Can Bloggers Make Money Without Google AdSense?

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I have talked a lot about Google AdSense in the past, and I have also recommended AdSense as one of the best contextual ad networks for your blog. With the high-quality of ads and its safe recurring income, AdSense is a great blog monetization network.

But, what about people who’ve been banned by AdSense, or who can’t get approved by AdSense? Is that the end of making money via blogging for them?

No! It’s not!

Blogging without AdSense
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In this article, I will be sharing how having your AdSense account banned, or not getting AdSense approval, is not as much of a problem as you may think it is.

AdSense is considered to be one of the best money-making programs for bloggers for the following reasons:

  • It is easy to use.
  • You don’t have to worry about low-quality ads.
  • You don’t have to manually change the ads after a certain time.
  • You don’t have to worry about payment (AdSense payments are very reliable).

However, there are numerous issues which you face when using AdSense:

  • You must abide by the content guidelines offered by the AdSense team.
  • You cannot simply post anything you want to post. Even though you may not be violating any webmaster guidelines, you cannot publish certain types of posts due to AdSense policies. (Example: Websites which allow us to watch movies online.)
  • To earn more from AdSense, you need to continually try out various optimization techniques, including using keywords with high CPCs.
  • If most of your traffic is from countries like India, Pakistan, or Malaysia, you might earn mere pennies from AdSense.

None of these drawbacks make AdSense evil, but these issues do point to the fact that AdSense may not be as great as you think it is.

Why & How Your Life Is Better Without An AdSense Account:

Let me start by sharing my own journey with AdSense:

When I started blogging, I had no idea how to make money. I started blogging because of my passion for sharing knowledge & only heard about AdSense after a few months of blogging. Even after implementing AdSense on my blog, my first ad income was $47 from a DreamHost affiliate sale.

  • It was not from AdSense or any other ad network.

You may be wondering why I would say this since I make lots of money blogging (over $30,000/month). But let me ask you: Have you ever seen AdSense ads here at ShoutMeLoud?

If you take a look at my AdSense earnings for 4 years, you’ll know that I’ve made almost no money with AdSense, compared to the loads of money I’ve made with other monetization techniques. The only good thing about AdSense is the recurring income, which can offer a feeling of security to some degree.

Now that you know my AdSense story, I will share my experience of successfully monetizing a few blogs without using AdSense at all, and what can happen if you choose to do the same.

Your blogging life becomes more experimental.

The best blogging education comes from experimenting.

When you experiment with the latest monetization methods, you may stumble across a solution which works amazingly well for your niche. Experimenting also allows you to learn things from the experiences of other bloggers.

So instead of spending time experimenting with something completely new, you can start with tested methods which have worked for other bloggers.

Takeaway: When you read about a new ad network, try it out. Don’t be afraid to experiment. Also, instead of simply looking for a review, search for income reports and/or a case study.

You will be inclined to earn using your natural set of skills.

I have a blog called WPSutra which is currently in its orphan stage. But the good thing is that I have a blog business plan ready, and I believe it will work. To what extent, I’m not sure. But this blog has been running for a while now, I do not use AdSense, and the blog is still making enough money to cover its hosting and maintenance fees.

You may be thinking “Sure, Harsh, but you have been using WordPress for eight years now, and you know how things work around WordPress.” And yes, that’s right. But WordPress is part of my skill set.

Have you considered what your skill set is?

  • If you are running a technology blog, you can write an eBook on how to do certain tasks.
  • If you are running a finance blog, you could offer to make a finance plan for your readers at an affordable price.
  • If you are running a relationship blog, you could offer premium one-on-one consultancy around relationship issues.
  • If you are running a health blog, you could offer to create a diet plan for your readers.
  • If you are running a fashion blog, you could help people shop for fashion that works for them… and you could get paid for that.

Takeaway: There is a market out there for everything!  All you need to know is how and where to sell what you have to offer.

Embrace affiliate marketing.

Here at ShoutMeLoud, affiliate marketing is the main source of income. You will find thousands (or maybe even millions) of marketers talking about affiliate marketing and recommending thousands of products to you. But they will never tell you which ones work and which ones do not.

Many of them will claim to make you a multi-millionaire in a day, but don’t fall for it!

If you are planning to earn income via affiliate marketing and use it as an alternative to AdSense, you need to work hard, and you need a proper plan to reach a sustainable income.

If someone tells you that affiliate marketing doesn’t require any hard work, they are wrong. Likewise, if someone tells you that affiliate marketing doesn’t offer recurring income, they are also wrong.

I know that every month, no matter what, I will earn at least $5,000 from affiliate marketing. That is the minimum amount I will earn because I’ve created a resilient sales funnel to sustain that amount of income every month.

The key to this kind of sustainable success with affiliate marketing is to recommend something that you personally use, and can also guide readers on how they can get the same benefit. While it is true that Google doesn’t like affiliate links, they don’t mind them if you are adding value.

Takeaway: There are many types of affiliate marketing, and you can choose what works for you. You can either create a blog and try to recommend every new product in your niche, or you can be selective and recommend products that you are actually using while teaching your readers how to benefit from their use.

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If you are looking to achieve long-term financial success without selling your soul, do it the right way. It may be slow at first, but it will pay off nicely in the end.

Here are a few hand-picked articles to help you to learn more about affiliate marketing:

My intention with this article has been to show you the reality of life without AdSense. Many bloggers give up when AdSense doesn’t work for them, and they don’t even pursue anything else.

Half of them spend months trying to get their AdSense account approved, and they end up making dumb mistakes which get their accounts banned.

If AdSense is not working for you, let it be. Try something else. Try something which no one else has dared to try. If there is an ad network out there, chances are it’s working for someone. Why not you?  You may want to ask yourself if you are brave enough to take that risk.

If you are, then do it!

I would love to know your monetization success stories which don’t involve AdSense. Share your experience in the comments below!

If you find this article useful, don’t forget to share it!

Also check out:

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Authored By
A Blogger, Author and a speaker! Harsh Agrawal is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and FinTech space. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud, and a Speaker at ASW, Hero Mindmine, Inorbit, IBM, India blockchain summit. Also, an award-winning blogger.

183 thoughts on “Can Bloggers Make Money Without Google AdSense?”

  1. Brandon

    Hello, Harsh. Very informative article indeed. Affiliate market has already taken over the Ads system. Affiliate is the best way to earn and in good amount however it requires proper research and skills to make money in affiliate marketing. Other than that, splendid article. I really enjoyed watching the vide.

  2. Sohbet

    I read your post all , it is little bit long.So ,I join with you and you are right about that people who are from USA , UK click your sites than you can eran more from Google Adsense.
    Also I cant think another alternative instant of Google Adsense 🙂

  3. Ashutosh

    Hi Harsh,
    My blog is providing information about application . I put apps link on my blog and Users download it from playstore by provided link .
    Now I want to know that can I earn some money per download or any affiliate program with app owner .

  4. praneet thakur

    Is it okay as per adsense copyright to include a youtube video of another publisher on our web site….even if with valid correct reference of the link …?

    1. Vikrant

      I recommend to embed the video rather than downloading the same and copying it in your website. Its legal!

  5. Ann

    Hi Harsh,
    I have an educational website. I am banned from AdSense due to invalid clicks. Currently I use infolinks and cant earn anything out of that. Is there anything specifically for educational websites? Most of the traffic comes from India. Please suggest one or two. Thanks.

  6. Priyadarshan

    i am using bidvertiser after google adsnse account banned,so dont think its end of blogging

  7. Neha Roy

    Is it okay as per adsense copyright to include a youtube video of another publisher on our web site….even if with valid correct reference of the link …?

    1. Zaman

      Yes, it is fine to embed any youtube video in your website with the embed codes unless you are intentionally using a copyrighted video (like a pirated movie, sports event, tv shows etc.) of others in order to try to save yourself from copyright infringement. Initially they might give a warning but later on they would ban all such ads and later perhaps your ad account. I am saying from experience as I faced such problems with embedding around 7-8 years ago (when Youtube was nascent and Google Adsense was hardly much strict compared to today’s strict guidelines). They warned a couple of times and then removed adsense from that site (it was streaming TV shows from Youtube… at that time, no TV channel was officially there on Youtube either). I had even faced problems for uploading movie trailers on my Youtube account and posting them on one of my websites. There were not many production houses at that time too. Nowadays, almost every major production house has official Youtube channels. So, you can just embed the official Youtube video and nobody would raise any concer hopefully unless you are not doing it intentionally to bypass copyright infringement problems yourself.

  8. Sara

    Thanks for your article.After Adsense banned me with $1100 in my account i search a good alternative and i find Tribaladnetwork.com. I earn decent revenue around $20 per day.If you want a good alternative you can try it.

  9. Abhishek

    Hey Harsh, I wanna ask you, if for reasons Adsense is banned on your site. Then what other alternatives are bloggers like me who didn’t even started their blogging life. And are these alternatives better than Adsense

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      Hey Abhishek,

      Like I sais in my post, you can go for sponsored posts, display ads and affiliate marketing to name a few.

  10. Robin Khokhar

    Hi harsh,
    I really enjoyed reading your article. Sometimes it becomes hard to get Google AdSense or earn money with Google AdSense. But affiliate marketing is the best way to make a money online.
    Thanks for sharing.

  11. Arigas

    Hi,
    Yesterday I have bought a domain in godaddy.com and hosted my website which is previously on blogger. I applied for adsense and i have placed few adds on my website. After 1 hour, I received an email stating that my adsense is disapproved because of my youtube adsense account with other gmail. It states that a person should not have more than one adsense account. I felt disappointed and then deleted that adsense account and added my website to already existing youtube adsense account. It is a hosted account. It is not showing any ads on my website. I can not log in to my old adsense account. Does my adsense will get approved or not. Felt disappointed. Then this post give real energy to work on. Thanks for sharing valuable info.

  12. Abhishek Singh

    Hi Harsh, Well the AdSense is crucial major part of income section for mostly sites but can we imagine similar income from other ad networks. As per our experience, income on other ad network fluctuates with major difference & as per our view no one ad network present on web which competes with AdSense. Well what’s your view on this?

  13. amrit sharma

    Thank you harsh for this great post. I am new blogger and my AdSense account is blocked for the reason I don’t know. I already earned 76 dollars and waiting for my first 100 dollar . Because of this i was very disappoint and decided to not post anything on my blog. But this post gave me new hopes and I am again ready for blogging.

  14. Kiran

    Surely adsense is the best way to earn from your blog. But affiliate marketing is also increasing now a days. If you know affiliate marketing you will hardly prefer adsense.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      That’s true! Thank you for your comment Kiran.

      1. samaksh

        Hi Harsh, My site has daily 35,000 page views but google did not give me good RPM and my site is based on Entertainment, what can i do, any suggestions?

  15. Varun Khatri

    Hello,

    Thanks for the nice article, really great post indeed, Please keep it up.

    Varun,
    Regards.

  16. Kushagra Upadhyay

    So, you say that affiliates of amazon or flipkart is make money but I have a question that if amazon and flipkart have their own site for sell then why visitors use our affiliates for buy product ?.and you say that you make $5000 with an affiliate how is that possible I don’t believe on this. if your this point is really correct then tell me that why visitors use your site shoutmeloud for buy the product through your affiliates.

  17. Fazechec

    I have tried Adsense but not earning so much good money, will try other alternatives also. I will try my best to get future earning and this earning can borrow affiliate marketing also.

  18. hasan

    hi harsh
    i want to know if google accepts another companies ads together with adsense at the same page?
    and if yes is there a list of these companies ?
    thank you

    1. Mat.Erial

      Yes they do! But forget them. Like adsense they are all crap. Decent affiliate marketing is a much better earner. Just look at smartpassiveincomes Bluehost aff income to get inspired! 🙂

  19. Gurmeet Singh

    Nowadays, Google AdSense is just an alternate way to earn money as a blogger. There are a lot of other more profitable ways to earn money online. Since I started blogging, I haven’t yet got my first cheque from Google Adsense but already earned thousands of rupees by other ways. 🙂

  20. Ramakrishna

    It’s very usefull information for me.I started blogging since 2 months and i just earned $40. I already heard about affliate marketing but didn’t used in my site due to lack of knowledge.From now I will use affliate links in my site.
    Thank you Harsh Agarwal

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