For three years tens of thousands of webmasters have been making incomes ranging from a few dollars a month to five figure sums per month – with Google’s contextual advertising program –Adsense।

Indeed many Internet Gurus have made substantial profits by telling people how to monetise their website traffic by putting Adsense on it.

Adsense revenues are shared between Google and the Adsense Publisher … the website owner – up to now a nice cosy and profitable arrangement.

Google has always been cautious about revealing the ratio of payout to the publishers for Adsense clicks compared to the amount that the advertiser pays for the Adwords … but the feeling among Adsense Publishers is that the percentage has been dropping steadily over the past three years – if you are a number cruncher, you may try to interpret the financial data from Google itself here: http://investor.google.com/fin_data.html

In the past there was one price for Adword keywords, whether they appeared in Google Search results or as Adsense Ads on individual Adsense Publishers websites – that was fine as an Adsense Publisher might get, say $4 from a click for a $6 Adword – remember nobody knows exactly because Google will not tell!

Individual websites that publish Adsense are known as Google’s content network.

On 22 November 2005 Google made a change to their Adwords advertising program - they allowed advertisers to bid different amounts for the Ads that would appear in Google Search results and for the Ads that would appear on individual Adsense Publishers websites.

So an advertiser might bid $5 for a click from Google and 5 cent for a click from an Adsense Publisher in the content network … Ouch if you happen to be that Adsense Publisher!

Is it the end of the road for Adsense Publishers?

Is there life after Adsense?

What can Adsense Publishers do to make up for the drop in revenues?

Is it possible to make much more from your website than you were making with Adsense – maybe this was a blessing in disguise!