Ad-dition By Subtraction

Loyal readers will no doubt recall my post earlier this year describing my decision to enable Google AdSense on this blog (see Monetizing Your Content). I thought it would be interesting to share with you an update. It seems that the high-quality content that I have been developing for this weblog over the last (almost) three years is starting to pay off - I am starting to enjoy the fruits of my labor. Since enabling AdSense-based ads on my blog on March 15 of this year, I have accrued $6.14 USD in earnings. Putting to good use the Minor I obtained in Mathematics from the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh in 1984, that looks to be about 2.34 cents of earnings per day. $6.14 won’t even cover the price of a cup-of-coffee at Starbuck’s anymore.

As you may have noticed, I have disabled the display of AdSense ads from the blog. My AdSense account is actually in quite good standing with Google. I haven’t clicked my own ads or violated any of the terms and condition of the program. My blog hasn’t been click-bombed or anything nefarious like that. In fact, Google recently made my blog eligible for Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger (so I have that going for me). I just felt like the AdSense thing had run its course. It was sort of amusing to see which ads were displayed for a particular post. Who could forget that ad for “Christian Singles” that appeared on Unhinged?

Removing the ads certainly gives a more pleasant look to the blog (less visual noise) but my chief reason for disabling AdSense is a more practical one: one can’t cash in AdSense earnings until one accrues the Google-defined payment threshold (which for my account is $100). At my current earnings rate, the date at which I would have built up to that $100 threshold will be somewhere in the neighborhood of Monday, November 20, 2023. That is a long ways away – what are the odds that I will still be blogging then? Hell, I’ll be months away from collecting (reduced) Social Security by that date (stop laughing – both about my advancing age and the Pollyannaish optimism that would lead one to think SS will still be around then). So I’m trading off some pennies for some aesthetics.

Interestingly enough, I can still keep my AdSense account even while not showing the ads on my blog. You can temporarily suspend and resume ads at any point if your account is in good standing, so there is no real good reason to cancel the AdSense account – especially since my earnings don’t even meet the cancellation threshold of $10. "Google will not make payments for any earned balance that does not reach this threshold."  As I was reading the cancellation policies, a question occurred to me: So what happens to the current earnings in all of those AdSense accounts that are cancelled that don’t meet the cancellation threshold? Duh. Sorry Google – you’re not getting that $6.14 - quite yet anyways.