Can Bloggers Make Money Without Google AdSense? By:Harsh Agrawal In:Make Money online Last Updated:15/05/2016 (143 Comments) 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 quality of ads and a safe recurring income, AdSense is one of the safest blog monetization networks available to bloggers today. But, what happens to people whose AdSense accounts are banned or to one who is finding it difficult to get an AdSense account approved? Is that the end of making money via blogging for them? 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 the best money-making program for bloggers for the following reasons: It is easier to use You don’t have to worry about the quality of ads. You don’t have to manually change the ads after a certain time. You don’t have to worry about payment, as AdSense payments are 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 the AdSense policies. (Example: websites which allow us to watch movies online.) To earn more from AdSense, you need to try out various optimization techniques, including using keywords with high CPC. If you get traffic from countries like India, Pakistan and 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 is not as great as you may think it is. Following are some of the benefits of not using Adsense: Why and 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 from the blog. I am among the accidental solopreneurs like John Chow, Neil Patel and others, who started something without knowing where we were heading. I started blogging because of my passion for sharing knowledge. I heard about AdSense after a few months of blogging, but my first ad income was $47 from a Dreamhost affiliate sale. It was not from AdSense or any other similar ad network. You may be wondering why I would say this since I make lots of money blogging ( $8800/month as this article is being written), but have you ever seen AdSense ads here at ShoutMeLoud? If you happened to stumble upon a previous ShoutMeLoud article on my AdSense earnings for 4 years, you know that I made almost no money with AdSense, compared to other monetization techniques I have used. The only good thing about AdSense is recurring income, which can offer a feeling of security to some degree. Now that you know my AdSense story, I will share with you my experience 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 of blogging education comes when you experiment with things. When you experiment with the latest monetization methods, for example, you may find a solution which works perfectly for your niche. On the other hand, you can also learn things from the experiences of other bloggers. So instead of spending time trying something completely new, you could start by trying methods which have worked for someone like me or for other bloggers in your niche. For example, some time back I talked about Viglink, which is a great advertising network, but not perfect for a niche like ShoutMeLoud. It does, however, work great for a fashion niche. You can check out the case study of running Viglink on a fashion blog here. I don’t have a blog on fashion, but fortunately, one of my clients does, and she trusted my judge

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 quality of ads and a safe recurring income, AdSense is one of the safest blog monetization networks available to bloggers today.

But, what happens to people whose AdSense accounts are banned or to one who is finding it difficult to get an AdSense account approved? Is that the end of making money via blogging for them?

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 the best money-making program for bloggers for the following reasons:

It is easier to use
You don’t have to worry about the quality of ads.
You don’t have to manually change the ads after a certain time.
You don’t have to worry about payment, as AdSense payments are 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 the AdSense policies. (Example: websites which allow us to watch movies online.)
To earn more from AdSense, you need to try out various optimization techniques, including using keywords with high CPC.
If you get traffic from countries like India, Pakistan and 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 is not as great as you may think it is.

Following are some of the benefits of not using Adsense:

Why and 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 from the blog.  I am among the accidental solopreneurs like John Chow, Neil Patel and others, who started something without knowing where we were heading. I started blogging because of my passion for sharing knowledge. I heard about AdSense after a few months of blogging, but my first ad income was $47 from a Dreamhost affiliate sale. It was not from AdSense or any other similar ad network.

You may be wondering why I would say this since I make lots of money blogging ( $8800/month as this article is being written), but have you ever seen AdSense ads here at ShoutMeLoud?

If you happened to stumble upon a previous ShoutMeLoud article on my AdSense earnings for 4 years, you know that I made almost no money with AdSense, compared to other monetization techniques I have used. The only good thing about AdSense is recurring income, which can offer a feeling of security to some degree.

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