How much money can you make with Google AdSense?

Why were many early internet users relatively friendly towards Google?

Because, in those early years, Google, through its advertising network, saved countless internet users!

To put it simply: many individual website owners didn't have enough traffic to receive individual ads. However, Google, as a massive global traffic platform, received countless advertising requests from businesses. These businesses not only placed ads on search results pages, but Google also placed these ads on partner websites worldwide, sharing advertising revenue with them.

This is Google AdSense.

As an individual website owner, inserting Google ad placement code into your website would automatically display relevant ads. What ads are displayed depends on the nature of your website's content. If your page's content is about cars, then it might show you car ads. So there's a certain relevance.

With more traffic, more ad clicks naturally follow, leading to more revenue. In those days, individual website owners mainly relied on this money to survive.

The first time I tried this advertising, using only a few ad placements, I earned about $800. I never expected such a high return.

Later, I made this my most important source of income. I remember that under normal circumstances, I'd earn between $1,000 and $2,000 a month. Back then, the exchange rate was 1:8, so that monthly income was roughly equivalent to an average person's annual salary. It wasn't too strenuous; I just updated content daily, which was a relatively comfortable period.

I later calculated that I earned a few hundred thousand yuan from this over those two or three years, which solved my basic survival needs.

Perhaps I was content with a modest lifestyle at the time and didn't scale it up. A friend surnamed Kang, however, scaled up this traffic operation, hiring hundreds of college students to create content and making a considerable amount of money. Even now, he still profits from traffic, primarily focusing on overseas traffic. He claims to be the number one Chinese traffic provider in China, earning a small fortune annually from traffic alone—truly taking traffic to the extreme.

Actually, there were also people working with overseas traffic back then. Legend has it that someone earned 8 million euros a year using Google AdSense through overseas traffic before immigrating.

Some might ask: Does Baidu have a similar advertising network?

Later, Baidu launched a similar product, Baidu Ad Union. I tried it for two months before giving up. This platform was shady!

If they didn't want to share the profits, they'd claim I'd violated the rules and deduct from my earnings. I still remember Baidu owes me several thousand yuan. So I vowed never to work with Baidu again.

This platform wasn't just shady; it was shamelessly aggressive. I emailed them saying I hadn't violated any rules and demanding they follow the rules, and they replied, "Tell me how you cheated before I give you money."

So, this was unacceptable, and I said goodbye to Baidu.

Many advertising platforms now model their operations after Google's ad revenue sharing model, even video platforms like Xigua Video.

Making money through traffic is the simplest: no need to consider customers or products, just generate traffic.

But this model severely tests a platform's conscience. A conscientious platform will follow the rules and give you a monthly payment that you can withdraw directly. It's heartless; it'll steal your money.

Don't assume big platforms are all ethical. When platforms do evil, ordinary people are left out.

Back then, I'd receive a Google AdSense remittance slip every month—a paper letter containing a printed check called Western Union. You could just take this to a bank to cash it.

I remember there were two main places to withdraw Western Union money back then: the Bank of China and the Agricultural Bank of China. The Post Office also accepted it. I mainly went to the Bank of China. I think I even kept one of the remittance letters as a souvenir, but I can't find it now, so I'll use an online image instead:

After visiting the bank more often and talking to people there, she told me I wasn't the highest earner; there was someone else who earned more than me. I was curious then, and I still don't know who it was. My traffic generation skills gradually improved, so I started creating some commercial keywords for myself. For example, back then, when searching for terms related to Shijiazhuang, I was usually ranked first, so I got some commercial orders.