I never had set up AdSense on my site before and I was curious how it would be. I am in the process now and I learned lots of things. I am not convinced that I want to do this long-term but I will see how it goes.
The first thing that I learned is that this process takes a few days. On Saturday morning I set it up and created my ads.txt file and that process was easy. I use the Google Site Kit plugin which was a pleasure to use and it is pretty well done.
This is my second attempt to see how monetization works on my site. The first was many years ago when I was reached out to by a company that wanted to run ads on my site. The money wasn’t great but it was an experience.
Mostly I was curious about AdSense because I had other IT people tell me that their sites paid for their costs with AdSense. I just bought a $60 plugin to make the site faster so I figured why not see if it can pay for itself. If the ads are too intrusive I will discontinue it. I hate ads and don’t blame you for using Brave to block the ads like I do. Just as a reminder ads sometimes serve malware, so blocking ads increases your security so you don’t get Browser hijacking like I wrote about yesterday.
Is there a downside to using AdSense? You have to give Google some tax information including your SS number. It might complicate your taxes a bit if you make lots of money. Oh if I have that problem I will be glad. It might not be worth paying your accountant/tax attorney if you only make a little money. Still, I will take my chances and see what happens. This site has been going for 14 years and for the vast majority, it has been something that I have self-funded.
Yes as an IT person, it is helpful for my career and my own intellectual curiosity. Yes, it has brought me business and credibility when I am a consultant and when I had my own business. Having a website is something that I always want to have. If nothing else I like to write, and the fact that some people find this helpful is encouraging. Thank you for reading.