Is google Adsense a scam?

My dad tried to get me to start a blog there but the whole "Make money by clicking on things" seemed too good to be true. Has anyone here used it before?

Just about anything that involves making money and doing little is a scam.dodgerblue13

This man speaks the truth.

[QUOTE="dodgerblue13"]Just about anything that involves making money and doing little is a scam.DarkGamer007

This man speaks the truth.

So they can decide to shut you down for whatever reason?

So they can decide to shut you down for whatever reason?

zeorshadow19

It's not a scam. Basically it works like this:

Google has an ad engine that's pretty good and because google more or less owns the internet it's a wise business decision to do your advertising with them. So companies who want to advertise their product pay google some cash to get their ads strewn all over the internet. Of course Google can't just inject ads onto any site it wants. Doing so would be illegal. So what Google does is offer to split some of the profit with you if you agree to be a virtual billboard for them. Of course Google doesn't want to hand out massive amounts of cash to billboards that bring in much revenue but they certainly want to keep a hold of their goldmine sites. So what Google does is pay you on a "per click" basis. They give you a pitance of money, I think it's something like 1-10 cents per click. So the income that most people get from adsense is entirely negligable. However, if you have a website with a ton of traffic all those 1-10 cent clicks add up and you end up making a good deal of cash. Google still comes out on top though since in the end they're giving you a sliver of what the client paid them.

You see this with all sorts of advertising, not just adsense. The more people you reach the more you can charge for advertising. Advertisers will still erect ads on your site/radio station/TV station even if it does get crappy ratings/traffic as long as your price is low enough. But in the case of sites like gamespot it's not unheard of for a single ad campaign to rake in millions of dollars for the host site.