I'm a heavy consumer of AdSense (i.e. I'm the guy who actually pays for these clicks) and I also sell software. I happily put ads for my software on the pages of free competitors and similar applications (as well as many, many other pages on the Internet). They convert like nobody's business, unsurprisingly, because if you're staring at a page for Software That Does X you're probably in the market for Software That Does X.
I don't do this out of a sense of charity -- ooh look at me I can use Google to give this chap some programmer welfare! I'm paying Programmer X $2 a sale to make $25 a sale. It strikes me that if I were Programmer X I'd rather have the $25, right? That is why I actually, you know, sell stuff.
Moreover, since I know that I have Google set to buy every stitch of advertising inventory I can get on this site and I know how many impressions I get from him, I can guesstimate his monthly income and CPM to within a fairly decent range. Its probably close to a $3 CPM. He is the free competitor to me, bounces above or below me in the search results, and I make twenty times that on a CPM basis and quite a bit more on an absolute basis even when figuring in estimates of his higher traffic.
More broadly, if you're doing this on OSS software (as opposed to free-as-in-beer software), you need to come to terms with the fact that OSS enthusiasts are about the worst possible market for most advertising. Half of them run Firefox with AdBlock installed. The other half just never click on ads. And when they do click on ads, it is not to buy stuff. Websites which have visitors who tend to buy stuff get better click prices than the ones that send lookie-loos, for obvious reasons.
Losing your focus:
If you're going to do well with AdSense you have to optimize your site for it. You've got better things to do with your time, both in terms of "earns me money" and "accomplishes any sort of value for my users aside from shunting them to the competitor actually prepared to pay money". You also might have to spend time manually disallowing ads, if for example your paid competitor starts buying your visitors for $2 a sale.
True story: I sent a courtesy offer to one of my free competitors telling him I'd pay him $X for him to replace the adsense with just a static ad pointing to me, where $X was twice my best estimate as to what he was making a month. He asked how I picked the number and I told him "Oh, yeah, I place about 1/4 of the ads on your site and am getting it for an absolute song so I really want the other 3/4s too".
He promptly banned my ads (his site, his call -- I bear him no ill will for that decision).
My armchair psychoanalysis is that he didn't want other folks profiting more from his work that he did, and he was in fact willing to take less money just to make sure that was the case.
There's a simple solution to that: charge money for value.
Ok ok...but for me, as a website owner, the whole point of placing Adsense is, that I do not worry about conversion rates - You and Google does.
I think the original advice is good - free software developer can monetize his traffic a little with one-time additional work. It's not his concern that those ads don't convert that well.
You are not correct. Advertisers don't pay for traffic that doesn't convert for long -- if they were made to, they'd get POed at Google. Accordingly, if your traffic does not convert, you will be given "smart pricing" -- essentially, ads placed on your site will be automatically discounted. Heavily. This will result in CPMs (cost per thousand pageviews) so low they will be measured in cents.
The submission article suggests that $10 to $150 is reasonable for a site with 100 pageviews a day (i.e. 3k per month, implying a CPM of $3.33 to $50). If a 3k per month site gets smart priced, its monthly earnings will drop to between about a buck and two bucks (or less). Since Google does not issue checks for less than $100, you will be lucky if you see a check in the next five years.
I'm a heavy consumer of AdSense (i.e. I'm the guy who actually pays for these clicks) and I also sell software. I happily put ads for my software on the pages of free competitors and similar applications (as well as many, many other pages on the Internet). They convert like nobody's business, unsurprisingly, because if you're staring at a page for Software That Does X you're probably in the market for Software That Does X.
I don't do this out of a sense of charity -- ooh look at me I can use Google to give this chap some programmer welfare! I'm paying Programmer X $2 a sale to make $25 a sale. It strikes me that if I were Programmer X I'd rather have the $25, right? That is why I actually, you know, sell stuff.
Moreover, since I know that I have Google set to buy every stitch of advertising inventory I can get on this site and I know how many impressions I get from him, I can guesstimate his monthly income and CPM to within a fairly decent range. Its probably close to a $3 CPM. He is the free competitor to me, bounces above or below me in the search results, and I make twenty times that on a CPM basis and quite a bit more on an absolute basis even when figuring in estimates of his higher traffic.
More broadly, if you're doing this on OSS software (as opposed to free-as-in-beer software), you need to come to terms with the fact that OSS enthusiasts are about the worst possible market for most advertising. Half of them run Firefox with AdBlock installed. The other half just never click on ads. And when they do click on ads, it is not to buy stuff. Websites which have visitors who tend to buy stuff get better click prices than the ones that send lookie-loos, for obvious reasons.
Losing your focus:
If you're going to do well with AdSense you have to optimize your site for it. You've got better things to do with your time, both in terms of "earns me money" and "accomplishes any sort of value for my users aside from shunting them to the competitor actually prepared to pay money". You also might have to spend time manually disallowing ads, if for example your paid competitor starts buying your visitors for $2 a sale.
True story: I sent a courtesy offer to one of my free competitors telling him I'd pay him $X for him to replace the adsense with just a static ad pointing to me, where $X was twice my best estimate as to what he was making a month. He asked how I picked the number and I told him "Oh, yeah, I place about 1/4 of the ads on your site and am getting it for an absolute song so I really want the other 3/4s too".
He promptly banned my ads (his site, his call -- I bear him no ill will for that decision).
My armchair psychoanalysis is that he didn't want other folks profiting more from his work that he did, and he was in fact willing to take less money just to make sure that was the case.
There's a simple solution to that: charge money for value.