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The Internet’s Biggest Google Whores

johnchow.com — A list of the top 8 Google AdSense income earners. Digg founder Kevin Rose is at number 2!

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  • bootlick, on 10/12/2007, -33/+9Cool read there
    • snypa, on 10/12/2007, -11/+19http://duggmirror.com/business_finance/The_Internet_s_Biggest_Google_Whores
    • hawkmucci, on 10/12/2007, -0/+25plenty of fish is so ghetto that you can't tell the adsense ads apart from the content of the site. but hey, for that kind of money. hell
    • dclowd9901, on 10/12/2007, -4/+29Should I laugh at the advertisement at the top of this page?

      "
      AdSense - Warning
      Don't do AdSense until after you read this shocking review.
      TheAdsenseTruth.com
      "

      Good ol' automated advertising.
    • 23r17i05o42n, on 10/12/2007, -15/+1Kevin Rose gets more tail than Sinatra.
    • Intangir, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7its also funny they are advertising it on adsense ;)

      anyway i make $.12 a day from adsense ;) ya im pretty rich
      ive made 36 dollars so far!
    • neoform, on 10/12/2007, -14/+2Plentyoffish does NOT earn $300,000 per month nor has it ever. max it ever did was 50,000/month and that was over a year ago. I know the guy and he makes more like 8,000 to 10,000 a month on adsense now days..
    • benjihad, on 10/12/2007, -10/+10@ neoform
      you don't know the guy, you're full of *****. your numbers are wrong, you just made that ***** up.
      there is an actual picture of a check he recieved from google, it's about $900,000 dollars. RTFA and click some links next time you make a bunch of ***** up - ***** douche.
    • mozzep, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3Neoform,

      what do you get out of blantantly lying?

      just curious, does it make you feel powerful to say, "i know the dude"? Do you like bragging?

      Too bad though, since we all know you're lying.
    • googleking, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Digg.com makes $100,000UAD daily

      Source: http://www.lollyhop.com/?tag=digg.com

      You can also check what other web sites make.
  • rexb, on 10/12/2007, -24/+5Stingy bastards! Share the wealth!
  • chriskzoo, on 10/12/2007, -7/+144I have NEVER clicked on an ad on Digg.
    • sq377, on 10/12/2007, -7/+51I have.
      Never on purpose... But i have.
    • DJFMA, on 10/12/2007, -10/+89I don't even see them. God I love adblock + firefox.
    • npsken, on 10/12/2007, -47/+9By using ad block you are taking away revenue from hard working people. Sure ads are annoying, but, for example, what do you think would happen to digg if 50% of the users started using ad block?
    • noodlez, on 10/12/2007, -7/+31i have clicked on ads on purpose, and i have this page whitelisted in adblock (as i do with other sites i appreciate) for the express purpose of helping to keep digg alive.

      i like the page, so i'm willing to put up with the text ads to do my part in contributing to keep digg afloat.
    • snlildude87, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14i accidently clicked on an ad and thought it was a news story. the story was top 10 web tools for college student. i clicked on an ad on the top right (college care package) where they sold food.

      was confused as hell for a second
    • haggie, on 10/12/2007, -28/+16If you don't use FF +adblock, you are an idiot.

      It's not my job to put money in your pocket. If I can avoid ads, I will. I use a PVR and skip commercials too. Kiss my ass!
    • vees, on 10/12/2007, -4/+16I don't see any embedded scripts such as Google ads because my Firefox blocks any Javascript from sites not explicitly allowed. You'd be amazed how much nonsense goes away when you do that.
    • geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -5/+19"what do you think would happen to digg if 50% of the users started using ad block?"

      Kevin would only make $100k a month, which would still make Digg incredibly profitable (seeing as their only real cost is bandwidth and power for their servers).

      As soon as people make advertising I'd like to see, I'll stop using AdBlock. Google used to be that, with text-only ads, but now that Digg's decided to use image ads with Google, ***** it.
    • mathmanjeffy, on 10/12/2007, -5/+6No....

      You can't manipulate statistics that way...

      It is fairly safe to say that a good number of digg users do not click on the ads. If 50% of the users started using adblocking software, which "half" would you think more likely to use it: The "half" that doesn't click on ads or the "half" that does click on ads?

      In all reality, if 50 % of digg users started using adblock, it would probably do very little to Kevin's bottom line.
    • ElectricGrandpa, on 10/12/2007, -7/+14To me it does seem incredibly rude to visit someone's site that they've put a lot of work into, and then to hide their one way of making money from the site. If you're going to view their site, you should view it as they want you to see it, ads and all.
    • nofxjunkee, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6"By using ad block you are taking away revenue from hard working people. Sure ads are annoying, but, for example, what do you think would happen to digg if 50% of the users started using ad block?"

      I don't click on ads anyway. I have clicked on a few ads from time to time, but that's only when I'm looking for a specific product or service that I _need_ at the moment, and am probably searching google to find a vendor.

      When I'm killing time on Digg, I am not looking for anything save for entertainment.
    • Thuktun, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7This is a community site. If it weren't for those visiting the site, there would BE NO CONTENT to drive people to the ads.
    • IEatHamburgers, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2@geminitojanus:
      Uh, I've read that Digg is only breaking even, even at $200K revenue per month. If their revenue suddenly halved, you'd probably be surfing Reddit or Netscape right now.
    • calebcharles, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3They have ads on Digg? LOL. Thanks, I actually forgot about adblock. (Still laughing...)
    • overlordmead, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6@hambugers...

      half his bandwidth is ads! Why don't we drop that 50% of his bandwidth and see how much that saves.
    • bpapa, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6Wow, you don't click on ads! You are such a renegade!
    • jo42, on 10/12/2007, -9/+1I never click on the ads either. I highlight the URL and open it in a new tab. No money to The Man.
    • Lewie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You can definitely tell which of the above users have sites with ads, and those that don't.

      I find that ads, as long as they're not hugging actual content, don't bother me. I'm even more likely to click them (probably click fraud, oh well). But when I have to carefully scroll and differentiate content from ads, I become the Splinter Cell of the Web.
    • destructoid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Even if you don't click on advertisements, high traffic sites are paid for serving them. Advertisers chuck this off as "branding" and will pay top dollar on quality sites for it.

      For example, I know for a fact that The New York Times sells $150,000 of ad inventory on a daily basis and that guarantees you exactly 0 clicks, but you can guess at least 0.1% will (the industry average).

  • drpeppper, on 10/12/2007, -28/+1***** assholes, leave some for us!
  • neutrascrub, on 10/12/2007, -7/+9You won't find Max Goldberg of YTMND on there
  • thewaz, on 10/12/2007, -15/+4tom is in my top 8.

    /wrong top 8
  • bnl771, on 10/12/2007, -22/+4There's ads on Digg???!?!?!

    Firefox must be broken because with extensions I can't see them. :-(
  • Llanowar, on 10/12/2007, -13/+2Seems like Kevin was lying when he told us he hardly plays even with this site.
    • gharding, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Yeah, because employees and servers and bandwidth are FREEEE!!!
    • Llanowar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2No, but I doubt it costs him even near $250k a month...
    • twstdroot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@Llanowar

      Let's make a rough estimate here. According to the About Us page here at digg there are 15 employees. Let's assume that these employees each average $80k per year (maybe I'm way off). $80,000 * 15 = $1,200,000 / 12 = $1,000,000. That's a million bucks in salaries alone never mind payroll taxes, server hardware costs, datacenter costs, office space costs, etc. I'd say $250,000/month is reasonable.
    • TheBlackLeopard, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I think Digg needs an actual business person to run the company to make it profitable. I mean seriously, what kind of privately owned small business with 15 employees has a "CEO"? Small to Medium Enterprises have Managing Directors who don't take home large salaries...
    • Llanowar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@ twstdroot

      Well, if all those 15 employees earn 80k a year, than they all got a top income. I doubt it's even half of that.

      But even then, I doubt the bandwidth, hardware, etc costs 2 mill a year.
    • HersheyP, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@twstdroot

      I just registered so I can respond to your dumb ass. lol Who taught you math?

      On what planet is 1.2million divided by 12 equal to 1million??!!!

      Did you confuse yourself into thinking that you were on to something?

      That's $100,000/month on Salaries according to your simplistically unrealistic analogy.
      I don't know where you got the $250,000 on bandwidth and server costs but it makes it quite obvious you have no experience in or have any knowledge of the subject.

      That number MIGHT sound a little more realistic if you were talking about sites like YouTube that require a lot of bandwidth for streaming content but a media publishing site like this that has nothing streaming would only be paying that on a yearly basis and even that is a stretch.
  • buttsakk, on 10/12/2007, -11/+6Sooo thats how Kevin is worth 50 mill
    /me rubs chin
  • right75, on 10/12/2007, -2/+37Good for them! Those people know how to make money.

    Shame on the article's author to be so cheap and sleazy as to call them "whores".
    • shiftt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2he just wanted people to read his article.

      but it doesn't matter, that list is very far from accurate.
  • chris9902, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14I never seen 6 of those sites.
  • useful, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10I was making 3k/month off my site, guess I should be a on some top500 list :)
  • geronimo, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5I can't help but think - if that's bringing in the dough for google, why doesn't google increase their margins and start their own digg?
    • zed260, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4because 200k is not worth that much money too a multibillion dollar company and it is not worth the effort
    • geronimo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Assuming Google's unpublished payout % is 50%, that's 400k a month or around 5 million/year they could generate. Multiply that by 10, that's about $50million/year they could make. That's significant.
    • jspalding, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yeah, but why bother? Remember, Google make the same amount of money as those websites do when someone clicks their ad, and they get it for ALL of those websites.
    • DivineLackey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Also I would like to point out that google cannot do business by stabbing it's constituents in the back. If people feel like by using adwords they get google interested in stealing their business, people won't use adwords.
  • flippinjeremy, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1that. is. crazy.
  • loganz, on 10/12/2007, -10/+4most i made off of adsense in one month was $24k.. i should be on that list =[
    • snlildude87, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3and i thought my 7k (yahoo + google) was crazy; it's a lot lower now. it was fun rubbing it in my friends' face at the time, though. :-/
    • loganz, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5same here, its a lot lower.. but it was fun going to the bank in my pajamas with $10k+ checks.. sometimes they would keep me around for 30 minutes lol
    • Lewie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1damn! Send your readers my way!
  • haggie, on 10/12/2007, -6/+8I have never clicked on any AdSense ad ever. I ask friends if they ever click AdSense ads, they reply no or rarely. I've asked my family. Same thing. I think click fraud is incredibly underestimated.

    I'm just waiting for someone to find the secret location of the Google Monkey Army that spends all day clicking AdSense ads and watch as Google's market cap completely disappears in charges of massive fraud.
    • realsurreal2, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16I don't know about your friends and family but mine wouldn't know what an Adsense link was - it's a link on a page, that's all they know
    • gonephishin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Yes, and no one ever buys spam either. Spammers keep sending emails not because they're worth it, but just for kicks. Don't assume that everyone in the world is just like you or your circle of friends.
    • DruSam, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Like realsurreal2 said, there are many people who don't know the difference between an ad and a regular link. And there are even some that do know the difference, and don't care because the ad interests them.

      Is it so hard to believe that people are making legit money on the internet?
  • christacw, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7it seems so simple. but... i never click those. supposedly nobody really ever does. and yet...
    • loganz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2most users on digg are web saavy and know what are ad's and what are real links. that is why 'diff effected' sites never make a good return off of their ads.

      but to compare the entire internet community with digg is wrong. there are billions of users online who dont know the difference, and they also have pop-ups, spyware, bloatware running freely on their computers
  • n8r0n, on 10/12/2007, -0/+22I need to come up with an idea quick.
    • jshanman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I have too many ideas, just not enough time or money :(
    • gd007, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2give me those ideas, i have plenty of free time.
  • emilyizzles, on 10/12/2007, -13/+0adsense is the only thing i don't like about google. it's make it look like another sellout.
    • Xinareiaz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9what would you prefer them to make a profit on? Chargeing for email?
    • detroitsux, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5I'd personally pay Google money if they can get rid of annoying spelling errors.
    • lerchmo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Google results would be ***** if they didn't have those advertisements. You think its cheap to run servers google is on?? look like another sellout? to what? is every site that turns a profit a sellout? why don't you take a peek at the real world.
  • crash331, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7My mom does. I don't know if she does $250,000 worth, though.
  • marnaq, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13And on the 0th place... Sergey and Larry!
  • ddogg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Lol there are much bigger earners out there, some sites are just way under the radar.
  • ChanKaiShi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12PlentyofFish.com is run at home and hosted on 4 servers and maintained by coder himself. All being run on Windows. That's pretty amazing. Wondering what kind broadband he has in his house.
  • spyderman4g63, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Any estimates on how much money this article will make from adsense?
  • jriley101, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3These google whores don't add up to the $500M+ that google pays out each year. This is a list put together to get the attention of diggers with Kevin on it. BS.
  • ggudggid, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I have a small site that makes almost nothing from Adsense. Is anyone on here doing $100/month with Adsense? What are the other options out there besides Adsense?
    • Lewie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yahoo has their own advertising business. Chitika.com . Amazon....
    • finalcut, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I, amazingly, make about 100 every 3 months from google Adsense. Sometimes the number is below that and sometimes it is more.

      Since my last check (6/1) I have made $88 on about 41k page impressions which have resulted in about 1300 ads clicked.

  • maledei, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1well, i got banned from adsense for clickfraud after earning just 100 bucks. (rightly so).
    i wonder if i can ever set up an account again when i have my big selling Internet-startup idea?
  • TMoney, on 10/12/2007, -9/+0This is BS. I'd be suprised if plentyoffish.com got 10 hits a day.
    • vemerge, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1LOL. Is this a joke? PlentyOfFish gets a ***** of hits. The site sucks nuts though.
  • maledei, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3-edit- double, sorry. vote me down.
  • r00tus3r, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Absolute and complete insanity!!! I'm a web developer myself, and this is motivation for me to keep working. Congrats to digg and Kevin Rose, you guys had a fantastic idea, and really put your all into it, to make this the best website on the entire Internet.
  • wildcatcs, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I keep wondering, would digg be as successful if Kevin didn't have his popularity coming off of screensavers.
    • arkitect, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I think it would be as popular but it might have taken longer. I had never heard of Screensavers before I started using digg. I mean digg is just a freaking good idea that was executed really well.
    • tutivlahos, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I live in greece and I never watched screensavers, so...
  • mathmanjeffy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2"Google, The Internets Biggest Whore"

    Fixed.

    Seriously, considering how much google pays out, consider how much they >make
  • dagnabbit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3FTA: Digg gets "over 200,000 million page views per month"? As in, two hundred thousand million?
  • captaineuphoria, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Did anyone notice that the article says "200,000 million page views per month"?

    That's like... 200.000.000.000 page views. Never realized that microbes read digg.
  • KyotoWolf, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14how can Rose earn 250k a month when he cant even afford a couch, or am i missing something?
    • tutivlahos, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1200k its the revenue not the profit.
  • cellis, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Perezhilton (perezhilton.com) makes 25 thou a week on his gossip blog. And he really IS a whore. But I guess he doesn't count, since his site is funded with other adverts besides googles.
  • NapoleonGold, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Where is Fark or BoingBoing?

    I would figure they would be making a decent living off their ads, but lil' Drew wasn't there.

    And yes I have never even noticed the ads on DIGG, Thanks for that Kevin.

    Keep making cash and PLEASE dump it into your Revisions3 bandwidth. I hate how clunky that site is but enjoy the content.
  • feelingfunky, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2the dangerous thing now though is 'friendly inflation'- the act/violation where people click on friends ads to help them out. I could post my website and state (or rather have someone else - like an alter ego/identity) ask that you visit the site and drive up my $$$ from having page views. well ok that IS spam isn't it, but if we wanted to we could all click on each others blog sites just to be nice and 'lend a click'. YES that would be an abuse of friends. Of course we could all just turn ADBLOCK's Whitelist on this site and click on ads just to help Digg out too....
    My mind is spinning at hearing that Digg makes 200k+/month on adsense! I think I will click on an ad now - just to be nice.
    /ramble
  • FastZ, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Haha, maybe I need to be on that list! In a year and half, I've made $11.71 from my Adsense ads. The most I've ever gotten in one day is $3.21 and that was in June of last year. I was looking at that Joel guy's e-book but he wants friggin' $97 for it so screw that. My sites sorta suck anyways. I ain't gonna spam a link to my blogs or my website on here because you guys dont like that. If anyone's interested in looking at my sites, you can google my username.
  • s14sh3r, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Digg has ads?


    /thank you adblock
  • mecole21, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2your mom is a google whore
  • sembetu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I'd settle for a cool 10,000 a month. I could live quite happily on that.
  • peschomd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2my favorite quote of this conversation............

    "you're mom's a Google Whore"

    ever lasting.....
  • Evic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I was making $7K per month off of WoWCensus, until IGE shut down their entire AdWords campaign to stop me.
  • andyd2k, on 10/12/2007, -0/+01. It's an estimate. There's no basis on his claim besides that fact that he's taking a number that BW published and divided it by 12.

    2. I would think that most of the poeple on this site are tech/web savy - ie those that would probably never click on a google sense ad.

    I would be pretty surprised if indeed this site was making that much money off those ads.
  • curseyouberkley, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Whoa. Where are these ads you speak of?
  • ujangdigg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3sadly, Youtube not in the list...
  • aderemiojikutu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Google Adsense earnings has gone beyond this few listed superstars which John Chow listed. In fact i can say that his compilation is a crude and outdated aggregate.

    Today, thousands of publishers are earning a couple of thousand bucks (between 3 - 10 thousand Dollars per month). Even in Nigeria where the relative price of a click is geographically very low, due of course, to low Internet density, we have publishers sites that earns a few thousand bucks monthly from Google Adsense.
  • ogletree, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1It is easy to make that much money from Adsesne the problem is we don't know how much they spent to get those checks. I can spend $500k and $400k no problem.
  • Li0nel1234, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I can't believe how much $$$ Google is paying out for adwords and adsense. I just had a test in electronic commerce and adsense was one of the answers... I'm gonna pay more attention and maybe I'll make some money out of it.
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