Not a very good page title as this is not a history of Adsense but a history of "our" relationship with Google Adsense.
We have been a Google Adsense publisher since 2004, so that makes us a long-term Google publisher.
We've had some very good times, and now not quite so good but all in all, Google + Adsense has been very good to us.
For us it started with a business partner suggesting we try Google Advertising (Adsense) on one of our web sites.
We had been publishing content web sites for a number of years without making any 'real' money. We always hoped it would come one day, and maybe today was that day.
In the early days, all of Google's ads were text, and to be frank, I didn't like their appearance. I used to say, "I dont want ugly advertising next to my content".
After 3 months I relented. We are in Australia, but had a motoring directory in the UK that I felt would not be harmed by giving these ugly ads a try.
I signed up for a Google Adsense account (there were no Google Accounts at the time), was accepted and added a few advertising blocks to the site at about 6pm Australian (EST) time.
Checked the ads (they were working) and shut up the office. 6pm Australian time is roughly start of the day in the UK, so by morning (my time) it would have been around 12-14 hours later.
I arrived back in the office the following morning, made coffee and did a few regular morning jobs like check emails.
Oh yeah, that's right, I added Google Advertising last night so I wonder how it got on.
I logged into my Google Adsense account and went to earnings...
Gobsmacked is the word that comes to mind. OMG!
During the first night of the one campaign, with one advertising block, we had generated US$365.00+ dollars.
I couldn't believe it? Wowee
Yes, we added a couple more blocks and by week's end had generated over $3,500.
That was one web site. We have over 30 web sites that operate in the same way but in different countries and industries.
At it's peak (2008) we were making over $25,000+ a month. Today (2014) we're down to $10,000+ a month. The drop in earnings is not just a reflection of Google Adsense but our ability to generate traffic to our web sites. I'll talk about that aspect at another time, but for today, if you have a web site and you are looking for a way to monitize it, then consider Google Adsense.
Before you rush off to get a Google Account, when I say "if you have a web site" I am not referring to a business web site aimed at selling products and services. The aim of this type of web site is to generate sales for the business, not lose the visitor to a competitor.
Update
Today (2015) we're down to $5,000 a month and for a while felt it was going to go even lower but over the past few weeks we have watched it start to climb again, albeit moderately.
I suspect two issues are affectings our earnings. As mentioned above, our traffic has fallen, on some web sites dramatically so if we don't have traffic we cannot expect to generate revenue. The other issue is quality of advertising being displayed. In some cases that means relevancy, so if the advert is not relevant to the visitor then it is unlikely to interest them and we do not generate click-throughs. The other case is the type of advert. We've seen Google ads appear where they are unable to generate an advert from an advertiser and so again, the ads are unlikely to interest our readers.