Google AdSense – No Dollars for Clicks!

A reader of this blog, who uses Google AdSense to monetize his blog, emailed me the following question:

I’ve had 3 clicks and yet zero dollars. Is that normal? My IT guy tells me that Google takes a while to evaluate things before allocating money but I just want to confirm.

Here’s my answer to this question.

There are 2 reasons why you may have a zero dollar value against your clicks.

(1). Google thinks the clicks are invalid.

If you happen to click you own ads or if someone clicked from a computer on a Local Area Network (example at work) where you have logged in to check your AdSense revenue, then Google will consider the click invalid. The reader also mentioned that he did not click his own ads. This leads us to the second reason.

(2). CPC vs CPM

The AdSense program has two types of ads. CPC ads that are paid on a per click basis (thus the name Cost Per Click) and CPM adds that are paid based on 1000 page impressions. CPM stands for Cost Per Millie. Millie is the Latin word for thousand. For CPM ads the publisher is paid each time the ad is displayed on a page. This means when a user clicks on a CPM ad there is no payment made to you, even though Google reports that click. There are CPM ads that are priced at very low rates, for example 50 cents for 1000 page impressions. This means when an ad is displayed on a page you earn 50/1000 = .05 cents. Google does not report any earnings under 1 cent. Google will keep track of these earning and will display them once the accumulated earnings reaches a cent.

Therefore it is perfectly normal to have Clicks and no dollars against the click.