Introduction
This Google Adsense related hub is going to go right to the heart of the worries of most people who participate in the Google Adsense program. Basically, I'm going to answer the title question in a concise and informative way. You may not like the answer that's going to come out of this article, but it's the honest to goodness truth, and there's no magic bullet to change the status quo, so if you're curious to find out how much money you will earn with Google Adsense, scroll past the Google logo!
There Are Many Factors That Determine Your Adsense Profits
Usually, when people ask how much they can earn from Adsense, they're assuming that it's a cut and clear deal. Like, for every ad clicked, you'll get 20 cents. The truth of the matter is somewhat more complex. Among the factors that can determine your Adsense profits are:
The types of ads appearing on your pages: Advertisers will compete for the advertisement space on your site, in an ad auction. Whoever wins gets to place his or her ads, which can be CPC (Cost per Click; you get money each time the ad is clicked) or CPM (Cost per Thousand Impressions; you get X amount of money for every 1000 views the ad gets). Google will choose whatever will get you the most profit.
The pricing of ads appearing on your pages: This is fairly logical, but not a whole lot of people pick up on it. Basically, the ads displayed on your page cycle every so often, and each one has a different value. Today, you may have an 80 cent CPC ad in the spot that had a $1.00 CPM ad the day before. Thus, your actual profits may vary wildly each day.
How many AdSense products you use: Besides the Google ads that most people use, there are also several other niceties that you can use if you have your own website or blog, such as Adsense for Feeds and Adsense ads in Google Search. The more Adsense products, the higher your potential profits.
Those are the factors Google lists on its help page. Of course, there are many more factors involved in your Adsense profitability, such as:
Higher quality content will get you higher profits:
For articles, 400 words is the bare minimum. Anything less than that is usually pointless. However, don't make your article too big either, because that will just turn people off as well (in this day and age, most people don't have the attention span to truthfully read a 5000 word exposé in one sitting).
Your content should be relevant to a central theme. If you have a website about baby products, don't leap into a tangent about Mustangs or grandfather clocks. This will hurt the quality and relevance of the ads that you're getting served by Google.
Ad placement is important: Studies have shown that people tend to look in the upper right section of a webpage upon entering it. No one has a clear reason as to this behavior, but if you're looking to make the most of your Google Ads, guess where you should have an ad block? ;)The more traffic the better...usually: It's a simple numbers game: The more traffic you get, the higher the chance you will get ad clicks. Also, the more traffic, the more money you make from CPM ads as well. Of course, just because you get 100,000 page views a day doesn't mean you'll get a single click (but with such a high traffic density, you might be better off using CPM ads at that point).PageRank is good for you: Basically, the higher your Google PageRank, the higher you'll place in the Google search results for keywords relevant to your content. This is an extension of my previous bullet (as you tend to get more traffic the higher your PageRank). Thus, anything that can sabotage your PageRank should be avoided. If I were asked to name one thing that will kill your PageRank in a heartbeat, I'd probably have to say: Duplicate content.
Conclusion
So, as you've probably inferred from reading this article, there are way too many factors involved in figuring out how much money you'll make with Google Adsense to give any sort of concrete answer to the question postulated in the article title. However, I hope you've also figured out that Google Adsense is a viable way to make money online.
If you have any other questions related to Google Adsense, feel free to ask me. Also, post any feedback and/or suggestions you may have for this article (any improvements I could do or anything crucial you believe I have left out) and I will see if I can improve it. :)