There are active discussions on multiple forums across the Internet centered around the question, "Can you make a million dollars from Google AdSense?" Apparently there are people who have become a millionaire entirely through the Google AdSense publisher program.

What is the Google AdSense Publisher Program?

From Google.com: Google AdSense is a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to display relevant Google ads on their website’s content pages and earn money. Because the ads are related to what your visitors are looking for on your site — or matched to the characteristics and interests of the visitors your content attracts — you’ll finally have a way to both monetize and enhance your content pages.

It’s also a way for website publishers to provide Google web and site search to their visitors, and to earn money by displaying Google ads on the search results pages.

But can you really make that much money being an Adsense publisher?

Well, if you own a popular website that gets millions of page views daily, then it is certainly more than feasible that you could become a member of the elite google adsense millionaires club; but the average website is lucky to receive a few hundred pageviews per day much less to receive millions. Google AdSense publishing millionaires aren’t usually people like you and me. Take Jason Calacanis for example. Calacanis is the co-founder of Weblogs Inc, a network of blogs that made its income through advertising programs like Google AdSense. Calacanis is an example often used to show that yes, it’s possible to make tons of money as a Google AdSense publisher. Calacanis has reportedly generated millions from displaying google ads on his weblogs. But what is not often discussed is Calacanis’s background and his connections and how these factor into his laudable achievements.

The reality for most people looking for ways to make money online is that they are not of Jason Calacanis’s caliber. That is to say, they weren’t active in New York’s Silicon Alley community during the dot-com boom. They’ve never been profiled in The New Yorker and Wired. They aren’t personally acquainted with venture capitalists and angel investors the likes of Mark Cuban. They simply do not have Calacanis’s expert  knowledge.

So keep Jason Calacanis’s background and connections in mind when reading about the fortunes he amassed as a Google adsense publisher. He was not a clueless little guy who started a blog network and "somehow managed" to get rich. And unless you are in a position yourself to secure Mark Cuban as an angel investor, or get funding for your venture through some other source, you probably will not be able to take the Jason Calacanis route to Google AdSense millions. (Note:Weblogs, Inc., the blog network Calacanis co-founded was sold to AOL in October 2005 for an amount reported to be about $25 million.)

So how do people like you and me get rich publishing Google ads on our blogs and other websites? The answer might well be that we won’t get rich as AdSense publishers; but the key to having a chance of making money with Google AdSense is to have a website that gets a decent amount of traffic that turns into useful page views. Just because someone reaches your web site doesn’t mean anything. Someone can take one look at your site and exit immediately. So you need not only to be able to get traffic, but you need the traffic to be targeted. You need people coming to your site who are interested in whatever it is you’re talking about on your site. You need your content to be interesting enough that they will read it. You need them to spend a little time on your site browsing your content. And you need to place your ads strategically so that they work within your content as seamlessly as possible.

Many more people know what Google ads are nowadays than in the past; and a good number of your visitors are going to consciously avoid clicking on your ads because, well, they know you make money if they click and human nature being what it is, they are not going to want to contribute to helping you make money off of their click. If you think about it, you probably do the same thing when you are on other websites, especially if the site is a competitor’s. These are some of the reasons people do whatever they can to integrate the ads within their content by modifying the ad code so that text and link font colors match the rest of their site.

But even while taking these steps you should not expect more than a very small percentage of your page views to result in a clickthrough. Thus, the greater your traffic and the longer people spend on your site the better luck you will have with Google AdSense.

Google does forbid such things as offering incentives to people to get them to click on ads or posting text such as, "help us out by clicking on these ads", or "support our sponsors" and other text designed to get people to click. It might seem unfair to you as a publisher. After all, you should be able to do whatever it takes to help get people clicking on the ads you’re publishing; but think how unfair it will be to the advertiser to have to pay for the useless clicks. Advertisers pay in the hope of clicks turning into sales for them. If your site visitors click just to help you make a few pennies you’re essentially ripping off the advertiser.

Considering that the ads Google will show on your page will usually be related to your content, if people are interested in your content there’s every chance they will spot an ad that captures their interest as well. You shouldn’t need to do anything extra to force their attention to the ads. In fact, doing so can convey a message to your visitors that you’re only interested in using them to make money, and no one likes the feeling of being used.

AdSense provides an opportunity for you to provide additional resources to your website viewers. Do not give the impression that your site’s purpose is to profit from AdSense rather than to provide a useful service.

As far as answering the question of how to make millions from Google Adsense, well, think about it this way, let’s say an average click earns you .03 cents. Let’s also say that to finish the year with a million Adsense dollars you need to make roughly $100,000 per month (you’d finish with a little more than a million at the end of 12 months - not factoring in taxes etc.).

So you need to make about $100,000 per month. That’s about $4000 per day rounding up to the nearest thousand.

At a rate of .03 cents per click, you need about 135,000 clicks per day to accumulate $4000 per day. The exact amount you’d accumulate with 135,000 clicks at .03 cents per click would be $4050. (.03 is the estimated average amount Google pays per click. The actual amount you receive per click varies and is determined by a number of factors)

Let’s say that each of your 135,000 clicks comes from a unique visitor. (This is unlikely but let’s say it’s the case for argument) Let’s also allow for the likelihood that only about 1% of your visitors will click on your Google ads. How many visitors per day does that mean you need to have in order to get your 135,000 clicks per day? 13,500,000!

If you have what it takes to build a website that gets 13,500,000 visitors per day, more power to you. Get started! Obscene wealth awaits you. Google might even buy your site for 1.6 billion. You probably won’t be needing to become an Adsense publisher even….

If you are like the rest of us, struggling just to get a few thousand visitors per month, you might need to scratch Google Adsense off your list of realistic ways to become an Internet millionaire.

1000 clicks per day is huge for the average publisher. At .03 cents per click, 1000 clicks earns you $30 per day. If you’re targeting specific high-paying keywords, you might be able to get as much as $3.00 for some of your clicks, but what is the likelihood of making $3.00 or more per click for 1000 clicks every day for a year?

$1000 per month from Google AdSense is far more feasible than $100,000; and even $1000 per month from Google AdSense isn’t that easy to achieve. So before you start getting excited about possibly becoming a Google AdSense millionaire, you might want to keep in mind that the majority of Google AdSense million dollar publishers aren’t laymen like you and me. Yes, there are a few regular Joes and Janes who are managing to make some decent money; but the average ad sense publisher is lucky to accumulate $100 per month.