Cashing Adsense Checks Is Worth Nothing?

Here's an interesting tidbit - Tuomas Rinta was trying to cash in a Google ~AdSense check, and it turns out his bank takes 85 € to turn it into hard currency. With today's exchange rate, that's about USD 107. Therefore, since Google sends your check at every $100, you'll end up with pieces of worthless paper in your hands...

I haven't hit that problem yet - I've had ads on this site for almost a year now, and so far haven't yet hit the first $100. (So as a method to get rich quick, ads on a website are not terribly good.)

Why checks are so expensive then? My guess is that it's because they're not used in this part of the world at all, and therefore handling them is a pain in the butt that the banks just don't want to deal with. No matter what the reason, I would recommend everyone with a Nordea account to put a tick in their "hold the payment" box until Google can do Electronic Fund Transfer to Finland. Unless, of course, you're making significant amounts of money from ~AdSense.

(That, or switch banks. But that's a huge hassle for mere 85€.)



Comments

It depends on your bank and how important a customer you are.

My bank, a small company from certain Swedish-speaking isles in Baltic sea, did not charge me anything to cash a U.S. check for USD 20.

Some banks, notably those that like to levy all sorts of outrageous fees to anyone not either depositing in excess of €1M or owing them €2M, probably do things differently.

Of course, it would be much better customer service from Google to just do a wire transfer from one of their EU-based tentacles.

--AnonymousCoward, 27-Jun-2006

Like I said to Tuomas on his blog, cashing checks in Osuuspankki is significantly cheaper. But you need to be customer, that's true.

About not earning even $100 on your blog - (I'll say this knowing that I risk sounding like SEO zealot) - you might want to reconsider the placement of your ads. It can make a world of difference. Also, keep in mind, that with blogs it's the long tail that earns you money. And forget Google's product referral buttons.

--samik, 27-Jun-2006

I've cashed loads of foreign (US) cheques in Nordea, and iirc the fee they took was something like 12 euros per cheque.

--Outi, 27-Jun-2006

samik: I've tried differing positioning, and in fact, they're now in the places optimizers suggest they should be.

However, I have two things which break it: my URL paths contain the word "wiki", and therefore I get loads and loads of wiki ads. My readers in general don't care about those at all, and even if they do click, it's a very low-paying word. The other problem is that half of my readership is Finnish, and many of the advertisements I get are just simply not that interesting to that bunch.

My guess also is that a lot of my users are savvy enough to run adblockers... I certainly do :-)

--JanneJalkanen, 27-Jun-2006


More info...     Comments?   Back to weblog
"Main_blogentry_270606_1" last changed on 27-Jun-2006 10:19:36 EEST by JanneJalkanen.