Today, we bring you a success story from India, CarDekho.com, an auto portal, who made it big in the Indian online space thanks to AdSense.

Cardekho.com is one of the top auto portals in India that assists new and used car buyers to make informed buying decisions by offering them a variety of research tools and reviews. Co-founders Amit and Anurag launched Cardekho in March 2008, like every new business venture, were struggling to monetize. Luckily, Anurag discovered AdSense and was delighted by the prospect of finding revenue without needing VC funding.

They experimented with various products and features, and found the most success using the features highlighted below:

* Filtering options help them eliminate irrelevant ads. They use this feature carefully and intelligently so they don’t unnecessarily block good revenue.
* Top banner above-the-fold (beside the logo) ad placement is the top earning slot for them.
* Placing ad units in the “F pattern” helps them optimize visibility of ads.
* Showing text ads when content on the page is mostly images and image ads when content on the page is text-heavy. This helps make the page look better and improves ad visibility.
* Channels tell them how their ads are doing and how well they can perform if placed somewhere else on the site.

Because of their AdSense revenue, the CarDekho team can focus their efforts on providing useful and quality information on their website to ensure a good user experience, rather than worrying about monetization.

Amit, co-founder, shares, “AdSense is a must-have for all sites looking forward to a sustainable and profitable business model. It may not be the primary source of income as you scale your business model to earn from other sources. AdSense does add to considerable amount of revenues generated without having to worry about hiring a sales team to sell inventory...Had it not been for AdSense, CarDekho would not have come this far without VC funding.”

Have a success story of your own? We’d love to here it. Fill out this form to let us know how AdSense has helped you and your business!