Well it would appear that another year has quickly come and gone, but it has been a very eventful year for me in terms of my AdSense experience so I thought I’d share my experience over the last 12 months, and maybe throw in a few hints and tips that I have learnt in that time.
So I guess what you all really want to know is just how much am I making from AdSense on my sites. Well as it stands I’m making around $120/day lately. Here is a graph of my earnings progress since I joined DP:
As you can see when I first joined DP I was earning a very measly $10/week from AdSense with my sites that were at this point about 15 months old. Once I joined DP I obviously had my eyes opened to the true potential of my sites, not just in terms of AdSense but also in terms of SEO and the importance of building a good quality site. With this, I quickly saw improvements in my AdSense earnings and my traffic to my sites by applying that simple advice that is scattered all over these forums, and within a few short weeks I was earning a very solid $100-$200/week which I was quite happy with.
From October 2005 through to May 2006 I saw fairly gradually, but small growth of my sites with the exception of two weeks in February where my sites were down for a few days and constantly crashing until I upgraded my hosting, which had become overburdened due the progress I had made. Then in May I got caught up with my university commitments and then I went on a couple of brief holidays which saw my sites’ growth stagnate until around August at which point I had a terrible drop in revenues as a result of Google supplementally indexing my sites and placing many of my pages into supplemental results, a problem which I would solve a couple of months later.
Then came September! As you can see on the graph I made significant progress in September. What did I do that made such amazing returns in such a short period of time? Simple – I got serious and started working hard and applying what I had learnt over the past two years.
How did I get serious? I took a bit of a risk, bought a few books about AdSense, SEO and general website development and dropped down to part time uni and started dedicating more time to my websites. I started writing articles that were on topics that people wanted to know about and topics that people were searching for, and I placed these articles into a highly optimized template that was just designed for these articles, then I went about building a few backlinks for these articles to help with the SEO. I’d have periods of maybe a week where everyday I would sit down and write an article two, often three or four, and I’d just keep writing, sharing my knowledge, sharing my expertise.
Why were articles successful? These articles each focused on an individual search term or topic within my industry. The articles were informative and useful. They were 100% original and completely unique in the industry. They were my thoughts, opinions and beliefs on topics that I was very knowledgeable on. They were detailed and lengthy. And the search engines loved them.
Why did the search engines love them? Because they were original and unique, and because they were getting backlinks and they were on my established sites which I believe have a fair amount of “TrustRank” because at this point my sites were well over 2 years old and had thousands of backlinks, because I had slowly but surely developed them over the previous two years. Plus the articles were all on niche topics that there wasn’t that much competition for, and I had employed very basic, but very solid SEO techniques. Things like:
- Giving each article an individual highly relevant page title.
- Using meta descriptions and keywords, but not abusing them.
- Using H1 and H2 tags.
- Using good keyword density and specific phrase targeting.
- Using good quality, unique, original and focused content.
- Building some well anchored backlinks.
- With a good navigational system between articles.
- Using an aged domain with good TrustRank.
These techniques are nothing special, and are the basics of SEO and when they are applied to individual articles and based around a well optimized AdSense template is the formula for high earnings and success with AdSense.
So what sort of template am I using? It is again nothing special. It basically is a simple article page that was 780px wide, with an AdSense links unit at the top, then a 100px high header image, then a left hand navigation bar. Then a large rectangle unit above the article, then the article itself with a H1 title, with H2 sub titles, where required, followed by another large rectangle unit after the article which was along side a list of similar articles, then a footer. Far from a revolutionary template design. I have attached the hand drawn version I gave to my designer so you can see how simple the design was.
Ok so that is the basics of how I went from less than $10/day in August 2006 to $100/day in October 2005, but before I wrap up this “little” post I thought I’d also share a few bits of wisdom that I have picked up along this 15 month learning curve here at DP.
Firstly so many people out there are preaching you need to diversifying and make MORE sites if you want to make more money with AdSense, and often in this suggestion is the timeless of debate of which is the best way to make money with AdSense, with sheer quantity of sites or a few quality sites? Personally I’m a quality sort of person who believes that that with every page and site I’m creating and building an asset that will not just be of value now, but well into the future. I’m not working on a snatch and grab model of trying to create one spam site a day everyday for a month to hopefully earning $1 from each site so that by the end of the month I can be earning $30/day. Why don’t I work like this – because in life making money generally comes down to one thing – providing value, and sites like that are soon weeded out by refined search engine algorithms.
Whether you are a CEO of a large company or a factory worker working on assembly line you are being paid for the value you provide. When it comes to websites you also need to be providing value to your visitors for them to continue to use your service, and by providing value you will gain them as a loyal reader, and as a reader you can advertise to them. The more people and the more value you provide the more you will make. It’s a simple equation really. Now search engines are constantly working towards weeding out the “poor value” sites that are often referred to SPAM and whilst there may be loopholes at the moment with every passing year the search engines become savvier and are refining their search algorithms.
So for me providing value is normally about providing good quality content. So I make sure that when I’m creating sites these days I’m adding something to the site that makes it worthwhile for someone to visit and if possible try to make it so valuable to them that they are actually inspired to come back again and again. These sorts of sites are then normally looked upon favorably by search engines as they receive natural link development from all the fans of the site. This is a model of site development that doesn’t just work presently, but is a model that I’m confident that will work well into the future of this rapidly changing environment.
Another issue that is often brought up is the issue of creating lots of sites for high paying niches. Personally I have never wasted my time with such things because I’m focused on providing good quality expert content and if I’m going to do this I need to make sure that I’m knowledgeable in the niche that I’m creating the site on, and unfortunately for me I’m just not that knowledgeable on mesothelioma, cancer, debt consolidation or lawyers, nor do I have any passion towards developing my knowledge on such niches so creating a site for such things would just be a waste of my time and any visitor’s time that came by my site, because the information on it would be next to useless.
What is a much smarter idea, that I believe I got from one of Shoemoney’s posts was that you should establish a good quality site in an industry that you are familiar with and knowledgeable of then when you have built the site to close to its potential and you are looking to make a new site to diversify, you should look to make a site that is still in a similar industry but has only a degree or two of separation from your original site. So say you had a site about Sports Cars, instead of trying to start a site about Music or something else that is completely unrelated to your established site, you might try making a site about Car Sound Systems, or Luxury Cars, or something that is still related to cars. This way you can build the new site somewhat off the back of the already established Sports Cars site. Plus you already have a great deal of knowledge about the related industry plus it is easier to stay motivated if you make sites about topics related to your passions, and even if you don’t have expert knowledge to start off with, you will pick things up quickly when you have loads of related knowledge from your other expertise. This is so much easier than trying to develop a new site from scratch and is a very effective way of developing a successful network of sites that feed off each other.
In this game of making money online you really should be always experimenting and trialling new things, but you should also be looking to apply methods that you know work. Building on what you have with more of what has worked in the past and consolidating your position.
You also need to make sure that you are working hard and keeping yourself motivated. The online world can be extremely competitive and you need to make sure that you are doing your best to stay ahead of the pack. You should be reading diversely on a range of topics, AdSense and other earning methods, SEO, online marketing, website design and development. Reading diversely doesn’t mean just reading forums, I also highly recommend buying ebooks, books taking classes to extend your learning beyond that of JUST DP – there is a whole world of thinking out there and often I think that so many people are just reading DP thinking that it is a one stop shop for everything.
The reality is DP doesn’t have it all and a $20 book from Amazon on AdSense or SEO could make you thousands of dollars. Let’s face it, if you aren’t willing to part with $20 at bare minimum to extend your expertise, chances are you aren’t going to be the next person here making $XX,XXX/month from anything online. That said there are definitely exceptions to that but it's extremely rare. Plus you can certainly fast track your development and earnings if you are willing to shell out a few dollars to increase your knowledge, or get a good quality design made, or some special feature for your site. Plus if you have invested money into your projects chances are you will be a lot more committed to gaining a return from them which will only further contribute to your development.
The reality is there are millions of people online that are willing to put their time into making money online, but only a very small proportion of those are willing to put there time AND money into giving themselves the edge, and the reality is that for every person that had tried to make a few bucks online and succeeded there have been about another 99 that tried and made nothing. So give yourself the edge, and take the risk of losing a what is literally a couple of dollars – I can almost guarantee you it will be the best risk you have ever taken.
I mentioned above, it is important you stay motivated, and one of the best ways I know of staying motivated is setting challenging goals and targets that are very detailed and measurable. That includes, short, medium and long term goals, and often making them public like here on DP is a great way of making yourself accountable to them. I personally think that you should have your goals written down somewhere along with an action plan at least and renewed them at least once a month. There have been many goal setting threads started up here at DP before in the past, many of which I have tried to stay actively involved with in the past, and I have always found them be wonderful references for both your progress and to help with keeping to a target.
Well it think this thread is getting excessively long now so I will wrap it up, with a good old fashioned, if you work hard you will reap the fruits of your labor. So stick at it, and best of luck in 2007 may it be your greatest year to date.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Monday 18 February 2008
Make money online 2007 Review
Make money online 2007 Review
Well it would appear that another year has quickly come and gone, but it has been a very eventful year for me in terms of my AdSense experience so I thought I’d share my experience over the last 12 months, and maybe throw in a few hints and tips that I have learnt in that time.
So I guess what you all really want to know is just how much am I making from AdSense on my sites. Well as it stands I’m making around $120/day lately. Here is a graph of my earnings progress since I joined DP:
As you can see when I first joined DP I was earning a very measly $10/week from AdSense with my sites that were at this point about 15 months old. Once I joined DP I obviously had my eyes opened to the true potential of my sites, not just in terms of AdSense but also in terms of SEO and the importance of building a good quality site. With this, I quickly saw improvements in my AdSense earnings and my traffic to my sites by applying that simple advice that is scattered all over these forums, and within a few short weeks I was earning a very solid $100-$200/week which I was quite happy with.
From October 2005 through to May 2006 I saw fairly gradually, but small growth of my sites with the exception of two weeks in February where my sites were down for a few days and constantly crashing until I upgraded my hosting, which had become overburdened due the progress I had made. Then in May I got caught up with my university commitments and then I went on a couple of brief holidays which saw my sites’ growth stagnate until around August at which point I had a terrible drop in revenues as a result of Google supplementally indexing my sites and placing many of my pages into supplemental results, a problem which I would solve a couple of months later.
Then came September! As you can see on the graph I made significant progress in September. What did I do that made such amazing returns in such a short period of time? Simple – I got serious and started working hard and applying what I had learnt over the past two years.
How did I get serious? I took a bit of a risk, bought a few books about AdSense, SEO and general website development and dropped down to part time uni and started dedicating more time to my websites. I started writing articles that were on topics that people wanted to know about and topics that people were searching for, and I placed these articles into a highly optimized template that was just designed for these articles, then I went about building a few backlinks for these articles to help with the SEO. I’d have periods of maybe a week where everyday I would sit down and write an article two, often three or four, and I’d just keep writing, sharing my knowledge, sharing my expertise.
Why were articles successful? These articles each focused on an individual search term or topic within my industry. The articles were informative and useful. They were 100% original and completely unique in the industry. They were my thoughts, opinions and beliefs on topics that I was very knowledgeable on. They were detailed and lengthy. And the search engines loved them.
Why did the search engines love them? Because they were original and unique, and because they were getting backlinks and they were on my established sites which I believe have a fair amount of “TrustRank” because at this point my sites were well over 2 years old and had thousands of backlinks, because I had slowly but surely developed them over the previous two years. Plus the articles were all on niche topics that there wasn’t that much competition for, and I had employed very basic, but very solid SEO techniques. Things like:
- Giving each article an individual highly relevant page title.
- Using meta descriptions and keywords, but not abusing them.
- Using H1 and H2 tags.
- Using good keyword density and specific phrase targeting.
- Using good quality, unique, original and focused content.
- Building some well anchored backlinks.
- With a good navigational system between articles.
- Using an aged domain with good TrustRank.
These techniques are nothing special, and are the basics of SEO and when they are applied to individual articles and based around a well optimized AdSense template is the formula for high earnings and success with AdSense.
So what sort of template am I using? It is again nothing special. It basically is a simple article page that was 780px wide, with an AdSense links unit at the top, then a 100px high header image, then a left hand navigation bar. Then a large rectangle unit above the article, then the article itself with a H1 title, with H2 sub titles, where required, followed by another large rectangle unit after the article which was along side a list of similar articles, then a footer. Far from a revolutionary template design. I have attached the hand drawn version I gave to my designer so you can see how simple the design was.
Ok so that is the basics of how I went from less than $10/day in August 2006 to $100/day in October 2005, but before I wrap up this “little” post I thought I’d also share a few bits of wisdom that I have picked up along this 15 month learning curve here at DP.
Firstly so many people out there are preaching you need to diversifying and make MORE sites if you want to make more money with AdSense, and often in this suggestion is the timeless of debate of which is the best way to make money with AdSense, with sheer quantity of sites or a few quality sites? Personally I’m a quality sort of person who believes that that with every page and site I’m creating and building an asset that will not just be of value now, but well into the future. I’m not working on a snatch and grab model of trying to create one spam site a day everyday for a month to hopefully earning $1 from each site so that by the end of the month I can be earning $30/day. Why don’t I work like this – because in life making money generally comes down to one thing – providing value, and sites like that are soon weeded out by refined search engine algorithms.
Whether you are a CEO of a large company or a factory worker working on assembly line you are being paid for the value you provide. When it comes to websites you also need to be providing value to your visitors for them to continue to use your service, and by providing value you will gain them as a loyal reader, and as a reader you can advertise to them. The more people and the more value you provide the more you will make. It’s a simple equation really. Now search engines are constantly working towards weeding out the “poor value” sites that are often referred to SPAM and whilst there may be loopholes at the moment with every passing year the search engines become savvier and are refining their search algorithms.
So for me providing value is normally about providing good quality content. So I make sure that when I’m creating sites these days I’m adding something to the site that makes it worthwhile for someone to visit and if possible try to make it so valuable to them that they are actually inspired to come back again and again. These sorts of sites are then normally looked upon favorably by search engines as they receive natural link development from all the fans of the site. This is a model of site development that doesn’t just work presently, but is a model that I’m confident that will work well into the future of this rapidly changing environment.
Another issue that is often brought up is the issue of creating lots of sites for high paying niches. Personally I have never wasted my time with such things because I’m focused on providing good quality expert content and if I’m going to do this I need to make sure that I’m knowledgeable in the niche that I’m creating the site on, and unfortunately for me I’m just not that knowledgeable on mesothelioma, cancer, debt consolidation or lawyers, nor do I have any passion towards developing my knowledge on such niches so creating a site for such things would just be a waste of my time and any visitor’s time that came by my site, because the information on it would be next to useless.
What is a much smarter idea, that I believe I got from one of Shoemoney’s posts was that you should establish a good quality site in an industry that you are familiar with and knowledgeable of then when you have built the site to close to its potential and you are looking to make a new site to diversify, you should look to make a site that is still in a similar industry but has only a degree or two of separation from your original site. So say you had a site about Sports Cars, instead of trying to start a site about Music or something else that is completely unrelated to your established site, you might try making a site about Car Sound Systems, or Luxury Cars, or something that is still related to cars. This way you can build the new site somewhat off the back of the already established Sports Cars site. Plus you already have a great deal of knowledge about the related industry plus it is easier to stay motivated if you make sites about topics related to your passions, and even if you don’t have expert knowledge to start off with, you will pick things up quickly when you have loads of related knowledge from your other expertise. This is so much easier than trying to develop a new site from scratch and is a very effective way of developing a successful network of sites that feed off each other.
In this game of making money online you really should be always experimenting and trialling new things, but you should also be looking to apply methods that you know work. Building on what you have with more of what has worked in the past and consolidating your position.
You also need to make sure that you are working hard and keeping yourself motivated. The online world can be extremely competitive and you need to make sure that you are doing your best to stay ahead of the pack. You should be reading diversely on a range of topics, AdSense and other earning methods, SEO, online marketing, website design and development. Reading diversely doesn’t mean just reading forums, I also highly recommend buying ebooks, books taking classes to extend your learning beyond that of JUST DP – there is a whole world of thinking out there and often I think that so many people are just reading DP thinking that it is a one stop shop for everything.
The reality is DP doesn’t have it all and a $20 book from Amazon on AdSense or SEO could make you thousands of dollars. Let’s face it, if you aren’t willing to part with $20 at bare minimum to extend your expertise, chances are you aren’t going to be the next person here making $XX,XXX/month from anything online. That said there are definitely exceptions to that but it's extremely rare. Plus you can certainly fast track your development and earnings if you are willing to shell out a few dollars to increase your knowledge, or get a good quality design made, or some special feature for your site. Plus if you have invested money into your projects chances are you will be a lot more committed to gaining a return from them which will only further contribute to your development.
The reality is there are millions of people online that are willing to put their time into making money online, but only a very small proportion of those are willing to put there time AND money into giving themselves the edge, and the reality is that for every person that had tried to make a few bucks online and succeeded there have been about another 99 that tried and made nothing. So give yourself the edge, and take the risk of losing a what is literally a couple of dollars – I can almost guarantee you it will be the best risk you have ever taken.
I mentioned above, it is important you stay motivated, and one of the best ways I know of staying motivated is setting challenging goals and targets that are very detailed and measurable. That includes, short, medium and long term goals, and often making them public like here on DP is a great way of making yourself accountable to them. I personally think that you should have your goals written down somewhere along with an action plan at least and renewed them at least once a month. There have been many goal setting threads started up here at DP before in the past, many of which I have tried to stay actively involved with in the past, and I have always found them be wonderful references for both your progress and to help with keeping to a target.
Well it think this thread is getting excessively long now so I will wrap it up, with a good old fashioned, if you work hard you will reap the fruits of your labor. So stick at it, and best of luck in 2007 may it be your greatest year to date.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Sunday 10 February 2008
Adsense Section Targetting
Adsense has become the main source for revenue among many bloggers. However,making money using adsense is not as easy as many believe it to be.
Many components have to be combined skillfully to even hope for a considerable amount of profit. One of the most important aspects of making money with adsense is your ability to serve your audience with the most relevant advertisements.
Google has added several features to their adsense program to enable publishers to better target ads. Section targeting is the latest and most effective addition to adsense.
Blogs usually contain many features that often confuse the adsense bot and result in serving irrelevant advertisements. Some of these features include Catagories,User Comments,Your Web Profiles,and even RSS Web Feeds.
For instance if you were to write a post on the Lastest Cellphones but spam produced by user comments might contain links to Mesothelioma sites. This alone could confuse the adsense bot to produce ad’s that are completely irrelevant to your post topic.
A post usually only takes up 50 percent of the total blog,while the rest of your space is filled with comments, links, catagories, Flickr images and such forth. Google has infact developed section targeting to deal with these exact situations. Section targeting uses certain html tweaks to force the google adsense bot to focus on specific content.
Some things to note before implementing Google Section Targeting:
1. Don’t cheat Google by targetting wrong content (doing so might result in Google banning).
2. Try including user comments in the Tags, but do remove them if you find that it is worthless.
3. If you do not see results quickly, give it few days for the adsense bot to crawl your blog.
4. If your Google earnings drop for the first few days, experiment for some time.
5. Always include the Title of post within the tags.
This is how it’s done. Just open your HTML page in your prefered editor such as notepad and place your cursor to the beginning of your article and insert the following line:
note:If you are using wordpress or any other blog publishing software that contains a built in editor, you can place the following lines without any external software such as notepad.
Then point your cursor where your post ends and insert the following HTML line
By adding the above code to your template you are basically suggesting to the google bot which content you want included.
[screenshot provided by Digital Inspiration]
Adsense Smart Price Solution
I recently got smartpriced on one of my othersites
I used to make $600 from around 1000 clicks but then my traffic increased even more and I began to earn the minumum bid amount per click which was $0.01.
As you can imagine I was very irate at what was happening. To solve this I simply:
1. Took off adsense ads from the high CTR pages on my site for a week (What's the point of having them there if you are barely making money)
2. Put them back again
3. Watched earnings rise again
Follow these tips and I am sure you will solve your smart price problem!
Google Adsense tips
I’ve been reading a few forums and blogs about Google Adsense tips lately, and thought it would be helpful to consolidate as many as possible in one place without the comments. I’ve also thrown in a few tips of my own. We start out with some of the basic general stuff and move to the more specific topics later on.
Build an Empire?
When you’re deciding to become a website publisher you will fall into one of two broad categories:
- Publish 100 websites that each earn $1 a day profit
- Publish 1 website that earns $100 a day profit
The reality of it is, most people end up somewhere in between. Having 100 websites leaves you with maintenance, management and content issues. Having one website leaves you open to all sort of fluctuations (search engines algorithm’s, market trends, etc). You can adapt your plan on the way, but you’ll have an easier time if you start out going in the direction of where you want to end up.
General or Niche
You can build your website around general topics or niche ones. Generally speaking niche websites work better with adsense. First off the ad targeting is much better. Secondly as you have a narrow focus your writing naturally becomes more expert in nature. Hopefully this makes you more authority in your field.
If this is your first try at building an adsense website, make it about something you enjoy. It will make the process much easier and less painful to accomplish. You should however make sure that your topic has enough of an ad inventory and the payout is at a level you are comfortable with. You may love medieval folk dancing, but the pool of advertisers for that subject is very small (in fact it’s currently zero).
Once you’ve gotten the hang of how Adsense works on a website, you are going to want to dabble in some high paying keywords, you may even be tempted to buy a high paying keyword list. This does come with some dangers. First off the level of fraud is much higher on the big money terms. Secondly there is a distortion of the supply and demand relationship for these terms. Everyone wants ads on their website that make $35 or more a click, however the number of advertisers who are willing to pay that much is pretty limited. Additionally the competition for that traffic is going to be stiff. So, don’t try to run with the big dogs if you can’t keep up. If you have to ask if you’re a big dog, then chances are, you’re not. I have used a high dollar keywords report from cashkeywords.com and was pleased with my results (see cash keywords free offer recap).
New Sites, Files and Maintenance
When you’re building a new site don’t put adsense on it until it’s finished. In fact I’d go even farther and say don’t put adsense on it until you have built inbound links and started getting traffic. If you put up a website with “lorem ipsum” dummy or placeholder text, your adsense ads will almost certainly be off topic. This is often true for new files on existing websites, especially if the topic is new or different. It may take days or weeks for google’s media bot to come back to your page and get the ads properly targeted. TIP: If you start getting lots of traffic from a variety of IP’s you will speed this process up dramatically.
I like to build my sites using include files. I put the header, footer and navigation in common files. It makes it much easier to maintain and manage. I also like to put my adsense code in include files. If I want/need to change my adsense code, it’s only one file I have to work with. TIP: I also use programming to turn the adsense on or off. I can change one global variable to true or false and my adsense ads will appear or disappear.
Managing URL’s and channels
Adsense channels is one area where it’s really easy to go overboard with stats. You can set up URL channels to compare how one website is doing to another. You can also set up sub channels for each URL. If you wanted to you do something channels like this:
- domain1.com - 728 banner
- domain1.com - 336 block
- domain1.com - text link
- domain2.com - 728 banner
- domain2.com - image banner
- domain2.com - 336 block
- domain3.com - 300 block
While this is great for testing and knowing who clicks where and why, it makes your reporting a little wonky. Your total number will always be correct but when you look at your reports with a channel break down things will get displayed multiple times and not add up to correct total. Makes things pretty confusing, so decide if you really need/want that level of reporting detail. TIP: At the very least you want to know what URL is generating the income so be sure to enter distinct URL channels.
Site Design and Integration
Once you know you are going to put adsense on your website you’re going to have to consider where to put it. If this is new site it’s easier, if it’s an existing site it’s more difficult. While there are some people who will be able to do it, in most cases I’d say if you just slap the adsense code in, you’ll end up with a frankensite monster (props to Tedster of WMW for the buzzword). While every website is different, Google has published some heat maps showing the optimal locations. No surprise that the best spots are middle of the page and left hand side. Now I’ve done really well by placing it on the right, but you should know why you’re doing it that way before hand, and be prepared to change it if it doesn’t work out.
Google has also has published a list of the highest performing ad sizes:
- 336×280 large rectangle
- 300×250 inline rectangle
- 160×600 wide skyscraper
From the sites that I run, I do really well with the 336 rectangle and 160 skyscraper. My next best performing ad size is the 728 leaderboard, I don’t really use the 300 inline rectangle too often. So really it depends on how well you integrate these into your site. Placement can have a dramatic effect on performance. TIP: When working on a new site or new layout you may want to give each location it’s own channel for a little while until you understand the users behavior.
Another ‘trick’ that can increase your CTR is by blending your adsense into your body copy. For example if your body copy is black, remove the adsense border and make the title, text, and URL black.TIP: Try changing all of your page hyperlinks to a high contrast color (like dark red or a bold blue) then change the adsense title to the same color.
The one area where I’ve found blended ads don’t perform as well is forums, especially ones with a high volume of repeat members. Regular visitors develop banner blindness pretty quickly. One ‘trick’ to keep the ads from being ignored is to randomize the color and even the placement. As with any of the decisions about location, placement and color it’s a trade off. How much do you emphasize the ads without annoying your visitors. Remember it’s better to have a 1% CTR with 500 regular visitors as opposed to a 5% CTR with 50 visitors. TIP: For forums try placing the adsense ads directly above or below the the first forum thread.
Using Images
One of the latest ’secrets’ to make the rounds is using images placed directly above or below an adsense leaderboard. This has been used for a while but came out in a digital point forum thread where a member talked about quadrupling their CTR. Basically you set up the adsense code in a table with four images that line up directly with the ads. Whether or not this is deceptive is fuzzy and very subjective. Obviously four blinking arrows would be ‘enticing people to click’ and be against the adsense TOS. However placing pictures of 4 laptops over laptops ads isn’t, so use your best judgment here and look at it from the advertiser or Google’s perspective. If you have a question as to your implementation being ‘over the line’ write to adsense and ask them to take a look.
As far as using the images, I’ve done it and can tell you it definitely works. You get the best results when the images ‘complete the story the ads are telling’. For example if you have ads about apple pies, use pictures of freshly baked apple pies, instead of granny smith, Macintosh, pink lady, and braeburn apples. TIP: Don’t limit yourself to using images only on that size ad unit, it works just as well with the other sizes, like the 336 rectangle.
Added:
I got a little criticizm for this and rightly so, as I wasn’t specific as I could have been. Do not use very identifiable brand name or products for your images. Use generic non-specific stock images whenever possible and appropriate.
Multiple Ad Units
Another way to increase ad revenue is to use multiple ad units. According to Google’s TOS you are allowed to post up to three ad units per page. Similar to standard search results the highest paying ad units will be served first and the lowest being served last. If there is enough of an ad inventory, place all three ad units. However you should pay attention to the payouts. Current assumption is you get 60% of the revenue (on a $0.05 click you get $0.03). So if a click from the third ad unit is only paying between 3 to 5 cents you may want to omit it from your page. This is one are where giving your ad units channels does have value. If one ad unit is getting a higher percentage of click throughs you’ll want to make sure the highest paying ads are being served there. TIP:Use CSS positioning to get your highest paying ads serving in the location with the highest CTR.
Adsense in RSS
With the growth of blogs and RSS feeds you’re starting to see adsense included in the feeds now. IMHO this doesn’t work, and here’s why:
- You only get to place one ad unit.
- You have no control over finding the ’sweet spot’ for the ad unit.
- The ads are usually poorly targeted (this is getting better).
- People develop ‘banner blindness’.
I know people like being able to read full postings in their feed reader, and there are at least a dozen other reasons for full posts from pleasing your users to mobile offline computing, all of which are completely valid. However if your website depends on generating adsense revenue to survive, then bring them to the site and show them the ads there.
Affiliate Sites
Placing Adsense on affiliate sites is tricky. Are you giving up a $10, $20, or $30 sale for a $1 click? This is something you have to test on your own to figure out. If you aren’t converting now it’s definitely worth a try. I like to use adsense on my article pages. For example let’s say you had an affiliate website where you sold shoes. You’re going to need some related articles to ‘flesh out’ the site. Things like ‘getting a shoe shine’ or ‘finding a shoe repair shop’ these are excellent spots for adsense. While you won’t get rich, they will usually provide a small steady income and cover things like hosting costs.TIP: If you find you have pages getting more than 50 clicks per month add more pages about this topic, and link the pages together. Mine you logs for the search terms used.
PPC Arbitrage
This is a dicey subject so I’m going to steer clear of precise examples. Basically you bid on low volume uber niche terms at a very low cost. You set up landing page that contains high payout ads for the related general topic. You are looking for terms with a large gap between the price you are bidding on adwords and the price you are getting on Adsense. If you pay $0.10 a click and get $1.00 a click you make $0.90 each click. To get your adsense ad approved you will need to ‘add some value’ along the way. You can make a killing or get taken to the cleaners with this one, so make sure you know what you are doing before you try it.
Have any other adsense tips, tricks or secrets? Drop me an email and let me know, I’ll give you credit.
Added
728 leaderboard works very well if it is just above the end of the
“above the fold” area on what would be considered your viewers average
resolution/browser window size if there are few other enticing links
above the fold. Makes for an interesting layout but if you’re building
a site for AdSense it may be worth it. We consistently receive very
high CTRs from doing this.
Try to build sites that allow you to quickly try any and all of
those locations outlined in the heatmap guide or at least allow you a
wide degree of freedom to easily change ad/content locations.
via:nuevojefe
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