How to increase your Adsense earnings

I’ve written many blogs now about making money online with little or no effort, recounting tales about how you could earn thousands while you while away your time gardening, watching TV, or cheating at the local pub quiz on your Internet phone (James).

Well now it’s time to go into a little detail, some ‘put up or shut up’ facts to turn your casual hobby into a full-time career. Forget the websites that offer to teach you how to make money with Adsense in exchange for paying them a consultancy fee, or buying their expensive eBooks. They’re idiots, and they’re trying to scam money from you. The real gold is right here… for free.

If you’ve read my previous blogs you’ll know about choosing a niche for your website, filling it with regularly updated unique content and monetising the socks off it – this time we go into detail about how to make that little extra money become a lot, with Google’s very own Adsense.

Step 1 – Ad Types

Choosing your Ad format is the first step to make, as remember Google’s Adsense is mostly an EPC (Earnings per Click) scheme whereby you get money each time someone clicks on the ads rather than when visitors simply view them, or actually buys something at the end of it. Therefore it’s in your best interest to have as many of your visitors as possible click on your adverts.

Obvious that is, easy that is not, hmm?

So what are the best performing ad sizes? According to Google the best performing ones are:

160×600 Skyscraper: Google say that advertisers like these size ads and tend to bid more for them, who are we to argue?

728×90 Leader board: Very popular for site headers, footers and forums

300×250 + 336×280 Rectangles: Another popular size and one Google personally recommends, also used quite extensively for video ads.

Link Units: These are recommended by Google for sites that have limited space, and recommended by me because they can be slipped into a horizontal navigation seamlessly 

Step 2 – Position your Ads

Location, location, location!

Slapping your ads on a page and hoping for success will lead to failure just as sure as eating a curry after 14 pints ‘to settle the stomach’ will lead to vomiting. You need to know where the hotspots are on your website; the locations that users are most likely to click (what is a hotspot not?  …not a good spot! Actually in this instance it’s very good, so read on). Identifying these hotspots is simple, as user trends are fairly constant. Then you place an ad where the user is most likely to go first.

In fact, if you’re unsure about where users are most likely to click on your website, Google Analytics even shows you an overlay of your website marked out where your visitors click – if you have it installed; if you don’t, why not?

So where are visitors most likely to go? Why, the navigation links of course! They can usually be found vertically on the left of the page and horizontally at the top of the page. When visitors naturally head for these hot-spots they’ll be finding your ads instead of site navigation, earning you money.

If you’re thinking any of this might be a little underhand, or against Google’s TOS, don’t panic… Google actually offers advice on this itself in the Adsense FAQ, and even offers extra tips for ad placement within your forums and blogs.

Let’s look at a couple of examples of successful advert placement from some Adsense websites.

This website utilises the left hand navigation slot for the Adsense links, knowing that most users will automatically look there in an attempt to navigate the website – earning the website owner money from the clicks.

Notice the links at the top of the page? They’re not navigation links; they’re Google Adsense link units, masquerading as navigation.

For a much better example however I’ve used one of my own sites, anonymously of course, to show how to truly Adsense up your website.

Here you can see use of the Link Unit and the 160×600 skyscraper to maximum effect. Obviously with the normal navigation slots used for Adsense placement the usability of the site suffers, and the bounce-rate is extremely high… but the exit links are almost always to Adsense. That, of course, is the idea!

Step 3 – Style your Ads

This is the real trick, where the serious optimisation comes in. Your CTR will soar if your ads don’t look like ads, and instead look like the rest of your site.

Now hold on! We can’t go and style up our Adsense ads outside of the limited colour changes Google affords us can we, it goes against their TOS? True, you can’t… however, you can style up your own text and links to match the Google ads. This is perfectly OK with the big G. Make sure that your link text is the same colour, same font and same size as the Adsense ads and that it is underlined the same. Also make sure you have descriptions underneath your links to match the style and layout of the Google ads.

To be really sneaky (and again even Google recommends this) you can make your Adsense adverts’ background colour the same as your website’s, AND even lose the border on the Adsense ads. This makes them blend in seamlessly with your website.

With your navigation links and your Adsense links working in perfect harmony your website doesn’t look like an ad-fest when visitors first visit it.

How To Write A Profitable PPC Ad Text

After all the hard work of researching your market and keywords, you need to make sure your PPC ad will be effective. Here are a few basic guidelines:

Tip #1

Write three ad texts per ad group and make sure you use the ad group’s keywords in the ad text

Tip #2

Make sure each one has a call to action, i.e. summon your customers to act, whether that’s to ‘buy now for free delivery’ or ‘get your product for just £19.99′ the ad must contain a clear call to action

Tip #3

Try different approaches, for example, appeal to consumer through a price-led ad if your prices are competitive, appeal to the benefits they’ll get from using the product or tell them about the special offer you’re running.

Don’t Get Involved With Adsense Click Fraud- Google will ban you!

Imagine the next time you join a discussion about Adsense. When you start sharing the fascinating Adsense facts below, your friends will be absolutely amazed.

Is everything making sense so far? If not, I’m sure that with just a little more reading, all the facts will fall into place.

Many web site owners are getting their Google Adsense account terminated when they have done nothing wrong to deserve the punishment. Considering the money that they are getting from Adsense, they would certainly want to get back into it.
Considering the money to be made with Adsense, it is no wonder that they would want to get back into it.
It is that same consideration why the Google Adsense click fraud is thought of and why many people are getting into it.
Click fraud is the act of clicking on ads for the purpose of costing the advertiser money. It is simply the same as paying out cash for false leads. Many people website owners are aware of this fraud and are sharing the same sentiment that this is the one big problem that Adsense is facing.

How do you prevent being involved in this fraud?
Majority of web hosts are offering access logs. Once this is offered to you, it is necessary that you hand it over to Google as well. This allows them to look for any suspicious activity on your site. Problems like this are very serious and giving it to them is saying that you would want to help them in any way you can in solving the problem.
It can also help if you have a click monitoring software. If you do not have one yet, you should try and get one. There is absolutely no major factor preventing you from having one because most of this software is free.
As usual, all the information you have received should be turned over to Google. This is showing Google that you too are fighting against click frauds and is in no way a part of it.
Study your server logs and watch for any activity that seems suspicious. Report anything that you may find odd, may it big or small thing.
You may want to consider disabling ads for your own IP address and local geographic area. This will certainly prevent accidents and will not make Google mistake another user as you. You can do through a htaccess file. This will avoid Google mistaking as clicking on your own ads and be kicked out because of it.

How Often Should You Update Your Blog?

Every day is better than once a week

I get a lot of mail both here at About Weblogs and also though my other email addresses. The question I’m asked most often, (besides “How do I get a job at About.com?” is “How often should I post?”

Different people have different responses but most of us agree, the more you post the better. Now we can get into a lot of technical talk regarding page views and SEO. Indeed, lots of posts means lots of pages indexed by the search engines, but to me the answer is simple. If you post often, people will expect this and visit often. One to three times each day is best.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not enough to just post, you have to actually say something. If you really know your topic, this shouldn’t be a problem.

My recommendation is to post at least five out of seven days each week, more if you can. Keeping the quality content flowing is the best, most foolproof way to bring in traffic. The only reason people stop showing up, is if there’s nothing there to see.

Trackback for traffic

Maybe you?ve heard of trackbacks yet, but if not, no problem. For example, you see a good post on one ?earn money blog? and you think I could copy that interesting post one on my blog (with minor changes of course). And of course because you?ve copied it, it?s appropriate that you put a link in your post to the exact blog post on the ?earn money blog?.

The ?earn money blog? then (if trackbacks are enabled on the other blog) automatically recieves this link from your blog and post it on it?s comment page. And those people that read comments on the ?earn money blog? see your trackback there. Lot?s of people than actually click on your link and you get free traffic and a reciprocal link! Ain?t that a good idea or what?

 

But don?t use this technique as spam. You?ll get banned from the blogs for sure. Use it from time to time, so that it looks natural (as it?s supposed to be).

Now, I?m going to find a blog that is similar to mine (earn money with adsense) and post a link to one of it?s entries. I hope I?ll find some with high traffic. Be sure to check if the blogs have trackbacks enabled before you do this.

Now here?s a fantastic post on the Steve Pavlina blog. Here?s one part of the post that I find very interesting ?StevePavlina.com was launched on Oct 1st, 2004. By April 2005 it was averaging $4.12/day in income. Now it brings in over $200/day $300/day $400/day $1000/day (updated as of 10/29/06)?. He also talks about how to earn money, income strategies, traffic building, ads position etc. You should read it for sure, not just because of this trackback.

Test your success with channels

Wondering whether a certain ad placement, format, or color will be effective on your pages? Run a test to find out. Experimenting with AdSense can help you discover what will work best for your site, and channels are the perfect tool for your experiments. Any time you make changes to your site, take advantage of channels to measure and observe the effects. Whether you want to track a specific type of ad placement or an entire site, custom and URL channels will help you determine what’ll be most successful.

Testing will also help you make smart decisions about your ads. If you’re considering implementing one of our other optimization tips, we encourage you to test it out with channels. The more you test, the better you know the effects of the ads. The better you know the effects of the ads, the faster you’ll realize your revenue potential.

Tip for channel users: When you create a custom channel, give it a detailed name so you can easily identify it later in your reports. For example, “ArticleRightWideSkyscraperOpenAir” could represent your wide skyscraper ad unit with the Open Air palette, located on the right-hand side of your article pages.

Google AdSense: Understanding Alternate Ads and PSAs

Imagine the next time you join a discussion about adsense. When you start sharing the fascinating adsense facts below, your friends will be absolutely amazed.

We all know that Google AdSense works by serving targeted Ads to the websites that are enrolled with the Google AdSense program. However, there are instances when no targeted Ads are available for a website e.g. the website might be catering to such a topic or subject for which no relevant Ads/advertisers are available.

In such a case, Google serves alternate Ads i.e. content of your choice. If you have not specified any content as Alternate Ads, Google AdSense program treats PSAs i.e. public service Ads as alternate Ads and serves them on your website.

These PSAs are charitable Ads that don?t contribute to your revenue. So, unless you are looking to do charity (which could mean lessening of revenue for you), you must specify Alternate Ads upfront.
Here are the options that you have for alternate Ads (your choice of content):

 

AdSense Ad variations: Link Units and themed Ad Units

The following article covers a topic that has recently moved to center stage–at least it seems that way. If you’ve been thinking you need to know more about it, here’s your opportunity.

Link units and themed ad units are two variations of AdSense Ads that are meant to further increase the quality of AdSense Ads that get served on websites. Let?s take a quick look to see what ?Link units? and ?themed Ad units? actually are:

Themed ad units: As their name suggests, themed ad units are the ad units that are based on particular themes. These themes could be depicted by colors or special type of graphics that are representative of the event or occasion portrayed by the theme.

The events and occasions could be things like Christmas, New Year?s Day, etc.  Of course, the themed Ads can only be displayed if they are available from the advertisers and if you have enabled the themed Ads on your AdSense account (in ?Ad Type Preferences?).

Also, since the events vary across different locations, the themed Ads are displayed based on the location of the website visitor. Besides this minor difference, themed ad units work in the same way as the normal ad units.

Making the AdSense Ads suit your website(Positioning of Ads)

When most people think of adsense, what comes to mind is usually basic information that’s not particularly interesting or beneficial. But there’s a lot more to adsense than just the basics.

The four important properties that help in making the AdSense Ads look good on your website are ? shape, size, color of the Ads and their positioning. While the first three can be customized using the customization options provided by Google, ?positioning of Ads? is something that Google can only give you advice on. You are the best judge of what position would be best suitable for your AdSense Ads.

It’s really a good idea to probe a little deeper into the subject of adsense. What you learn may give you the confidence you need to venture into new areas.

Making the AdSense Ads suit your website

Do you ever feel like you know just enough about adsense to be dangerous? Let’s see if we can fill in some of the gaps with the latest info from adsense experts.

Making the AdSense Ads suit your website is an easy job that can really enhance the effectiveness of your AdSense Ads (and hence increase the AdSense revenue for you). The four properties that contribute towards making the AdSense Ads look in-place on your website are ? size,  shape, color and positioning of the Ads.

Though none of these properties can be regarded as more important than the others, the color of Ads is surely one thing that can help a lot in making the Ads blend with your website or making them stand out. Let?s take a closer look at this Ad customization option that Google provides to all the webmasters who use the Google AdSense program for earning revenue.

The more authentic information about adsense you know, the more likely people are to consider you a adsense expert. Read on for even more adsense facts that you can share.

Color of your Ads:

This is one property of Ads that is fully customizable. You can easily customize the color of your Ads using the color palettes provided by Google; and there are more than 200 colors available. You can choose from several different colors that are available on the color palette (and 200 colors are enough for any website). You can choose colors for Border, Title, Text and URL.