7/15/2008

Adsense Tips and Tricks

Technorati Profile
With personal and commercial blogs, community websites, and social pages becoming the hot topic of the Internet in the last few years, many people have become more Internet-literate and are always looking for ways to make a few hundreds or even thousands from their websites. This is when Google Adsense comes into play. Google Adsense, unlike Affiliate Programs, is CPC (Pay-Per-Click) and the good thing about it, is you can still earn some bucks without making a sale.

As with any other things in this world, it takes time, effort and dedication before you could earn some decent amount from Google Adsense. And here are some of the tips and tricks to help you with your Google Adsense journey.

Layout

1. Blend your ads to your website layout
This could be considered as one the most important things which is often overlooked. Instead of using predefined colors provided by Google, try changing colors of your ads to match the website layout. For example, if your website uses white background with green text, make sure you use the same colors for your ads.

2. Do not display a border
While you can’t get rid of the border around your ad, you can make it invisible by changing the border color to that of the background. Researches have shown that ads without a visible border generate much higher clicks than those with one.

3. Do not place your ads in normal spots
Internet users have become accustomed to the normal ad spots (eg: a Leaderboard above your header, a Skyscrapper outside the content) and hence, any ads placed in those normal spots will often be ignored.

4. Choose the right ad formats
There are a few ad formats which perform better than others. Some of the recommended ad formats are Wide Skyscrapper, Medium Rectangle and Horizontal Ads Links. However, these ad formats may not necessarily work for everyone, so choose the ones that work for you.

5. Good layout design
Although a good layout design does not necessarily increase your Adsense revenue, it is important for the first impression and also for the professionalism.

Content

5. "Content is the king"
The fact that Google Adsense is contextual advertising implies that the ads being generated are often relevant to the website content. That simply means you will not get any relevant ads if the content does not focus on a certain topic or the content is not text based. For example, if your page does not have any copy/text but an image, it’s unlikely to get relevant ads.

6. Pick a high paying topic
It took me a while to find out that some keywords are being paid more than others. While Google does not tell you how much advertisers are paying for their keywords, it is pretty easy to guess. For example, ads about credit cards, home loans and insurance are being paid more than those ads about free blogging tool, yellow pages, etc. It is also recommended to pick a Niche topic and provide a narrow focus than to pick a general topic.

7. Update your website frequently
Updating your website frequently enables you to get more visitors checking out your website which increases your page impression and the probability of ad clicks.

8. Write quality content
Not everyone possesses a natural talent in writing, and I can say for sure that I don’t. However, if you offer something useful, interesting, and put your heart into writing, your readers will enjoy what you have to say. And they will be coming back for more.

Organization

9. A good organizer is the winner
With Google Adsense, you can organize your ads and have a clear idea about their performance by using Channels. This way, if a particular ad is not performing well, you could always replace it with a difference one. There are quite a few things you could do with Channels and this is just one of them.

10. Monitor your statistics
Checking both your website and Adsense statistics enables you to get better ideas about your audiences. From your website statistics, you can find out which pages are being viewed the most, where most of your traffics come from, what the peak day of the week is, etc. Similarly, Adsense statistics will tell you which ad formats are being clicked the most, how many page impressions you receive, how much you are making each day/week/month, etc. You can then make improvements based on these figures to maximize the performance.

Traffics

11. Link Building
No matter how good your website is and how relevant your Adsense ads are, without a decent amount of traffics, you will only be making a small amount of revenue, if any. It is not easy to achieve a decent amount of traffics, but it is not impossible. Some of the most common ways to gain traffics to your website include Link exchange, Directory listing, participating in online communities and making use of social bookmaking systems.

12. Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most successful and recommended methods of gaining traffics to your website and it is more than just a buzz word. Optimizing your websites for search engines increases your website visibility and ranking, which in turn generates significant amounts of targeted and relevant traffics to your website. Combined, search sites reach more than 130 million Americans or approximately 85 percent of all Internet users each month, ranking Search/Navigation among the most popular categories on the Web. (Source: comScore Media Metrix)

Miscellaneous

13. A little maintenance goes a long way
Many people tend to overlook the maintenance part of the website. In this case, rather than sticking to the same ad formats, or the same positioning of the ads, try experiment with different formats and positioning. If they do not work, you could always revert the changes. But if they do, that’s a bonus for you.

14. Do not click on your own ads
Honesty is the best policy. Be honest with yourself, and do not try to increase your Adsense revenue by clicking on your own ads. Google is really strict when it comes to fraud clicking, and before you knew it, your account could be banned and you could be owing some money to the advertisers.

15. When in doubt, ask
If you have some questions in mind, or are unclear about certain stuffs, don’t hesitate to ask the Google Adsense Help Team. Before asking them, though, you could do them a favor by checking out their Frequently Asked Questions and Answers page.

I hope you will find the above tips and tricks useful in improving your website to increase your Adsense revenue. While it is always good to earn some cash from your website, do not let it rule you or your website. And remember that no money is easy money and it takes a considerable amount of time, effort and dedication before one could see a marked improvement in his Adsense revenue.

7/14/2008

How do people make so much money with Google Adsense?

Are you a frustrated Google Adsense publisher? You may ask how people make so much money with Google Adsense and even if you ask elsewhere you will get the following answers:

  • Unique Content is the King
  • Quality traffic, mainly from search engines results (High Ranking Sites
  • Your ads placements

and there are many other answers similar to it. But I will give you some points to think about it before you open a site to make money with Google adsense of course applying all the points mentioned above:


CTR/Clicks
Ranking well is good, but not so good if the traffic isn’t all that high. So out of 500 visitors a day you might get twenty clicks (assuming a 4% CTR). A 1,000 visitors = 40 clicks.

Who is bidding?
So who are the bidders? Are they manufacturers or affiliates? Quite possibly it’s affiliates. What do you estimate is the profit margin of affiliates? This is going to play a supporting role in determining how much clicks pay.

General profit margin
Some products have thin profit margins, so you’re going to find less satisfying payouts. Check it out on CJ. The worst scenario is low traffic coupled with low profit margins.

Competition
High competition is good. Really high competition is better. :) As an affiliate, I like new niches or underserved niches.

Keyword Trends
You can go to Google Trends and see how some markets didn’t really exist a few years ago, but as certain keyword phrases gained awareness in the minds of consumers you can see the upward trend. Some phrases have downward trends as consumers move on to new products or fads. Anticipating keywords is a good niche to play, and that includes slang and names of products or services.

and a user in the forum, makes a good suggestion:

Yes., me and my wife make a 6-figure income from AdSense but we have been doing it for over 6 years now and it has taken a lot of effort with close to 2 million visitors each month and with a dozen websites. It has not been easy and it is still a lot of work. The message here is that it is hard work but you can do it. Focus on good content that makes life easy for visitors; they will come back and refer their friends. Useful content generates natural linking too and that improves search engine ranking. Simple, honest way to make money but it takes patience and hard work. I do not know of a get-rich-quick way.

What to Do When You're Kicked Out of Adsense

This is one of the best articles I have seen in forums, I have seen many Adsense publishers that got banned for no reason (and tell you that because once happened to me) and from experience this article can summarize and help you a little bit. This is a mini-guide founded webmaster world and would like to share it with you in case you got banned from adsense. Before starting this, I would like to recommend you to not put all your eggs in one basket, that means don’t just focuss on earning money from adsense only. At the end of this article I have listed some other programs that you can make money.

I see threads here all the time from people who are either concerned with getting the “fraudulent clicks” letter, or they’ve gotten them and now want to know how to get back in.

I am one of a handful of people (that I’m aware of) who have had my account knocked out for invalid clicks and been reinstated a couple of months later.

So, here’s a little tip guide primer on what to expect and what to do.

A few things first:

  • A) You will not receive any check that is currently unprocessed. Consider that payment forfeited (and don’t threaten google with a lawsuit to recover it - it will just make things much, much worse).
  • B) Do confess to them any and all circumstances where you might have screwed up. If you didn’t screw up and are genuinely baffled you will need your server logs to locate suspicious activity. I highly recommend getting click tracking software to monitor your ads for exactly this scenario. If you don’t have server logs or tracking software, YOU are at fault by default.
  • C) The account disabling was both automated and then verified manually. Google examines the location of where clicks were coming from. If they see that too many clicks are from the same geographic area as where they send your check (or the ip you log in from) that sets off a red flag. Competitors clicking on your ads is something Google is well aware of and can track as well (they know their geographic area too)

To get your account reinstated:

  • A) Write google an apology and discuss steps you’ve taken so the situation won’t arise in the future. Don’t avoid blame, even if you knew nothing about what your friends were doing when they decided to “help” you by clicking on your ads. The fact is, by revealing information about how you make money to someone else, you are setting yourself up for this situation. I’m not being judgemental, just telling you how Google sees it. In your letter to them, recognize and admit this.
  • B) Offer to make good on any fraudulent clicks. They won’t take you up on it, but they will know that you are genuinely sorry and want to keep their business.
  • C) Contact someone at google directly. Don’t just send off a random email to adsense@google.com. Go to a webmasterworld conference. Meet someone in their company. Use that In when the conference is over. Worst case scenario, BUY an In into the company. Does someone you know have an In there? Offer to pay them to to speak to their In on your behalf. A big adwords spender with a personal ad rep is a good place to begin.
  • D) Seek out text ad competition immediately. Even if the ads aren’t as high-paying as Googles (and they won’t be), it will break the sting of losing all of your income until Google does come back around to review your case.
  • E) Be persistent, but polite. Send a letter (a new one) once a week. Keep reiterating your loyalty to their program and how you are prepared to write letters forever until they will understand you are committed to following their rules if they will reaccept you.

Now for the bad news….

None of this will probably help. To be reviewed for readmission, your site must be large enough that the revenue is worth a potentially risky business move.

If they don’t answer your letters anymore and all hope is lost, you are now left with basically one recourse assuming you really want to be in their program: Change your domain name, bank account, IP address, ISP and site design. Wait two months, then take on a partner you trust. Reapply for the program under this new partner’s name and address, (now especially possible given Google’s automatic deposit program). Learn from your mistakes and never do anything that can potentially result in your ads being clicked on fraudulently again. So, really, get a partner you can trust will not click as well.

To anyone else who hasn’t been kicked out yet and never wants to be:

  • A) Shut up about how you make money when talking to friends and family. Let them privately think you run a bestiality porn site or something. It’s still better than them clicking on your ads :)
  • B) Disable ads for your own ip and local geographic region, if you have access to that data and it won’t hurt your business. Ditto with your competition’s ip address. If you don’t know it, write him an email pretending to be a customer and look at his return headers.
  • C) Get click-monitoring software and check it daily. Be vigilant in notifying Google about what YOU think is fraud, even if they don’t. Your notifications to them will come in especially handy should your account ever be flagged by them. You’ll be remembered as honest.
  • D) Think of Google for the long term, not the short term. So you’re having a bad month and think clicking on an ad you might be interested in anyway doesn’t hurt anyone? You’re wrong. This month might be bad. Next month will be good. Google revenue is about long term averages. Is a few cents click worth the loss of thousands of dollars in the long term? Definitely not.

Take it from me, I’ve been there, been put out on the street, and eventually been reaccepted (after a lot of hard work). It can and does happen to any of us. Just make sure the odds of it happening to you are as slim as possible.

Some Reinstated Adsense Accounts Testimonial:

Adsense has reinstated my account. When it was disabled, I sent an email assuring that I didn’t understand why and that I very much valued the integrity of the system (both of which are true). They responded within a couple days with some questions about my website and my traffic. I answered all the questions honestly and today (a couple days since then) I received and email that says my account is reinstated. yay! The email today said that there were invalid clicks on my account, but upon further investigation, they determined that they didn’t come from me. So, I will be extra super careful about checking my logs etc now, and alerting adsense if I see anything incongruent.
I have seen lots of great posts about protection measures such as blocking local ips from seeing the ads etc.
I thought maybe people would want to recap their best protection measures here. Also, any specific stats tracking programs that might help me to monitor my logs most effectively for invalid clicks?

External Optimization Tricks

External Optimization deals with the points you should remember while promoting your website over web, the external world. This part of optimization not only influences the ranking, but also influences the relevancy of ads. This part of optimization takes time, and your control over it is limited sometimes.
Anchor Text
Keywords in anchor text enhance the relevance of the target page with regard to the keywords used. Every page of your website should be made relevant through optimized anchor text containing important keywords, matching the theme of the website.

Try to make link partners link to you with the anchor text you specify (but please don't force them). The inclusion of important keywords in the anchor text can make a big difference in the final ranking as well as the relevance of ads on your website. All the important search engines give due importance to the anchor text (both on your website as well as on the external websites linking to your pages).

Also, it's a good idea to keep changing your Anchor text while the link development campaigns. Varied options of title and description make search engines give your website wider coverage. Again, you can choose the keywords to be used in the anchor text according to your choice (Traffic or payouts).

It is important to understand that as your Page Rank (PR) and resultant traffic increases, Google may increase your payouts. However, if you are getting highly untargeted traffic (or fraud traffic), your payouts automatically decrease with a period of time. This is because of the phenomenon called SMART PRICING. That is why Anchor Text is so important.
Getting Back Links
The number of incoming links to your website may not have direct impact over your Adsense ads relevancy. However, the anchor text with which your link partners are linking not only gets you direct traffic, but also promotes your website to certain segments of traffic surfing on search engines.

When you target wrong keywords, it attracts wrong segments of traffic. This decreases your CTR as well as the earnings you could have had from that traffic. You can say, it affects the relevancy of your ads. When the ads that Google broadcasts are not relevant to your traffic, the results are damp.
Promotion
To get the most relevant ads, it is important that the links that you are getting from other websites should have proper anchor text. Your article gets prominence on the search engine because of the relevant keyword used as anchor text. Even the links on your own pages should have relevant anchor text. This will help you get more target traffic and resultant higher revenue.

Other ways to promote your website include getting inward links from free or paid sources, and exchanging links from authority or important websites having good search engine ranking. Links placed at the top of the page get more importance, so try for that. There are many more things you can do to promote your website and earn more Adsense money.

How to Optimize Internal Web Pages for Maximum Adsense Revenue?

Internal Optimization means on-page optimization that you should take into consideration while writing your internal web pages. This is one thing you have complete control over. Besides, it has a major effect on the ads relevancy and CTR.
Meta Tags
Meta Keywords: They have low impact, BUT - they DO have impact over the ads relevancy. You are advised not to leave this part of your page as blank. Always try to make it as easy as possible for the crawlers to understand your website. Create your web page with Meta keywords. If there is NO CONTENT on your webpage, the Adsense Media bot will pick-up the Meta Tags, and show ads according to that. Search on Google for pages that top the SERPs for the keyword you have in mind. These websites will give you a good idea about what to include in Meta Tags.

Meta Description: Whatever you put in the description meta tag, it will appear as description right after the Title Text that links to your page in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). This property of the description meta tag makes it quite important, as it has direct impact over the CTR of your link in the SERPs that leads to your website. It eventually decides how much traffic you will get from a search engine. Write description that attracts right kind of traffic from search engine pages.
Title Text
Search Engines give importance to the keywords that appear in the title tag of HTML Source code. Title has a good impact over relevancy of ads too. For higher payouts, choose the highest paying keyword of that category for the title text.

However, this entirely depends upon your optimization strategy. If you are more concerned about competition and getting more traffic than payouts, choose a keyword with low competition keyword (competition you can handle) with relatively higher traffic. Though, I will advise you to get more traffic first, and become authority page of that keyword. Payouts will increase with the traffic.

Tip: Title text generally appears in the SERPs as TITLE link to your page. In other words, you can say, this very line controls the CTR of your website link listed in SERPs. How you design your title is entirely your own decision.

If you are optimizing it for more traffic, you will not want your title to read as it was written for Search Engine crawlers. The title has to be concise so much so that even 10 words are considered as too many. If you are optimizing it for more payouts - Go ahead!

However, you can try to mix the high paying keywords with traffic attractor keywords too.
Give Headings
Its quite important to mark the main headline of your webpage with H1 tags and subheadings with H2 and H3 tags, and so on. This is because headings highlight and indicate the most important element of your web page - the actual content. It is important to use relevant keywords in headings and sub headings as these have good impact on rankings - especially when sorted by relevancy. This has an equally good impact on the ads appearing on your web page. Headings give prominence to the content on your web pages.

Again, you can use these headings either to optimize for traffic, fighting competition, or getting more payouts.
Embedding Keywords in the Content
Besides hosting useful and genuine content on your web pages, it’s important to include keywords at the beginning and end of an article. This helps search engines and Ad bots determine the theme of the web page. Good use of keywords help the Google Mediabot achieve higher Ad-relevancy for your website.

Some people follow a strategy of hosting less content on a web page. This helps focus ads on specific keywords and avoids dilution of ads by other keywords that you may have mentioned even once in the web content. This works when you are optimizing for Adsense, but has some traffic drawbacks too. Furthermore, Google may consider it as SPAM. Therefore, it's never advised to host 2 or 3 lines and expect good earnings. Chances are that you will be hit by smart pricing.

On the other hand, don’t make lengthy web pages as it might mislead Ad-bots to get some wrong ads, resulting in dilution of relevant ads. Sometimes, Ad bots can be very sticky to a certain keyword you used just for a reference. If you are getting irrelevant ads, changing meta tags and Title text is the first thing to start with, then move on to your content.
Internal Linking
Internal linking of web pages has traffic as well as Adsense importance. As all your link partners may not link all the pages of your website, it's the responsibility of your web pages to hyperlink your other pages, and define the crawlers what your pages are about. In the context of Adsense, suggesting related links (related articles) to the visitor will also increase the page views of your website and also the chances of the visitors clicking on the high paying ads.

A website must interlink its pages. This can be done by displaying related articles or linking to pages with proper anchor text. This helps increase the importance of most web pages. Even a simple navigation bar can achieve that purpose.
Increasing Penetration
Write articles with more heading and subheadings. This not only makes your content more readable and user friendly, but also help the Ad Bots (and Crawlers too) to properly recognize the theme of your web page. This will make them serve you the most relevant ads. This trick also gives you another chance to mention more of those keywords in your web page. Try to include as many instances where you can specify keywords to the bots. This will have impact on your CTR and EPC. It will also help you get the target traffic. Target traffic will mean more CTR of your web page and better performance.

Adsense Optimization: How to apply Top Paying Keywords?

Applying top paying keywords in your website is quite similar to Search Engine Optimization. However, there are many differences as well. I have done in-depth research on the subject. On the basis of that research, I have marked the points you need to keep in mind while optimizing your website for maximum payouts through highest paying Adsense keywords. We will discuss how to apply top paying keywords as well as traffic pulling keywords to a webpage for maximum payouts and traffic.

First of all, we must understand that Google Adsense bot (formally known as Google Mediabot) is a subset of Google's main crawler. The crawler detects the theme of the pages and makes an entry in the Google's index (a private index - not shown publicly) that records the theme of all the pages hosting Adsense script. In other words, Google Mediabot has the characteristics somewhat similar to Google's main crawler.

There are two types of optimizations that you need to follow to make a web page search engine optimized. Same is the case with Adsense Optimization.

Internal Optimization : Internal Optimization includes Meta tags, Title Text, Optimization of content, and internal linking of your website. Here we will learn how to increase relevancy of ads and how to inject keywords that will help you get high paying ads. Internal Optimization has a high impact on the relevancy of ads and CTR.

External Optimization : This includes the web pages that are giving links to you (external profile of your website), anchor text being used to link your website, and many more variables that search engines use to evaluate the authoritative importance of a web page. External Optimization helps bring relevant traffic to your website and enables you to earn more by getting more CTR (Click Thru Ratio).
How long does your webpage take to show high paying ads?

This is an important question that needs to be answered. As soon as you apply Adsense script in a webpage, it is visited by the Google Mediabot (within 2 hours to 48 hours, if the bot is free - immediately). Google Mediabot's responsibility is to evaluate the theme of the web page, and enable ads almost immediately so that your website traffic does not see FREE SERVICE ADS.

The relevancy of ads increases as Google's main crawler visits your website and updates its index. Furthermore, you may observe an increase in the earnings as the PR of your website/web page increases. This means that in case of Google Adsense, the internal factors that affect the ads of a particular page are evaluated by Google Mediabot (but Google's main crawler can overwrite them). And on the other hand, the external factors are inspected by the Google Crawler over a period of time. Having said that, there are simply many many factors (including those which you cannot control) that affect your ads. We are going to discuss the factors that you can control. Lets take control!
Remember:

1. Relevancy of ads may increase as your page is indexed by Google.
2. EPC (Earnings Per lick) may increase as your PR increases.
3. It entirely depends upon you how well you promote your website and get maximum
earnings from your website/web pages.
4. In case of Google, many variables are involved.

The Basics On How TO Start Making Money With Adsense

by John Ugoshowa
Adsense is considered as one of the most powerful tool in a website publisher’s arsenal. It enables a person to monetize their sites easily. If used properly, it can generate a very large and healthy income for them. However if you are not using them rightly and just maximizing the income you squeeze from it, you are actually leaving a lot of money on the table. Something all people hate doing.

How you can start earning money with Adsense can be done easily and quickly. You will be amazed at the results you will be getting in such a short period of time.

Start by writing some quality content articles which are also keyword incorporated. There are a lot of people given the gift of being good with words. Writing comes easy for them. Why not make it work in such a way that you will be earning some extra cash in the process.

There are actually three steps to put into mind before you begin writing your ads and having an effective Adsense.

Keyword search. Find some popular subjects, keywords or phrase. Select the ones which you think has more people clicking through. This is actually a keyword selector and suggestion tool that some sites are offering to those who are just their Adsense business.

Writing articles. Start writing original content with keywords from the topics that you have achieved in your search. Take note that search engines are taking pride in the quality of their articles and what you will be writing should keep up with their demands.

Quality content site. Build a quality content site incorporated with Adsense ads that is targeting the subject and keywords of your articles and websites. This is where all that you’ve done initially will go to and this is also where they will prove their worth to you.

The proper positioning of your ads should be done with care. Try to position your ads where surfers are most likely to click on them. According to research, the one place that surfers look first when they visit a certain site is the top left. The reason behind this is not known. Maybe it is because some of the most useful search engine results are at the top of all other rankings. So visitors tend to look in that same place when browsing through other sites.

Some of those who are just starting at this business may think they are doing pretty well already and thinking that their clickthrough rates and CPM figures are quite healthy. However, there are more techniques and styles to generate more clicks to double your earnings. By knowing these techniques and working them to your advantage, you will realize that you will be getting three times more than other people who have been previously doing what they are doing.

Finally, Adsense has some excellent tracking statistics that allows webmasters and publishers to track their results across a number of site on a site by site, page by page, or any other basis you wanted. You should be aware oft his capability and make the most of it because it is one powerful tool that will help you find out which ads are performing best. This way, you can fine tune your Adsense ads and focus more on the ones being visited the most rather than those who are being ignored.

Another thing you should know. Banners and skyscrapers are dead. Ask the experts. So better forget about banners and skyscrapers. Surfers universally ignore these kinds of ad formats. The reason behind this is that they are recognized as an advert and advert are rarely of any interest that’s why people ignore them.

To really start making money with Adsense, you should have a definite focus on what you wanted to achieve and how you will go about achieving them. As with any other kind of business ventures, time is needed coupled with patience.

Do not just ignore your site and your Adsense once you have finished accomplishing them. Spare some time, even an hour, making adjustments to the Adsense ads on your sites to quickly trigger your Adsense income.

Give it a try and you would not regret having gotten into Adsense in the first place.

2 Surefire Ways To Maximize Your Adsense Earnings

by John Ugoshowa
Most webmasters know that Adsense generates a sizeable source of additional advertising income. That is why most of them use it to go after high paying keywords. They have with them the lists that tells what the keywords are and have already used various methods of identifying them. And yet, after putting up these supposed-to-be high paying keywords into their pages, the money they expected to come rolling in is not really coming in.

What is it that they are doing wrong?

Having the pages is with the proper keywords is one thing. But driving visitors to those pages is another matter and often the factor that is lacking.

The thing is, to get visitors to your high paying keyword pages, you need to optimize your site navigation.

Stop for a moment and think about how visitors are using your website. After a visitor has landed on a certain page, they have the tendency to click on another page that sounds interesting. They get there because of the other links that appears on a page that they initially landed on. This is site navigation. It is all about enabling visitors to move about your site. And one way of maximizing your Adsense earnings.

A typical website have menu links on each page. The wording on these links is what grabs a visitor’s attention and gets them to click on one of the links that will take them to another page of that website. Links that have “free’ or “download” are oftentimes good attention-grabbers.

This navigation logic can also be applied to driving traffic to your high paying pages. There are some websites that are getting a lot of traffic from search engines, but have low earnings. The trick is to try and use come cleverly labeled links to get the visitors off that pages and navigate them to the higher earning ones. This is one great way of turning real cheap clicks to real dollars.

Before you begin testing if this same style will work for you and you website, you need to have two things. Something to track and compare and some high earning pages you want to funnel your site traffic to. An option is to select a few of your frequently visited pages. This is ensuring fast result to come by.

Now, the next thing to do is think of ways to get visitors viewing a particular page to try and click on the link that will take them to your high earning pages. Come up with a catchy description for that link. Come up with a catchy and unique description for the link. Think of something that people do not get to see everyday. That will trigger their curiosity enough to try and see what that was all about.

You can also use graphics to grab your readers’ attention. There is no limitation to what you can do to make your link noticeable. If you are after the success of your site, you will do everything it takes just to achieve that goal. Just be creative. As far as many Adsense advertisers are concerned, there are no written and unwritten laws to follow regarding what they write. Just as long as you do not overstep the guidelines of the search engines, then go for it.

Also remember that it is all about location, location and location. Once the perfect attention grabbing description has been achieved, you have to identify the perfect spot on your page to position that descriptive link to your high paying page.

There is nothing wrong with visiting other websites to see how they are going about maximizing their site navigation. “Hot pages” or “Most read” lists are very common and overly used already. Get to know the ones that many websites are using and do not try to imitate them.

Another way of doing it is to try and use different texts on different pages. That way you will see the ones that work and what does not. Try to mix things around also. Put links on top and sometimes on the bottom too. This is how you go about testing which ones get more clicks and which ones are being ignored.

Let the testing begin. Testing and tracking until you find the site navigation style that works best for you site.

5 Ways To Improve Your Adsense Earnings

by John Ugoshowa
If webmasters want to monetize their websites, the great way to do it is through Adsense. There are lots of webmasters struggling hard to earn some good money a day through their sites. But then some of the “geniuses” of them are enjoying hundreds of dollars a day from Adsense ads on their websites. What makes these webmasters different from the other kind is that they are different and they think out of the box.

The ones who have been there and done it have quite some useful tips to help those who would want to venture into this field. Some of these tips have boosted quite a lot of earnings in the past and is continuously doing so.

Here are some 5 proven ways on how best to improve your Adsense earnings.

1. Concentrating on one format of Adsense ad. The one format that worked well for the majority is the Large Rectangle (336X280). This same format have the tendency to result in higher CTR, or the click-through rates. Why choose this format out of the many you can use? Basically because the ads will look like normal web links, and people, being used to clicking on them, click these types of links. They may or may not know they are clicking on your Adsense but as long as there are clicks, then it will all be for your advantage.

2. Create a custom palette for your ads. Choose a color that will go well with the background of your site. If your site has a white background, try to use white as the color of your ad border and background. The idea to patterning the colors is to make the Adsense look like it is part of the web pages. Again, This will result to more clicks from people visiting your site.

3. Remove the Adsense from the bottom pages of your site and put them at the top. Do not try to hide your Adsense. Put them in the place where people can see them quickly. You will be amazed how the difference between Adsense locations can make when you see your earnings.

4. Maintain links to relevant websites. If you think some sites are better off than the others, put your ads there and try to maintaining and managing them. If there is already lots of Adsense put into that certain site, put yours on top of all of them. That way visitor will see your ads first upon browsing into that site.

5. Try to automate the insertion of your Adsense code into the webpages using SSI (or server side included). Ask your web administrator if your server supports SSI or not. How do you do it? Just save your Adsense code in a text file, save it as “adsense text”, and upload it to the root directory of the web server. Then using SSI, call the code on other pages. This tip is a time saver especially for those who are using automatic page generators to generate pages on their website.

These are some of the tips that have worked well for some who want to generate hundreds and even thousands on their websites. It is important to know though that ads are displayed because it fits the interest of the people viewing them. So focusing on a specific topic should be your primary purpose because the displays will be especially targeted on a topic that persons will be viewing already.

Note also that there are many other Adsense sharing the same topic as you. It is best to think of making a good ad that will be somewhat different and unique than the ones already done. Every clickthrough that visitors make is a point for you so make every click count by making your Adsense something that people will definitely click on.

Tips given by those who have boosted their earnings are just guidelines they want to share with others. If they have somehow worked wonders to some, maybe it can work wonders for you too. Try them out into your ads and see the result it will bring.

If others have done it, there is nothing wrong trying it out for yourself.

AdSense is Stupid When...

by Baabit Mohamed

There are times Google's heralded ad affiliate program isn't in your long term business interest. Oh no I said it!

AdSense isn't the unstoppable revenue engine for every eBusiness. Before I am taken out and flogged by the eCommerce pundits -- please let me explain what I mean in my defense.

I make revenues from AdSense at a very high click-through rate. I experience high click-through rates with AdSense without resorting to questionable tactics like tricking site users with photos (the AdSense trick and tip dujour).

So my perspective is from one who has made decent income from AdSense to fund aspects of his business like advertising seminars -- and outsourcing to his virtual assistants. Yes, AdSense is a legitimate and significant revenue source. However evaluate AdSense with some type of balance.

By now you may have heard about people like Joel Comm's six figure income with AdSense, or Jason Calacanis of Weblogs being on his way to generating 1 million dollars in AdSense revenue. Google's Ad revenue sharing affiliate program for publishers certainly seems to be an eSales Nirvana for many webmasters.

But there are obvious and not so obvious times not to use AdSense ads on your sites. Let's list - examine - and explain them below.

~~~~> 1. On Sales or Mini-sites

This is a no-brainer. If you are trying to sell a particular product that is important to your bottomline, you don't want AdSense ads distracting your customers from either joining your email list, or hindering your site's online sales process.

However I do see hybrid sites that are mini-sites or full scale eCommerce sites, with AdSense at the bottom of their pages. This might not be so bad since only 1% - 15% of your site visitors will either buy from you or fill out a form.

The thinking with this approach is you might as well make money from disinterested parties using up your server's bandwidth.

~~~~~> 2. SEO Business Sites

If your livelihood depends on search engine optimization or marketing for a living you might want to think twice about displaying AdSense Ads on your site. I can tell you this from personal experience. I once was on top of MSN for search engine marketing in my local area. I concentrated on my local area because I found people felt more comfortable hiring an eCommerce consultant locally.

One day my site fails totally out of the MSN index. After intense study I noticed that I obviously had a filter on my site from MSN.

I analyzed all the top ranking sites in MSN and noticed the only difference between me and the other top ranking sites was I had Google AdSense ads on my site. Someone at MSN felt that my AdSense ads, and perhaps to a less extent, my book on SEO, was getting a free ride in the MSN search engine database.

In fact I noticed that there were no sites with AdSense ads for at least the first 3 pages. Plus the sites with AdSense were only using 1 ad unit at the bottom of the home page (there were very few of them in the top 5 pages).

I knew it was strange to not have AdSense ads on the top Internet marketing sites. This prompted me to scan other industries where I noticed the same trend.

Many of the leading SEO gurus have sites that have been banned from the top listings by the search engines. It seems the more visible you become, the more of a target your sites are to the search engine auditors.

Some of my sites are still on the top of MSN with AdSense ads but that doesn't mean they won't also be targets in the future.

Let's face the facts. MSN and Yahoo! have competing ad networks to Google's, and this competitive situation is rife for a potential backlash against SEO sites with AdSense ads.

Many SEOs will point to exceptions to this position. However you have been warned!

Think about it, how long will MSN and Yahoo! sit back and watch SEO driven websites use their search indexes to fund Google? Did you know SEO in MSN and Yahoo(!) --- is much easier to obtain.

Therefore optimized sites are creating an ad sales wealth transfer from MSN and Yahoo into the pockets of Google! It won't be long before Yahoo! and MSN begin to devalue ranking on AdSense sites in their databases -- if not outright ban them.

If you are in the search engine business stay search engine neutral, or create multiple sites for different search engines.

~~~~~> 3. When AdSense Becomes Your Only Business Model

When you become so myopic in your thinking that you build a business solely on AdSense revenue -- think again my friend. Why build a business solely on the largess of Google?

I don't know if your realize it or not, but the sites making the real big AdSense money usually have a following that doesn't depend on the search engines. Internet mavens like Chris Pirillo or Joel Comm have been on the Internet a while and have followings for their websites. Therefore they can consistently make six figures with AdSense.

These content powerhouses are an asset to Google and not the other way around. But do you think Google is going to sit back and watch just anybody make big bucks off of their top rankings?

If you do a search on most keywords you will notice many of the top ranking sites are news sites, .gov sites, or .org sites these days. The only exception is in industries where these sites don't really exist like eCommerce industries (clothing, shopping, etc.).

No doubt in most industries you will notice a conspicuous scarity of AdSense sites in the top rankings. In other words don't bet your future fortunes on AdSense.

An IPO based on projections of AdSense revenue isn't in the future for the average eBusiness. Think of Google AdSense as supplemental income. Building a business solely on AdSense revenue isn't just silly -- it's just plain stupid.

by Mohamed Ghouaghi is a moroccan guide and director of atlas tourisme company www.atlastourisme.com

Google Adsense Profits Mixed In With Affiliate Marketing

by Efimov Anatoliy
Are you a webmaster who needs funds to keep your website running? Or is your website the only way for you to earn income? Whichever you are, for as long as you are a webmaster or a web publisher and you need cash, affiliate marketing may work well for you. With affiliate marketing, you may get a lot of cash pouring into your bank account easily. And if your website is rich in great contents and you want to earn more profit, why not get into the Google Adsense program as well?

Why Affiliate Marketing?

Well, simply because affiliate marketing is the easiest and probably the best way to earn profits online, unless otherwise you are a businessman and would rather sell your own products online than advertise other businessman’s products on your site. But even online retailers can benefit from affiliate marketing programs, because affiliate marketing actually works for merchants as well as it works for the affiliates.

Affiliate marketing, simply said, is a relationship or agreement made between two websites, with one site being the merchant’s website and the other being the affiliate’s site. In the relationship, the affiliate agrees to let the merchant advertise his products on the affiliate’s site. The merchant, on the other hand, would agree to pay the affiliate in whatever method they have agreed into. This would generally mean easy income for the affiliate, as he would do nothing but place the retailer’s ad on his site. This would also be very beneficial for the merchant, as getting affiliates to advertise their products would be a lot more affordable than hiring an advertising firm to promote their products.

There are a variety of methods on how the merchant would compensate the affiliate for his services, and for the webmaster, these methods simply translates to the method by which he would earn easy cash. Among the more common methods of compensation are the pay-per-click method, the pay-per-lead method, and the pay-per-sale method. The pay-per-click method is the method most preferred by affiliates, for their site’s visitor would only have to visit the advertiser’s site for them to gain money. The other two methods, on the other hand, are better preferred by merchants, as they would only have to compensate you if your visitor becomes one of their registrants or if the visitor would actually buy their products.

Getting much profit on affiliate marketing programs, however, does not depend so much on the compensation method is it does on the traffic generated by your site. A website that can attract more visitors would generally have the greater chance of profiting in affiliate marketing programs.

What about Google Adsense?

Google Adsense is actually some sort of an affiliate marketing program. In Google Adsense, Google act as the intermediary between the affiliates and the merchants. The merchant, or the advertiser, would simply sign up with Google and provide the latter with text ads pertaining to their products. These ads, which is actually a link to the advertiser’s website, would then appear on Google searches as well as on the websites owned by the affiliates, or by those webmasters who have signed up with the Google Adsense program.

While one can find a lot of similarities between Google Adsense and other affiliate marketing programs, you can also see a lot of differences. In Google Adsense, all the webmaster has to do is place a code on his website and Google takes care of the rest. The ads that Google would place on your site would generally be relevant to the content of your site. This would be advantageous both for you and for the advertiser, as the visitors of your site would more or less be actually interested with the products being advertised.

The Google Adsense program compensates the affiliate in a pay-per-click basis. The advertisers would pay Google a certain amount each time their ad on your site is clicked and Google would then forward this amount to you through checks, although only after Google have deducted their share of the amount. Google Adsense checks are usually delivered monthly. Also, the Google Adsense program provides webmasters with a tracking tool that allows you to monitor the earnings you actually get from a certain ad.

So, where do all of these lead us to?

Where else but to profits, profits and even more profits! Affiliate marketing programs and the Google Adsense program simply work, whether you are the merchant or the affiliate. For the merchant’s side, a lot of money can be saved if advertising effort is concentrated on affiliate marketing rather than on dealing with advertising firms. For the webmaster, you can easily gain a lot of profits just by doing what you do best, and that is by creating websites. And if you combine all your profits from both the Google Adsense program and other affiliate marketing programs, it would surely convert to a large amount of cash.

7/13/2008

The Two Most Successful Blog Business Models Adsense

Entrepreneurs have two different business models that they use in order to make money from blogs. The first way that they make money is they sell advertising to different companies and make money when the blog’s readers click on advertising or click through and make a purchase.

Entrepreneurs have two different business models that they use in order to make money from blogs.

The first way that they make money is they sell advertising to different companies and make money when the blog’s readers click on advertising or click through and make a purchase. These blogs use affiliate programs and Adsense to generate revenues.

The second way that they make money from blogs is by helping a single brand improve its image by creating a positive association, between the blog and the product, in the mind of the consumers.

If the creator of the blogs has a good mind for marketing, both of the blog business models can make a lot of money.

If your goal is to sell advertising on your blog there are two ways that you can go about finding ways to generate an income with your blog. The first way is to let someone else do all the work to find the advertisers or you can do all the work yourself and keep all of the revenue rather than paying out a portion to someone else.

In the first way, you will be able to keep all the revenues yourself. Many people make money with blogs by selling space through the Google AdSense program. There are many advantages to this program, because it requires little work on the part of the blogger in order to start making profits. You will find, however, that you will make less money on this method than you hoped to earn. But, you can make a fortune if you do it right.

Selling advertising directly to companies that want to put an ad on your site, can be extremely lucrative. You would only want to do this if you have a lot of people that you already know in the industries related to the topic of your blog.

You would have to have a strong background in sales and have to be able to pitch proposals. If you can do this you can make a lot of money renting real estate space on your blog to different companies. The downside, is that you would have to build up a large readership before advertisers will pay you money. It could take several months of hard work before you will see a profit from your blog.

As blogging becomes more and more profitable, many established companies will consider how they can get into blogging. One of the ways that companies can get into the action is by having their own blogs. The blog can provide a friendly face for their corporation. Companies will often hire established bloggers to create a weblog for their company. Bloggers are getting hired by companies to make and run blogs that help the company build a positive image to their company. This maybe a route that you can take to have blog success.

Consider these two ways that you can make bucks from your blog. Start a blog today. It is easier than you think.

7/09/2008

ADSENSE: GET RICH QUICK?

by Juddie Passion
After a careful search thru all online wealth building opportunities I found out that a lot of publishers refer people to Google Adsense formula as being the best. I have tried it too and found out that it is: 1. Really cheap to start. 2. Easy to setup 3. No setup Fees 4. No maintenance fees 5. And no hidden charges. 6. Anyone can do it 7. There is no discrimination 8. They are faithful 9. They really pay 10. They train you for free 11. Content is king But what I realized is that it: 1. Is Not a get rich quick scheme 2. Requires a lot of learning and training 3. Requires a great effort to setup 4. Utilizes the power of keywords 5. Requires a lot of patience For one to start making money: 1. You must utilize the power of Pay Per Click Campaign 2. You must utilize the power of keywords search 3. You must enhance the adds placement on your site 4. You must have good, real and fresh content 5. You must have a well designed site 6. You better use you own hosting account 7. You must your own domain name 8. You must have patience I wish you good luck up the ladder of Adsense. About the Author. Juddie Passion is a motivational speaker, blogger, internet marketer and publisher. He is the president of Http://jpassions.com and http://pcomms.com

Make Sense of Google AdSense – and make money!

As a successful web publisher looking to get to the next level, you are probably thinking about trying a number of different approaches to increasing revenue – especially your passive revenue, the money that just “shows up” from time to time while you focus on other things. You may be considering various forms of internet advertising. And you should.
Internet advertising has exceeded all expectations. The technology keeps advancing, and the popularity and ubiquity of the medium is incredible. Most companies can benefit from the Internet because it allows the chance to reach a global audience at never-before-possible speeds, with many kinds of filters to make sure the right audience sees the right message, and costs that are often surprisingly low. But many businesses make money online in ways that have very little to do with their own actual business, but with systems that connect various companies and offerings together.
You may be wondering how to make money easily with online advertising, and you have come to the right place!
The secret is that taking ads is a much more profitable strategy then placing ads for most websites. And the best way to make money with this right now is “hiding in plain sight” from the world’s most popular search engine company.
While there are many ways to approach online advertising, it makes sense the best would be offered by the ultimate search engine company, the company that is setting out to organize all of humanity’s vast amounts of information – Google. This method is Google Ad Words, and it’s sister program, Google AdSense. With Ad Words, Google makes a lot of money. With AdSense, web publishers – that’s you! – can reach a lot of people and make a lot of money too!
In this report, we’re going to focus in on how to make sense of, and a lot of money with, Google’s AdSense program.
Want to make five or ten or twenty thousand dollars a month automatically and be paid by one of the biggest Internet companies in the world?
We’ll describe what AdSense is, how it works, how to get started, how to maximize the program, and where to go from here! Ready?
First let’s examine what AdSense is and how it works.

What is Google AdSense?

Google AdSense is an ad-serving program that places ads that “make sense” – specifically, that make sense based on relevant content, and assumptions about who might be interested in that content. AdSense is an application of the broader concept of Contextual Marketing. Contextual Marketing is just what it sounds like. On a website about custom cars, you might have an ad for fancy wheels or car care kits. On a website about off-roading, you might have an ad for durable truck tires or spotlight rigs. A hockey site might advertise hockey sticks…and a tennis site, tennis shoes. Contextual Marketing just means aligning the ad serving with the context/nature of the website and its audience, the same way like items are grouped in a store. And the “context” can be cut much finer than website level, it can be page level, article level, and so on, so the ads always match the material they are appearing near, and thus, appeal to the interest of the reader/buyer at any given moment.
So what’s in it for you – the website publisher/owner? That’s easy. Every time a visitor to your site clicks one of these ads, you make money. The better the ads are targeted, the more clicks you get, the more money you make. AdSense displays easy-to-read, text-based, relevant ads that don’t overshadow the content of your website or annoy visitors. Actually, you have seen hundreds of these ads yourself, as you’ll realize in a moment.
Today there are probably only a few places in your website that can directly make you money, if any. The magic of Google AdSense is this: It allows you to earn money through every page of your website. On top of that, with algorithms used to align ad content with page content Google automatically selects and displays ads for your website that are likely to generate the highest revenue for you.

AdSense is an application of AdWords beyond Google.com

Making “sense” of AdSense means understanding that it is really an offshoot of the older Google model, AdWords. But they are not the same thing.
Google AdWords
If you have ever searched on Google, you have seen AdWords.
Google AdWords are the small text ads that are displayed on the side of the search results in Google. These ads are contextual of course – in this case the context is the search terms you entered. The ads will be served based on what you’re looking for. So, if you do a search on “printing services” you will get ads for printing services along with your search results!
How does this generate money for Google and the advertisers?
Google AdWords works on a model known as pay-per-click. When someone clicks on an AdWords ad, the advertiser of that ad has to pay Google a certain amount. It’s easy to track and fully automated.
We say “certain amount” because that amount is different all the time and is subject to market forces – in this case, bidding. Something has to determine the placement of those ads, and what determines it is how much the advertiser offers to pay per click. When you submit this kind of ad to Google, you submit it with a bid – which is compared to other bids for similar keywords. It’s an auction style process.
The position of the AdWords ads is based on the bidding amount of keywords of an ad. Obviously, the higher the bid, the higher the position the bid buys you. For instance, if the highest bid for the keywords “Internet marketing” is 80 cents per click, you can get top position by bidding 90 cents. Then every time someone clicks on your ad, Google would charge you 90 cents, and you would retain the top position until someone else bids more for the same search word placement.
Google AdSense, as stated earlier, is an extension of Google AdWords. It takes the AdWords concept and moves it off of Google’s search page and onto thousands of other web pages. The ads that are displayed on the websites are Google AdWords ads.
It’s good for the advertiser, who gets more and broader displays, for Google, who charge more for this program, for you, who will make money from the clickthroughs on your pages, and also for the consumer, who will see cool ads for stuff they are probably interested in!
So how exactly are you making money from all this? You earn a share of the pay-per-click amount, every time a visitor clicks on the ad. So you just need to get ads on your site…

How the Ads Get On Your Site

Once you join the AdSense program – and Google approves your site or sites, which we’ll cover in detail shortly – the actual process of displaying ads on your website is extremely simple. You are provided with a small HTML script, which you can paste anywhere on your webpage. You may paste this code any number of times and on multiple pages, and watch the ads get served! Google automatically places AdWords ads that are most relevant, from its extensive advertiser base. Google employs various sophisticated algorithms to determine the relevancy of the ads to your content.
Before we get into how Google assesses sites, and whether a few or many placements of that magic script will deliver optimum results, let’s review the advantages of AdSense.

Advantages of the Google AdSense system

Google AdSense is simple to use and manage. Once approved, displaying ads on your webpage does not take time and requires minimal technical knowledge.
Google AdSense is very smart about ad selection. The ads that are displayed are only those that are relevant to your content, and Google has strict quality control on the general quality of the ads.
Google AdSense uses text-only ads. Far from being low-tech, text ads are more effective than flashy ads. The clickthrough rate of text ads is proven to be higher than that of animated ads! More clicks equals more money, and text ads equals more clicks. Also…text ads are very “low weight” and very fast loading. The AdSense program will not slow your website, or your visitors, down. You can also use graphic ads.

AdSense for content

AdSense for content is the main AdSense program – contextually targeted ads are displayed on your webpage, and you get paid for every click. These ads are specifically targeted to the content of your webpage. Consequently, if you change the content of your page, the ads that are displayed would also change. AdSense allows you good control over what ads get served, since there might be some obvious problems if it didn’t.

Blocking Ads – you choose

While the ad selection is automatic, you can block unwanted ads – such as those from your competitors. You just tell Google which companies to block from your sites.

Reviewing and filtering Ads – semi-automatic

Google has its own strict policies for ad content (no profanity, no racial discrimination, etc). These are filtered out automatically from your point of view. Additionally, you can choose to block additional content through custom filters. This is slightly different than blocking an advertiser, since with this method an advertiser you generally allow may submit ads that would individually be filtered out.

Allowing the publisher to select an ad

In the rare case where Google’s content engines can’t make a clear match of ads to pages, they will let you pick which ads you want served. If you don’t pick, you’ll get public service spots.

The look-and-feel of Ads can be customized

Ads shouldn’t look out of place or be jarring on your website. Google allows you to customize colors and layout. You can choose options provided or have your own custom layout and color applied to the ads. The advertisers have no control over this; as the material appears on your site, you can and should select how it looks.

Tools for analysis

Tracking and analyzing the performance of any marketing campaign is critical. Google AdSense provides a range of comprehensive online reports that allow you to monitor and analyze your earnings as well as the performance of ads by many metrics, including size, color, and so forth, so you can make adjustments to maximize the value of the placements.

AdSense for Search

This is another program whereby Google allows you to ad a Google Search box to your website. By doing this, visitors to your site can search the entire internet from your website itself. In a way, your site becomes a host to Google. Except you make money!
The search results page that is displayed when a visitor on your website searches through the search box on the site itself, also displays Google Ads (AdWords ads) next to the usual listings, just as it would on Google.com. If the visitor clicks on any of these Google Ads, you get paid as well. Thus, with AdSense for search you can enhance your income potential beyond what just the content of your actual site can provide.
AdSense for search offers all the same options and controls as AdSense for content. These include ad customization, ad filtering, monitoring and tracking results, and so on.

Google AdSense Premium service

The AdSense Premium service provides advanced functionality and features, provided your website qualifies for it – which in fact very few sites do.
As a base requirement, your website should received at least 5 million search queries or 20 million page views a month to qualify for the Premium service. (We’re betting if your sites qualify for this level of service, you already know all about AdSense!)

How much can I make with AdSense and how do I get started?

You’ve seen the nutty claims by so-called “internet experts” that strategies and programs they have devised enable surfers to earn thousands of dollars within a matter of days! Or minutes!! No such thing.
However, there are several lucrative programs that can provide an extremely generous income with comparatively little effort – Google AdSense is absolutely one of them.
But it takes some time, and it takes some planning, like anything real does. The rest of our report is all about unlocking that potential.
To start understanding the potential, think about how you make money with this program. Each time someone clicks an ad on your pages, you get a percentage of what Google is paid for placing that ad.
Revenue (or Income) from an Ad
=
Clickthrough value of the ad * Payout Rate * Clickthrough rate of the Ad * Webpage traffic * Frequency of Ad
In the above equation, Clickthrough value is the amount the advertiser pays per click for the Ad (this figure varies); the Payout Rate is the percentage of revenue to be paid for every click fixed by Google (this figure varies); Clickthrough rate is simply the # of times the ad is clicked on in a certain period of time divided by the # of times it is displayed during the same period; Webpage traffic is the # of visitors to your website; and Frequency of Ad is the # of times this particular ad appears on your webpage.
Let’s put some figures into the above equation and see what the income is. The figures below are for a single day:
Clickthrough Value �� 30 cents or $0.30 (The advertiser pays 30 cents per click for the Ad, to Google)
Payout Rate �� 50% or 0.5 (This is an assumption based on what many experts believe to be the current payout rate for most deals)
Clickthrough rate of the Ad �� the ad is displayed 100 times within the day and clicked by 9 people �� the clickthrough rate would be 0.09
Webpage traffic �� 150 visitors during the days
Frequency of Ad �� 100
The Income per day from a single ad would be = 0.30 * 0.5 * 0.09 * 150 * 100
= $202.5
If you consider this to be the average income per day, the total revenue generated within a month would be more than $6000. This is incredible, considering you basically did nothing to earn that money. We know of cases where people have earned even more than $25,000 a month with AdSense, which is a large sum to anyone.
Our goal is to equip you to get started on the road to making money with AdSense.

Understanding Google policies

We discussed earlier how rewarding the Google AdSense program can be. However, joining the Google AdSense program is not that easy or everyone in the world would do it (which would defeat its purpose, ultimately). You have to be approved by Google in order to create your AdSense account and start earning money from it.
How do you get approved? Google famously has never publicly published details of its approval process, there are tips you should follow to ensure a high possibility of getting approved.
The good news is that Google does publish its policies and you do not need to be a member to read them. You should read them and be certain that you are in 100% compliance with them, not only when attempting to start your AdSense account, but once you are already a member. They update these policies regularly and a violation will get you suspended. A list of Google AdSense policies can be seen at: http://www.google.com/adsense/policies

The Key to AdSense!

As stated earlier, we cannot say exactly how Google decides to accept or reject a site. However, one thing is for sure – the main criterion for approval is always the content of the website!
Most sites get rejected simply because they do not have any – or enough – good content. What constitutes “good” content? We can say what it is not. The types of websites that only have links and “filler” content aimed at attracting Search Engines, and sites that do not offer any informational content but solely focus on their own products and services. Google is one of the smartest companies on the Internet, and they can easily tell “junk” content from “real” content, even if many web surfers themselves can’t.
Google approves websites that have significant real content. These could be in the form of informational articles, analyses of various topics, and much more. For business websites that solely focus on selling their products and services through their website, including informational articles about their industry is smart, and this data is usually pretty easily available.
Another reason why most business websites do not qualify for the program, is that most businesses are specialized, and these websites are most likely to get Ads from their competitors, as only those ads would be relevant. As discussed, competitor ads would be blocked by you, filtered by Google, or both, so an AdSense program that serves no ads makes no sense!
Similarly, websites that focus only on links for generating search engine traffic do not have any content at all, according to both common sense and Google. These sites may rack up fairly high traffic scores and so forth, but they do not qualify for AdSense.
One of the best and simplest strategies is to include at least 30 to 40 informational articles of 400 to 450 words each and update them from time to time. Writing these articles yourself may be a daunting task. However, the good news is that there are considerable websites that offer articles for free, and plenty of professional writing resources who can not only write high quality material for you, but can especially optimize that material to work well with search engines and the “qualification” processes for systems like AdSense.
We’ve developed a 5-Step plan for success.

Formatting Ad Blocks

You can let Google decide for you the type of ads that will be displayed on your webpage, but as the website publisher, you may be in a better position to decide what ads suit the content of your website and how you would like them displayed. To the extent possible, whether chosen by Google or you, make the ads seem like part of the site itself.
Most internet marketing experts believe that the ads on your website have a high probability of getting clicked if they blend in with the rest of the content of your web page. Factors such as color scheme, font size and type, and the appearance of your ad should match your web page. Borders are optional and we think often you should opt out – why put a box around the ad that says “Hi! I’m an ad!”?
Also, regardless of other design choices, text links should be blue. Why are text links blue? For the same reason Henry Ford said of the Model-T “They can have any color they want so long as it’s black.” They just are.
Though we think text ads are generally better than graphic ads, also known as image ads, Google does offer them with the program.
Actually, you don’t need to struggle much with whether graphic ads or text will be better on your pages, as Google’s technology will suggest whether an image ad or a text ad will be more suitable and which will earn you maximum revenues (since you earn part of they earn, they have motives to get this mix right).
However, it remains totally up to you whether you wish to run image ads or text-based ads. You can select only image ads, or text ads or a combination of both these formats on your entire AdSense account or on one page at a time based on your discretion.

Ad Placement

“Location, location, location.” It is true in real estate and true in advertising, including web advertising. Since the “location” of the user is your site already, the “location” of the ad in this context means on which pages, where on the pages, and so on. As noted, the less an ad looks like an ad, the more effective it is likely to be.
Then there are general design and usability factors to consider.
If your webpage is cluttered and you can’t dispense with any content, you may want to break it down further into sections or more pages to provide easier reading. This also gives you the potential benefit of placing additional ads.
As noted, we generally recommend text-based ads. However, text-dense sites may actually do better with image ads. If your site has very few graphics, you may want to balance it out by putting image-based ads. In the monotony of a lot of dense written information, image-based ads and graphics provide what’s called visual relief. This can also prompt clicks.
Where should you put the ads? The chances of your ad getting noticed by the visitors to your site increases greatly if you place ads as close to the top of your webpage as possible.
If you choose to place so-called ‘skyscraper’ ads – in magazines these would be called columns – on the sidebars of your webpage, it would be wise to place them on the right side of your principal content areas. The reason for this is the visitor to your page (in most languages) will read from left to right, he or she will chance upon the ad ultimately, if not consciously then at least out of habit. Their eyes will go there. From the left, they can visually “skip” the ad when they start reading next to it.
Your ads should be placed in such a way that it matches the links to other
websites on your site. If you already have a links section on your site, put the AdSense links in that section or list. This is not dishonest – if it were Google would not allow it.
Obviously if you have a “most popular” area on your website, such as a page that is updated daily with some kind of material that people bookmark to revisit often, place your ad(s) there instead of somewhere else that may get less traffic. For many websites the home page is not actually the most accessed area. If you don’t know what the traffic pattern is on your sites, it’s easy to find out – ask your hosting provider about usage logs.
One more thing: While some affiliate marketing programs encourage host sites to encourage clicks directly, it is not appropriate to expressly ask your readers to click on the ads served by the Google programs. Not only is it unprofessional and arguably unethical, it also annoys people and moreover Google AdSense actually prohibits any such activity. You can neither directly solicit clicks nor can you do anything considered deceptive to encourage clicks.
In conclusion, the emphasis is always on quality of content on your web pages.
Good and interesting content makes your site better, more acceptable to Google, more likely to win with AdSense, and therefore more profitable for you!

Researching Keywords

After you are done choosing the right format and location for your AdSense ads, don’t sit back and wait for the money to roll in just yet. The next important step is to choose the right keywords for your web pages. These will influence both who visits your site, and how AdSense assigns ads to you.
The number one mistake most website publishers make is to constantly choose high-paying (i.e. expensive!) keywords assuming that it will yield them more income. While it is tempting to choose such keywords to get higher rankings on search engines, be prudent when it comes to selecting the right keywords that go with the AdSense ads that are to be displayed.. Remember the goal here isclicks, not SEO rankings. This is a case where you often do not get what you pay for.
Consider this scenario. Your webpage talks about wine tasting courses. You review search phrases and keywords with “wine” in it and you find “wine rack” is in the top three and available, so you buy it. The corresponding ads also focus on buying wine racks online, wine storage and building your own wine racks. After a week when you check on the statistics of your webpage and AdSense account, you see that you are losing visitors and your income is dipping! The keyword selection is faulty in this case even though it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Why? The visitors to your webpage were actually looking for wine racks and have landed on your webpage talking about wine tasting courses instead. The wine course types want to sign up for the courses, maybe buy a book on wine, or a wine of the month club. They don’t want to build a wine rack. Think strategically, not tactically.
Just because a keyword is high paying and is seemingly related, does not mean it is totally relevant and you need something relevant. Relevance is more important than value! In the above case, you could have – and should have – chosen wine tasting tour, wine tasting party, wine tasting event, wine tasting class, wine tasting school, course tasting wine and so on. You are interested in relevance more than popularity. Tasting is a match. Racks are not.
Let’s look at some of the ways in which you can research your keywords for AdSense ads:
• You can check out the popularity of various keywords if you already have an account with Google AdWords. This way you will get an idea of the popularity of various keywords as well as the cost and returns that entail.
• Google AdWords also has a tool known as the AdWords Keywords Tool which can sometimes help you search for alternate keywords and variations.
• Another tool known as Keyword Analyzer can generate numerous key phrases that are typed by Internet users in different search engines.
• Consider getting a WordTracker account. They have an excellent tool that suggests top 1,000 most popular keywords. This tool can also help you create a list of relevant keywords for your webpage. You can learn a lot from a small investment here.
• Another great idea is to search for top 100 keywords on 7search which will give you an idea of high-paying keywords.
Your clickthrough rate will be boosted tremendously by including the right keywords in your web copy, of course. Keywords occurring in your ads are usually highlighted on the search engine results page. This also helps in drawing additional attention to your ad.
The URL of your webpage is also an integral part of achieving success on Google AdSense program, as it is on the Web generally. Current wisdom holds that the keywords in the URL are equally if not more important than the ones featured in the actual webpage content or in metatags. If you change your ordinary URL to a keyword rich URL relevant to your market, it is possible to raise your CTR as much as 200% or more without doing anything else.
Obvious domain names with the keywords that you want might be expensive to purchase from a broker, but you can also buy used domain names that are no longer active, often for just a few dollars per year.

Developing Content

Let’s assume you have good ads, good placement, and good traffic.
This step is all about how to tweak your pre-existing content to support the most effective profitability from your new AdSense program.
One major mistake many web publishers make now is to lard up their pages with a bazillion keywords for so-called “search engine optimization.” Do not fall into that trap and clutter your webpage with high-profile buzzwords that do not contribute to the value of your webpage or the experience of your intended audience. Remember, we’re focused here on clicks, which means bringing
relevant readers to your site and giving them a good experience that puts them in an inquisitive or buying frame of mind.
As a general rule, all content shifts should make some kind of sense. You may well be able to make connections between articles on sports, to articles on sports medicine, to articles on herbal supplements which feature ads for those products. On the other, a web page on bicycles should not have ads for other kinds of pumps, if you know what we mean.
Before you decide to add that magic Google AdSense code on any page of your website, you should have dealt with the following two important steps:
• High quality textual content
Ensure that your web pages have enough textual content so that the AdSense program can set up ads that are relevant to the content on your pages. If you have very little content, it will be difficult for Google to determine the focus of your page and end up displaying only public service ads that do not earn any revenue.
• Use different page titles for different pages
Have unique page titles based on the specific content of each page. Avoid generic or vague page titles such as ‘Untitled Document’ or ‘Page 1’. Be crisp and precise and avoid using long phrases and difficult words in the page titles. If your page has a very long title, it might get banned from some search engines, so be pithy.

URL Channels

This will help you track the performance of your web pages without altering your ad code. All you need to do to track your performance is to enter a full or partial URL in the channel and you’re done. A full page URL will track the performance of the specific page having that address. If you want to track all the pages on a specific domain, you need to enter a top-level domain name.

Custom Channels

Custom channels are used to track the performance of your webpage based on the criteria that you specify. You can choose what specific factor you would like to track and customize the channel according to your requirements.
As the name suggests, custom channels are very flexible, and if you have ever used any kind of data reporting tool you will find setting them up easy and logical. You can have up to 50 custom channels!
You can compare the performance of different ad formats and the relevancy of ads. You can also compare how ads on one page are performing when compared with ads on other pages. You can do so by assigning each group of pages to a specific channel and eventually comparing results in your customized channel reports. You can also see where your clicks are coming from by assigning a channel to each of your separate pages. Also, it is a good idea to name your channel in such a way that it is easy to identify different channels in reports, especially if you are using a dozen or more.

Server Logs

In addition to the ‘channel’ program offered by Google to track your AdSense ads on your web pages, you can also use any of the various high quality external AdSense tracking software packages to track your performance in greater detail (except actual revenues – you need to get that from Google). One major advantage of such software is that it runs locally, which enables you to access specific information that Google doesn’t track. Be aware that none of these third-party software solutions are “endorsed” by Google currently but most of them guarantee to operate within AdSense guidelines. Just make sure they do, because you don’t want to lose your account status over a technical violation by a third party.
Some of the information you can obtain by using tracking software:
• Referring website of all your visitors
• The type of web browser they are using
• Where the actual ad-clickers are coming from
• Search keywords typed in by the visitors to your website that eventually brought them to you
You should use a combination of Google channels and a reliable AdSense tracking program so as to get comprehensive information about your AdSense account.

AdSense Do’s and Don’ts

Now that you know what AdSense is all about, we can offer the following do’s and don’ts – which more or less summarizes everything we’ve said so far.

Do’s

The first rule of using AdSense is to follow their terms of service. Google has exceptional monitoring ability, and if they find any violation of their TOS, your account will be suspended, rendering all your efforts moot.
Consider having a number of informative pages about varying topics but with a consistent theme for your website. That way you will have more ads to choose from and can possibly maximize your CTR.
Use keywords to your advantage. Higher paying keywords will usually but not always yield more rewards. Think relevance. Also use variations of keywords for added advantage.
Provide unique information on your web pages. The more specific the content of your website is, the more targeted your ads will be, and the more effective. Always focus on providing good quality information!
Experiment with various ad formats on your web page and choose those that suite your website. You can choose to display ads with different formats on one page.
Position your ad block in such a way that the ad is visible and yet it does not put off the readers. Ideally, place your ad in the top section of your webpage which can be viewed without scrolling down.
Use the Google AdSense preview toolbar to your advantage and see how the ads will appear on your website. Get a hands-on feel of how the visitor to your website will view your web page.
Use Google channels and other external tracking software to evaluate your performance on a routine basis.

Don’ts

Do not resort to fraudulent or deceptive means for generating clicks on the ads that are on your page. Some of the methods that are prohibited by Google AdSense are:
• Automated clicking programs
• Repeated manual clicks
• Using robots to generate clicks
• Clicking your own ads
• Tricking your visitors into clicking on your ads by using fraudulent means
Don’t have confusing layers of content. Content on your web page should not hide the ad text and URL. At the same time, it is advisable that you use same font type, size and color (background and font) for both the ads and the content on your web pages so that your ad does not announce itself as an outside ad. Ideally, your ad should look and feel like a part of your website.
Don’t have broken links on your site. Your website should not contain any broken links and should be easily navigable. Also, the content on your web pages should be informative, of high quality and the ads should be relevant to the content.
Don’t have old or illegal information on your site. Be careful about outdated information, plagiarized text and obscene or offensive material. Avoid using any of these on your web pages.

Adding Google Ads to your RSS feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) has gained huge popularity on the Internet. RSS is an XML document format that organizes and stores news-like content from various sources into one source. Think of it like a newswire service, the kind of stuff that scrolls along the bottom of cable channels. A large percentage of the “news” items you find on any website that is not a major news portal got there through an RSS feed.
Google has introduced a specific program known as AdSense for RSS. Although, it is under beta testing currently (mid 2005), you can join this program now and start making money with it. RSS offers a variety of interesting content options that most websites themselves can’t match.
Google AdSense for feeds has its own set of policies. These can be accessed at:
http://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=20134 Like the AdSense program, you must follow all guidelines in order to be accepted for the AdSense for feeds program.

Placing AdSense ads on your Blogs

Blogs are similar to RSS feeds in concept except they usually have one author rather than an aggregate of sources of the material they contain. Blogs (short for Web logs) are simple webpages where you can write articles and other content on a variety of topics, and both the famous and the unknown use these online diaries to share their thoughts, post pictures, and so on. The public can view this content and even comment on it in most cases.
Due to the considerable amount – and unlimited range – of content on Blogs, it may make sense to place AdSense ads on them. In fact, it is much easier to generate revenue from Blogs as compared to other web pages, at least in theory.
• First, blogs are full of content, most of which is original most of the time. The content may not be “good” from a human reader perspective but it is
usually “good” according to Google’s scans. Thus, getting approved by Google AdSense may be easier.
• The content presented on the blog, in many cases, is quite diverse which, unlike a website that needs to be “about something” can be excused by the “everything and nothing” nature of most blogs. Consequently, the possibility of Google finding targeted ads that are relevant may increase.
• Google AdSense works only with those websites that are already indexed by Google. Blogs get indexed far more easily than regular webpages. Some blogs get indexed in as few as two to three days of submission. Thus, the chances of getting approved by Google AdSense increases
• Blogs can be created at practically no cost – much cheaper than commercial websites.

Tools and Scripts

These are tools that would help you in a variety of areas such as seeing what ads appear for specific keywords, tracking and analyzing clickthroughs and revenue, scripts and much more.
• AdSense Preview tool from Google – Preview your AdSense Ads
• AdSense Desktop – Tool for analyzing Google AdSense statistics
• AdSenseLog – Another tool for analyzing AdSense stats
• AdSenseCharts – Chart generator for your statistics
• Revenue Checker for Google AdSense – Checks and monitors revenue
• Google AdSense Sandbox Tool – shows what Ads would appear for specific keywords or content
• AdSense Web Tool – similar to the one above
• AdSense Tracker – Statistical Analysis and tracking
AdSense Monitor – AdSense tracking script
• SysSense - A utility that puts your AdSense information in the Windows system tray
• AdSense Notifier – places AdSense information in a status bar
• AdSense™ Tracker - Another good tracking tool
• Google AdSense Tracking Script – Another tracking script
• AdSenseMasterFlex 2.0 - Script
• asRep: Google AdSense tracking script

AdSense Information Websites and Tutorials

AssociatePrograms.com - AdSense Forum
• Digital Point - AdSense Forum
• Google AdSense Charts & Graphs
• Google AdSense Preview Tool
• Google AdSense Sandbox Tool
• GoogleRankings.com
• How to Boost Your AdSense Revenue
• JenSense - Making Sense of Contextual Advertising
• Search Engine Forums - Contextual Advertising Forums
• Search Engine Watch - AdSense Forum
• V7N Web Development Community - Google Forum
• Web Pro World - AdSense Forum
• Webmaster World - AdSense Forum
• Googlest