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venerdì 21 giugno 2013

What is Google AdSense?

How Make Money Online With Google Adsense
AdSense is a nice way to monetize your traffic, and very easy to implement. It's one of my top earners and has been since 2003.

How Make Money Online With Google - Make Money With Google Adsense

AdSense is not a get-rich-quick program. You have to build a site with lots of traffic to make it worthwhile.
This free guide will give you a realistic overview of what you can expect from the program. Don't pay a cent for these "Get Rich Quick" books on AdSense. Many of them are all hype or they're trying to get you to purchase one of their products. Google.com earns most of its revenue by allowing other website owners to advertise on their search results pages. All this is managed through a program they call AdWords (pay per click marketing). You see these ads displayed above the free/organic results and along the right side of the page on Google.com. These are called Sponsored Results, and the advertisers are paying a certain amount of money per click for these ads. It's an auction-based system that allows advertisers to compete for those spots. Whomever has the highest bid and most "quality" ad, gets the top spot and so forth. Now you can earn a share of the revenue that Google earns from AdWords by displaying these same text or image ads on your site. When someone clicks, you earn roughly 68% of the click and Google gets the rest.

This program is called AdSense.

  It's a great program that can help you drive additional income to your website -- especially if it's mostly content based.
  So if you are one of those people that doesn't like the idea of paying for a site, this is an excellent way to earn your money back and then some.
  Please make sure you read this entire article. AdSense is not a get-rich-quick scheme and it takes a lot of work to make money. Don't think that just because you join, you are guaranteed to make big money.

How Does AdSense Work?

Here's a video I did some years back. The reason I still show it here is the concept is still exactly the same. 
  The biggest difference is it takes more work to build up traffic. Nevertheless, AdSense still works just as well as it did back when Is created this video.

How Much Can You Earn With AdSense?

The commission you receive per click depends on how much advertisers are paying Google for the particular ad. You will earn a share of that amount.  I've heard of earnings anywhere from 2 cents to $15 per click.
  Getting over $1 is probably very rare, although it does happen from time to time. However, you will find that most of your earnings will be on the lower end of the spectrum.
  It's important to note that I cannot estimate how much you will earn based on your traffic. People always want to know what the average amount is per click.
  No one knows the answer to this except Google, so don't let anyone try to tell you any different. It would be impossible for myself or any AdSense publisher to give this information because the ads all cost different prices and we have no idea what advertisers are paying.
  However, there are some niches that obviously pay more. So it is logical to believe that keyword phrases like sex, make money, etc. may earn you more per click since these are highly competitive keywords that are searched for quite a bit on  

The more competitive the search term, the more the advertisers pay and the more you earn as a publisher.

  Even though Google will not reveal how much you are earning for each ad that is clicked from your site, you can still login to your account at any time and see the total amount of revenue you've generated that day, week, month, year, etc.
  For example, if you see that you've made $12.60 today from 9 clicks then you can calculate that your average click-thru commission was $1.40 per click.  That's as detailed as their stats will get.  Also remember, that's only an average.  You won't know how much each specific ad brought in.

The amount you'll earn also depends largely on the amount of targeted traffic you receive to your own site, how well the ads match your audience's interests, the placement of the ads on your pages, and of course the amount you receive per click.

Ideally, you should create a site on a topic you know a lot about.  That way you'll have a much easier time creating a generous amount of content on that subject.  

My Google AdSense Earnings

 I have been receiving monthly checks from Google since 2003 (yes that's me holding the same check from above), and I've read numerous success stories of websites earning 5 digit incomes per month with AdSense.  Now, I will admit, a 5-digit commission in a single month is probably not the norm for most participants.
  I promote AdSense on 6 of my websites (2 blogs, a forum and 4 static sites). My earnings vary greatly between $5K and $8K per month. A lot depends on traffic and how much the advertisers are spending on ads.
  My sites have been around for a long time and I have a great deal of traffic so that's a big reason why I earn so much. I promote my sites on social media, create YouTube videos etc. Making a lot of money with AdSense is all about numbers. The more traffic you have, the greater the earning potential.
  My checks weren't always this large.  I think my first month's earnings in 2003 totaled less than $20. However, as my traffic increased, so did my checks. 

Creating Your Website for AdSense

 Before you even begin your site, make sure you've come up with a topic that you feel you know plenty about.  That way it will be easiest to write a lot of content.
  The more content you have, the better chance you have getting accepted into the program.  Also, the more content and traffic, the greater the earning potential.
  If you want to make a lot of money, prepare to write a lot of content and learn how to market your site. Don't expect to throw up a 10 page site and make $1,000 per month. That's unrealistic.
  Now let's talk about building your website.  There are two ways you can approach this:

1) Do it Yourself (DIY) from scratch

2) Use Site Build It! 


  I've actually used both methods for building my site and there are advantages and disadvantages to both. So the option you choose, depends on what you're comfortable with.
  If you use the DIY method, you will have to go and get a domain (yoursite.com) and then sign up for aweb host and build your pages. 
  Decide if you want a static website like this or a blog. If you don't know the difference, this article will help you out.
  Averaging between $3 and $10 per month, the DIY method is usually the most cost friendly of the two but you are mostly on your own in terms of learning how to create your web pages and adding the AdSense code to your site. 
  Web hosts are generally there to house your site.  They don't specialize in helping you market and optimize your site for the search engines to help you get traffic.  So don't expect a lot from them in terms of helping you market your site and making money with Google AdSense.
  This is not necessarily a bad thing.  I had to learn how to build this site on my own and it wasn't very difficult.
  I now manage all of my static sites with Dreamweaver. My blogs use WordPress.

How to Join AdSense

Once you have 20-30 pages on your site, go to http://adsense.google.com to apply.
  When you are accepted, simply copy and paste the provided HTML code into any page that you'd like to show the ads. You can opt to display text ads, image ads, or a combination of both. It's up to you.
  You can either display the ads vertically along side the page like Google does or in a banner-like formation horizontally across your pages.  You can even customize the colors to match your site's theme.

Tips on Succeeding With AdSense

Here are some tips for achieving success with Google AdSense.

Build Traffic

You're not going to make anything with AdSense if you don't have enough traffic. Please don't think this is some easy, get-rich-quick program. This takes work and it all starts with getting visitors.

Learn more about traffic building here.

Experiment 

Test ad sizes, images vs. text, play around with colors, you name it. I personally like to have my ads match the background of my site so they blend more.

Some people prefer to make their ads stand out by using bold/contrasting colors, but that never worked well for me. I think it's because they look so much like ads.

Read a blog post I wrote where my readers and I discuss our best performing ad units/sizes.

To display the ads vertically along the right side of the page, just copy this code into your site and paste your AdSense code where indicated.

<table align="right" width="300>
<tr>
<td>INSERT ADSENSE CODE HERE</td>
</tr>
</table> 


You can change the width of the table to suit your needs, just remember that it needs to be wide enough to fit whatever AdSense code you selected. You can also switch the alignment by changing the align attribute from "left" to "right."

Create Channels

Channels allow you to see what units are working best. So if you are adding an AdSense unit to your header, you should create a channel called (name it Header, for example) so you can track its performance in your reports.

I think it's important to maximize your click through rate (CTR) so you can attract more advertisers (just my opinion based on logic.) So I remove channels/units that perform significantly lower than others.

Advertisers want to advertise on sites that will give them the most clicks, right? So it makes sense to optimize your account's CTR as much as you can.

lunedì 17 giugno 2013

Some European AdSense Publishers Can Now Get Reports in Euros


AdSense today have added the ability for publishers located in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain to view AdSense reports in Euros as well as USD. They write:
“If you’re located in one of these five countries and make this update, we’ll convert your earnings to Euros on a daily basis using the prevailing market rate from the previous day. With earnings converted daily, you’ll avoid the risk of currency exchange fluctuations between USD and the Euro. You can still choose to receive payments in either Euros or U.S. Dollars and select from a range of payment methods as well. “
There are some new terms and conditions to go along with these changes that publishers will need to agree to.

AdSense ‘Force’ Expandable Ad Units on Some Publishers and Exclude Others

Update: I’ve updated this post below with an update from AdSense. Please read it.
AdSense have today announced a new type of ad – Expandable Ad Units.
I’m pretty sure that I’ve seen these ads being tested on one of my sites (although bizarrely I am not able to use the ads as I’m not located in a country that they are available for – see below) and they are basically an ad that looks like a normal image ad but which expands when a reader interacts with it (by clicking it).
AdSense say that these ads are served on both a CPC (cost per click) or CPM (cost per impression) basis (advertisers choice). If they are CPC you only get paid if people click the ad and visit the advertiser (I have a bit of a problem with this – see below).
Ads will only be available to publishers meeting all of three criteria:
  • If they’re located in North America or Europe, with a website in Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, or Spanish
  • If they’ve added the AdSense code directly into their site’s source code
  • If they’ve enabled image ads
OK – interesting. On one hand I think this is cool, while AdSense don’t say it I suspect these ads could pay more than normal ads. They’re rich media and in general advertisers wanting to use these sorts of technologies are willing to pay a premium and are generally top tier advertisers with recognizable brands and good budgets.
On the other hand a couple of concerns come to mind:
1. Why do AdSense keep offering new things to publishers in certain parts of the world?
Come on AdSense – we’re a global economy. While I’m an Aussie my sites are read by less than 4% Australians. The vast majority of my readers are in North America and the rest are largely European. I’ve ranted on this more times than I can remember. I can understand not wanting to run ads on sites where READERS are not in your target markets, but as a publisher whose blog is read by your target market, hosted by your target market and attracts other direct sponsors from your target market I would have thought you’d love to have these ads on my sites. All this does is drive me to put more and more emphasis on cutting you out of the equation and finding my own sponsors directly – something I’m having more and more success with (thanks to Lenovo this month for their sponsorship of DPS).
2. The ads are more interruptive – but don’t always generate revenue.
Some publishers will be annoyed that these ads are more interruptive than normal image ads. While AdSense say that they’ve got strict guidelines in place around what kinds of ads can be shown – when clicked they will cover parts of the publishers website. More than that, a click on the ad might not generate any revenue if the advertiser is using CPC ads. This means that an advertiser gets the benefit of someone noticing their ad and interacting with it (good for their branding) while the publisher has part of the rest of their site covered over…. and gets nothing for that.
3. Opting out of these ads is not easy.
So what if you don’t want expandable ads on your site?
AdSense makes clear in their announcement that there are ways to stop these ads appearing on your site. They give two methods – neither of which are satisfactory in my mind:
  • You can block advertisers using the Competitive Ad Filter – this means going in an blocking advertisers domains from having their ads appear on your blog. This is only effective if you notice the ads and also means you’re blocking any other ads from that advertiser from appearing on your site.
  • You can use the Ad Review Center – this allows you to log into the back end of your AdSense account and view all ads being targeted to your site. OK, this could work, but last time I checked my Ad Review Center (and I rarely do it because of the number of ads and the slowness of using it) to see what ads were being targeted to DPS I saw literally thousands of ads. AdSense say you can narrow it down by just viewing ‘Rich Media’ ads which is helpful – but I just checked my account and still saw hundreds of such ads on my own account. I don’t know how many were there exactly because I had to close down my browser – something about viewing 100 rich media ads on a page didn’t agree with Firefox on my computer).
OK – so my headline is a little exaggerated, you can opt out of them, but at the very least it is a chore and for some sites that get a lot of ads targeted at them it could be impossible to keep them off their site.
Note: there is a 3rd way of opting out of these ads – disable image ads. Of course this means you only will ever get text ads on your site which means less potential income.
Last Thoughts
IF I was a publisher living in one of the ‘lucky lands’ where these ads are relevant for I’d let them show on my blog. While I have some reservations I think they’re a good idea and don’t think my readers would mind them – however I wouldn’t be happy at virtually being forced to show them or for them bringing value to advertisers brands without compensation.
What do you think of them?
If you have a comment – I’d love to see it below but I’m sure the team at AdSense would love to hear it to – they have comments open on the post on their blog and there’s some good feedback for them already appearing there.
Update: I’ve asked AdSense for comment on this post and they have quickly responded with:
“Google AdSense is really excited to launch our new format of expandable ads, and we’re currently clarifying our statement regarding the eligibility for serving expandable ads based on publisher’s location.”
I’m expecting further comment in the coming hours.
Update 2: OK – AdSense have come back to me with a full response. Looks like they made a mistake in their announcement post. I’ve included their full respond below.
====
Thanks for your feedback on AdSense’s new format of Expandable Ads. We’re really excited to launch this new format, as it brings variety and choice in our ad products for users, advertisers, and publishers.
We made a mistake in our blog post regarding publisher eligibility for expandable ads, leading readers to believe that only US and European-based publishers could serve them. We’re glad to inform the ProBlogger readership that all publishers can accept expandable ads regardless of location. However only select US advertisers are testing expandable ads at this time. We hope to be able to extend this offering to advertisers located outside the US in the future. This has been updated on our Inside AdSense blog post.
Publishers generate earnings from a CPC-priced expandable ad when a user visits the advertiser’s landing page, rather than when a user clicks to
expand the ad. Advertisers have different goals, and we encourage them to achieve them on the Content Network with options to bid via a CPC or CPM
model for all rich media formats. Publishers benefit from our auction technology that optimises their yield from our wide range of ads. CPC expandable ads still compete with other ads to automatically maximise your return from AdSense.
We’re also constantly working to improve publisher controls, and between the Competitive Filter and the Ad Review Center, publishers have two comprehensive ways of blocking expandable ads. Google has designed this ad format to enhance the user experience with ads. Users are given complete
control over ad expansion – expandable ads are initiated with a click rather than a mouseover, and users can easily close the ad at any time.
Expandable ads do not interfere with the page’s layout, and if publishers have opted into accepting all ad formats, it takes no extra effort to
accept them. It’s an exciting ad product that will bring mutual benefit to publishers, users, and advertisers.
======
So – the expandable ads will appear on sites owned by publishers from all locations (after the initial test). The CPC issue is still an issue to me but the auction system that Google have in place to decide which ad to show should help to keep ads profitable. If an ad is not converting on a site then it tends not to be shown. I still have some concern with the ways to opt out for those publishers who don’t want them but I guess we have to live with that.
Thanks to the team at AdSense for responding!

AdSense Developing ‘Category Filtering’ Feature

AdSense today announced at Adspace and on their blog that they’re developing a much requested feature for publishes – category filtering.
“Category filtering will give publishers the ability to block ads that fall into specific categories such as dating, religion, and politics. Regardless of how ads are targeted, they’ll be filtered if they’re within one of the selected categories. We’ll also show the percentage of recent revenue that ads in each category generate, so publishers can predict how filtering selections will impact their revenue.”
The feature is being launched as a beta test to a small group of publishers so don’t expect to see it too soon unless you’re in the test group.
Here’s a screenshot of what the feature currently looks like (click to enlarge):
Looks like a useful feature – particularly for those who regularly get irrelevant ads on their blog.

AdSense Announce ‘Google Ad Planner’ – Showcase Your Site

If you run AdSense on your blog and are looking to attract advertisers to target it specific with their ads then you’ll want to check out a new tool that AdSense have just announced on their blog –Google AdPlanner’s Publisher Center.
Ad Planner is a tool that advertisers use to find sites related to their ads and this new publisher center you can have some say over what they see when they’re looking for sites to advertise on.
First you need to claim your site (there are two methods either through Webmaster Tools or if you’re a DoubleClick Directory User) and then you can customize the description for your site, highlight the ad types that you run, share Google Analytics data (if you wish – this will replace the estimated traffic numbers that Ad Planner currently gives advertisers), choose categories for your site etc.
See more about Google’s Ad Planner Publisher Center in this video:

AdSense Introduces Font Size Choice for Publishers

AdSense Font Size

One of the more commonly requested features that I see AdSense publishers making is for the ability to be able to change font size in their ads.
The AdSense blog today announces this change:
“The font size you choose will be applied to the body of the ad, with the title scaled appropriately. In order to fit the ad text correctly, the actual font size will vary for each format size, font face, and user-specific settings such as browsers and operating systems. In addition, some formats sizes currently have very limited room, so the font size application will be most apparent in cases where the number of ads appearing in your ad units varies automatically in order to maximize your performance.
Your ads are currently set at the default size for AdSense, which is the equivalent of ‘small’. You can select a new font size on an account-wide basis in the Ad Display Preference section of your My Account tab, or on an individual ad unit basis for new and existing ad units.
If you’re creating new ad units, you can choose between the AdSense default font size, your new account-wide font size (if you’ve selected one using the instructions above), or a separate size. To update existing ad units you’ve created using the Manage Ads feature, visit the ‘Manage Ads’ page under your AdSense Setup tab. Any font size changes you make on an individual ad unit basis will be maintained even if you change your account-wide default in the future.”
Also announced in the post is that the default size for ads will soon be automatically increased from ‘small’ to ‘medium’. This is due to testing that they’ve done which shows that larger size is performing better.

Simple Changes Doubled My Adsense Revenue

Doubled My Adsense Revenue

In this post ATUM from Home Construction Improvement and Today’s Green Constructionshares how he doubled the AdSense revenue on his blog with a few simple changes.
Several simple changes in my Adsense approach and layout have almost doubled my blog’s revenue. The results were so drastic and eye opening that I convinced a friend (www.oneprojectcloser.com) to make the same changes to his blog with even better results. The changes involve two simple ideas that can be easily incorporated into any Adsense monetized website or blog.
I’ve been blogging for over two years now and growing traffic, authority and readership slow and steady. Along with the steady increase in traffic the site has continued to increase it’s Adsense revenue at a similar pace with no sudden increases regardless of all the changes and adjustments I’ve made. That was true until I took the time to study many different published Adsense approaches. As I read all of these different approaches three distinct ideas came to the forefront.

Three Important Adsense Approaches

  • Less is More – This concept is really simple yet I hadn’t really given it much thought before. First off the top ad is the highest paying ad and you want that in the best possible position.
Secondly, if you’re using all three of the allotted Adsense units on a given page then there are quite a few ads all competing for attention or a click through. However, if you only use one Adsense unit then you’re limiting the number of ads served and improving the likelihood that one of those ads will get clicked. Therefore, the theory is that an advertiser will be willing to pay a higher rate for less competition.
  • Size Matters – If you read enough Adsense guides you’ll find that the 336 x 280 Large Rectangle is the most effective Adsense unit. It typically offers four ads and they are likely to be very related to the topic based on the position between the post title and body.
  • Position, Position, Position – Placing your Adsense unit above the fold is imperative for success. This makes sense to me for one reason. Every day my site (and I assume most sites) gets a majority of it’s traffic from search engines. This traffic is generated from people searching for something. So when they land on my page and they decide that it’s not the content they were looking for then I want them to see the Adsense unit right where they land so that becomes an “outclick” option.

How I Doubled My Adsense Revenue

In order to understand the approach I used to double my Adsense revenue I’ll use two graphics that show the same post before the changes and after the changes. First – the before shot:
And here’s the after shot:

My Old Adsense Layout Included:

  1. 468 x 60 Text Only Unit located in the header area of my page.
  2. 468 x 60 Text Only Unit located between the post title and the body of the post.
  3. 468 x 60 Text Only Unit located at the end of the post before the comment section.
Revised Adsense Layout Includes:
  1. Remove the old 468 x 60 Text Only Unit completely and replaced with an affiliate banner. The idea here is to remove some of the units in order to address concept #1 of Less is More.
  2. Replace the old 468 x 60 Text Only Unit with the 336 x 280 large rectangle unit. This unit is above the fold between the post title and body which makes it a very prominent position. This change addresses both of concept #2 and #3 for Size Matters and Position.
  3. Remove the old 468 x 60 Text Only Unit completely. I actually replaced this with the new Chitika Jumbo unit which is also performing quite well. Again the removal helps address the Less is More concept.

Immediate Results

If you look at the graph of my Adsense revenue over the last two months you’ll see that the increased revenue was immediate. The changes were made as indicated by the Red Circle #1. As you can see my revenue went from under $150 per week to almost $300 per week. Immediate should be taken with a grain of salt, the increase happened over several days and it’s likely to take some time for Adsense to incorporate the reduced number of ads being served on your site.

Summary Of Improved Adsense Layout

While I’d be naive to think that this will double any and all Adsense revenue for any site I think the principal is worth evaluating on all sites. The concept is really simple; make one large, well positioned ad do all the work. This will make your page look cleaner and it’s likely to improve your revenue immediately. It’s also important that you follow some of the basic suggestions of blended ads that match the color and fonts of your site. So far I’ve done this on two of my sites and a friend’s site with the same result, improved Adsense revenue.
Note from Darren: I think that the key with optimizing a blog for AdSense (or other ad networks) is to experiment. The best thing that Todd did here was to try something new and to track the results. What he’s done has worked for him but it might not work for everyone – the key is to keep trying different combinations of numbers of ads, ad sizes, ad positions, ad design (color, fonts etc) and to try different ad types until you find what works best for your blog.

How to Prevent and Monitor Invalid Clicks, and keep an AdSense Account in Good Standing [a Statement from AdSense]

Keep an AdSense Account in Good Standing

Over the last week or two there’s been an increase amount of chatter on forums and blogs about invalid clicks and AdSense. Some of the talk has contained information that has been a little confusing and perhaps even ill-informed (and some ‘influenced’ by companies with their own agendas) – so I got in touch with AdSense and asked if they had any information to help their publishers protect themselves against invalid clicks.
The following is what they replied with – in their words it is ‘a concise guide to how to prevent and monitor invalid clicks, and keep an AdSense account in good standing.’ I hope that it is helpful to AdSense publishers everywhere:
The Google AdSense team has heard many concerns about how Google treats invalid click activity on publisher’s sites, and there have been questions on how to keep your AdSense account in good standing. The Google Ads Quality Traffic Team wants to help all publishers keep their accounts in good order, so here are some tips to keep in mind.
We understand that it’s not always possible to control the behavior of your users, but you can be proactive about monitoring your traffic, and you can take steps to ensure that your site provides a helpful and safe environment for users and advertisers. Here are some top tips for keeping your account in good standing (which you may have seen before):https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=23921
Expanding on the tip “Be aware of how your site is promoted.” we’d like to remind you that, should you purchase traffic to promote your site, you do so at your own risk. There are many site promotion services out there that appear to be legitimate PPC advertising companies or search engines, but actually may be sending artificial traffic to your site for their own gain. (For legal reasons, we’re not allowed to disclose the names of such services.)
To combat this, we highly recommend that you use channels to segment your traffic by source (e.g. a channel for your site’s Google AdWords traffic only). If one channel’s reports look particularly suspicious, you may want to consider unsubscribing from that traffic service. We also recommend using Analytics to slice and dice your traffic reports further to ensure that you’re receiving clicks from users who are genuinely interested in your ads.
Though we encourage you to be proactive about monitoring your site and ad traffic, we highly discourage the use of click tracking via third-party software or custom ad implementations. These methods may:
  • inadvertently disclose sensitive information about you or your site to a third-party
  • disrupt Google’s ad delivery or click logging in a way that violates our Terms and Conditions
In addition, click tracking may not provide you with significantly more information than you can already find in your AdSense or Analytics reports. We believe that the creative use of channels can help you gain detailed insights into your account.
If you see unusual activity on your account, feel free to submit this form to let us know:https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/request.py?contact=invalid_clicks_contact Please note that we will only respond if we find a significant issue with your account.
Invalid clicks can come from many sources, as described athttps://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=16737. While we’re unable to go into the details of our monitoring system, you should know that invalid clicks don’t always mean clicking on your own ads or using click bots. Our Ad Traffic Quality Team looks for numerous types of activity that may inflate advertiser costs, then takes the necessary actions to protect our advertisers.
That said, we still find that many publishers are clicking on their own ads, possibly because they feel that Google is disregarding those clicks. Keep in mind that even though we filter the revenue from an invalid click, we don’t ignore it completely. If we detect significant invalid activity on your AdSense ads, we may take action on your account to protect our advertisers from inflated costs. Here are some examples of situations in which clicking your own ads is prohibited:
  • Clicking out of interest in the ad content
  • Clicking to see an ad’s destination URL, such as for filtering purposes (we recommend trying the AdSense Preview Tool, available at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=10005)
  • Clicking to ensure that Google is properly registering clicks on your ads (we log all ad clicks, but it can sometimes take up to 24 hours before your reports are finalized)
  • Clicking to test your website
For general invalid click questions, you can find more information athttps://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/topic.py?topic=8426

For questions about AdSense accounts disabled for invalid clicks, you can find more information athttps://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153.

The Parable of the Lemonade Stand: Is AdSense Costing you Money?

AdSense Costing you Money?

My journey into affiliate marketing.
Before I start, I’d like to make two disclaimers:
  1. I don’t hate google or AdSense—this article isn’t a rant against either.
  2. I recognize that every blog is different—what I’m about to say may not apply to your blog. Regardless, I think you should ask yourself the question I’m presenting here.
Disclaimers finished; let’s get to the point:

The Parable of the Lemonade Stand

Imagine a lemonade stand. The entrepreneurs get the ingredients, start up their business, and have dozens of customers per day. It earns twenty dollars a day. Not bad for a humble lemonade stand, right?
Now, let me throw in a twist: imagine the before-mentioned entrepreneurs are in their 30’s. They own the lot on which the lemonade stand is located. The lot is located along a major highway in a rapidly growing suburban area. All adjacent lots have businesses making thousands of dollars per day. Suddenly our lemonade stand seems rather silly.
This concept is called opportunity cost—the economic consequences of choosing one thing over another. I’m learning about this the hard way — I’ve been making pennies per click when I could have been making dollars per click.
Let me explain in a little more detail. As I’ve mentioned before, strongandfit.net is the first profitable blog I’ve ever had. As my traffic increased, so did my AdSense earnings. A few dollars a day ads up, so I was finally seeing checks come in at the end of every month (I’m new to making money online, so I’m easily amused).
But I started noticing something: a few products in particular kept showing up over and over on my blog (in the AdSense widget). “Wait a minute,” I thought to myself, “these products obviously convert well if someone is willing to spend money promoting them.” I realized I had inadvertently put myself at the bottom of the economic food chain: I was getting paid a few cents per click while someone else was earning commissions on sales produced by these clicks.
I did a little research and started directly advertising these products with affiliate marketing. So far it seems to be paying off—my blog is making more money.
But there’s another benefit: I have complete control over what gets advertised on my blog. It’s turning into a win-win situation: my readers are referred to high quality products, and I earn more in commissions.
I still use AdSense, but I’m devoting more of my prime “real estate” on my blog to affiliate marketing. Maybe you should also consider doing this.

A Note from Darren

Like Kevin says, I don’t have anything against AdSense either. In fact I find that it works quite well on some of my sites. For me the idea of ‘Opportunity Cost’ is a powerful one. For every decision you make to use ANY type ad unit on your blog (whether it is AdSense, some other ad network, an Affiliate product, an ad sold directly to an advertiser, an ad for a product of your own there is a potential opportunity cost of that decision.
The key is to test different options. Kevin has had success in substituting affiliate ads in the place of AdSense, for others affiliate products might not work, but an ad for your own product might. For others it might be about swapping ads to Chitika or another ad network. For others it could monetize better by selling ads directly. For others still it could be better to not have ads at all but to sell yourself on your blog as a consultant.

9 Tricks I Used To Triple My AdSense Earnings In 30 Days

AdSense Earnings In 30 Days

I have been using Google AdSense to monetize my blogs and websites for as long as I remember. In fact it was the first method I ever tried (I made a whooping $15 on my first month… back in 2005). Over the years I migrated to other methods (e.g., direct sponsors and affiliate marketing), which made AdSense become merely an inventory filler. I was still making around $1,000 monthly from it, but whenever I could I would use other methods over it.
Then some months ago I started noticing an upward trend on the CPC of my sites, and I figured that I should give AdSense another try. I started applying some tricks here and there, and the next month I made over $3,000 with it (that is combining all my sites). I was pleasantly surprised, and I decided to keep using it actively on some sites.
In this article I want to share with you the tips and tricks I used to triple my AdSense earnings in one month.

1. I added units to my Big Websites

Daily Blog Tips and Daily Writing Tips are my largest websites in terms of traffic. They are getting close to one million monthly page views (combined). Despite that I was not using AdSense on them, mainly because the direct sponsorship model was working relatively well.
Some months ago I decided to load some AdSense units on the sites, however, and the results were very positive. Around 70% of the boost I generated to my earnings came from these two sites. At the same time I managed to keep the other monetization methods working fine, and no reader ever complained about the new ads (more on that later).
Even if your blog is already making money with direct sponsors and affiliate marketing, therefore, you could still manage to increment your earnings by strategically adding some AdSense units.

2. I added units to my Small Websites

As many webmasters do, I have a bunch of small websites scattered around the web. Some are on free hosted platforms like Blogger, and others are self hosted sites that I abandoned along the way. Most of these sites still get traffic, however. Not much, but combined the numbers get decent.
I figured that adding AdSense units to all these sites could yield some money, and I was right. The main reason is that, since these are abandoned sites and don’t have loyal visitors, I can place the units very aggressively. The result was a very high CTR (Click-through rate), which compensates the small traffic levels.
Don’t underestimate the earning potential of small websites, especially if you are willing to place AdSense units aggressively.

3. I used the Large Units

If you want to make money with AdSense you’ll inevitably need to use one of these units: the 336×280 large rectangle, the 300×250 rectangle, the 120×600 large skyscraper or the 728×90 leaderboard.
Whenever I tried to use smaller units the results were disappointing. Even if I positioned them aggressively the CTR was just too low.
All four units mentioned above can produce good results, but the best performing one is by far the 336×280 large rectangle, and that is the one I used to boost my earnings.

4. I placed the Units above the Fold

My first trial was to place the 336×280 large rectangle between the post and the comments section of my blogs. The results were OK. I then decided to try placing them below the post titles for one week, and the CTR skyrocketed. In fact I still need to find a placement/unit combination that will beat placing a 336×280 unit below post titles.
I knew this rule, but I guess I needed to test and get confirmation. The rule is: if you want to make money with Google AdSense, you must place your units above the fold.

5. I Focused on Organic Traffic

My main concern with adding a large AdSense unit right below my post titles was that some of the loyal readers could get annoyed with it. At the same time I knew that loyal readers become ad blind quite fast, and that the bulk of my money would come from organic visitors (i.e., people coming via search engines to my posts).
To solve this problem I decided to display the large rectangle only on posts older than seven days (using the Why Do Work WordPress plugin). It worked like a charm, as loyal readers don’t even notice the ad units when they are browsing through my recent posts, and organic visitors almost always see the ads because they usually land on posts older than seven days.

6. I started using AdSense for Search

I was not sure how much money I would be able to make with AdSense for Search, but I was not happy with the search results provided by WordPress, so I decided to give it a shot anyway.
Currently I am making around $60 monthly with AdSense for Search. It is not much, but if you sum it over one year we are talking about $720. On top of that the search results are as relevant as you’ll get, so it is a win win situation.

7. I started using AdSense for Feeds

Another AdSense product I decided to try was the AdSense for Feeds one. I opted to display the ads below my feed items (you can also place them on top, but this would be too intrusive in my opinion). The results here were pretty good, both in terms of CTR and earnings.
You obviously need a large RSS subscriber base to make this work, but I am guessing that even with a couple thousand subscribers you could already make $100 monthly from feed ads.

8. I played around with section targeting

Section targeting is an AdSense feature that allows you to suggest specific sections of your site that should be used when matching ads. You can read more about it here.
I found that on niche and small websites section targeting can help a lot. Often times Google was displaying unrelated ads on these sites because there weren’t enough pages. After using section targeting I managed to increase the relevancy of the ads and consequently the CTRs.

9. I tested with Different Colors and Fonts

If you enabled both image and text ads on your units you should be able to customize the colors and fonts. I did some testing with both of these factors, and it helped to increase the numbers. Nothing dramatic, but it was definitely worth my time.
You just need to track your CTR for a couple of weeks. Then change the color or font and track it for another week, seeing if you can beat the original CTR. If you can, keep the new format. If you the performance decreased, try a new color or font and track the CTR for another week, until you find the optimal combination.
On my sites the best results came from making the ad units merge with the look of the site, but on some sites contrasting colors perform better, so testing is a must.

Newsletter Readers Do Click Ads

How to Make Newsletter Readers Do Click Ads

I recently attended an event where a presenter talked about the reasons that they didn’t use email marketing as part of their online business. One of the main reasons that he presented was that he didn’t think that people coming from a newsletter would click the ads on his site.
His reasoning was that people coming to his site week after week from a newsletter would become blind to the AdSense ads he was using (his main source of income). So rather than working on building loyal readers he put all of his efforts into SEO to generate one of readers.
There were lots of nods in the room from attendees – on one level what he was saying did make some sense – but for me it didn’t quite ring true.
You see my biggest days of earnings from AdSense are always the day I send out my newsletter. It drives a lot of traffic but also does seem to convert in terms of income (all kind, including eBook sales, affiliate promotions and AdSense).
Today I decided to dig a little deeper into my Google Analytics stats (which now integrates with AdSense) to see if what he said was actually true. Here’s what I found when it comes to AdSense earnings on my photography site from different sources of traffic over the last 3 months.
I’m not able to share with you actual eCPM (earnings per 1000 impressions) or CTR (click through rate) as I think it’d break the terms of service with AdSense – but I think the chart speaks pretty clearly for itself.
‘Aweber’ is the traffic coming from my newsletter and I’ve included a number of other sources of traffic to compare how it performs. You can see on both eCPM and CTR that Aweber out performs not only Search Engine traffic but traffic coming from different types of social media and referral traffic from other sites.
Newsletter traffic is certainly converting on both CTR and eCPM. This is confirmed when I look at other newsletter traffic (for example traffic coming from AOL and Yahoo’s mail servers) which is similarly higher than other types of traffic both in terms of eCPM and CTR.
What I also found interesting in these results was traffic coming from sites like Facebook and Flickr which both again out performed Google traffic on both CTR and eCPM. I had always assumed that social media traffic didn’t convert as well as other types of traffic but at least on these results it seems that not all social media traffic is alike. On that topic – Twitter didn’t convert anywhere near as well as Facebook.
Of course these sorts of results will vary from niche to niche. Perhaps because my photography site is not specifically a ‘product’ site but is a ‘how to’ site the traffic from Google is a little more general and less in a buying mood which could decrease the conversions – but for me at least it is an indication that I’m on the right track investing time into growing my newsletter list!
 

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