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 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.

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.

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!

AdSense Explained - Google's Program to Put Paying Ads on Your Web Site

Summary:

AdSense is one of many ways to earn money from the Web. AdSense for content is a system of Google contextual ads that you can place on your blog, search engine, or Web site. Google, in return, will give you a portion of the revenue generated from these ads. The rate you are paid varies, depending on the keywords on your Web site used to generate the ads.

Text ads come from Google AdWords, which is Google's advertising program. Advertisers bid in a silent auction to advertise for each keyword.

AdSense also supplies image and video ads through AdWords.

Restrictions:

Google restricts AdSense to non-pornographic Web sites. In addition, you may not use ads that may be confused with Google ads on the same page.

If you use AdSense ads on search results, the search results must use the Google search engine.

You may not click on your own ads or encourage others to click on your ads with phrases like "Click on my ads." You must also avoid mechanical or other methods of artificially inflating your page views or clicks. This is considered to be click fraud.

Google also restricts you from disclosing AdSense details, such as how much you were paid for a keyword.

How to Apply:

Can Make Money With Google AdSense

You must apply, and Google must approve your site, before you may earn money from AdSense.

You can fill out an AdSense application directly at www.google.com/adsense

You can also apply from within your Blogger blog.

Learn how to ad AdSense to your Blogger.

The application process may take several days before approval.

Cost:It is free to place AdSense ads.

AdSense Locations:

AdSense is divided into two basic locations.

• AdSense for Content
• AdSense for Search

AdSense for Content covers ads placed in blogs and Web sites. You can also place ads in the RSS or Atom feed from your blog.

AdSense for Search covers ads placed within search engine results. Companies, such as Blingo can create a custom search engine using Google search results.

Payment Method:

Google offers three payment methods.

1. CPC, or cost per click ads pay every time someone clicks on an ad.
2. CPM, or cost per thousand impressions ads pay for every thousand times a page is viewed.
3. Cost per action, or referral ads are software ads that pay for every time someone follows a link and takes the advertised action, such as downloading software.

Google for Search results only use CPC ads.

Payments are generally monthly by either check or electronic funds transfer. US residents must supply tax information to Google, and the income you receive will be reported to the IRS.

Disadvantages:

Google AdSense ads can potentially pay well. There are people who earn in excess of $100,000 per year in AdSense revenue alone. However, to earn money from AdSense, you really need to attract a large audience. This takes time, quality content, search engine optimization, and possibly advertising. It's possible for a new AdSense user to spend more money on advertising and server fees than they earn in revenue.

It's also possible to make content with keywords that nobody has purchased through AdWords. When this happens, you will only see Google public service ads, and those do not generate income.

Advantages:

AdSense ads are very unobtrusive, so it provides a better user experience than flashy banner ads. Because the ads are contextual, many people will want to click on them anyway, since the results may be relevant.

You don't have to be big or famous to start using AdSense, and the application process is simple. You can even insert ads in your Blogger blog, so you don't need to host your own Web site.

AdSense acts like your own ad broker. You don't have to negotiate prices or find appropriate advertisers. Google does that for you, so you can concentrate on creating quality content and