Saturday, July 12, 2008

Treble your Adsense Income in 60 MInutes

Google's Adsense is one of the most powerful weapons in website publisher's arsenal. It enables you to monetize your sites easily and if used properly can generate a very healthy income. However, if you're not using it properly and maximizing the income you squeeze from it, your leaving money on the table – something we all hate doing.

Boosting your return from Adsense can be done very easily and quickly, and you'll be amazed by the results.

I ran Adsense on my sites for over a year before I discovered these techniques, and like many people, I though I was doing pretty well. My clickthrough rates and CPM figures were very healthy, and I didn't honestly think that they could be improved a great deal. How wrong I was. Immediately after I implemented a few quick changes my clickthrough rate more than doubled, and by doing some fine tuning I manged to get nearly three times as many people to click on the ads as had been previously doing so.
The first technique is one that was 'discovered' by the amazingly helpful Debs, on SiteSell's SBI! forums. When I read it originally, it made sense and I decided to goive it a go, but I wasn't prepared for the immediate impact it would have on my income. It involves making only a few simple changes to the format and positioning of your Adsense ads.

Firstly, forget about using banners or skyscrapers. These ad formats are almost universally ignored by surfers. Why? Because we've all been conditioned to recognise a skyscraper or banner as an advert and as these adverts are rarely of any interest, we ignore them. What's needed is a way of integrating Adsense ads into the editorial on your site as seamlessly as possible. To do this you need to do three things:

1. Use the 250 x 250 rectangle format 2. Make the background color of the ad the same as the background color of your site, or as close to it as possible. 3. Make the ads borderless by setting the border color to be the same as the background color of the ad.

These changes can be made by logging into your Adsense account and creating a custom format. Just select the 250 x 250 ad format, and create a custom color palette. Use the color picker to pick the coor you want. The Javascript is automatically generated at the foot of the page, ready for you to copy and paste into the pages on your site.
Now, you need to position your ads where surfers are most likely to click on them. Research using retina scanning technology has shown that the place that surfers tend to look at first and most often is the top left. I don't know the reasons for this, perhaps it's because that's where we're used to seeing the most useful search engine results (at the top of the rankings) and search engines are the sites we most often visit, so we automatically look at the same place on other sites.

Whatever the reasoning, as soon as I made the above changes to my Adsense ads, clickthrough rates doubled, immediately.

The second technique is much newer and one which is entirely based on my own experience. Google has recently added a new type of Adsense format, called Adlinks. This displays a series of links on your page in the same style of Ad unit as regular Adsense ads. When a user clicks a link they are taken to a page of adverts that resembles regular Google search results. As a publisher, you are paid every time a user clicks one of those ads.

Adventurous soul that I am, I jumped in with both feet and started to trial Adlinks on my most visited pages as soon as it was launched. I'm using the four links in a square box format, positioned top left of my page content. After a few weeks of running Adlinks alongside regular Adsense ads, it's clear that the return on Adlinks is about a fifth to a quarter higher than regular ads. There's no clear reason for this but one explanation may lie in the fact that clicking on an Adlink takes the user to page of 'results'. When a user clicks on one of these, you are paid for the click. If the user finds what they want, great, if not, it seems that they hit the Back button on their browser and try again, just as you would for normal search engine results. Then they click on another result, and you get paid again. So it's possible to be paid more than once from the same Adlink click. Now, this reasoning is speculative, but it does make perfect sense in the light of my Adlinks results.


Finally, Adsense has some excellent tracking statistics that allow you to track your results across a number of sites on a site by site, page by page, or just about any other basis you choose. This is a very powerful tool and you should use it to find out which ads are performing best for you and fine tune your Adsense and Adlink ads accordingly.

So you see, by spending an hour or so of your time making a few adjustments to the Adsense ads on your sites, you can very quickly treble your Adsense income. Give it a go, you'll be amazed by the results.

6 Easy Ways to Increase your Adsense Revenue

How much revenue do you generate from Google Adsense?

Recently there has been a lot of discussion about people who earn over $10,000 a month just from Adsense. Furthermore, there are rumors of a few individuals who earn over $1 million a year just from using the power of Google advertisements.

So what is Google Adsense and how can you use this program to earn a six-figure income?

About two years ago, Google created this program to help websites to monetize their web-traffic.
Here's how it works:

Webmasters obtain a special code from Google which then displays targeted ads on their website. Whenever a visitor clicks on one of these ads, the webmaster earns a commission. Unlike other online businesses, there is no selling involved. All you need to do is get people to click on the ads.

Although this is an excellent way to generate an income, many websites are not effectively maximizing their Adsense potential. As a result, they are leaving a lot of cash on the table.

The question is how can you increase your Adsense revenue without increasing the number of web visitors?

The key to earning an income with Google Adsense is to have your ads match the rest of the site, making them look like part of your content. Your focus is to avoid having the Adsense blocks look like blatant advertisements.

The following are six ways that you can do this and increase your revenue at the same time:

1) Find the right place- Most website visitors read content that is in the middle of a webpage. As a result, the best place to put your Adsense block is in the top part of the page, at the beginning of your web content. You want to weave the Google Ads into your web content to give the appearance that they are extra links which expand on the information of the page.

2) Use the Large Rectangle-With Google Adsense, you have the option of picking different ad formats. Most of the time people opt to use the Leaderboard (728x90) or Wide Skyscraper (160x600) style ads. Unfortunately, this is the wrong choice, because both look like blatant advertisements. Instead smart webmasters have found that using the Large Rectangle (336x280) yields the best amount of click-thrus.

3) Ditch the border- Many people experience a sharp increase in Adsense revenue when they changing their border. What they change is very simple…they get rid of the border on their Adsense blocks. This is another way to make the advertisements look like useful web content.
4) Adapt the font- Whenever you write content, it should be the same font size and style as your Google Adsense block. This will help make it appear that the advertisements are a natural part of your website.

5) Match the colors- In addition to changing the fonts, you also should match the colors of your website. For instance, if your content is written in black, and your hyperlinks are blue, then the Adsense blocks should also be the same color. Again, this helps the advertisements appear to be normal web content.

6) Don't have too many distractions- On a webpage, it is important to give web visitor a limited number of options. By having too many links and graphics, the web visitor might go to a section that doesn't help increase your profits. While it is important to inform and entertain your web visitor, it is also vital that you monetize your site. So if the main focus of your site is to earn an income through Google Adsense, then get rid of all non-essential links and graphics.

By taking the time to implement these six simple steps, you'll see a dramatic increase in the click-thru ratio of your ads. If added to all of the content of your site, your Adsense income will skyrocket!

Monday, June 23, 2008

Easy Steps To Hands Off Passive Income

So you want to increase your Adsense income? Log into your Adsense account, and look at your last month's stats. There are three key areas that contribute to your earnings: Impressions, Clickthroughs and Effective CPM. Improving your stats in any, or preferably, all of these three key areas will increase your Adsense earnings.

Impressions

Impressions are the number of times your webpages with Adsense ads have been viewed. You can increase Impressions by increasing traffic (preferably targeted traffic) to your webpages. Some of the best ways to increase targeted traffic to your webpages include:

-create more webpages, with relevant, focused content
-create more links to your webpages
-list your website/s under relevant categories in more directories
-set up a directory of relevant sites on your website and accept relevant
reciprocal links
-write relevant articles, with your site information in the 'resource box' at the end of each article, and submit them to article directories
-advertise with pay per click search engines like Google's Adwords. www.Miva.com (formerly www.FindWhat.com, www.YahooMarketing.com (formerly Overture) and 100's of others. When of the best places for pay per click info is www.payperclicksearchengines.com with a descriptive list of 659 search engines.
Clickthroughs

Clickthroughs are the percentage of viewers who click on your Adsense ads. You can increase Clickthroughs by increasing the relevance of Adsense ads on your site, and by tweaking the format and placing of your ads.

Although you can't dictate which Adsense ads show on your site, you can
influence the relevance of the ads by maintaining a tightly focused website. If every page on your site focuses tightly on the site topic, its more likely that the Adsense ads will too. For example, if every page of your site is about fishing, and the word 'fishing' appears several times on every page, its likely that your Adsense ads will relate to fishing.

The best way to tweak your ad format and placement is to invest in an Adsense Tracker, and test, test, test! People who have done this tend to suggest that the best format is the large rectangle, with background and border the same color as the page behind it, so that the ad blends into the page. The best placement is towards the center or top left of the first screen of the page. Try these suggestions first, and then track and test, to be sure of what works best for your pages.

Effective CPM

Effective CPM is a measure of your average earnings, per thousand clicks. You can increase your Effective CPM by selecting topics that attract high bids from Adsense advertisers, and building pages and whole websites on higher paying topics.

Although Google doesn't release information on Adsense bids, you can get a good idea of the top paying topics by looking at information on Adwords bids, or, for that matter, bids on pay-per-click search engines like Overture. There are a number of keyword research tools available, both free and paid, that can help you find high paying topics.

The Formula

So now you have the basics of increasing your Adsense income. Its a deceptively simple formula:

-Build pages and websites on high paying topics for the best Effective CPM.
-Format and place your Adsense ads for maximum Clickthroughs.
-Promote your sites to drive targeted traffic to your Adsense webpages for maximum impressions.

7 Tips For Creating Sites That Make Money

Having a Google AdSense site is a great way to make money. And to create an AdSense site, all you have to do is have a Google AdSense account (which is free), a website or a blog (which is free), and some articles (which are free if you write them yourself). Once you get your site up and running, the AdSense ads will be targeted to your content.

Therefore, those looking for your content will come by, read your articles, and have a high probability of being interested in the targeted ads. Every time someone clicks an ad, you get paid! That is, as long as you have designed your site to maximize AdSense clickthroughs!

Let's look at seven tips for creating AdSense sites that create money.

#1: Keyword Density

Before you place ads on your site, be sure your keyword density is good. You will want to be sure that the right kinds of ads are placed on your site. A free way to determine what the ads will look like on your site is to go to http://www.resultsgenerator.com/adsense/ and type in your keywords. You will then be able to see exactly what ads would show on your site.

If you don't like what you see, then you know that you need to make changes to your keywords! You can get keyword suggestions from Results Generator from Overture or from the free trial version of Word Tracker.

#2: Focused

Not only will the ads be based on your keywords, but they will also be based on your content. You definitely want your keywords and your content to match as closely as possible.

#3: Write Often

The more information you have the better. Why? Because the more content you have, the more visitors you get. Many people suggest that you write a new article every day since no one wants to come back to your site to find the same old messages!

#4: Choose The Right Format

AdSense allows you to choose many different ad formats. Research has shown that wider ads are more successful. The top three formats are:

" 336x280 large rectangle
" 300x250 medium rectangle
" 160x600 wide skyscraper

Additionally, the 468x15 horizontal ad link under the navigation bar is also a good bet.

#5: Color Counts

You have the option to create a Google AdSense ad in any color of your choice. The best thing to do is to make your ad blend well with your site color scheme. You should make the border color and the background color the same color as your web site. You will want your text color to either be black or the color of your main content.

When creating your Google AdSense ads it is recommended to use the color scheme and style of your website so that the ads blend in well. Ads without background color and borders perfom better than ads within borders with background color.

#6: Position Counts, Too

It is well known that visitors to a website scan the site to determine if it is worth reading. You definitely want them to see and scan your AdSense ads. Therefore, the best place to put them is in the top left part of your page or directly under your headlines.

#7: Increase The Number

AdSense allows you to use up to three AdSense units on a page, two AdSense search boxes, and one unit of ad links. Using all that you can increases the chances of earning money.

Keep these seven tips in mind when creating your AdSense site and you will find that your clickthrough rates increase, thus increasing your money making potential.


Monday, June 16, 2008

AdSense Tricks: How to Increase CTR

An increase in CTR can mean a lot to AdSense Revenue. To increase AdSense revenue, either you have to increase traffic or increase CTR.

If somehow, you manage to triple your CTR just by tweaking the Google AdSense code, that equals three times boost in your traffic. Here are a few tips for increasing your CTR.

What Google AdSense Engineers say:

- An email conversation with a Google Engineer:

"Due to the dynamic nature of Google AdSense, fluctuations in your revenue will occur. Your earnings will depend on a number of factors, including the types of ads being served to your pages, the cost per click or cost per impression of these ads, and your users' click through selections. Regarding ad placement - the best ad format varies from page to page. We've observed that, in general, wider ads perform better because of their reader-friendly format. We strongly recommend putting your users first when deciding on ad placement. Think about their behavior on different pages, and what will be most useful and visible to them. You'll find that the most optimal ad position isn't always what you expect on certain pages."

- Google Optimization Guide:

For example, on pages where users are typically focused on reading an article, ads placed directly below the end of the article tends to perform better. It's almost as if users finish reading and asking themselves, "What can I do next?" Precisely targeted ads are just like answering their questions.
https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html

What Webmasters have concluded

Webmasters have very diverse views on how to increase CTR. It largely depends upon the keywords you are targeting, looks of your website, the quality of its content, placement of AdSense ads, page optimization and various other factors. Generally, AdSense blocks wrapped between the quality content works the best. For the websites having poor quality content, placing the Ads before the start of the content works best.

If you develop a poor quality content website, it will likely give you high CTR and clicks, but you will be getting low priced ads and also nobody will like to add your url to their favorites. But if you have quality content, that keeps the visitors glued, you may get low CTR, but you will be getting high priced ads and regular visitors, too.

Proper positioning of ads on your website has direct impact on your CTR. Change the location of the ads and watch changes in your CTR regularly. Try to locate the area of the page where the focus of the visitor can be. Generally, AdSense ads near the quality content or other crucial areas like navigation bar tend to perform better. But it really depends upon the keywords you are targeting, and the traffic you have. As the Google engineers say, more user friendly ads, more widespread tend to do better than towers and others.

The Traffic

AdSense comes after traffic. No traffic, no AdSense. Take a great care of your traffic. Your visitors expect some valuable information from you. Make sure you are providing quality content to them. This will increase your visitors' return back ratio. And only those visitors will return who are more targeted to the content you are providing. More targeted users mean more CTR. 85 percent of my visitors add my website urls in their Favorites, and most of them do return.

Install a Website stats monitoring software and regularly look at your web logs, and get a handle on where your traffic is coming from. Try to establish a pattern or relation between your AdSense stats and your traffic stats, so that if there are any marked deviations you can make a judgment on why there has been an increase/decrease and what (if anything) you can do about it.
This will give you new ideas to develop traffic.

Experiments

Experiment and experiment a lot, till you are satisfied with the tweaks you have done to achieve highest CTR. Track your page performance by making channels of ads in your AdSense Control Panel and experiment till you are satisfied with your CTR. Though, each such experiment will make you loose money for a day or two, as Google may take time to adjust with new changes, but it will be beneficial in long run.

KeywordCountry (http://www.keywordcountry.com) helps AdSense webmasters in increasing their AdSense revenue. KeywordCountry is a library of 2.83 million Top paying keywords containing thousands of niche keywords. For more tips and tricks on AdSense

About the author:
KeywordCountry

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Adding AdSense ads between WordPress posts

In the following tutorial, I explain how to place Google AdSense ads between your WordPress posts. This is similar to the option of placing adsense ads on posts in category results pages tutorial with the exception that this example places ads on your Blog's Main index or Home page.

How to Add Ads Between Posts:

1. Log into your WordPress admin panel
2. Select Presentation -> Theme Editor from the navigation menu
3. From the Theme Editor, find and select the "Main index template" (index.php) from the list to the right
4. Find the following line

PHP:
  1. if (have_posts()) : ?>

5. Above it add the following line

PHP:
  1. $count = 1; ?>

6. Now find the following line


  1. class="entry">

7. Add the following code directly below it (replace AdSense Code with your code)

PHP:
  1. if ($count == 1) : ?>
  2. AdSense Code
  3. endif; $count++; ?>

8. Click update file, then go view your site to confirm that the ad has been added to the first post listing.Note: To change which post your ad is placed under, simply change the count numberExample: $count == 2 will place the ad under post 2