Win Big Cash With AdSense

Google AdSense for Search on WordPress

2008-05-26T11:23:00.000-07:00

When Google let users add AdSense for Search results on my own site, I tried to install it. I want to keep elements like the header, footer, and site navigation panel the same for the search results page I create. You should try this new feature to your wordpress.

To use it, just choose the “Open results within my own site” radio button when you’re generating your AdSense for search code. You’ll also need to identify the page where you’d like to display your search results.

Google will give you two sets of code: one for the search box, and one for search results. Place the first set on a page where you’d like the search box to appear, and the second set on the page you’d like the search results to appear. Whenever users perform searches on your AdSense for search box, they’ll be directed to the page on which you placed the search results code.

It’s sound so easy. I just tried it and I couldn?t get it to work on my blog What is wrong? Therefore, I search to find the solution of my problem. I get a solution from macstansbury for my problem. Thanks for your tutorial.

Here are steps to install Google AdSense for Search on WordPress:
Create a new page named “Search Results,” or something similar.
Put your search box code in your sidebar or wherever you decide. I put this code in searchform.php and call this function on my sidebar.
Set up the search to point to the page your created.
After you put the Search code where you want it, do a search for anything.
The result page you get will have no results. For some reason, any header javascripts interfere with the Search code. I think this is a main problem. Let’s fix this problem.
Create a new page template in your theme folder. The theme would start with this as the first line:

< ?php
/*
Template Name: Google Search
*/
? >

Feel free to named this template.
Upload this to your theme folder in a moment, after you’ve titled the file googlesearch.php and saved it.
Go to the search page you created (the one I named “Search Results”), and get the HTML for the page. You?ll need to copy it and paste the actual code into your googlesearch.php file. Look through the code, and take out any javascripts in the section. Also take out any of the admin code, such as the one for editing the page. You’ll need to take out any javascript-dependent elements from your page, as well. I take out sidebar code, because Google Search result will overlap my sidebar
Save your googlesearch.php file, then upload it in the same folder as the theme you’re using right now.
Go into edit your search results page and change the Page Template to “Google Search” (or whatever you named the template) and save the page.
Well done! You’ll get get the results I get!

Try search something on my blog just for test.

17 Wordpress Plugins For AdSense

2008-05-14T12:09:00.000-07:00

Like it or not, many blogs survive thanks to Google AdSense - a fact that’s leading some to debate the use of ad blocking software. However, implementing and tweaking AdSense ads on a Wordpress blog can be tedious. We’ve gathered 17 Wordpress plugins which help you implement, control and overview AdSense ads on your blog.

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Adsense Deluxe - probably the most popular and perhaps the best AdSense plugin out there, AdSense Deluxe lets you automatically insert ads (it works with Yahoo ads, too) into your posts or pages. Very configurable and yet simple to use. (at the time of this writing, the official link for this plugin is dead. Hopefully, it’s just temporary.)

AdSense Widget for Wordpress Sidebar - Add AdSense to your Wordpress sidebar in the form of a widget.

Shylock AdSense - another plugin for easy integration of AdSense ads into your blog; has an interesting feature that lets you set particular ads into blog posts which are more than X days old.

Adsense Injection - random Adsense injection into your blog.

AdMan - integrates ads directly inside your blog posts. Compatible with AdSense.

AdSense Manager - a fully featured AdSense manager. Use the latest version only, as older versions had some issues with the AdSense terms and conditions.

AdRotator - afraid of adblindness? AdRotator rotates (doh!) your AdSense ads, and combines them with other advertising programs.

AdSense Attachment - display extra content, like images, in a new page together with AdSense ads.

MightyAdsense - display AdSense ads without modifying the templates. Has a preview for ads in the Wordpress control panel.

Google Ad Wrap - show that pesky Google spider what content on your blog is really important

Adsense Inline - another plugin that makes inserting AdSense into your blog posts really easy.

Adsense Beautifier - places images next to your AdSense ads, which should increase the clickthrough rate. Be very careful with this one, as there’s some controversy over whether this violates the AdSense T&C.

Author Adsense - split revenue between several blog authors on the same blog.

Author Adsense MU plugin - same as Author AdSense, only commercial and aimed only at Wordpress MU (Multi User) users.

AdSense Sharing Revenue and Earnings System - another revenue sharing plugin for AdSense on Wordpress. Also shows you your earnings in real time.

Adsense Earnings Wordpress Plugin - always be in control of your AdSense earnings, right from the Wordpress Admin panel.

WP-AdsenseProfit - another plugin that shows you your AdSense earnings in real time.

Smartpricing - How flawed is it?

2008-05-14T11:46:00.000-07:00

Most of us agree that the smartpricing algo works on the basis of the likelyhood or the expectation of a conversion. So how is this mysterious algo expected to work effectively in the following hypothetical niche, keeping in mind that although the niche is hypothetical the actual scenario is not.

Publisher has a site selling quality consumer, prosumer and professional digital cameras alongside adsense advertisments. The adsense ads displayed on said publisher's site are largely comprised of the following:

*Review sites about digital cameras
*Review sites with affiliate ads about digital cameras
*Generic Ads pointing to sites such as Ebay, Target or Megasearch etc.
*The occasional off-target ads about industrial products.
*Shopping sites whos landing page may carry everything from keychains, keychain cameras to banana lounges.
*MFAs with nothing but ads: Consider that MFAs ads may or may not be targeted well or may contain more MFA's, general advertisers etc.

I think that if Google can’t always get their advertiser quality control or targeting right, then samrtpricing really has no way of working effectively as in many cases it doesn’t really know what actually is the desired outcome in many cases.

How to boost your AdSense revenue

2008-05-14T11:41:00.000-07:00

AdSense often easier than affiliate programs

Google's AdSense is a superb revenue generating opportunity for small, medium and large web sites.

Some webmasters are designing brand new sites specifically for serving AdSense text ads. (It's against the AdSense rules to design a site purely for AdSense, so you'll want to include a few affiliate links or sell your own product, too.)

AdSense allows you to serve text-based Google AdWords on your web site and receive a share of the pay-per-click payment. AdSense ads are similar to the AdWords ads you see on the right-hand side at Google when you do a search there.

AdSense is having a huge impact on the affiliate marketing industry. It's often much easier to generate revenue from AdSense than from an affiliate program.

Weak affiliate merchants will die faster than ever.

If you're a merchant running a lousy affiliate program, now's the time to improve it FAST.

AdSense's advantages

AdSense is simple to join.

It's easy to paste a bit of code into your pages.

It's free to join.

You don't have to spend time finding advertisers.

Google provides well written, highly relevant ads - chosen to closely match the content on your pages.

You don't have to waste time choosing different ads for different pages.

You don't have to mess around with different code for various affiliate programs.

You're free to concentrate on providing good content and Google does the work of finding the best ads for your pages from 100,000 AdWords advertisers.

It's suitable for beginners or marketing veterans.

AdSense provides simple, easy-to-understand stats.

If you have affiliate links on your site, you ARE allowed to add AdSense ads. However, with your affiliate links, you must not mimic the look and feel of the Google ads.

You can filter up to 200 URLs, so you can block ads for sites that don't meet your standards. You can also block strong competitors.

Inevitably, AdSense is competing strongly for space on web sites with all other revenue sharing opportunities.

If you own a small web site you can plug a bit of AdSense code into your site and almost instantly relevant text ads that are likely to appeal to your visitors will appear on your pages.

If you own several sites, you need apply only once. This makes AdSense much simpler than joining a bunch of affiliate programs.

As you can see, I'm really keen on this revenue sharing service.

Disadvantages

One problem is inappropriate ads. You don't want spammy junk advertised on your site. Google's standards probably aren't as high as yours. You can filter out 200 URLs, but in some industries that won't be enough.

The stats Google supplies are inadequate. They're easy to understand at a glance. However, they don't tell you exactly which ads people are clicking on, or which keywords are involved. That's frustrating.

Also, I'd like to be able to identify and block ads that have very low payout rates, without doing a lot of sleuthing and messing around.

The ad panels say "Ads by Google" - free advertising for Google. You don't earn anything if someone clicks on that link.

The minimum payout is $100, which is regarded as too high by sites which don't receive much traffic. That won't worry experienced webmasters.

Also, sites that want to display AdSense ads may not include "other content-targeted and/or text-based ads on the pages displaying AdWords ads." However, human beings review the sites. Rejected sites have been able to appeal successfully.

Another disadvantage is that Google doesn't allow you to share your stats with other webmasters. The AdSense Terms and Conditions say:

"Confidentiality. You agree not to disclose Google Confidential Information without Google's prior written consent. 'Google Confidential Information' includes without limitation: ... (b) click-through rates or other statistics relating to Site performance in the Program provided to you by Google..."

That's really weird. Web site owners need to be able to share such information and discuss successes and failures.

A big disadvantage of the service is that Google doesn't say how much its AdSense partners will receive. You'll just receive an unknown share of the revenue.

Only a company with the goodwill and respect Google has earned could get away with such a cheeky offer.

Google says:

"How much will I earn through this program? The AdWords ads you are able to display on your content pages are cost-per-click (CPC) ads. This means that advertisers pay only when users click on ads. You'll receive a portion of the amount paid for clicks on AdWords ads on your website. Although we don't disclose the exact revenue share, our goal is to enable publishers to make as much or more than they could with other advertising networks."

So the only way to know how much you'll earn is to try it and see. If you want to bail out, all you have to do is remove the code from your site.

Don't put all your eggs in the AdSense basket. If Google discovers fraudulent clicks on ads appearing on your pages, it can dump your site from the service, and refuse to pay you all revenue owed. Some webmasters who claim total innocence have had this happen to them.

Google has made several changes to its AdSense FAQ, clarifying varying things. For example, it IS possible to apply for separate accounts for separate web sites. I've done so, and checked with Google that it's OK in my case. Read the rules - they look ambiguous to me. If in doubt, ask first!

Some time after the launch of AdSense, Google added "channels" which improve the tracking. I strongly recommend that you experiment with these.

15 Common Mistakes that Violate Google Adsense TOS

2008-05-14T11:28:00.000-07:00

[This post is regularly updated]

Google Adsense program is a popular web advertising program which provides a good income source for many websites. There are well defined terms of service to strictly adhere to when participating in the program.

On my visit through sites and forums, I daily notice several instances of misuse of Adsense ads. So here a few helpful Google Adsense tips, probably many you already know, and few you might gain by knowing now. These adsense faq are all picked from the Program Policies, Terms and Conditions and FAQ itself and presented in a simplified manner.

1. Never click your own adsense ads or get them clicked for whatever reason. You know this one very well. This is a surefire way to close you Adsense account. Never tell your office associates or friends to click on them. Keep a check if your family or children are busy increasing your income by clicking your ads and indirectly trying to stop your income. Dont even think of offering incentives for clicks, using automated clicking tools, or other deceptive software. Adsense is very smart to detect fraudulent clicks. Check the ads which appear on your pages by the Google Preview tool if required.

2. Never change the Adsense code. There are enough means of adsense optimization & customizations available to change the colour, background or border to suit your needs. Do whatever you want to do outside the code, never fiddle within the ad or the search code. They know it when you do. The search code has more limitations to colour and placement, but you should adhere to the rules. The code may stop working and violates the TOS.

3. Do not place more than 3 ad units and 3 ad links or 2 adsense search boxes on any web page. Anyway, ads will not appear in those units even if you place more ad units. But this is the limit they set, so it is better to stick to it.

4. Do not run competitive contextual text ad or search services on the same site which offer Google Adsense competition in their field. Never try to create link structures resembling the adsense ads. Never use other competitive search tools on the same pages which have Adsense powered Google search. They do allow affiliate or limited-text links. Update: Google has allowed you to run contextual advertising like Yahoo ads, Chitika etc provided the ads do not resemble Adsense ads.

5. Do not disclose confidential information about your account like the CTR, CPM and income derived via individual ad units or any other confidential information they may reveal to you. However, you may reveal the total money you make as per recent updates to the TOS.

6. Label headings as “sponsored links” or “advertisements” only. Other labels are not allowed. I have seen many sites label ads with other titles. Dont make your site a target in a few seconds gaze.

7. Never launch a New Page for clicked ads by default. Adsense ads should open on the same page. You may be using a base target tag to open all links in a new window or frame by default. Correct it now as they do not want new pages opening from clicked ads.

8. One Account suffices for Multiple websites. You do not need to create 5 accounts for 5 different websites. One account will do. If you live in the fear that if one account is closed down for violation of TOS, believe me they will close all accounts when they find out. You can keep track of clicks by using channels with real time statistics. They will automatically detect the new site and display relevant ads.

9. Place ads only on Content Pages. Advertisers pay only for content based ads. Content drives relevant ads. Although you might manage some clicks from error, login, registration, “thank you” or welcome pages, parking pages or pop ups, it will get you out of the program.

10. Do not mask ad elements. Alteration of colours and border is a facility to blend or contrast ads as per your site requirements. I have seen many sites where the url part is of the same colour as the background. While blending the ad with your site is a good idea, hiding relevant components of the ads is not allowed. Also do not block the visibility of ads by overlapping images, pop ups, tables etc.

11. Do not send your ads by email. Html formatted emails look good and allow placement of these javascript ads. But it is not allowed as per TOS. You do not want impressions registering on their logs from any email even once. They are watching!

12. Keep track of your content. So Adsense is not allowed on several non content pages. But it is also not allowed on several content pages too. Do not add it on web pages with MP3, Video, News Groups, and Image Results. Also exclude any pornographic, hate-related, violent, or illegal content.

13. Do not alter the results after ad clicks or searches - Ensure you are not in any way altering the site which the user reaches to after clicking the ads. Do not frame, minimize, remove, redirect or otherwise inhibit the full and complete display of any Advertiser Page or Search Results Page after the user clicks on any Ad or Search results.

14. Avoid excessive advertising and keyword stuffing - Although the definition of ‘excessive’ is a gray area and is subject to discretion, yet Google adsense with correct placement, focused content and high traffic will get you much more income than other programs, so excessive advertising is not required. Keyword stuffing does target better focused ads, but overdoing it is not required.

15. Ensure you Language is Supported - Adsense supports “Chinese (simplified), Japanese, Danish, Korean, Dutch, Norwegian, English, Polish, Finnish, Portuguese, French, Russian, German, Spanish, Hungarian, Swedish, Italian and Turkish”. In addition, AdSense for search is available in Czech, Slovak, and Traditional Chinese. If your web pages language is not supported, do not use the code on such pages.

Update:
16. Maximum 2 referral button per product per page - With the launch of the google adsense referral program, you are allowed to put only 2 referral buttons for adsense referral, adwords referral, Google pack and Firefox with google toolbar referral.

17. Do not specify Google ads as your alternate ads. - Several services like Chitika eminimalls allow you to place alternate urls, when a targeted paying ad cannot be displayed. This involved creating an simple html page and putting the ad to be displayed instead. Even Adsense allows an alternate url feature instead of displaying public service ads. But never use Adsense ads as alternate urls.

18. Do not confuse with adjacent images - It was a common policy to increase CTR by placing same number of images as the number of text ads, which falsely gave the impression that the text ads represented an explanation to these images. Inserting a small space or a line between the images and ads is not allowed. Make sure that the ads and images are not arranged in a way that could easily mislead or confuse your visitors.

Whenever in doubt, it is better to ask for adsense help from the learned staff of Google Adsense. They are very helpful!

The Top 5 Google Adsense Kingpins

2008-05-14T11:25:00.001-07:00

Make money with AdSense

2008-05-14T11:22:00.000-07:00

AdSense Optimization

2008-05-14T11:20:00.000-07:00

About Google's AdSense

2008-05-14T11:13:00.000-07:00

Your AdSense Resource Center

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Welcome to the first website totally dedicated to helping you get the most out of Google's new AdSense program.

Google's AdSense is perhaps the fastest and easiest way to generate revenue from a website that contains great content.

Our names are Audri and Jim Lanford, and we're very excited about AdSense. In case we haven't yet met, you can click here.

Since it's a Google program, not surprisingly, it's not based on get-rich-quick or pie-in-the-sky ideas. Instead, it's a legitimate, well-conceived and executed program that will help many website owners achieve their goals.

Here you'll find everything you need to know about this new program to maximize your revenue and your AdSense results.

If you don't yet know anything about AdSense (or you'd like to know if it can benefit you), click here to discover the answer to the question: What is AdSense?

Or check out our free, special Google AdSense Web Tool. This tool allows you to peek at which Google AdWords may be displayed on your site. It also provides six suggestions for using the AdSense Web Tool to maximize your AdSense revenue.

Be sure to sign up for our free Mini-Course, 'Dollars and AdSense.' It's dedicated to helping you get the most out of Google's new AdSense program. We take you 'behind the scenes' and show you real-life examples of what's working and what isn't (and why), what pitfalls to avoid, specific tactics to improve your AdSense revenue, and much more.

Or you can click here for 10 easy tips to maximize revenue with AdSense.

Making Perfect Google AdSense

And be sure to check out our new edition of our ebook and audio, '10 Quick Steps to Making Perfect Google AdSense.'.

We've added a page to help you take advantage of Google's new Alternate Ads.

Finally, check out these Internet marketing recommended resources that will help you make the most of AdSense.

Don't miss out on perhaps the most exciting new source of revenue for small, medium or even large websites.

AdSense

2008-05-14T11:11:00.000-07:00

When I survey bloggers about the methods that they use to make money from their blogs Google’s AdSense is always the number one response. It is a quick and easy way for bloggers of all sizes to display ads that are relevant to their content.

AdSense is a ‘contextual’ advertising program where publishers simply add a piece of code to their blogs that helps Google analyze what your page is about so they can serve ads on that topic. This increases the chances of your readers clicking the ad which increases the chances that you’ll earn something from them.

AdSense also provide a variety of other income streams to bloggers including a site search tool (you make money by people searching your site) and referral tools (where you can make money by recommending Google products).

AdSense is how I earn around 35% of my income as a full time blogger and I would thoroughly recommend it as a way of monetizing a blog - especially for those just starting out.

If you’re not already an AdSense publisher sign up for it using the following button.

Once you’ve signed up (or if you already have) check out some of my tips for maximizing your AdSense income.

How To Build An Adsense Empire

2008-05-02T09:48:00.001-07:00

As soon as you've mastered Adsense on one site the natural thing to do is build another. Another becomes another and so forth and within about a year or two you can have your own empire generating a massive monthly income.

The hard thing about succeeding online is the learning curve. You've got to put in a good 6 months to a year absorbing everything before you start to come out the other side.

Money is harder to find in this time but once you're afloat applying what you've learnt to many different markets is a doddle and you make more than enough money to compensate for the harder times before.

With Adsense based websites there's no point building wide until you have mastered the fundamentals.

For an Adsense site this includes - website building, understanding Adsense, search engine optimization and link building. A good grasp of affiliate programs will also help you supplement your Adsense income and knowing how to navigate your way around Adwords will allow you to test your templates and integration before finalising a particular model.

Once you've mastered these things then this is the forumla for Adsense Empire Building:

1. Choose a Niche - A niche is a self-contained market which focuses around a particular question or type of product. An understanding of the internet, the different markets and the tools available to assist your research is critical.

2. Working out the keyword pyramid for that niche - every niche has a keyword pyramid which is made up of the words people use to find things related to that niche. At the top is the most commonly used search term (Adsense would be Adsense), and at the bottom, the multitude of variations, for example - "which adsense ad color generates the most clicks" To maximize your free search engine traffic, your content will want to cover as much of this pyramiid as possible.

3. Planning the website - Now you've chosen your niche and have sketched the content that will be neccessary to meet it you'll then need to create this content, be it your own or from a third party and also work out how to integrate Adsense into it.

4. Build the website - Putting the bricks and mortar together - if you're not already using XSitePro you should be!

5. Get some traffic to the website - Basic directory submissions, preliminary reciprocal links, using Adwords, forum and blog postings will all start the trickle of traffic to your website. This will allow you to:

6. Optimize your Adsense - by testing your Adsense Format, Placement, Colors etc on your traffic you'll be able to work out which combination(s) they are most responsive to. The aim is to reach the optimum for that website so that it can be left pretty much on auto-pilot.

7. Focus on getting more traffic - This is the real task behind your project and will require link building and search engine optimization in all of it's variations.

8. Monitoring and Maintenance - Keep an eye on your Adsense reports and optimize if you still feel there is room for improvement, plus have some type of ongoing but easy to manage link building strategy in place so that your website keeps developing in the eyes of the search engines.

9. Repeating the process - that's one site down, onto the next.

I'm in the process of doing a lot of research into Adsense Empire Building so there will be lots of new material appearing on the site in the coming months. Keep your eye out.

How To Build An Adsense VRE Empire

2008-05-02T09:46:00.000-07:00

An Adsense empire is for the webmaster who wants to focus on utilizing Adsense to create a significant monthly income - say $30,000.

The majority of people who use Adsense already have a website or would like to build one around a topic they know about.

Adsense for these people is simply a way to monetize it. To make an extra $1,000 or so a month.

These are the monetizers. The other type of Adsense Publisher is the empire builder. If you want to build an Adsense Empire you must approach your task from a different perspective.

The fundamental difference is that you have now become a middleman - a middleman between internet traffic and Adsense Ads.

Your aim will be to connect people with the ads that they will click on and every website that you build serves as a platform to facilitate this connection. The more people you connect to ads the more money you make - that's the game.

For example, a $30,000 a month empire would probably be composed of anything between 20 and 80 websites depending on the models used, the niches targeted and the degree of optimization undertaken on each website.

Creating 80+ websites is a lot of work, especially if you don't know what you're doing and so there are certain "rules" that are worth paying note to that will help you stay on track.

The Rules of Adsense Empire Building

Don't become attached to your websites - the aim is not to perfect each website but to do what is necessary to create a successful website for the particular niche that that website relates to. This is still very easy to do as the quality of most websites are still very poor. The most common trap is to get caught trying to beautify one webiste when the only person judging it is yourself.

Build horizontally not vertically - it's easier to make a large number of websites that do ok than it is to make 5 that dominate their particular market. Competition at the top is always fierce and places additional demands on you including constant updating and constant link building. Don't aim high, aim wide and you can have a pretty much automated empire rather than a few sites which constantly require your attention.

Target niches - the internet is made up of lots of markets and each of these markets is a keyword pyramid. The key to a successful empire is choosing your markets and then targetting their keywords.

Come up with a definite model that can be applied to various niches - uniformity is the name of the game when you are operating in several markets. Develop a model that works and then apply it to other markets, tweaking where necessary.

Build a web template for that model and use it for numerous websites - if you're targetting different niches the chances of crossing over traffic is very slim and even if it does slight adaptations to a particular niche including colors and images will make the template appear fresh and original. You can either build a template using an application like XSitePro, buy a template which you have reuser rights for or modify a free template. I used to modify free templates as their actual structure is often sound and it allowed me the freedom to make changes but as XSitePro makes it so easy to build a new site my method has somewhat changed. Whatever works best for you, just make sure you use it more times than once - building fresh templates takes too much time.

Focus on getting traffic from the seach engines - There's no source of traffic like search engine traffic. The only thing that comes close is Adwords or Overtures PPC Services - but they cost money. Getting search engine traffic revolves around Search Engine Optimization. This involves extensive link building which will also serve as a source of traffic, killing two birds with one stone.

Develop a sound link building strategy - people always go wrong with link building in exactly the same way - they don't think. It's very easy to waste a lot of time and energy haphazardly searching and requesting links. If you're building an empire you want to limit this time to a minimum. I always start with directories and move forward from there. I'm in the process of building two websites that will help you with this. I'll include a link here once they're up and running.

Make sure all of your pages are content rich - the only way to get good search engine traffic is to have content rich pages. There are two ways of making content rich pages - with information or with products.

Steer Clear of Advertising - using Adwords or other ppc search engines to convert on Adsense has become a popular idea in recent times. It is possible to make a profit but it's limitations as a model far outweigh its potential unless you're supplementing the pages with products from an affiliate network like Clickbank. If I'm not doing that I only use Adwords to test my Adsense integration on a particular site.

For more on Adsense Empire Building you can read

2008-05-02T09:45:00.004-07:00

How To Monetize A Website With Adsense

So you have a website and you have some people coming to your website and what you would like is for these people to somehow give you some money. For you, Adsense is going to be a dream come true - if you add it to some of your pages today you will be making money by tommorrow - guaranteed!

The key to getting the most out of Adsense on a website that is already up and running revolves around three things:

1. Integrating it properly into the structure of your pages,

2. Optimizing the ads for your current traffic through testing and monitoring,

3. Bringing more traffic to your now optimized webpages.

How you integrate Adsense into your website is the single largest determiner of it's eventual performance. With that in mind, monetizers often fall into one of two traps.

1. They chase clicks and forget about the purpose their website actually serves. Pushing ads at every visitor might force a higher click through rate for a time but if you undermine your websites value it will eventually fall from grace.

2. If they've built a website around a topic that they are genuinely interested in, then as I was with my first site, they will be rather proud of it and therefore quite possessive over it - and consequently Ads are viewed as a bit of an intrusion. Plus as they relate to the people using their site they are often reluctant to "push" (as it feels) ads in front of them. These people therefore under utilize Adsense and are only earning a fraction of what they should be from their traffic.

Therefore, your biggest barrier to having Adsense perform at its optimum on your website will be that you either follow Adsense to closely, concentrating on clicks rather than your website which will eventually hail it's demise or your attachment to your site prevents you from fully integrating Adsense and limits your earnings.

Going back a couple of years, the first website I integrated Adsense into was a custom motorcycle resource center. It was making no money but was receiving between 700 and 1000 people every day from a combination of search engine queries, reciprocal links and repeat visitors. I have not touched that website for over 9 months but everyday it does an average of $70 to $80 with Adsense.

The process I went through on that website is the exact same one that everyone who seeks to monetize their website traffic with Adsense goes through.

SEO Friendly General Directories

2008-05-02T09:45:00.003-07:00

Directories can serve as a great source of direct and indirect (through assisting your search engine rankings) traffic.

You can find General, Niche and Local directories to submit your website to at Which Directories.

When I've built a new website I submit my site to a proportion of the directories listed on that site depending on:

1. The money I'm willing to spend on the particular project as some of these charge a submission fee, and;

2. The value of the links page inside these directories for the topic that particular project is about. For example, when I submitted Understanding Adsense I checked the page that my link would appear on for things like;

The number of steps from the homepage my link page would be,
The title of the page my link would appear on - does it match my keywords?
The flexibility of the actual link - can I use my target keywords and not my website name?
The Page Rank of the page my link would appear on,
The number of links on the page my link would appear on - there should be below 20.

Apply these type of factors to directories which charge a submission fee in particular. It can be a lucrative business charging website owners for what are in effect valueless links - don't pay for things that don't align with your SEO strategy.

The Importance Of Directories

2008-05-02T09:45:00.001-07:00

Directories are often over emphasized - "they are the most important part of your website promotion", or under utilized - "I don't know any directories other than Dmoz or Yahoo so I'll just submit to them and see what happens".

The role directories can play lies somewhere in the middle. I like to use them as the backbone of my link building strategy. The reasons for this are simple:

1. If you choose right they generally always accept your website - there's not many things quite as frustrating as sending out 100 link requests and only hearing back from 10!

2. Their pages are optimized around a certain theme - this means that the page title and the rest of the content on the actual page your link ends up on will often correspond with the theme of your website.

3. Many directories have good Page Rank (4+) which implies good link popularity.

4. The people who build directories "generally" understand SEO and so limit the number of links on a page to 20 at the most - useful for passing Page Rank.

5. Niche directories can be a good source of direct traffic and assist your branding efforts in your particular market.

6. If you're willing to spend a little bit of money the turn around time of getting accepted is normally only a few days.

7. Many directories allow flexibility in the anchor text of your link - for example my link could be Make Money With Adsense, rather than just my domain name - Understanding Adsense. This is important in telling the search engines what your website is about and improving your rankings for your target keywords.

This is only a summary of the good points. There are thousands of directories online, many of which have been set up purely to take a submission fee from unsuspecting website owners. A proper strategy is fundamental to successful directory submission. A good starting point is my website Which Directories.

Search Engine Optimization and Adsense

2008-05-02T09:44:00.002-07:00

Search engine optimization is the process of doing certain things so as to rank higher in the search engines - particularly Google, MSN and Yahoo.

If you get listed higher in these three search engines for the search terms that match what your website is actually offering, then you will receive free targeted traffic whose conversion on Adsense will be very good as the ads will match what they're looking for.

The aim of search engine optmization is to tell the search engines what you are relevant to - you are basically trying to tell them which search terms you should rank highly for.

The content on your webpages will already be doing this for you. For example, this page is relevant to "search engine optimization", whereas my home page is relevant to "making money with Adsense". Each page is about a different topic and will therefore be related to different search queries but there are various techniques you can use to stress each pages relevancy to different keyword phrases.

This is called Onpage Optimization and includes:

1. Including a keyword rich title on the page,

2. The appropriate use of Meta Tags,

3. Using Header Tags for your main and secondary keywords,

4. Including your keywords in the content of your page,

5. The appropriate keyword density and placement.

By doing all of this, Google will therefore know that my home page is about "Making Money With Adsense" but how does it determine how valuable it is in relation to other websites which stress they too are about "Making Money With Adsense". How does it determine which order these websites should appear in when someone searches for that term.

Here the second part of seo comes into play which has been named Offpage Optimization or Link Building.

By analyzing the linking structure of the internet the search engines hope to work out which websites and which webpages are more valuable. A link from another site to yours is considered as a kind of endorsement - a vote in your favour.

The aim with link building is to have a good supporting linking structure which pushes you up the search engine rankings and holds you on the first page. There are many ways to get inbound links to your website including:

1. Submitting your website to directories.

2. Exchanging links with other websites (this is called reciprocal linking).

3. Including your website in your forum signature or when you leave comments on other peoples websites or blogs.

4. Submitting articles (which include a link to your site) to many of the internets article directories which other webmasters then take and place on their own sites.

5. By buying text links from one of the internets many text link brokers.

6. By advertising on or becoming a sponsor of another website.

But beware - before you spend months trying to get links from every website you come across the twist in the tale is that not every link carries the same weight. What you want is high value links. The factors which affect the value of a link include but are not limited to these:

- Whether the website is a highly regarded website - an "authority" site.
- Whether the website and it's webpages have a high page rank (note that page rank can be a good indication of value but is not absolute in its accuracy).
- Whether the title of the page and it's content matches or is related to your target keywords
- How many other external links there are on the linking page - there should be no more than 20 links on this page
- The number of steps from the home page that the link page is.
- The anchor text that you can use in the link - you want to be able to use your target keywords and not your business name.
- Who links to the page and to the site?

Please note that this page is an inevitable simplification of search engine optimization in order to give a basic grasping of it. Search engines are constantly evolving the ways in which they rank websites and so search engine optimization must too constantly evolve. It's importance in relation to Adsense is it's ability to drive LOTS of free and targetted traffic to your website and as this websites continues to grow we will cover it in much more depth.

More Traffic Equals More Adsense Money

2008-05-02T09:44:00.001-07:00

Successful Adsense publishers know one thing. Real money with Adsense has nothing to do with Adsense. The optimization strategies that haunt every forum, blog and article are only a very small part of the story of receiving a sizeable monthly cheque from Google.

The fundamental rule of Adsense is traffic. Without traffic, no Adsense clicks, regardless of how precisely you’ve picked your placements or how much time you’ve spent perfectly blending the ads into the structure of your content so that they now appear as additional links and not advertisements.

The large majority of Adsense Publishers forget this very important fact and focus on solely trying to improve their click through rate. Finding your optimum click through rate is extremely important but cannot take precedence over traffic as without the latter you can not find the former.

If you obsess about optimization before you’ve fleshed out your site and expanded its reach into the search engines you will never actually develop your website and even if you get your CTR up to something quite formidable you will only be making a fraction of what you would be if you’d focused on your sites expansion.

So what should you do? If the fundamental rule of Adsense is traffic, the fundamental rule of traffic is that you can’t get a repeat visitor until they’ve been a first time visitor, and a first time visitor can only come to your website through a certain number of channels.

Putting advertising aside as unless you’re playing the arbitrage game you won’t convert on the margins, you are left with two serious options - the search engine results and incoming links from other websites. The latter supports the former so I always concentrate on getting as many pages under as many keywords into the search engines as are related to the particular website I’m working on. This is Search Engine Optimization territory.

With SEO you are trying to force the search engines to recognize your website and individual pages within it as relevant to particular keywords. What you’re trying to say is that “my website is more relevant, and so more valuable, to that keyword search than the first ten that are already there”. The more times you can convince the search engines of this the more traffic your website will receive. The more traffic your website receives the more clicks it will generate on Adsense and the more money you will make.

Focus on working out which keywords are related to your particular niche, build content of value that answers the question of each keyword phrase and then get supporting links to back up your relevancy. If you do this for your website you will significantly increase your traffic. Once your traffic is organic and automated turn to optimizing your Adsense ads through testing different placements, colors, formats etc. Once you’ve done that, this website can be left pretty much on auto-pilot and you can turn your attention to the next project where you will be very easily able to replicate what you’ve just done. Now you’re into Adsense Empire Building territory and this is where the “real” money lies.

Monitoring Adsense: Optimization

2008-05-02T09:43:00.004-07:00

Monitoring is an important part of increasing your Adsense revenue. It's the only way that you can tell whether a change in format, placement or color has had an effect on your click through rate.

The best way to monitor your ads performance is to set up several channels inside your Adsense account. By setting up a channel for a particular set or type of ad you can monitor their performance and compare them to other ads.

For example, on this website I have four channels operating:

1. One channel for the whole website - UnderstandingAdsense.com,

2. One channel for the 336 x 280 rectangle inside the page content,

3. One channel for the 160 x 600 skyscraper in the right navigation,

4. One channel for the Adlinks in the left navigation.

When I make changes to these ads I'll be able to see what effect this has on my click through rate and it is through these methods that we work out many of our best practices.

The standard channels I always set up on any Adsense monetized website include:

1. One for the whole website,

2. One for each type of ad used,

3. I may also set up channels on different groups of pages or even individual pages to compare performance across different topics.

For how to set up channels on your own Adsense campaigns I recommend reading Googles guide.

Adsense Ad Relevancy: Optimization

2008-05-02T09:43:00.003-07:00

There must be an ad pool for your market and on the assumption that there is, there are certain things that you can do to stress that your page is about X and not about Y: Stressing it in this way will improve the relevancy of the ads generated on your webpages and improved relevancy will result in an improved click through rate.

1. Include your target keywords in:

- Page title

- Meta tags

- Description tag

- H1 heading tags (plus include related keywords in H2)

- Body of the text several times (top and bottom)

- Bold and / or Italic tags a couple of times

- A link to the home page with the keyword anchor text

2. Use Google's Section Targeting facility.

Adlinks: Optimization

2008-05-02T09:43:00.001-07:00

The common prejudices against using an Adlink instead of or as well as the traditional Ad unit are faltering as Publishers are finding more and more ways to turn these little units into high converting Ads.

The basic assumption goes something like this: as the Adlink unit requires a visitor to click first on one of the four or five topics and then on one of the ads they will be clicked on less as it requires them to do two things. In a sense this is true but the best way to see Adlinks is not to compare them to the traditional ad unit because basically they are not the same.

Whereas the regular ad is best utilized as additional content for your website, the Adlink is best utilized as additional navigation. Most navigation links are solely the number of words which prescribe the meaning of that navigation and this is what Adlinks replicate.

They come in two main formats - horizontal and square (each of which has several variations). Therefore, they can be used effectively in a variety of places:

1. The favored hot spot for Adlinks is the top left of your navigation where on this site it says "Make Money With Adsense". If you include them there and match the link, border and background color to the colors you are already using you will generate a high ctr.

2. A 728 x 15 in the traditional leaderboard position can work very well (just underneath your banner and above your actual webpage). This golf store has done it well.

3. A 468 x 15 above or just below your actual page title can also work well. On this page it would go either above or below "Adsense Adlinks - Best Practices". Bear in mind that the 468 sometimes isn't long enough to cater for the amount of words that it generates and will result in it being squashed together. You'll have to test it for your content.

4. You can also use one of the square units at the bottom of your articles. WiseGeek uses this method and have done so for as long as I remember their site being online suggesting that the conversion is pretty good.

Number Of Adsense Units: Optimization

2008-05-02T09:42:00.004-07:00

The Adsense rules stipulate that you are allowed to include 3 regular ad units and 1 link unit per page. The number you should use per page will completely depend on the structure and design of your website.

What you don't want is a webpage that appears like a collection of Adsense Ads. Such a site is valueless and will struggle to get any traffic unless you enter the world of spamming or decide to pay for traffic - both offer only diminishing returns. For a visitor to click on your ad means that they must want to go forward from your website to another website. If your page repulses them straight away they will hit the back button (read about Breaking the Back Habit in The Perfect Page) and return to the search engine that they came from to find another site that will answer their query more effectively.

Entice your visitors into your site and then cleverly place ads at points where they will be focusing as discussed in Ad Placements.

So how many is not too many? This website can easily absorb two ad units and an adlink as it does. It could also include another ad unit at the bottom of the articles which I may introduce over time.

As a general rule I'd start with more ad units than less, set up channels so you can monitor how each performs and then make changes accordingly. If you're building your website from scratch try and build it with enough flexibility to allow you to test different variations.

One Unit - A large rectangle (or at least the 250 x 250 square) inside the body of the page with the article text wrapped around it.

Two Units - Either

1. A more aggressive tactic is to include two large rectangles together either side by side or on top of each other. If you're getting a fair amount of traffic this will really improve your ctr and is worth tyring. Just keep an eye on your web stats to check it doesn't undermine your visitors experience which will be highlighted to you through a decreasing traffic rate.

2. The large rectangle inside the content and a skyscraper (preferrably the 160 x 600) in your left navigation. The right navigation converts much lower.

3. A large rectangle towards the top of your content and another at the bottom. This gives your traffic two ways out from inside the same page.

Three Units - If you can fit three in you can now mix and match, for example:

1. Two rectangles inside the content and one skyscraper in the navigation.

2. One rectangle inside the content and if you have a right and left navigation, one skyscraper in each of these (I know of websites this has worked well on)

3. One rectangle inside the content, one skyscraper in your navigation and one leaderboard at the header of your page.

4. Three rectangles inside the content - this can work very well if you have a lot going on inside the page and it is long enough to absorb the three ads allowing them to be placed far enough away from each other.

Including an Adlink Unit

Your one prescripted Adlink can virtually always be included as they can slot in to the smallest of places. Many publishers still neglect Adlinks as they have wrongly convinced themselves that the requirment to click on a keyword phrase before they can click on an ad is requiring too much from a visitor. To learn more about how best to use Adlinks go here.

Adsense Ad Colors: Optimization

2008-05-02T09:42:00.003-07:00

In line with my basic philosophy that integration is the key to Adsense success, I've always found that blending the ads by using the same colors that exist on your website works best.

This is often referred to as the three way match whereby:

1. The background color and the border of the ad matches the background color of the webpage.

2. The color of the link matches the color of the links on your webpage.

3. The color of the ad description (the ad text) and advertiser url matches your text color.

I generally only make three exceptions to this:

1. I make the actual ad link darker than the other links on the page but keep it in a similar color palette. For example, on this page I may use this color or this color. When a visitor is finished with the page they are on and are looking for someone else to go they tend to see darker colors before lighter ones. I believe Google makes the links bold for the same reason - intensity draws the eye.

2. I use the standard internet blue link. Although this isn't as widespread as it once was, internet users still often associate this color with being a link. On certain sites I've more than trebled my ctr by changing it from the link color of my actual site to the standard 0000CC.

3. I make the advertiser url a very pale shade of grey. It's still visible as it must be to conform to Google's policies but the link and the text draw the visitors attention and the ads appear more like internal links than Adsense ads. The success of this modification will often depend on the market your site is targetting. For example, webmasters know what Adsense ads are and so this change will have little impact. If your site targets people who are less familiar with the internet making the ads appear more like an internal link (ie simply a link and a description of what you'll find when you click on it) can increase your ctr.

The reason blending works better than colors that draw attention to the ads is that it's not a color that is going to make someone click on an ad - even if it's their favorite color!

Humans respond to words or better put still the meaning of words - and it will be the word or combination or words which your visitor connects to in the ad. This is why they will click on one rather than another.

Attention grabbing colors will only serve to put a barrier between your visitor and the words in the ad. More people may see them but less will click on them and Adsense is pay per click, not pay per view!

Adsense Ad Placement: Optimization

2008-05-02T09:42:00.001-07:00

Placement is the fundamental factor that will effect an Ads performance - its click through rate. The first reason for this is simple - a visitor cannot click on an ad that they cannot see.

The second reason (which I talked about in Adsense Psychology) is that your traffic will interact with webpage and consequently your ads in the way that you want them to interact with them. This is obviously a generalization as not everyone will interpret your layout in the same way but the principle is sound.

For example, I generally don't like ads at the head of the page above your content and navigation nor at the very bottom below both of these. These postions are too reminiscent of the traditional banner advertisement and for me don't come close to taking advantage of what Adsense ads actually offer.

The bottom line is that Adsense works best when the ads are integrated into your website as additional content. Adsense generates ads that are related to the actual words in the content of your page. To perform at it's best they have to be placed next to these words.

If you think it through this is just common sense.

This leads us to two places where content is contained on each and every website.

1. The actual body of that particular page - If you've built your website correctly then each page will be about a distinct topic. As each page differs in what it provides the Adsense ads will vary to match these differences. For example, a motorcycle insurance page will generate different ads to a motorcycle parts page. This means that the hottest spot for Adsense on every page is roughly where I've included the large rectangle on this page. Inside the page topic and above the fold.

2. The website navigation - Your navigation includes further pages which may be of interest to your visitor. Relevant Adsense Ads will also be of further interest to your visitor and therefore, a good supplement to a large rectangle ad inside the content of your webpage is a 160 x 600 skyscraper in your navigation (this often works best in the left navigation although I have several sites where the conversion is good on the right). Adlinks work well here too.

Google has produced a heat map to assist Adsense Ad positioning which pictorially confirms what I have been saying here. You can see it and read Google's own answer to the question of Ad placement here.

Adsense Ad Format: Optimization

2008-05-02T09:41:00.003-07:00

The trick with choosing the Ad Format that you are going to use is to actually choose it and not let your current website structure which you built before you decided to monetize your website with Adsense choose it for you.

This is what the average Adsense Publisher says to him or herself - "This is how my site is built - I can make that space available there and so I'll have to place Adsense there which means I'll have to use that ad format". This is not a choice and needless to say it will generally not convert aswell as rejigging your page layout so as to accommodate the ads that will perform best into it. What this also means is that placement is more important than format.

The basic Ad Format rule is that wider is better and Google gives a neat explanation of why this is so here. Note, wider doesn't mean width of the whole ad (otherwise we'd all be using leaderboards) but the width of an individual advertisement inside the ad block.

This means that the large rectangle - 336 x 280, the medium rectangle - 300 x 250 and the wide skyscraper 160 x 600, other things being equal all perform better.

In content sites I always try to use at least one large rectangle but remember that a webpage can often accommodate more than one ad unit.

The Perfect Adsense Page

2008-05-02T09:41:00.001-07:00

Even if you have taken advantage of the nature of Adsense ads and have optimized your website accordingly - namely: view Adsense ads as supplemental content and not ads, integrate them into the actual content of the webpage and not solely into the header or navigation, use a larger rectangle shape ad near the very top of your content, and potentially another one at the bottom, your Adsense performance will probably still only be a fraction of what it could be.

The reason for this is that modifications to the actual ad and it's positioning are only half the story of succeeding with Adsense. There is such a thing as a perfect Adsense page and what this is is the type of page that will generate the greatest number of clicks. The perfect page will meet the criteria listed below and the click through rate will be extremely high.

1. The Page Is about One Self-Contained Topic

The purpose of content websites is to reveal information to their visitors. The perfect Adsense page is focused on one particular topic and serves to reveal information about that topic. This has several benefits. Firstly, it makes it easier to get good search engine listings which will bring you relevant traffic. Secondly, the traffic will have come to that page for the sole reason of looking for the information which the page will actually reveal - they will therefore be more responsive to ads related to that content. Finally, your page will generate more targeted ads as your content focusing will have made it easier for Google's technology to analyze and match ads. The more related the ad the more clicks it will receive.

2. The Content on the page is not too comprehensive

Now while you want to be revealing information about one topic, you do not want to be the definitive resource for that topic. You do not want your reader to be "full" by the time they have finished your article. If you have completely satisfied their curiosity on that topic they are going to be less likely to look for further information in your cleverly placed Adsense ads. Content should be interesting and insightful and the reader should feel like he's learnt something but not everything. The perfect article makes more curious - encourages the readers search for information.

3. The Page Breaks The Back Habit

As search engines dominate the way that the internet is explored an important task of every website is to break the habit of people clicking on the back button. If someone comes to your website from a search engine listing and doesn't immediately relate to your page they will go back to the search engine and try another website. If they've gone backwards, they can't go forwards through your Adsense ads. People move through the internet very quickly and so your website should seek to connect with the person instantly. There are several aspects to achieving this:

Keep your page kb size small (below 50kb) so it loads quickly - no one likes to wait.
Have a good page title which relates perfectly to what the search engine visitor will be expecting to find.
Your first paragraph is to the point and pulls someone in to your website
The clever use of images - in terms of immediate responsiveness people often relate better to images than to words - they trust them more. The appropriate use of images in your banner or at the top of your page can pull people into your website.

4. The Way The Page Is Laid Out and Reads Should Flow Forward

This is a continuation of breaking the back habit. Once you've got your visitor involved then your page should flow forward and if done correctly the Adsense ads will be used as a continuation of that flow.

5. The Page Pre-Sells what the ads are offering

If you were promoting a particular product through a sales letter your aim would be to pre-sell it. Talk enthusiastically and knowledgeably (your visitor must believe that you know more than him) about your topic - your visitor should want more on the subject and your Adsense Ads should provide them with this more.

5. Limit The Number of Navigation Links on Your Page

A visitor has three choices - they can go back to where they came from, they can click the x button or they can click on another link on your webpage. If you've suceeded in breaking the back habit and you've not completely resolved the question he came to your site to find an answer to, then he will look for another link. This is what you want your visitors to do and if you want them to click on your Adsense ads you want to limit the amount of choices that they can make.

6. Give Your Visitors Nowhere else to go

An Adsense ad at the end of your content often converts well. If the visitor has read your article through then they will by this time be well away from your navigation links. If you want maximum performance from your ads don't include links to other pages on your website at the bottom of your page or place links to other resources which they may find useful, or make a suggestion that they go and do something. This works especially well on pages that are built around one self-contained topic. The ads are then used as a further resource as the visitor has nowhere to go but forward.

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Now, unless you create a website exactly around this model, your own website will inevitably diverge from it in several ways.

For example, the flaws in UnderstandingAdsense.com when placed against this idea of a perfect page are:

Although each page is generally about one self contained topic they are not great for the search engines. Pages built around keywords like Adsense Tips, Adsense Secret, Adsense Website and Optimizing Adsense would result in more direct search engine traffic.
On each page I try to be as comprehensive as possible and often highlight further resources and use examples for which I receive no commission.
Although I am talking enthusiastically about Adsense I am not pre-selling the Ads as each article will bring you further into the site rather than encouraging you to look elsewhere.
I have not limited the number of navigation links on each page.

But these negatives are offset in this case by the aim of creating a workable and integrated resource. If I'd built this site with the aim of it being a strict search engine traffic, Adsense optimized website then it's pages would be built much closer to the perfect page model. You have to decide where your own project lies and build accordingly.

Adsense Psychology - Format and Placement

2008-05-02T09:40:00.002-07:00

The first rule of integrating Adsense into your website is to acknowledge that your visitors will see and interact with your Adsense ads the way you see them and have consequently integrated them. If you think of the time you have spent deciding colors, site structure, images and everything else that makes your website, the same amount of energy and precision should go into getting Adsense just right on your webpages.

As you have complete control over the design and layout of your webpages, you also have complete control over how a visitor interprets and ultimately interacts with your pages - and this includes your Adsense Ads.

First and foremost, the size and placement of your ads suggests to the visitor how he or she ought to interact with them. For example,

1. If you use a 728 x 90 leaderboard at the top of your page you are saying to your visitors - "here are some ads which I do not consider to be actually part of my website but I hope that they will catch your eye as you look to the actual content of my website".

2. If you use a 120 x 600 skyscraper in either your left or right navigation you are saying to your visitor, these ads are like my navigation, something extra to the page which you are currently on and to be used like the rest of my navigation if something in them takes your fancy.

3. If you use one of the square or rectangle shapes inside your actual page content, you are saying to your visitors that "these ads are integral to the content of this page and should be read as you are reading the rest of these words - as content relating to the actual page topic".

Needless to say the last of these will always perform better than the other two examples.

View Adsense ads as supplemental content to your page content, integrate them into the structure of your webpages that way and your visitors will interact with them that way giving you a much higher click through rate.

This is the first step to success with Adsense. If you view Adsense as just an easy way to make a couple of extra dollars that's all you will do with it. If you take the time to structure your website and integrate Adsense so as to supplement the page content your click through rate and your earnings will go through the roof.

There are many ways to do this successfully and many different sites that Adsense can work on.

An Adsense Ad Is More Than An Ad

2008-05-02T09:40:00.001-07:00

You will succeed with Adsense when your visitors wilfully look to them as a source of supplemental information to what your webpage provides. Therefore, if there is such a thing as a trick to succeeding with Adsense it is not to see Adsense Ads as advertisements.

The reason for this is that no one likes ads. Why? Because we're surrounded by the buggers.

Advertisements are viewed as an intrusion, Adsense Ads should be seen and integrated as a further resource for your website visitors.

The reason this is achievable with Adsense is down to the very nature of the ads:

1. The Adsense Ads are related to the content of the page that you put them on

The reason that Adsense is so popular and so effective at monetizing traffic is that the ads that appear on your website will be related to the content of each individual webpage. If you build a website about home insurance, then the ads on it will be about home insurance, if you build a website about Nike shoes then that's what the ads will be about and so forth. If integrated into your website correctly they're actually useful to your visitor and if something is useful it gets paid much more attention.

2. Adsense Ads are customizable

To not just be an ad, real integration into your website is necessary. The different format sizes and the color palettes all facilitate the integration of the ads into the fabric of your website.

3. The quality of the Ads

In the internet world Google is on top. Consequently, Google's advertising program - Adwords is used by thousands and thousands of quality businesses to reach their intended audience. This means that every niche market has a good selection of advertisers all writing carefully scripted ads to relate to the people using your website.

4. Because the Ads automatically change

Not only is the ad pool very large, the advertisers and the ads keep on changing. This keeps all your ads abreast of market trends as the advertisers constantly strive to better each other and themselves. The ads appearing on your site will evolve as your market evolves. Secondly, and this is important for sites that receive repeat visitors - your ads will often be different. If the same person reads the samepage twice in a two week time period they're more likely to click on ad both times if they are different each visit.

How To Build Your First Adsense Website

2008-05-02T09:33:00.000-07:00

The best way to learn something is to start doing it. This is a guide to get your up and standing on your own feet and making money with Adsense in a relatively short space of time. There's a lot to take in here but don't be put off by the foreign sounding nature of it all. If you persist everything will come together.

The fundamental fact is that Adsense is the easiest way to start making money online. With a very basic website and just a few people coming to it you will start to earn money. As you develop the site and bring more traffic to it an average Adsense monetized website will make between $500 and $1,000 each and every month with little work needed.

Desipte this, most webmasters struggle and the reason is that they are trying to make a massive amount of money very fast and are consequently not breaking each aspect of the process down to its basics. The reality is that from a standing start it is not possible to make $XX,XXX from Adsense in a very short space of time..

People who make a lot of money with Adsense have done one of two things:

1. They have Integrated Adsense into a website that already has high traffic (About.com is the extreme example of this), or

2. They have built a large network of niche websites each of which generates $500 - $1,000 a month. If you build 50 (which over the space of a year or two is completely feasible if you take my above example), you can earn up to about $50,000 a month which equals out to $600,000 a year - pretty good for a network of what are fundamentally very basic websites. This is Adsense Empire Building territory.

Creating one very high traffic website or a large number of small niche websites requires a whole host of skills which you will not yet have. You only get these skills by learning, implementing what you've learnt and reflecting on what your implementation has told you.

As a beginner you have to start at the beginning - that's the rule of any game. As you learn and do more, building effective websites that make more and more money will get easier and easier. Don't be one of the many that are making marketeers rich by buying into their rhetoric of making big money quickly and without any effort. These people end up stopping before they even started.

So How Do You Get Started?

To make money with Adsense you need two things:

1. A website, and

2. Traffic to that website

The Adsense ads are integrated into number one (your website) and are clicked on by number two (your visitors). Without these two things you cannot make money from Adsense. Below is a simple step by step guide of what you need to do and when.

1. You Need to Decide Which Topic You Are Going To Build Your Website On

Adsense works best on websites that provide information. Understanding Adsense provides information about how to make money with Adsense - if I placed Adsense on this website then the advertisements would relate to adsense in some way. The Adsense ads are related to this topic and so are more likely to get clicked on. A golfing website provides information on how to improve different aspects of your golf game, and Adsense ads on that website might advertise instructional DVD's or discount golf equimpent. Another website may review a particular product or type of product, advertising would then be matched to suit each product reviewed.

The easiest way to start is to build a website around a topic that you know something about. Don't look at this as the website that is going to make you rich but as a testing ground to learn all the skills you need to know to build succesful websites in different markets that will make you rich. Money comes after learning and doing. If you chase the money you'll learn and do nothing.

2. You Need to Be Able to Build This Website

First things first - don't buy an Adsense Ready or Turnkey website. If you don't know, these are content websites that have been built and optimized for Adsense. The seller packages together a few hundred articles around a particular market, eg health and then sells this package to a thousand people like you and me. Adsense Ready Websites will give you the first thing you need to make money with Adsense - a website, but you'll find it hard to get the second - traffic - as the search engines penailze duplicate content and without traffic Adsense is useless.

The other problem is that they isolate you from the most important aspect of making money online - and that is building a website.

To us as internet marketeers, all a website is is a vehicle for converting traffic into money. A good website is one that does this effectively. If you don't learn how to build one yourself you are trying to row a boat without an oar.

The good thing is is that you no longer need to learn html code to build your website. Programmers have come to our rescue and over the past few years better and better website creation tools have become available.

The one I recommend is XSitePro. It's made the process of building a website so easy and is streaks ahead of all the other tools on the market. Within two to three hours you will have worked your way through the tutorial and will be in the position to build your own successful money vehicle. It really is the internet marketeers dream come true and on my Golf website I mention above I will have paid the cost back within 7 days. It's literally built to facilitate what this website is talking about and even has an insertion facility for Adsense. It'is one of the few products I sincerely recommend. You can pick up yours here

3. You Need to Buy a Domain Name and Get a Hosting Package For Your Website

Now you've decided the theme of your website and have bought your website creation tool you need to buy a domain name and a hosting package. I use and recommend Bluehost. They've got a $6.95/month special deal on at the moment where if you set up a hosting account you get a free domain name. This will save you the cost and hassle of going to a domain registrar to register a name. They also allow you to host unlimited websites with them (although you have to pay for additional domain names) - as your business grows your hosting costs stay low.

4. You Need to Create the Content For Your Website

There are two ways of getting content - by writing it yourself or by obtaining it from a third party. The options open to you will really depend on the theme of your website. For a first website I generally recommend that you write it yourself. You can learn how to manipulate other people's information later once you've grasped the basics of website building, Adsense and traffic.

5. You Need to Join Adsense

This is simple - once you have built your website follow this link, click on the "Click Here to Apply" button, fill in your details and wait for your approval email.

6. You Need to Bring Yourself Up to Speed on Adsense

For the complete newbie to Adsense, UnderstandingAdsense.com has it's limitations as it doesn't go into the very basic stuff of how to get the code, how you change the variables etc. The site focuses on what actually makes money with Adsense and this is down to building the right websites, integrating Adsense correctly and bringing traffic to that website. Therefore your'e going to need another source so that you can get to grips with the basics. There are two that I would recommend:

(i) The Google Adsense Help Center - From the people who made the program this is a good tour de force of Adsense and how to use it. They also have some good "heat maps" which give you ad placement ideas depending on the type of website you are building.

(ii) Adsense Forums - Digital Point and Webmaster World both have good Adsense forums if you're the type that can happily sit and sift through thousands of posts.

7. You Need to Successfully Integrate Adsense into your website

Now comes the fun part. You've got your content, you've built your website, you understand the fundamentals of Adsense. Integration and optimization now become crtical and these articles explore how best to do that:

8. You Need to Do What Is Necessary to Get Traffic to Your Website

The more relevant people who come to your website the more Adsense clicks your website will generate. The other half of succeeding with Adsense is getting more and more relevant traffic. These articles explore what you need to do and how you do it.

Adsense Tools

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I was hoping to find more adsense tools to review and recommend, however I never received anything so we’ll go with what I was able to find.

Adsense Script Tools

These are the tiny little programs you install on your server (blech!) or locally on your machine that help you analyze your adsense clicks, CTR and earnings. Some of them are easy, some of them are difficult, and some of them help you make pretty graphs. To be honest none of them are worth recommending. You could do just as good a job by setting up your channels properly and dumping a CSV file into excel. If someone has a specific one or wants to send me a review copy of thier software, I will look at it. DO NOT send me anything that has to be installed on a server. I run multiple websites on multiple hosting companies, so I don’t need something that requires more maintenance thank you very much.

Adsense Preview Tools

The Adsense Sandbox comes via Digital Point. You put in a URL and it lets you preview what ads are most likely to appear on a URL. Pretty handy IMHO.

Adsense Tracking

While not set up to be an Adsense tracking tool per se, the free log analyzer from AddFreeStats is actually pretty good. You put a small graphic tracking bug on the bottom of each of your pages and it gives you standard logging reports. You can also activate adsense tracking to find out what ads are being clicked on what pages. Combine this with an excel spreadsheet and channels and you are good to go. You can upgrade to a paid version and get an invisible tracking bug. TIP: Lock down your stats under a password, I’m fascinated how many people leave that open.

Adsense in Action

Probably one of the best things you can do to increase your adsense earnings is to go and look how other people are doing things. The adsense case studies are one place. While these are Google approved you really don’t have an idea how successful they are. So you’d be much better off finding someone you know is in the UPS Club. Jason Calacanis who runs Weblogs Inc is on a quest to make 1 Million dollars a year from Adsense. While I do give Jason a hard time sometimes, I do actually admire what he’s built, and think there are some very valuable lessons to be learned from looking at the websites owns. Darren Rowse of ProBlogger also has two sites I really like the Digital Camera Review and Camera Phone Review. Don’t be a wanker and copy exactly what they’ve done, it’s bad form. Instead look at them, learn from them, and use it as inspiration.

How To Find Profitable Adsense Niches

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The profitability of an Adsense niche is primarily based on the amount that Adwords advertisers are spending to compete in that niche.

Remember that an Adsense ad is only an Adwords ad that is appearing on your site and not Google. The amount that an ad generates per click is therefore directly related to the amount that Adwords advertisers are paying per click. Bottom line - if they are paying more we earn more.

So how can you find out which niches (and which keywords inside those niches) advertisers are spending more money on?

I use two different methods:

1. Keyword Research With Keyword Country

As you will have probably have started to gather I cannot lay enough praise on this tool. In fact I struggle to understand how I researched, chose and targeted niche sites before I got hold of it...it's that good. Aswell as being able to search by category or keyword you can also search by price range. For example, you can decide to find keywords that have an average cpc of say between $18 and $20. If you enter this price range it will return a list of keywords which fall inside that parameter - in this case - 3957 different keyword phrases.

The top 5 rated keywords in this cpc range were: "credit card", "free credit report", "mortgage rates", "consolidate debt" and "website hosting". All you need to do is go down the list work out which ones would be suitable for an Adsense monetized information site, extend your keyword research by taking your chosen phrase and entering it into the search box, build the content, integrate the Adsense and promote your new website.

This is a simple and effective way of finding out where the advertiser dollar is being spent and consequently where the Adsense dollar may be earnt.

As a side issue - with tools like Keyword Country available you should never pay for a keyword list. For less than their cost you can get access to a complete keyword database which includes extensive analysis and ratings in terms of profitability and potential for every keyword or keyword phrase entered into the search engines. Spend your money wisely.

2. Affiliate Analysis With CJ

A different method is to forget keywords for a minute and to focus on markets and their advertisers. Adwords advertisers are made up of two types of people - companies and affiliates. We can't easily find out how much companies are making but we can find out how much their affiliates are by joining up to a third part affiliate network like Commission Junction (CJ), which connects companies that are selling products and website publishers like me and you who are willing to promote them for a commission.

My premise is that if you find the markets that are profitable for affiliates you will find the markets that are profitable for Adsense monetized sites. Why? Because a profitable market is one that you can spend a good sum of money on advertising and still make a healthy return.

Where the affiliates are earning good money, the companies and the affiliates will be spending big money on Adwords advertising.

You can find which markets are profitable in CJ by using their catrgory lists and sorting features. Once logged in simply follow this process:

1. Click on Get Links > this will take you to a categorical listing of all the advertiser programs.

2. Choose A Market From The Category List > this will bring up all the advertiser programs inside that niche category.

4. Click "3 Month EPC" > this will bring the top performing affiliate programs in that niche to the top of the pile. EPC stands for "earnings per click" (at CJ this is earnings per 100 clicks) and illustrates on average how much affiliates are earning for each set of 100 people they direct to that program. For example, the top performer in the financial services niche is a company specialising in mortagage refinance and equity release, with a massive 3 month epc of $354.90.

Now I have my profitable niches - "mortgage refinance" and "equity release" - I go to Keyword Country to see if my theory is correct. If I type in those two keyword phrases, Keyword Country will return to me average cpc, number of searches, competition, number of Adwords advertisers and profitablity rating for every keyword related to those two seperate niches. If I'm right the average CPC for these two keywords will be very high.

This is what Keyword Country told me:

Mortgage Refinance - average cpc $27.17 across 823 related keywords.

Equity Release - average cpc $10.145.

The theory proved correct and I've found two profitable niches that I could build a mini informational site around. In addition, I would integrate the appropriate high paying affiliate program which would give me a second means of monetizing my traffic.

There are hundreds and hundreds of these niches you just have to do the research and find them. If you're using the correct method and know where and how to look you'll be able to build a targeted site around a profitable niche within a few days. Again, these type of mini targeted sites are best and most effectively built using XSitePro.