Google Adsense Tips, Tricks, and Secrets

I’ve been reading a few forums and blogs about Google Adsense tips lately, and thought it would be helpful to consolidate as many as possible in one place without the comments. I’ve also thrown in a few tips of my own. We start out with some of the basic general stuff and move to the more specific topics later on.

Build an Empire?

When you’re deciding to become a website publisher you will fall into one of two broad categories:

• Publish 100 websites that each earn $1 a day profit
• Publish 1 website that earns $100 a day profit

The reality of it is, most people end up somewhere in between. Having 100 websites leaves you with maintenance, management and content issues. Having one website leaves you open to all sort of fluctuations (search engines algorithm’s, market trends, etc). You can adapt your plan on the way, but you’ll have an easier time if you start out going in the direction of where you want to end up.

General or Niche

You can build your website around general topics or niche ones. Generally speaking niche websites work better with adsense. First off the ad targeting is much better. Secondly as you have a narrow focus your writing naturally becomes more expert in nature. Hopefully this makes you more authority in your field.

If this is your first try at building an adsense website, make it about something you enjoy. It will make the process much easier and less painful to accomplish. You should however make sure that your topic has enough of an ad inventory and the payout is at a level you are comfortable with. You may love medieval folk dancing, but the pool of advertisers for that subject is very small (in fact it’s currently zero).

Once you’ve gotten the hang of how Adsense works on a website, you are going to want to dabble in some high paying keywords, you may even be tempted to buy a high paying keyword list. This does come with some dangers. First off the level of fraud is much higher on the big money terms. Secondly there is a distortion of the supply and demand relationship for these terms. Everyone wants ads on their website that make $35 or more a click, however the number of advertisers who are willing to pay that much is pretty limited. Additionally the competition for that traffic is going to be stiff. So, don’t try to run with the big dogs if you can’t keep up. If you have to ask if you’re a big dog, then chances are, you’re not. I have used a high dollar keywords report from cashkeywords.com and was pleased with my results (see cash keywords free offer recap).

New Sites, Files and Maintenance

When you’re building a new site don’t put adsense on it until it’s finished. In fact I’d go even farther and say don’t put adsense on it until you have built inbound links and started getting traffic. If you put up a website with “lorem ipsum” dummy or placeholder text, your adsense ads will almost certainly be off topic. This is often true for new files on existing websites, especially if the topic is new or different. It may take days or weeks for google’s media bot to come back to your page and get the ads properly targeted. TIP: If you start getting lots of traffic from a variety of IP’s you will speed this process up dramatically.

I like to build my sites using include files. I put the header, footer and navigation in common files. It makes it much easier to maintain and manage. I also like to put my adsense code in include files. If I want/need to change my adsense code, it’s only one file I have to work with. TIP: I also use programming to turn the adsense on or off. I can change one global variable to true or false and my adsense ads will appear or disappear.

Managing URL’s and channels

Adsense channels is one area where it’s really easy to go overboard with stats. You can set up URL channels to compare how one website is doing to another. You can also set up sub channels for each URL. If you wanted to you do something channels like this:

• domain1.com – 728 banner
• domain1.com – 336 block
• domain1.com – text link
• domain2.com – 728 banner
• domain2.com – image banner
• domain2.com – 336 block
• domain3.com – 300 block

While this is great for testing and knowing who clicks where and why, it makes your reporting a little wonky. Your total number will always be correct but when you look at your reports with a channel break down things will get displayed multiple times and not add up to correct total. Makes things pretty confusing, so decide if you really need/want that level of reporting detail. TIP: At the very least you want to know what URL is generating the income so be sure to enter distinct URL channels.

Site Design and Integration

Once you know you are going to put adsense on your website you’re going to have to consider where to put it. If this is new site it’s easier, if it’s an existing site it’s more difficult. While there are some people who will be able to do it, in most cases I’d say if you just slap the adsense code in, you’ll end up with a frankensite monster (props to Tedster of WMW for the buzzword). While every website is different, Google has published some heat maps showing the optimal locations. No surprise that the best spots are middle of the page and left hand side. Now I’ve done really well by placing it on the right, but you should know why you’re doing it that way before hand, and be prepared to change it if it doesn’t work out.

Google has also has published a list of the highest performing ad sizes:

• 336×280 large rectangle
• 300×250 inline rectangle
• 160×600 wide skyscraper

From the sites that I run, I do really well with the 336 rectangle and 160 skyscraper. My next best performing ad size is the 728 leaderboard, I don’t really use the 300 inline rectangle too often. So really it depends on how well you integrate these into your site. Placement can have a dramatic effect on performance. TIP: When working on a new site or new layout you may want to give each location it’s own channel for a little while until you understand the users behavior.

Another ‘trick’ that can increase your CTR is by blending your adsense into your body copy. For example if your body copy is black, remove the adsense border and make the title, text, and URL black.TIP: Try changing all of your page hyperlinks to a high contrast color (like dark red or a bold blue) then change the adsense title to the same color.

The one area where I’ve found blended ads don’t perform as well is forums, especially ones with a high volume of repeat members. Regular visitors develop banner blindness pretty quickly. One ‘trick’ to keep the ads from being ignored is to randomize the color and even the placement. As with any of the decisions about location, placement and color it’s a trade off. How much do you emphasize the ads without annoying your visitors. Remember it’s better to have a 1% CTR with 500 regular visitors as opposed to a 5% CTR with 50 visitors. TIP: For forums try placing the adsense ads directly above or below the the first forum thread.

Using Images

One of the latest ‘secrets’ to make the rounds is using images placed directly above or below an adsense leaderboard. This has been used for a while but came out in a digital point forum thread where a member talked about quadrupling their CTR. Basically you set up the adsense code in a table with four images that line up directly with the ads. Whether or not this is deceptive is fuzzy and very subjective. Obviously four blinking arrows would be ‘enticing people to click’ and be against the adsense TOS. However placing pictures of 4 laptops over laptops ads isn’t, so use your best judgment here and look at it from the advertiser or Google’s perspective. If you have a question as to your implementation being ‘over the line’ write to adsense and ask them to take a look.

As far as using the images, I’ve done it and can tell you it definitely works. You get the best results when the images ‘complete the story the ads are telling’. For example if you have ads about apple pies, use pictures of freshly baked apple pies, instead of granny smith, Macintosh, pink lady, and braeburn apples. TIP: Don’t limit yourself to using images only on that size ad unit, it works just as well with the other sizes, like the 336 rectangle.

Added:
I got a little criticizm for this and rightly so, as I wasn’t specific as I could have been. Do not use very identifiable brand name or products for your images. Use generic non-specific stock images whenever possible and appropriate.

Multiple Ad Units

Another way to increase ad revenue is to use multiple ad units. According to Google’s TOS you are allowed to post up to three ad units per page. Similar to standard search results the highest paying ad units will be served first and the lowest being served last. If there is enough of an ad inventory, place all three ad units. However you should pay attention to the payouts. Current assumption is you get 60% of the revenue (on a $0.05 click you get $0.03). So if a click from the third ad unit is only paying between 3 to 5 cents you may want to omit it from your page. This is one are where giving your ad units channels does have value. If one ad unit is getting a higher percentage of click throughs you’ll want to make sure the highest paying ads are being served there. TIP:Use CSS positioning to get your highest paying ads serving in the location with the highest CTR.

Adsense in RSS

With the growth of blogs and RSS feeds you’re starting to see adsense included in the feeds now. IMHO this doesn’t work, and here’s why:

• You only get to place one ad unit.
• You have no control over finding the ‘sweet spot’ for the ad unit.
• The ads are usually poorly targeted (this is getting better).
• People develop ‘banner blindness’.

I know people like being able to read full postings in their feed reader, and there are at least a dozen other reasons for full posts from pleasing your users to mobile offline computing, all of which are completely valid. However if your website depends on generating adsense revenue to survive, then bring them to the site and show them the ads there.

Affiliate Sites

Placing Adsense on affiliate sites is tricky. Are you giving up a $10, $20, or $30 sale for a $1 click? This is something you have to test on your own to figure out. If you aren’t converting now it’s definitely worth a try. I like to use adsense on my article pages. For example let’s say you had an affiliate website where you sold shoes. You’re going to need some related articles to ‘flesh out’ the site. Things like ‘getting a shoe shine’ or ‘finding a shoe repair shop’ these are excellent spots for adsense. While you won’t get rich, they will usually provide a small steady income and cover things like hosting costs.TIP: If you find you have pages getting more than 50 clicks per month add more pages about this topic, and link the pages together. Mine you logs for the search terms used.

PPC Arbitrage

This is a dicey subject so I’m going to steer clear of precise examples. Basically you bid on low volume uber niche terms at a very low cost. You set up landing page that contains high payout ads for the related general topic. You are looking for terms with a large gap between the price you are bidding on adwords and the price you are getting on Adsense. If you pay $0.10 a click and get $1.00 a click you make $0.90 each click. To get your adsense ad approved you will need to ‘add some value’ along the way. You can make a killing or get taken to the cleaners with this one, so make sure you know what you are doing before you try it.

Have any other adsense tips, tricks or secrets? Drop me an email and let me know, I’ll give you credit.

Added
728 leaderboard works very well if it is just above the end of the
“above the fold” area on what would be considered your viewers average
resolution/browser window size if there are few other enticing links
above the fold. Makes for an interesting layout but if you’re building
a site for AdSense it may be worth it. We consistently receive very
high CTRs from doing this.

Adsense Tips and Tricks

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

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

Layout

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

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

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

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

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

Content

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

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

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

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

Organization

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

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

Traffics

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

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

Miscellaneous

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

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

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

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

How to Make Money with the Amazon Affiliate Program

Amazon affiliate program is a scheme with which website owners make money by referring the customers to other websites that sells different products or services. Many webmasters are earning money with Amazon affiliate program. When a webmaster sign up for Amazon affiliate program, he is called as the affiliate. The role of an affiliate is not to sale the product; he just has to refer the customers to the other website. The affiliate gets money when any user from his/her website goes to the Amazon website and purchases any product from that website, a specific amount of money or commission is given to the affiliate.

Thousands of people purchase products from Amazon as it is a trusted brand so, a webmaster can easily earn money by affiliating with Amazon. An affiliate gets revenue on every product he refers to his website viewer and the viewer purchases that product.

A webmaster can refer a product of Amazon related to his website or blog. In writing articles on the blog, a web owner can easily add text link to the product page of Amazon, these are called affiliate links. The main thing is how webmaster adds link in his writing so, that it looks natural. When a customer, clicks, views and purchases the product then web owner is also given profit.

A wide range of products are available at Amazon so, a webmaster can easily select a product to refer relevant to the theme of his website or blog. The commission given to the affiliate depends on the price of product that a customer purchases. Commission is high on high price products, and on low price products, commission is low. To make more people attracted towards the product and purchase it, using image links to the Amazon product page is a good idea.

For making money with Amazon affiliate program here are some points:

Select a topic in which you are interested and have knowledge about it. Make a blog or website.

Select a domain name and register it. Get service from a web hosting company for the web hosting of your website.

Sign up for Amazon affiliate program, account approval generally takes 24 to 48 hours.

Make affiliate links of the products in the content of your website or blog which takes a customer to the product page of Amazon. Your website must have some reviews of that product that makes the customer to take decision easily whether to purchase the product or not.

For earning money, the main point is to promote the website or blog.

The best thing about Amazon is that an affiliate not only gets revenue on the purchased product which he has referred, he also gets commission on all the products that customer has purchased in 24 hours. A webmaster can also put the affiliate Amazon links in his Facebook posts or twitter posts. There are two simple methods with which an affiliate can get the revenue from Amazon. An affiliate can get revenue by directly deposited in his bank account or he can also receive Amazon gift card.

15 Proven Money Making Methods for Newbie Clickbank Users

There are some proven methods that make Clickbank for newbies a clear shot at making money online. Each of the methods bellow has been used by successful Clickbank affiliates to generate income. To make these methods work for you, start at the top and work through each step in the process.

The only reason newbies do not make money with Clickbank in the beginning mostly boils down to time and effort spent. Follow the tips correctly and you will generate traffic that leads to sales.

Method 1: Use a variety of analytics, web design platforms, and services to maximize your web presence.

Method 2: Market Samurai is one of the most effective keyword research tools. Download market samurai to analyze keywords. It is a secret weapon marketers use to get the inside scoop on keywords with the highest Google rankings.

Method 3: Outsource. Use Fiverr, oDesk or another cheap outsourcing platform to delegate various tasks. Each of the steps from building your website to loading valuable content can be outsourced so you can focus on the larger picture. Outsourcing is the valuable insider tool that makes Clickbank for newbies less stressful and helps construct a highly professional web presence.

Method 4: Select a good niche. Great niches are areas you have a passion for and know something about the target audience for that niche.

Method 5: Select a good product relevant to high traffic keywords.

Method 6: Select a recognizable and professional domain name.

Method 7: Set up a website. Look at other sellers in your niche to get an idea of what kind of website is the best way of selling your product, then build or outsource the appropriate website or pages.

Method 8: Load your site with web content that promotes your product and drives traffic.

Method 9: Generate traffic through direct promotion such as teleconferences, webinars, videos, podcasts, and radio interviews.

Method 10: Promote your website through search engine traffic.

Method 11: Submit informative articles to build links from multiple sources to your website.

Method 12: Utilize articles from ezines or articlebase.

Method 13: As a maximization development process, continue to build backlinks to articles. Your goal is to reach the front page of google.

Method 14: Use Squidoo to attract traffic. Squidoo has a high Google ranking. You can also promote Clickbank affiliates there. Load your Squidoo page with valuable content then link it to promotions, products, and other pages.

Method 15: Continue to maximize your web presence through social media and updates. Consistent development is what makes clickbank for newbies as profitable as it is for seasoned clickbank marketers.

Marketers have proven these 15 methods through using them to generate income via Clickbank. Making money with Clickbank starts with understanding that it is a step by step process. When these steps of the process are followed carefully, they produce higher sales for your business and gradually increase your ROI.

Adbrite.com- One of the Best Alternatives to Google Adsense

Adbrite ranks among the largest independent Adbrite advertising exchange companies. It is based outside San Francisco, California. This website reaches out to millions of users owing to its high quality and access to highly paid ad campaigns. It provides the facilities of a transparent marketplace to its users. The main aim of this site is to maximize the selection as well as control for both the advertisers and publishers alike. It is one of the most appealing pay per click sites. This site supports real-time reporting and analysis and hence it allows the close monitoring of the results.

The process of becoming a part of Adbrite program seems to be a fairly easy task as there are no restrictions as far as the nationality of the applicant is concerned  According to Adbrite the only reason that may result in rejection of Adbrite approval is if the site takes too much time to load. Adbrite, a very good alternative to Google Adsense, offers various types of advertising opportunities which include text Ads, banner Ads, interstitial Ads as well as in-text or inline Ads. The publishers who go for text Ads earn for each and every click that that particular ad receives, otherwise its payment is made on CPC basis. As far as banner ads are considered they are paid out on either CPC or CPM basis. The payment for full paid ads are based on cost per view basis but in this case the visitor has the option or choice to skip that page altogether. When a visitor skip the pages, the publisher does not earn anything.

Adbrite provides all its clients with the option to approve each of the ads based on the price that is set by the clients or they can leave this task up to Adbrite. If a publisher opts for approving the ads themselves then he/she will receive an email from Adbrite when some user buys the adspace. Then the publisher can approve it and it takes nearly four hours or so for the ad to show up. There are very few pay per click sites that offer its publishers such excellent control features that allow them to see the real adbrite advertising techniques along with the impression, clicks etc. Adbrite provides publishers the opportunity to earn by simply approving or disapproving each ad.

The support system provided by Adbrite is excellent. The response is always within 24 hours and quite satisfactory when someone uses their email support. The FAQ section of this site caters to the questions of all publishers and advertisers. This site has a blog and a forum which acts as an excellent platform for all of its users so that they can interact with each other.

As an Adbrite publisher, you must wait for a period of sixty days before your earning becomes available for withdrawing. Although Adbrite has a very large advertising base, it still has scope of improving to a large extent as far as their various payout options and relevance of most of their ads are concerned. A low CPC of ads results in a very low level of earning. If Adbrite is considered as an Adsense alternative, it will definitely rank among the top Adsense substitutes.