I began using Google Adsense in the summer of 2003, and since that time I have earned well into the mid 6 figures. You can do the math. 7 figures would be over a million. That’s all I can say because this is not about how much money I can make, it’s about how to effectively MAXIMIZE YOUR OWN EARNINGS!

The methods I'm explaining to you actually work - they are proven, I use them every day for more than past 6 years now! I like money, I like to be able to do what I want when I want, so I work very hard. No point in doing it wrong and wasting time. If you want to make more money online you will do this, if not then you may as well just stop reading now.

I do not make my Adsense earnings from one site, in fact I have several sites and we’ll just leave it at that. And yes I have read Joel Comm’s Adsense Book cover to cover. He is the self professed Adsense Guru, and there is some good content in the book, it’s worth a read even though it is quite long and wordy. And Joels tips are good, but he doesn’t know any more about Adsense than any other top earner. But he probably knows more about Adsense than 99% of the people using it. And you, yes you can learn the exact same methods that really make money by reading all 234 pages.

The book is called Adsense Secrets, and he used to sell it and is now giving it away (At least version 4 is free). The information is a bit old and some of the methods are no longer valid, but still a good read.

But if you are like me and don’t want to spend hours reading a book that could be summarized in 10 pages then let me help you with what I know works with Adsense, because it works for me… day in and day out.

The Facts: What You Need to Know to Maximize Adsense Earnings

First you do NOT want to place ads in every available spot on your website. Why? You won’t make more money by doing so, you’ll probably make a lot less. Because the more ads you place the more they look like ads. And people are not ad friendly, they ignore them. The second reason is you do not want 12 advertisements if only the top 3 or 4 are paying a high amount per click. You also do not want ads to show on pages like Contact Us, About US, Privacy Policy. Ads on those pages will make little or no money and just drive up your impression count. No point in that. I realize that with some software like WordPress it can be an all or nothing kind of arraignment, but if you can control it… don’t put them on those pages.

The next thing you need to understand is there is not set one perfect way to put ads that work every time on every site. Let me give you an example: I have 2 sites with the exact same template. Site 1 pulls about 2% click through. Site 2 pulls in 6%. Both are in High Paying niches. So if they layout is exactly the same then why is the click through 3x higher on Site 2? (Both sites look nearly identical by the way… same colors, fonts, everything). The answer to the question is “Visitor Intent”. Site 1 is an information site, Site 2 is a Product site. So the “Intent” of the visitor for Site 1 is to learn more, the intent of the visitor to site 2 is to find products… their intent is more specific.

If I had to do it all over again… I would not build Site 1. But I built it nearly 10 years ago and it makes money so I just leave it. I have “optimized” it to the maximum extent and it’s a cash cow, but not earning where I want it to. But it is in my best interest to work on other project. The lesson you should learn from this is – When building Adsense sites focus on your Visitors Intent. You do not want to be the nice guy who helps them do and learn but then they just leave. You want to be the guy/girl that focuses on providing your visitor links to the products or services that match their intentions!

I can not overemphasize this enough. If you build a site about Free Wallpapers the intent of your visitor is to find free wallpapers. If you build your site about Motorolla Cell Phone accessories then the intent of your customer is to buy! And that visitor will make you a lot more money. Who searches for cell phone accessories for fun? No one. People searching for Cell Phone accessories are in BUY Mode. Cash in on Niches where people are in Buy Mode!

Adsense and Traffic – you have to have it, you must have it, but not all traffic is alike. If you want to make money online you need targeted traffic. Let me give you example: I have a site in a highly competitive Niche related to a Law product. The site has little traffic because there are so few people searching for the niche. However, I have another site in a very high trafficked niche. That site gets lots of people and my offering is a Product that matches the intention of the visitor. Which site makes more? The site with more traffic or the site with less traffic? Answer: They are actually about the same, even though the traffic differs by a magnitude of at least 100!

Why is this so? Because even though both have excellent click through rates, the payout on the very tight niche is so high that it just blows away the other niche. Payouts per click are at least 20x higher! So you don’t always need tons of traffic to make money. But you had better plan very carefully your strategy if your niche is a low volume niche, and it had better payout very high.

So I see people saying all the time, I need more traffic, if I only had more traffic. And the reality is it would make no difference because people still would not click on the ads. So before you try to get a lot of traffic make sure you have the right niche and you understand your visitors intentions.

Adsense Ad Placement. You’ll read over and over how important placement is and a whole bunch of theories about colors and sizes and on and on. The bottom line is this. You want your ads to compliment your content. And you want your ads viewable as soon as a person comes to your site. This means “Above the Fold”… put your Adsense ads where they can be seen. I do not put Adsense on the bottom of pages.

The reason why you do this is simple; I don’t care how great your site is, or how great you think it is… almost all sites have very high bounce rates. The chances that a person visiting your site from a Search Engine will stay around for more than 8 seconds is very small… even if it’s what they are after. People immediately and subconsciously judge your site and make a decision on whether to stay or leave. Give them an ad that will catch their eye! This is why many sites that look really crappy make a lot more money from Adsense than sites that look great. They put the Ads right in front of the visitor.

You may think this flies in the face of what I have said about making your ads look like part of the content. It doesn’t! You still want your Adsense Ads to look like part of the content… you just want to make sure they work.

Adsense Colors – A lot of people will say that you should match the colors of your site. Great. What if your site is yellow and black? Here is better advice, use it and make a lot of money or skip it and complain about why you make so little. Blue text links work. People expect to see them, they know what they are and what they do. They know this at a subconscious level. You do not want to reinvent the wheel, you want to make money. And if you want to make money with Adsense you want Blue links PERIOD. And here is something you should be doing. Don’t put yourself in a position where blue links make your site look weird. Make your site so it works with Blue Text Links. It’s that simple. You either want to make money or you do not right?

Test and track. You should be taking advantage of all 200 Adsense Channels if you have any size site at all. You MUST know exactly which ads are performing. And about 2 years ago you could run 3^rd party tracking scripts that told you an amazing amount of information. Google made a change and now you can’t use the tracking scripts. All you have is Channels, so use them. But use them wisely as you grow. And make sure you filter out low paying ads! A low paying ads is one from a network like Shopping.com or some other site that is not really related to the core of your niche. Use every filter that Google makes available to you.

Section Ad Targeting - Take advantage of Google’s tool for “Section Ad Targeting”. It’s a simple piece of HTML Code you place into your pages… focus on the most visited high earning pages.

The tags look like this: Quotes are so it will appear on the page as this is code.. it would otherwise be discarded.

<!-- google_ad_section_start -->

<!-- google_ad_section_end -->

You will need to test these tags on your pages, they may or may not work, but you won’t know until you test. This is how you remove irrelevant ads from pages that can really perform. The real downside is Google takes forever to get the ball rolling on this. So you’ll need patience. You can learn more about Section Ad Targeting for Adsense Here:

https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=23168

Tweak your Titles and Headings and body text. You must have the right ads showing on your pages to make money. This is another major factor that separates the 6 figure earners like me from the other guys. If a highly visited page is not performing tweak it! You should already be looking at your Google Analytics account so you know what keywords are used to find your pages, and what pages people enter and exit from. If you find people are exiting a lot from a certain page… get your Adsense on the page… near the top … nice and big and fast! Give them something to click on before they leave. Or fix the page so they don’t leave. Keep changing the page until you get the ads you want. Sometimes you can’t. And for those pages you may want to substitute and affiliate opportunity. There are times when you need to know that enough is enough.

Make a Decision – Adsense or Affiliate. Choose one or both, but make sure you test so you know exactly which makes you the most money. I will sometimes use Affiliate links and Adsense on the Same page… but I decide ahead of time what is more important and what I am going to emphasize. Then I test it. And I will remove the non performing ad unit… Adsense or not. A shotgun approach is a bad approach. Don’t give your visitor an out… don’t confuse them.

Text Ads or Video Ads or Image Ads – You can do anything you want, but I use text 95% of the time. I will only use an image ad if it is spot on target, and that is very hard to achieve sometimes.

Keyword Phrases – Because I’ve already written other articles about Keywords I’ll be very brief here. Keywords are vital to getting Adsense to display the “right” ads and to pull traffic into your site. You must take the time to learn how to properly research keywords, the scope of which is too large for this article. Read my other articles. Don’t focus on Keywords as topics focus on Industries then dig for Keywords. Don’t just chase after a supposed “high paying keyword” like Mesothelioma… that is just stupid, that is what people who have no clue what they are doing do.

Pick an industry that needs leads and is willing to spend freely to get them. Insurance is a great example. You can start with Insurance, than dig down to niches like Automobile Insurance, Homeowners, etc. Then dig even further until you find a high paying niche… not just a keyword.

Ad Sizes – Here is what works for me after years of testing – Square Boxes 250 pixels or larger, 160 pixel skyscrapers, and if placed just right the 234 pixel half banner. 468 banners are dismal. I’ve never had good click throughs on 120 pixel banners.

Adsense Authority – If you want to make money with Adsense you site has to have some authority. What I mean by this is simple, Google must think your site is quality or they will display low paying junk ads. Remember that Advertisers can bid on your site if you let them. But if your site is junk, none of them will. And this is only going to increase now that Google has opened the doors for their Partners to be part of the content network.

Page Rank is a good indicator of what Google thinks of your site if you have a PR of 3 or higher you will make a lot more money with Adsense. I’m sorry but that is just how it is… so you’ll need to work on improving the visibility and authority of your site if you want to make money.

Final Thoughts: Matching your visitor’s intentions to Adsense ads is not easy, but is the only true way to insure the maximum profitability for you! You have to work at it, you have to test and tweak, you have to make decisions about what to promote or not to promote. It’s not a bad idea to do only Adsense on some sites. But you’ll still need authority. And if your site looks like it is just Made for Adsense that is really hard to accomplish. The easiest way to make it look like a site WITH Adsense as opposed to a site FOR Adsense, is to be conservative with your number of ads, professional design, and quality compelling content.

Now you have the information you need to Maximize your Adsense Earnings and make more money, what are you going to do with it?