Making More Money With Adsense
Adsense Advantages
The majority of people trying thier luck at making money online started with adsense.
If you're new to the scene, in a nutshell, adsense is a pay per click program run by Google. Publishers place a Google ad on their website and when someone clicks on it the publisher gets paid a fee - that's it.
As a publisher you get a percentage (65%) of the fee Google charges the advertiser - that is every time someone clicks on the ad you insert on your site.
Adsense Advantages
Adsense is a popular way to monetize your website for a few reasons:
- It's pretty relevant to your subject, not perfect, but good.
- Ads are targeted for the location. Lets say your site is about lawyers, a person with an IP in Chicago is reading your site. Some of the ads displayed will be for local lawyers in that area. This makes the ads even more relevant, the reader has more interest in clicking the ad, you make more money.
- You can block ads.
- You have options to mix and match image or text ads.
These are just some advantages of adsense for publishers. Google is the biggest search engine on the planet and the ads they run are by far the best paying in the industry. This is the main reason adsense attracts so many publishers to the program, it works!
Adsense Formats
You can change your adsense formats - this means size, colors and placement.
There were three major search engines: bing, google, and yahoo, but bing and yahoo have merged services so now it's bing/yahoo and google.
Advertising generates a lot of revenue for google and a good portion of this is passed on to publishers, but like anything else when it comes to money there is abuse.
Abuse Hurts Publishers Revenue
Google has clamped down on approving applications.
As mentioned, a lot of this scrutiny revolves around publishers abusing the system.
You could say that "adsense gone wild" is the theme for bloggers these days. Publishers would plaster ads on their sites disrupting the flow of the article. Readers would either abandon the site or they would adopt what is called "ad blindness."
In either case people stopped clicking ads.
At this point publishers had to look at size, color, text, background, and especially placement of these ads as to compliment their website, not smother the content.
Sample
If you want to see a really clean niche site, with what looks to be a good strategic ad block, then take a look at this debt blog.
It belongs to someone I subscribe to. It's not unique, but I found it refreshingly neat and clickable.
The colors blend nicely, it's not overcrowded and he has matched it up with other relevant affiliate ad blocks.
The point here is - try different things. Try different ad sizes, change font sizes, it's a matter of testing to see what combinations get the best click through rates. You might try a larger ad text compared to your content text, this could get the attention of your reader and result in more clicks for you.
Also note that this debt blog site has loose content. What this means is, the content doesn't answer all of the readers concerns, it has to leave some room for readers to want to click the ads for more answers.
If you want income from advertising then you have intentionally leave room for in your content for your advertisers.
Lets take a closer look at content and it's role in producing more clicks for your site.
Monthly Adsense Income
Content for Adsense Prosperity
You will find two schools of thought when it comes to content. Some will say write long, detailed posts, while others suggest writing shorter informative posts with loose ends. This will lead to the reader wanting more information, thus clicking ads.
Make no mistake about it, when you use adsense you are selling advertising.
There are advertisers on the other end of those ads paying good money for the ads, they deserve value for their money. As a publisher you need to keep this in mind.
Content for Adsense
I'll give you an example. I have a site about divorce attorneys. The content covers fees, types of divorce, and interviewing a divorce lawyer. Knowing that the ads for the "divorce attorney" topic pay well, I must look at all subjects associated with the main topic.
At the end of each post I always invite the reader to use the information provided to look for a lawyer among our ads. Now, I don't say "click my ads" this would violate Google's TOS but you can say something like "the internet provides a convenient way to find an attorney for your needs." You get the idea.
What Counts - what counts is what your readers want. If the ads are to bright (color wise) then change the colors. If the ads are not relevant enough, tighten up your content. If the clicks are cheap, your subject could be to vague.
Traffic - you and I know that all this talk about adsense income and content creation mean nothing unless you get people to read it.
Content is the driver behind everything. It can be text, audio, video, or a combination of all three.
When you're choosing a subject, and this is before you even build a website, you want a subject where advertising makes sense. A good example is gambling. If you are building a site about gambling and expect to use adsense on it in the United States, then you're wasting your time. At this moment google doesn't entertain advertising concerning gambling in the U.S..
Other countries might be different but in the U.S. it's off limits as far as adsense is concerned. So you must evaluate your topic first before you go through all the trouble of building a site if adsense is to be your choice for advertising income.