Money With AdSense

AdSense PSA Ads - They're Back!

2007-11-16T22:59:00.000-08:00

Those pesky Public Service Announcements (PSA) from AdSense have taken over my dog blog, DoggieNews.

They only seem to show up on the homepage, and on the archive pages. On the permalink pages, AdSense displays paid ads.

Since the homepage generates a big percentage of page views, I'm losing a lot of money by having the PSAs show up. And it was only recently that they began displaying, probably only a week ago. For the longest time, PSAs never showed up there.

You won't actually see PSA ads on my dog blog right now because I've replaced them with a back-up set of ads, which is actually Yahoo Publisher ads. But my experience with Yahoo Publisher shows that it pays less than AdSense. So, I'd rather figure out why PSAs are suddenly showing when they didn't used to.

I think the reason why is because there's been recently a reduction in ads for the words, "dog" and "dogs". It used to be these keywords generated a bunch of ads on Google's SERPs. The PSAs are showing up simply because what few advertisers are remaining for these keywords have may have blocked their ads from AdSense.

I'm going to try to replacing the META keywords with more lucrative ads like "dog training", or "puppy training". I'll let you know if that fixes it.

Blogger Archive Pages

2007-11-08T13:42:00.000-08:00

If you're running AdSense on Blogger, there's a little trick you can do to minimize the number of PSA's on your archive pages.

On the Archive Settings, there is a field for the "Archive Filename", as follows...

Enter a filename representing your biggest money keyword. In my case, I used "adsense.htm".

Blogger uses this filename when creating archive pages, such as follows...

By having the word "adsense.html" as my archive filename, AdSense will use this to determine ad relevancy.

By default, Blogger will use the filename, "archive.html", and this will often cause AdSense to show PSA's.

Of course, this "trick" can apply to any blogging platform, not just Blogger.

AdSense and Hyperlocal Blogging

2007-09-26T00:20:00.000-07:00

Earlier on my website publishing blog, I mentioned that my hyperlocal news blog, Menifee 24/7 is doing particular well with AdSense. I wanted to touch on this subject some more.

What's suprising about it is that it earns quite a bit more money than some of my other blogs, even if with far fewer visitors.

Junk Food Blog, one of my more popular blogs, earns far less than Menifee 24/7 on AdSense. JFB actually gets about 2,000 visitors per day, while Menifee 24/7 gets about 300 visitors per day. Yet, Menifee 24/7 earns about twice as much money from AdSense as JFB.

Here's the reasons why...

Audience Focus - The more an audience is focused down to a specific subject, the more likely they'll click on AdSense ads. The problem with JFB is that the audience is too broad. JFB is largely an entertainment site; it's audience comes from all walks of life, from all over the world, and have varied interests. On the other hand, Menifee 24/7 has a highly focused audience. The only people who visit it are people who live in this town, or want to relocate here.

The Real Estate Factor - Real estate ads on AdSense are very lucrative to publishers like myself. And they tend to appear often on websites that focus themselves on a specific geographic locale. Menifee 24/7 being focused on happenings in my town, gets plenty of them. So, once in awhile I publish articles about property values, selling a home, or relocation, just to maintain a demographic of visitors who want Menifee real estate info.

Ad Recognition - The audience on Menifee 24/7 tend to click on AdSense ads more often than JFB's audience because they don't realize its an ad. They're just not savvy enough to know what AdSense is. To them, the AdSense unit are just links, especially if you blend the AdSense unit into the background colors. On JFB, the audience tends to be more Internet savvy, and younger.

I think the key to making hyperlocal blogging a success with AdSense is to make sure your audience is primarily people in your city or town, and give some added weight to real estate topics. Remember that there's also a demographic of people who want to relocate to your town, and therefore are interested in real estate information.

There's a lot of money in them-thar real estate ads.

Blogs with AdSense

2007-09-25T13:23:00.000-07:00

Blogs are a great way to build audiences for monetization purposes.

I created the blog you're reading, "Money With AdSense", on August 24, 2007, which is just 30 days ago from today. Already it's starting to pick up some steady traffic.

This steady traffic started occurring about one week after the launch, when Google added pages from this website into its search index. Albeit, the traffic was very small, only 1-2 visitors per day. As of today, Google is now referring about 2-3 visitors per day. Woo Hoo! Big difference!

But before you toss your hand at that, also consider that just three days ago, Yahoo began referring visitors as well. I'm now seeing about 2-3 visitors a day from Yahoo.

So overall, I'm getting about 4-6 visitors a day to this blog from Yahoo and Google combined.

That's pretty good if you consider the following...

It's only been 30 days since the launch of this blog

I spent zero on traffic building.

I spent zero building the website

I spent zero on content (it's all my content)

I spent zero on hosting (it's running on my dedicated server)

The only area I paid money was for domain name registration

Thus far, I've earned very minimal from AdSense, but I have gotten some clicks. Considering the traffic volume, it's easy to understand why. But that's ok, because traffic will grow as I continue to publish more articles.

Remember, the more articles I publish, the more pages I'll have in Google & Yahoo's search index. The more pages in their index, the more likely one of those pages will show up on someone's query.

You can build up a steady income stream with AdSense just by doing what I described above. All I did was launch a blog, pasted AdSense into it, and then just write new articles (in your words), regularly. Traffic will automatically starts coming within days or weeks, and it builds from there.

The key to all of this, is original content.

That is, you have to create the content. You can't republish someone else's article from an article archive site. Google seems to know when it finds an article that exists elsewhere.

In a year's time, you might have hundreds of visitors each day, or thousands, depending on your niche, your SEO efforts, your domain name, and if you can get other sites to link to you.

Blogs have an uncanny way of building up traffic quickly from search engines, as opposed to other types of websites.

Blocking Public Service Ads

2007-09-13T06:19:00.000-07:00

My home-based website publishing blog, "In Your Web", has a nagging problem of getting a lot of public service ads (PSA) from Google AdSense.

This only happens on the homepage.

The reason is the domain name "inyourweb.com". Considering that keywords in the domain name, directory name, and filename, is a key factor towards determining relevant ads on AdSense, now you see why I get so many public service ads on the homepage. The other pages are ok, because those have more keywords in the filenames.

So the million dollar question is, "Why did I choose such a stupid domain name?"

Well, it wasn't that stupid at the time.

In Your Web was first launched in October 2003. That was only 7 months after Google AdSense was launched (March 2003). At that time, no one understood how AdSense determined relevancy, we were all still trying to figure it out.

I chose the name "In Your Web" because I wanted something that was easily recognizable. I was going after a domain that could be easily branded. Knowing what I know now, I would picked out a domain that had a keyword in it.

Blocking Public Service Ads

You can't force AdSense to display paid ads instead of the public service ad. Remember that the public service ads are displaying because Google can't figure out what else to display.

AdSense does provide some options on how it should handle this situation...

The second option, "Show Non-Google ads from another URL" is perhaps the best choice. It allows you to enter a URL to display ads from another source...

Here's what you do.

First create a new webpage on your server. This webpage should NOT have any of your website's template on it. It should be pure blank. Except, between the BODY tags, paste the advertising code from another advertising network. Make sure that the advertising code will display an ad with the same dimensions you're using with Google Adsense. NOTE: don't center the ad on the page, let it top-left-justify naturally.

Upload this page to your webserver.

Now, enter the URL for this page into the box above.

That's it. When Google decides that it can't find any relevant ads, it will display this instead.

You can also get creative, and instead of pasting code from another advertising service, you can use links for some affiliate programs, or links to some of your other websites.

AdSense CPM Drops as Impressions Increase

2007-09-12T11:09:00.000-07:00

One of the most intriguing statistics for me is that my effective AdSense CPM drops as the number of impressions rise.

It's frustrating, actually, because you want some predictability with your earnings. You'd like to know that if you earn "x dollars" with 1,000 impressions, you can earn "xx dollars" with 10,000 impressions.

I'd love to provide a graph from my own statistics to illustrate it for you, but AdSense's terms of service prevent me from disclosing that information.

It's not just AdSense, actually. It works this way for me with any advertising network or affiliate marketing program.

My explanation for this is that as your traffic increases, it becomes more diverse.

For starters, one of the primary causes of traffic increase is having published more pages. The more pages you publish, the more search engine food you create. Effectively, it's a like fisherman casting a wider net, catching more of the fish he wants, but also getting more fish he doesn't want.

The best way to guard against that, is to keep your focus on your primary audience, by writing articles whose keywords and filenames are optimized for that audience. That can be hard to do, because when you've written your 100th article, it's harder to find more stuff to write about.

Another reason for the increasing diversity of your audience, is that they're coming in from more places. When you write a compelling article, people tend to e-mail it to their friends, or post a link to it from a message board, or even blog about it on their own blogs. And when they do this, it's often for slightly different reasons than what you intended.

For example, if you write an article about how a blogger made a thousand bucks in one day using AdSense, one guy might e-mail it to his buddies because the photograph of the blogger shows she has big boobies.

Another nagging problem is Google's Image Search. Assuming you're putting images in your blog posts, people will eventually find those images through Google Image Search, and that will produce page views.

What can you do to help monetize this diverse traffic?

For all those page views created by Google Image Search, find an ad network that will pay "per impression" intead of "per click", and place one of their banners somewhere.

Place some promotional links in a highly visible place on your website, that link to some of your most popular content. Use heading text like, "Top 5 Most Popular Articles", or, "Top 5 Must Have Tools for Webmasters". If you don't have that stuff, try "Get Laid" and link it to a dating affiliate program.

AdSense Public Service Ads

2007-09-10T06:00:00.000-07:00

I was just reading a post from a guy blogging as "Kirbitz", who said that he switched to using AdSense after some disappointing months with Bidvertiser. The irony is that after viewing five of his webpages, all such AdSense units are displaying public service ads.

Hopefully that will change for him soon.

A "public service ad" (PSA) is what AdSense displays when it can't identify any relevant ads for your website.

These don't generate any income for you.

So the trick is, obviously, to not get any PSAs.

One of the biggest factors I've noticed with determining relevancy, are the filenames, directory names, and domain names. Sometimes, this seems to have such a strong influence, that it even overcomes on-page keyword frequency. Perhaps the best "one-two" combination I can think of towards ensuring relevant ads, is to match your most frequently used on-page keyword with the filename of your webpage.

But that's just my observation, and not gospel from the AdSense team.

There's also in-HTML optimization that you can do. The Meta Keywords tag, and the Title tag also seem to help. It would be best to make sure these also match the on-page keyword and the filename.

Going back to this guy, "Kirbitz", and his blog. His blog is about making money online, which is a subject frought with AdWords. He shouldn't have any trouble attracting relevant ads.

Since AdSense doesn't explain their relevancy algorithm, we can never know exactly what causes a PSA to display. But since my blog is pretty much on a similar topic as his, and AdSense never seems to display PSAs here, it obviously has something to do with the blog itself.

If you happen to see too many PSAs displaying on your site, my best advice is to remove all "template content" until you have nothing left but the unique content itself (the article), and see what displays then. To do this, usually you can create a "test" page. Then, add pieces of the template back one by one and observe how that affects things.

You might just try a new (and simpler) template altogether.

Kicked Off Of AdSense

2007-09-09T20:59:00.000-07:00

Getting your account suspended or shut down on Google AdSense is pretty much "end of story" if it happens to you.

Read the webmaster forums and blogs and you'll get the understanding that AdSense will shut your account down even if you did nothing wrong. Once it's shut down, its rare that they'll reopen it on appeal.

Janet, who goes by the name "Newspapergrl" claims to be one of the few to ever had their account reopened, after a very influential person stepped in on her behalf and convinced AdSense to do so.

Why will AdSense shut your account down?

Click fraud.

It's the biggest problem on their minds. Click fraud is what can potentially ruin the AdWords system. If advertisers get the feeling that the clicks they're buying are not converting into sales and leads, then they'll stop buying from AdWords. Hence, Google is doing everything in its power to convince advertisers that the clicks they're buying are valuable.

One publisher got kicked off of AdSense because his visitors were repeatedly clicking his AdSense units, thinking they were helping him out....
I was recently unfortunate enough to have been kicked off the adsense program. Some members got the idea that clicking it repetatively none-stop would help the site... but it didn't and only lead to the cease of adsense.
Read the rest of his story here...

http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread24300.html

Google will take your account down if your site is producing useless clicks, whether or not it's something you did. If you know someone is clicking your AdSense units just for your benefit, you need to put a stop to it. Once your account is shut down, you ain't getting it back.

Benjamin Cohen, who runs Pinknews.co.uk. writes about his problems with getting shut down by AdSense, and his frustration with the appeals process...

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/..../article703023.ece

Another way to get shut down by AdSense is to place instructions above the AdSense unit asking visitors to click the ads. Stuff like, "Please click on these links", or "Please visit our sponsors", will get your account suspended or shut down.

If your account is shut down, I don't have much advice to give you. I've never had my account shut down, and don't want to experiment with it.

On the other hand, while AdSense is still the name of the game in the contextual advertising sphere, they can enjoy the position they're in. It's going to take a big surge from Yahoo! Publisher Network to force Google AdSense to be more honest. It can still happen, hopefully.

How to Get More Ads on AdSense for Search

2007-09-08T21:50:00.000-07:00

AdSense for Search can yield high earnings for very specific types of search.

If you implement this on your website, it helps to guide your users into what types of searches they should use it for.

For example, one of my most popular websites caters to genealogists. And genealogists tend to run searches on surnames or names of their relatives. If they were to run a search on my website, using the AdSense for Search box, they'd mostly likely enter a query like, "william robertson" or "robertsons of texas".

Unfortunately for me, those keyphrases don't produce many ads on AdSense, often none at all. Hence, AdSense for Search would not yield much money.

On the other hand, if I were to place some instructional text right above the AdSense search box, something like, "Enter a surname plus the word 'genealogy'". They'll most likely follow the instruction and the query will produce more AdSense ads, and higher paying ones too.

You might want to run some searches on Google to find out which ones produce the most AdSense ads, and then come up with a short simple instruction to place above the AdSense for Search box.

AdSense Arbitrage

2007-09-07T18:41:00.000-07:00

So with this blog entitled, "Money with AdSense", you'd expect some discussion on AdSense Arbitrage.

And here it is.

AdSense Arbitrage is a simple concept, of buying a keyword on AdWords, and then directing it to one of your websites with an AdSense unit. For example, if you bought an AdWords ad for $1.00 per click, and you were able to direct it to your website, and earn $3.00 per click on AdSense, then you've made $2.00.

But as simple as the concept is, it's a rather complicated business model.

For one, the concept I described assumes you can get a 100% click through rate on your AdSense unit, which we all know, is impossible. If you can design a landing page that can get about a 50% click through rate, then you're in business. But to be profitable, you have to exploit a keyword where there is a large dropoff in bid prices.

That is, maybe the top 3 bids for a given keyword is $5.25, $5.20, and $5.17. But the fourth bid drops off to $2.25. There you go. You place a bid for $2.26, to get youself into that fourth position.

To ensure that AdSense displays the highest bidding keywords, you need to utilize a creative size that shows only two or three ads.

So first of all, is it possible to design a landing page that gets a 50% click through rate? Yes! I've done it. I described the technique I used in an article I wrote entitled, "Psychology of the Eye". The affiliate link is a simple web form that gets a 60% CTR.

Is AdSense arbitrage a violation of AdSense or AdWords?

Yes. It's stated here...
https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=66238

But it's up to the folks at AdWords and AdSense to figure out if you're engaging in arbitrage. Many publishers advertise through AdWords to drive traffic to their sites, but they publish sites with lots of content. Arbitrage sites, on the other hand, need extremely high CTR (such as 50%), in order to be profitable, and hence, publish very little content.

Steve's Opinion on AdSense Arbitrage

It's not worth it.

First of all, if takes a lot of dedication to find keywords with a large bid disparity. When you bid on one, you have to keep monitoring it to see if those higher bids come down on you. For the amount of time you're spending, and the amount of profit you're earning, are you any better off than just working at McDonalds?

You're also at risk of Google shutting your AdWords account down, or lowering your landing page score.

Lastly, it's a business model centered on gambling. That is, it requires a sizeable amount of capital, with no real guarantee of profit. You're basically gambling on the chance that the higher bids won't come down on you.

I don't do any Arbitrage at all. I haven't purchased keywords in the last several years. I've relied on my SEO and traffic building skills to get free traffic. If you build a site with lots of high quality content, that people actually want, that content will keep people coming in. In the end, you have a website that cranks out money like a machine with little effort or cost. That's the way to go.

But if you really have to know more about AdSense Arbitrage, read Grey Wolf's three-part series...
http://www.wolf-howl.com/sem/adsense-arbitrage-tips-tricks-secrets/

Should You Buy Joel Comm's AdSense Templates?

2007-09-06T14:30:00.001-07:00

Should you purchase Joel Comm's Adsense templates?

Who's Joel Comm?

Joel Comm is a guy who has made a name for himself as one of the many "make money online gurus", with a specialty on Google AdSense. In fact, here's how he describes himself on one of his own websites...

Joel is considered to be the world's foremost expert on the subject of making money with Google AdSense. He's written the all-time best selling ebook on the topic, and his recent book The AdSense Code topped at #1 on the Amazon marketplace, and became a New York Times best seller.

He goes on to say that he receives big fat paychecks from Google AdSense.

He's known for selling "AdSense templates", which I have never purchased nor seen. But I am going to talk about whether or not you should buy them.

If Joel Comm is the undisputed king of making money from AdSense, then it stands to reason that you can visit any of his websites to see what kind of "template" he's using.

Just go to his blog: http://www.joelcomm.com/

If he makes big fat paychecks from AdSense, then all you need to do is copy his blog design. You don't need to buy his AdSense templates.

But hey, the blog designs I make use of don't mimic his designs. So why don't I follow his design?

Well, placement of AdSense creatives do make big difference, but only so far as they can be seen by everyone visiting within 5-10 seconds of viewing your website. What matters after that is if the ads are readable, relevant and interesting to the people visiting your site.

I don't know if Joel Comm is truly making five-figure checks from AdSense as he claims he does (packaged in a UPS envelope). Only himself, his bank, and the people at AdSense know for sure. But I'm confident I'm just as much an AdSense expert as he is, maybe even more. What I am not, however, is a skilled salesman nor copywriter. That's what Joel Comm is.

Let's face the facts, there's no way to go from making a couple of dollars a day with AdSense to thousands of dollars a day, just by changing the placement and colors. If Joel Comm makes five-figure AdSense checks it has more to do with his traffic volume than his knowledge of AdSense.

That's the secret he doesn't tell you.

One thing for certain, Joel Comm has made a name for himself as an AdSense god, if anything, he's just really good at making you believe it.

The Best AdSense Sizes

2007-09-06T09:47:00.000-07:00

In my experience with using AdSense, it seems the best AdSense sizes are the skyscrapers, 120x600 and 160x600.

I haven't yet figured out which of the two is better.

Keep in mind however, that the best sizes will vary depending on the design of your website, and the placement of the AdSense unit. In reality, other sizes such as the 728x90 or the 300x250 may outperform the skyscrapers based on site design and ad placement.

It's also well accepted that AdSense units placed within the content, particularly inside the body of an article, outperforms skyscrapers placed on a side column. In that sense, the square-shaped sizes such as the 300x250 will outperform skyscrapers when used in this way.

If you publish a blog, you'll know that placing a 300x250 unit will sometimes interfere with images appearing inside the article. For this reason, bloggers tend to shy away from using in-content placements.

Take a look at the permanent URL for this article (click here) and notice that the upper-right of the article has a 200x200 AdSense unit, and that I never place an image at the top of the article. What images I may use, always appear well into the middle of the article so as not to interfere with the AdSense unit.

Still, I'd give the skyscrapers the title of the "best AdSense sizes" because they do perform well in side columns, and because they're in side-columns, you never have to worry about them interfering with content. It provides for greater artistic flexibility that way.

Keep in mind another general rule of thumb for identifying the best AdSense sizes are those sizes that display 4 to 5 ads per size.

AdSense Myths: You Need Traffic

2007-09-06T09:44:00.000-07:00

Many blogs focusing on "how to make money online" seem to put too much credit into traffic volume. That is, when they address the question of, "How come I haven't made any money yet?", they seem to point to low traffic as a primary cause.

I found this passage while reading an AdSense blog today...

First of all, try to figure out why you aren't making any money. Of course we all know by now that making money blogging is all about traffic. So, are you getting any traffic? If not, that is the first place to start. You need to concentrate on getting traffic to your blog, first and foremost.

Baloney!

I have a real estate blog, which I hardly ever post new stuff on. The blog gets very little traffic, because for one, I'm not a real estate expert, and two, real estate is such a tough niche to gain a foothold in, and three, I hardly ever post new stuff on it.

But I still get clicks on my AdSense units. And being that's it real estate, those clicks pay off REALLY well. If you measure that out over a month, it hauls in a decent sum.

Obviously, you do need some traffic, because somebody's gotta click those ads. But you don't need lots of traffic. If you can get just a trickle of traffic to your blog, and your blog focuses on a very high-paying niche (like real estate, personal finance, mesothelioma), you're still going to make enough to receive a check each month.

If you're having trouble getting clicks to your AdSense unit, traffic is usually the least of your problems. More often than not, the culprit is AdSense placement, AdSense sizes, and Contexutal relevancy. If you master those three, you can get some clicks on just a handful of visitors.

Link Units and Content Ads Blended Together

2007-09-04T14:57:00.000-07:00

Shawn Collins, the famed affiliate-manager of Club Mom, writes about a new type of AdSense creative that blends together link units with content ads...

http://affiliatetip.com/news/article001408.php

He discovered this new type of creative after perusing the ads on his blog one day.

They're essentially Content Ads, but with Link Units appearing at the bottom.

Here's one of them...

Google doesn't provide these creatives as an option on its AdSense setup, they're probably just being tested for now.

I've never had much luck with using Link Units. I've tried them in various places on my sites and blogs, even redesigning my navigation links to look just like them.

But these new "blended ads" has me a bit worried. The more ads crammed into one creative, the more cluttered it becomes, and the more it competes against the highest bidding ads. That can have the effect of reducing our overall earnings.

AdSense Optimization Includes Filenames Too

2007-09-04T10:01:00.000-07:00

If you're racking your brain trying to figure out why your AdSense creative is showing unrelated ads, check the words in your filename, directory, or even your domain name.

Yes, even those words are counted into the AdSense optimization algorithm.

That means you want to come up with directory names and filenames that are contextually relevant to your content. And use whole words! For example, do not abbreviate "dachshund" as "dach". Spell it out!

And be mindful of words that have double meanings. For example, "biker" can mean a motorcycle rider or a bicycle rider. You wouldn't want motorcycle ads showing up on your bicycle blog. In that case, avoid using "biker" as a filename, directory, or even domain name.

If you can't figure out what words will produce optimum AdSense ads, then just run a Google search for some words and see what AdWords display. Perhaps keep a list of words that work best, and use those for your directory names and filenames.

Also avoid using foreign words. If you use "escuela" instead of "school", you might run the risk of having spanish language AdSense on your site.

You can also utilize a coding system of numbers and letters as directory names and filenames if you want to totally remove this element from the AdSense optimization algorithm. Try something like, "HT983KD3445" as a filename. Though I'd recommend using your best keywords instead, you can still resort to this if you somehow need control.

Use AdSense to Boost Your e-Commerce Site

2007-09-02T19:28:00.000-07:00

If you operate an e-commerce site, one that sells products to consumers online, you can also supplement your site's income with AdSense.

AdSense can be "additive" to your e-commerce sales, as opposed to taking sales away from you. This is because not all of your site's visitors are going to buy something from you. They might just want to browse around, or perhaps buy something from you at a later date. You can use AdSense to monetize these visitors.

There's a woman who breeds lizards and tortoises and sells them online. She runs an e-commerce site called "Herp-titude"...

http://www.herp-titude.com

She asked me if I could help her earn some extra money by running advertising on her site. So, I suggested using AdSense since it runs automatically. (I should have referred her through an AdSense referral link, but I forgot about that, damn!)

So I explained to her about AdSense, which she knew nothing about! It's interesting to know that there are still so many website operators that don't know about it. She got her website approved, and I made some recommendations on what creative size to use, what colors to use, and where to place it.

She says she's earning a couple of dollars a day with AdSense, and her e-commerce sales have not dropped. Even if she's only earning a couple of bucks a day, that still equates to about $60.00 a month, and it's additive.

I advised that placing the AdSense creative within the body of her content would prove better, but being she's never ran ads on her site, she wanted to just try this for now. I also went on to recommend incorporating a blog within the site to publish news and tips, to create search engine food and increase visitors. She wants to do that also, but I got the sense that I was overwhelming her.

Multiple AdSense Units

2007-08-30T21:43:00.000-07:00

Google's program polices limit the number of AdSense ad units to three per webpage. An "ad unit" is the "AdSense for Content" unit, whether it's textual ads or image ads.

Running three of these ad units per page might be beneficial in certain cases, usually depending on what niche you're publishing in. Real Estate, for example, is rich with ads competing against each other, creating very high earnings per click (EPC) rates. Other niches might be much less competitive, and it would not make any sense to run several ad units.

When you run two or three ad units per page, a couple of dynamics start working against you...

Introduction of lower paying ads - more ad units per page means more lesser-bidding ads are displaying. This will have the effect of dragging down your overall EPC.

Competition between ad units - now each ad unit is competiting against each other for clicks, decreasing your chances of visitors clicking on the highest-bidding ads

Like I said before, it's not so bad if all of the ads were high-bidding ads. For example, if the top 12 ads for a specific keyword are bidding between $1.00 and $10.00 per click, then any click will produce great earnings for you. But if only the top two ads are bidding $1.00 or more, and the rest of the ads are bidding much lower at $0.06 to $0.12, then you'll end up a bunch of cheap ads competing against the two high-paying ads.

It's something you'll have to experiment with, and track closely. Make sure each ad unit has its own "channel", and track the combined earnings for all ad units. If you find the combined earnings decreasing as you introduce a second or third ad unit, then you'll know to remove the additional ad units.

Mixing Image Ads with Textual Ads

I don't advise running multiple ad units where one unit displays image ads, and another displays textual ads. In fact, I don't advise running AdSense image ads at all!

The reason is because image ads only display one ad per unit, and image ads tend to pay much poorly than textual ads. Making it worse is that some image ads display very compelling images designed to lure a lot of clicks. But these clicks pay poorly.

If you're going to run image ads, find another advertising network that pays purely on CPM, to monetize those visitors that don't click anything!

CNN Will Run AdSense

2007-08-29T22:08:00.000-07:00

Here's some big news that came out yesterday, courtest of BizJournals...

Google Inc.'s AdSense advertising program will appear on CNN.com, the two companies said Tuesday.

Atlanta-based CNN.com and Mountain View-based Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) said the agreement calls for the AdSense program to place "contextually relevant" ads alongside CNN.com content.

Under the terms of the deal, Google will serve as the exclusive provider of auction-based text advertisements throughout CNN.com.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

I don't think this is a sign that Google AdSense pays higher advertising earnings compared to CNN's own in-house advertising efforts.

Rather, I think this is more about CNN wanting to outsource it's advertising efforts to Google AdSense. That is, if Google can automate the process of signing up advertisers, and delivering contextual relevant ads to CNN, then that may provide potential cost-savings for CNN in the form of job elimination.

That in itself is revenue. If you don't have to spend your time courting advertisers, and maintaining relationships with them, it can save you time and money.

AdSense Click Fraud

2007-08-29T06:35:00.000-07:00

Click fraud on AdSense is a serious issue.

You can get kicked off of AdSense, even if you didn't do anything wrong.

For starters, consider this. The businesses that buy ads on AdWords don't just want clicks, they want purchases. That is, when they buy an ad on AdWords, they want someone to click on their ad, and then take action, usually by making a purchase, or filling out a form, or subscribing to a mailing list. But if all they did was click their ad, look around and then go away, it's like a wasted click.

Google's reputation with AdWords hinges on its ability to drive customers who take action.

That's the whole reason why any business would buy an ad on AdWords, to get paying customers. But if it turns out that AdWords creates a reputation for bringing only a bunch of lookie-loos, then why would a business want to buy their ads?

Click fraud is defined as anyone clicking on an ad without any interest in the ad. There are many reasons why someone would do this...

That someone is a website publisher clicking on an AdSense unit on their own website, to give themselves earnings

That someone is a friend of a website publisher, doing the same thing, but to give their friend some earnings

That someone is adversary of a website publisher, doing the same thing, in hopes of getting that publisher in trouble

That someone is a business who purchased an AdWords ad, and is trying to get their ad to rank higher on Google's paid listings

Click fraud can also include cases where a website publisher attempts to increase click throughs in a deceptive way, such as...

An AdSense unit on a mostly blank page, with a heading that says, "Click the link below to continue..."

An AdSense unit on any page, but with a heading that says, "Click these links, I need the money!"

If the folks at Google AdSense detect this is happening on your AdSense account, they'll suspend your account. Just visit any of the hundreds of webmaster forums and blogs to hear about other webmasters who lost their accounts.

I've read reports from webmasters who had their AdSense accounts suspended for no fault of their own. Someone was just clicking their AdSense units repeatedly. There have also been cases where someone's website simply had a demographic that was just useless for AdSense/AdWords; it wasn't click fraud at all, but just a bad demographic.

So, how does Google AdSense know that there's click fraud taking place on your account? They can determine this by looking at the Cookie ID on someone's computer, and how often they clicked on the same AdSense Unit on the same website.

To keep all this in perspective, Google's AdWords reputation is on the line. They need to deliver paying customers to their advertisers. Click fraud will ruin that reputation. That's why they're looking at your AdSense account!

Simple Designs Improve Click Through Rates

2007-08-28T17:17:00.000-07:00

One the factors that affect click through rates on AdSense is the complexity and simplicity of the webpage design.

Webpages that have a simple, clean look, tend to attract more clicks, than sites that are busy with lots of clutter.

Every element on a webpage will compete for attention from the visitor's eyes. The more elements on a webpage, the fewer clicks you'll get on your AdSense placements.

But don't go removing everything from your website in a zealous endeavor to boost your AdSense CTR. What you need to do instead, is to make sure the elements you have on your website are clearly identified as to what their purpose is.

That is, if you have a place on your webpage for reciprocal links, or a blogroll, then make sure they are labeled as such, and make sure this area has plenty of empty space around it so that it can be clearly recognized at a glance.

Remember, statistics show that about half of your visitors will stay at your website for only 5 seconds or less. What can you do to reduce that percentage? A simple clean website design will help them find the content they're looking for.

Here's a helpful tip...

Try to put yourself in the mind of someone who's visiting your website for the first time, and who has no idea what this website is about. When the website opens up on your web browser, on what area of the page do your eyes want to come to rest?

If your eyes tend to wander around, looking at all the elements, graphics, blinking buttons, and flash animation, then you're basically not looking at anything at all!

As a rule, your eyes should find a comfortable place on the webpage to rest on. Hopefully, that place is your main content. From that point, you surround it with other important elements like navigation links, a site logo, and ads.

Two-Column or Three-Column Designs

2007-08-27T16:43:00.000-07:00

Which blog design works better with AdSense, a two-column or three-column design?

My experience says to use the three-column design.

But specifically, use a three-column design like the one I'm using on this blog. I have two columns on the left, the first to hold "about us" information, and navigational links. The second to hold advertising.

I've experimented with various blog designs, including two-column designs, ones with the content on left, and ones with the content on the right. Right-sided content placement, with ads on the left, always seem to produce higher click through rates for AdSense.

I think the explanation for this is because people in the western world read everything from left-to-right, and from top-to-bottom. Hence, if you have ads on the left, people will glance over them quickly as their eyes come to rest on the content.

So, why would a three-column design produce higher click-through rates for AdSense, as opposed to two-column? I don't know exactly! I do know that when I look at a two-column blog and compare it a three-column, I find myself looking at the material in the middle column more often. Perhaps the eyes and brain are trained to believe that the column in the middle is always important, while the outside areas are less important.

Two years ago, I wrote an article on the very same subject, and published it on In Your Web...

http://www.inyourweb.com/2005/09/which-blog-designs-work-best.htm

Except on this article I said to place the content on the far left, and the two columns on the right. I went on to say that this produces more clicks on AdSense. However, in the two years since I wrote that article, I'm discovering the opposite is true, to place the content on the right, and the two other columns on the left!

Just goes to show that I'm constantly learning as I go along.

Getting Relevant Ads on AdSense

2007-08-26T21:26:00.000-07:00

The whole beauty behind AdSense is that it will automatically pick out ads relevant to your website's content.

Even though AdSense's algorithms do a pretty good job with this, it's still not perfect, and it's still a computer program making deciding relevance, not a human being.

The best thing you can do to improve ad relevancy is to write content that's focused on your subject matter. Don't stray off topic with anecdotes on your mother's cooking, or something cute your dog did. The keywords in those sentences cause AdSense to figure them into determine relevant ads.

Stuff your articles with keywords! Take a look at this very article, you'll notice that I have the word "AdSense" in every paragraph. I also have it in the domain name, and I also have it in the filename for this article "getting-relevant-ads-on-adsense.htm".

Here's a great AdSense optimization tip: Make sure you have your most relevant keyword in the HTML coding of your article. There are places where you can do this...

The TITLE tag

The META Keywords

The "Alt=" attribute of your images

The "Title=" attribute of your links

Over time, AdSense will monitor which ads are getting clicked on the most from your website, and will display them more often. This has the effect of optimizing the best ads to display. But you can help it get there faster by focusing your content on the subject matter, and including as many top-level keywords.

What AdSense Colors Work Best?

2007-08-25T21:23:00.000-07:00

My experience tells me that the best colors to use for your AdSense creatives are the same colors as your website.

More precisely, blend the AdSense creative into the background colors. Take a look at this website, and notice the AdSense 160x600 skyscraper ad in the second column. The background and border blends into the column.

There is another large following of AdSense publishers that says using background and border colors that are opposite of your website works best. To that, I can only say that each website is different. I'm just giving you my experience, which says to blend the colors into the background.

A few years ago, there was a concensus that blending the colors into the background attracted higher click through rates because visitors didn't realize that the AdSense creative were ads. They thought they were navigational links, and is why they received higher click through rates.

However, the concensus today is that this isn't actually the case. Blending the colors into the background seems to work well because it looks cleaner. That is, it doesn't give the website a cluttered look. Perhaps this allows visitors to see the ad text more easily.

I tend to give the Title colors on AdSense a brighter color than with the links on the rest of my website. Take a look at the AdSense skyscraper on this page, and notice that the links are a bright blue, whereas the links on other parts of this website are a darker blue. I want to give the AdSense creative just a little bit more shine without making the entire creative itself look annoying.

Best AdSense Placements

2007-08-25T20:48:00.000-07:00

The biggest question people have is "Where's the best place to put AdSense on my website?"

And the short answer is, "where people will see it the most".

But it's not that easy to figure out. It's actually a science.

My experience tells me to place it where...

Where people will see it most often

Where people will see it before they notice your content

Where it doesn't get in the way of your content

First consider this, statistics for most websites show that between 40% and 60% of your visitors will spend less than 5 seconds on your website. Yes, you read that right! Only 5 seconds, and about half of your visitors! The other 50% who stay longer, may range anywhere from 6 seconds to several hours.

Basically, the best place to display an ad, is "above the fold". That phrase means to display something on a webpage that doesn't require any scrolling. Usually, that's at or near the top of your webpage. If at least half of your visitors will stay no longer than 5 seconds, you HAVE TO place the ad above the fold if you want a shot at getting them to click.

The reason why you want to place it where visitors see it before seeing your content, is because you want to store some kind of "teaser" in their back of their mind. Once they've finished looking at your website, you want them to go back to the ad they saw.

The western world reads things from left to right, and from top to bottom. So, placing ads at the left and at the top of your content, will get these ads noticed more often.

Take a look at the design of this website that you're at. Sure enough, I have AdSense placed at the left of the content. I don't have any placed directly above the content, however I do have an AdSense Link Unit creative within the dark-gray bar above the content.

Google created this "heat map" shown on the right, that displays which placements end up getting the best click through rates.

The darker orange colors represent the higher click through rates.

Notice that best placements are in fact, the left, as well as directly above the content. This fits into what I said, that if you place AdSense where people see it first, they'll come back to it when they're finished looking at whatever else they want to see.

Finally, don't place AdSense where it interferes with the content, or purpose of the website. That just annoys your visitors, and creates a negative experience. Give them a positive experience and they'll more likely click on your ads.

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2007-08-24T22:59:00.000-07:00

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