| Google Adsense Tips For Maximum
Earnings And How To Avoid ' Smart Pricing ' |
| Posted: 4-05-2006 |
| Author: Robert Benjamin |
Almost everyone
has probably heard of AdSense by now, if not then I am
pretty sure you have seen AdSense and may have not even
known what it was. To explain AdSense, I must first tell
you a little about ' AdWords ', Adwords is a Pay-Per-Click
(PPC) advertising system that is available through Google
the search engine. You create a small text ad, which is
placed on Google's search result pages, the ads match
your websites subject or content. You bid or set a fee
that you are willing to pay Google every time someone
clicks on your ad, this is a great way to get highly targeted
traffic that can turn into sales, subscribers, or whatever
you are trying to achieve with your website traffic.
Now that I have explained Adwords, I can now tell you
about AdSense. AdSense makes it possible for website owners
to earn money by simply letting Google place ads on their
web pages. AdSense ads can be either text or images, the
ads can be altered to blend into the webpages, so they
don't make your site look junky or poorly designed. AdSense
ads are highly relevant to the content of most webpages,
for instance if you place AdSense ads on a webpage that
sells Coins, you will get ads about selling coins or other
coin related subjects. Every time a website visitor clicks
on one of the AdSense ads on your webpage, you earn money,
and every month after your first balance reaches one hundred
dollars, Google will send you a check or you can have
the money deposited into your checking account. The AdSense
program is a great way to earn extra money if you have
a website, it's easy to make a few dollars every day,
and some folks are making thousands of dollars per month
doing it.
When I first started Adsense, I placed the ads on my webpages
and it wasn't very long until I had made a small amount
of money, a few days later my account balance had grown
even more. I was pretty happy, but I thought to myself,
after reading a lot of articles, I am not making nearly
as much money as others are making with AdSense, something
must be wrong. Then I thought, maybe my website doesn't
get the traffic that the others are getting ? I chatted
with a lot of people on the internet that were in the
program, and I discovered that the amount of visitors
I get, was higher than some of the traffic they receive.
You may think that 200 - 400 unique visitors a day is
low for website traffic, you are very wrong, the average
website gets a lot less per day, especially if your website
is only a few months old or is not optimized for the search
engines, or it's subject matter has a very low search
demand.
If my website was getting a nice amount of traffic or
visitors, why was my AdSense earnings so low ? The first
thing that I discovered that was wrong was ' adsense ad
placement ', that's right, you have to study each webpage's
layout that you plan on placing the ads on. Wherever your
webpage has sections or areas that grab and hold the visitors
attention, this is a prime area to place a section of
AdSense ads, in other words, place the ads on your webpages
where folks will notice them. We are currently allowed
to place up to 3 different AdSense ad sections or groups
on each webpage. I found after some testing that the best
places for my ads are, just under the title or sub-title,
near the middle of the page, and near the end or bottom
of my page. If you place one section of AdSense ads near
the top of your webpage, folks entering your site will
probably notice the ads, and if they scroll down a ways
and theres more ads, that increases the odds that they
will notice them also. Probably the best place to place
one section of ads is at the bottom of your webpages,
right after your last bit of text or interesting reading,
but make sure you place the ads before any other links,
because when visitors are ready to leave your site, they
may leave by clicking on one of your ads, earning you
money, and if you have other links showing before your
ads, they may leave your site by clicking on one of them.
So after I studied the layout of all my webpages, I went
back through and repositioned the AdSense ads, almost
immediately I noticed my earnings increased.
I left my webpages alone, and about three months later
I received my first check in the mail, it wasn't a lot
of money but still for really doing no physical work I
was very glad to get it. My earnings slowly started getting
better and better after that first check, the next month
I received another check, then the following month I got
another and so on. After having been in the AdSense program
for about 8 months, and chatting with more folks who were
also in the program I found that my earnings were still
low compared to some other people.
I then discovered another method that increased my earnings
even more. I noticed that my ads stood out from the rest
of my webpages text and content. I had always thought,
I should make my ads a different color than my webpages
background so folks would notice my ads, and click on
them, I was totally wrong. Almost everyone that has been
on the internet for any length of time, has become so
accustomed to seeing banners and other flashy ads that
almost everyone now has what is called 'ad blindness',
that is, when they visit a site they are automatically
turned off or they ignore anything that looks like an
ad. I used the Adsense editor and I changed my ads background
and border colors so they matched the background color
of my webpages, and I changed the text color of the ads
so they matched the text color of my webpages content.
The ads blended in very well, to me they were barely noticeable
from the rest of my webpage, but right away the number
of clicks on the ads increased, and the earnings went
up even more.
I left my webpages alone and for another couple months
my earnings stayed about the same, I was content with
the results, but my earnings were still not as good as
some of the other folks who received roughly the same
amount of traffic that I did. Then I found out that they
had done something else to their AdSense ads, something
that made the ads seem to really get peoples attention,
they were placing images near the ads, it seemed adding
images made the ads look unique and it helped make the
amount of clicks on them rise. So I searched the internet
and I found some little icons and images that matched
the content of my webpages, and near where the Adsense
ads were shown, I displayed the images by adding a simple
html image tag. I asked google if adding the images was
within the AdSense rules, and I was advised that they
were fine as long as they didn't make folks click on the
ads, by this I mean, you cannot have a flashing sign that
says, ' click these ads ', or you shouldn't have a scantily
dressed girl pointing to the ads saying ' make me happy
- click here ' or stuff like that, just make some nice
little images that pertain to your webpages content.
The next couple months or so, my earnings still continued
rising slowly. By this time, besides my regular webpages
I had been working on several BLOG's pertaining to different
subjects, so I thought I might as well place AdSense ads
on all of my blogs also and make even more money. For
a couple weeks my earnings went up quite a bit, and I
was very happy, then all of a sudden, just like someone
turning off a switch, my AdSense earnings plummeted. I
was now making in a day, what I had made when I first
joined the program, what the heck happened I thought to
myself ? My traffic was still slowly rising, the number
of clicks was rising, but for some strange reason, the
earnings per click, (EPC) had dropped a lot, it was horrible.
Then I learned that Google had introduced a new feature
or system into the AdSense program, called 'smart pricing',
'smart pricing' automatically adjusts the cost of an ad
click. Using Googles system of analyzing AdSense data,
if it shows that a click from one of your webpages is
less likely to turn into an online sale, or other business
result for the Ad publisher, the amount you earn per click
in AdSense is greatly reduced. When 'smart pricing', was
introduced, some AdSense users saw their EPC drop to as
low as 3 cents a click, where before 'smart pricing',
that same click might of earned them a dollar or much
more, this was quite a drastic drop in earnings. What
is horrible about 'smart pricing', besides the earnings
loss to AdSense users, is that one site or webpage can
trigger it, and once triggered by that one webpage, it
effects your entire account and every webpage you have
will now earn substantially less per click. Remember awhile
back when I had added AdSense Ads to my BLOG's, that seemed
to be what had triggered smart pricing for me. The BLOG's
were on numerous subjects, but they were not business
or real professional sites, so hardly any business results
such as sales, occurred from folks clicking the ads on
these sites. After I removed the Adsense ads from the
BLOG's, it took about a week, then I noticed that the
EPC was once again climbing back up, yes the 'smart pricing',
spell had been broken.
If you are thinking about trying AdSense, or if you are
already in it, beware of the smart pricing curse, or if
it has already effected your earnings, try removing AdSense
ads from your webpages a few pages at a time, the smart-pricing
system is evaluated each week, so it will take a few days
to see if you have removed ads from the page(s) that triggered
it.
http://rwtroll.dealspot.hop.clickbank.net
You may publish this article in your ezine, newsletter
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About The Author:
Robert W. Benjamin has been in the software business on
the internet for over 5 years, and has been producing
low-cost software for the past 25+ years. He first released
software on the AMIGA and C64 computer systems in the
late 1970's-80's. http://rwtroll.dealspot.hop.clickbank.net/
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