3
Jan
2010
Optimizing Google AdSense For Revenue Generation
You have spent countless hours writing content for your website. It is a well designed site or blog, slick, has the most recent social media buttons added and is basically a seamless experience for those that visit. You’ve decided to integrate Google AdSense, hoping not only to boost your site but to make a few dollars on the side. After a week, you’ve checked your AdSense account and are a little dismayed to note that your account only has a few dollars in it, not enough to withdraw to your bank account. You are ready to remove AdSense from your site/blog and put it down to a failed attempt. STOP! Before you do, the question to ask yourself, did you integrate AdSense properly into your site/blog? Have you done your research on your target audience? Have you tweaked your AdSense Ads to maximize the opportunities for your viewers to click.
Here are some tips to help you increase your revenue from the AdSense.
- Make sure your ads look like part of the content. We are not into deception so what we’re saying is that do not make the ads blatant, as people will automatically turn off. What maybe surprising is that people respond better to the text ads. Banners typically have a response of 0.5% which is very poor meaning you would need copious amounts of traffic to your site to make any considerable money. Your AdSense ads should appear seamlessly integrated into the content.
- Remove border ads. Much like the above point, if you presently have borders around you AdSense ads, remove them and blend them into the same color as your site’s backdrop.
- Placement is essential to increasing clicks. There is no point on placing the ads at the bottom of the page if people have to read through large amounts of text to get there. The average person spends less than 30 seconds scanning a site for anything that catches their eye. If you don’t do it in that time, you have lost them. So placement is important. Right next to the body of text or a headline will be appropriate. But again, you don’t want to make it blatantly obvious that it’s an advertisement. So make sure you are able to distinguish that fine line.
- Your site is niche targeted. This means that your site/blog has content that targets a certain topic. By doing this, the Google AdSense Ads will contain Ads that are relevant to your readers. Relevance is the key word here. You will be surprised at the ads that come up. I run a free stuff site and since I target the topic of free stuff, the advertisements are closely aligned and highly relevant for my readers.
More about FreeStuff4Free
FreeStuff4Free.com is a website that specialises in finding cheabies, free samples and freebies. This site is visually compelling and easier to navigate than text based free sites. The site is updated daily and dead links removed regularly. There are no scams and all freebies are 100% legitimate.
1
Jan
2010
Optimising Your Site For Greater Adsense Revenue (Part 2)
A week ago, I wrote an article which was the first part of a two part series on fine-tuning Adsense to maximize your potential gains. If you missed it, you can get read it at http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?topic=11826&uid=176388282635. Today I conclude the topic with a couple more tips on helping you to maximize your revenue just that little bit more.
1) In the same way where Google likes content to be refreshed as frequently as possible, alternate between “image only” and “text only” advertisements. If it appears like the adverts are changing you will avoid advertising fatigue, and your click through rate will increase.
2) Integrate the AdSense code into your page so that the ads look like a normal part of your site. If it stands out too much, your visitors will know it is a deliberate advertisement and switch off.
3) Use the 4 and 5 link ad units wherever possible. Anecdotally they appear to have a much higher Click Through Rate than usual style advertisements. I haven’t done any official research but did notice that when I switched from the original 1 and 2 link ads to the 4 and 5 link ads that there was an immediate increase in click thru traffic. It does peak but stabilises at a Click Through Rate higher than previous.
4) If you want to exploit your earnings use the maximum multiple AdSense ads allowed which is 3 regular AdSense ads and 1 additional link unit. Again as I pointed out previously, use careful placement of these ads so they blend into your site and don’t divert from your content. By using the greatest number of advertisement boxes, your visitors will have viewed a variety of ads, not just the highest bidding advertisements. This again will relieve your customers from viewer fatigue. You can view an example at my free stuff site www.freestuff4free.com.
5) Customise your content to a particular niche or focus. Page content that is tailored towards a specific theme or key word will trigger Google ads that closely match the content and are therefore more likely to interest your visitors and inspire them to click. An example is free stuff or freebies sites. You will notice that the Google advertisements will automatically display companies that are either giving away something, running a contest or another freebie site trying to entice you away from your current site.
Hopefully you would have picked up on some good pointers to help you out in terms of increasing your revenue. Some formats and colors will work better than others, but you won’t know which until you test, do some research using analytics and adsense reporting and continue to tweak.
More about FreeStuff4Free
FreeStuff4Free.com is a website that specialises in finding coupons, free samples and freebies. This site is visually compelling and easier to navigate than text based free sites. The site is updated daily and dead links removed regularly. There are no scams and all freebies are 100% legitimate.
27
Dec
2009
Maintain Your Lifestyle Using AdSense
Google AdSense is a great way to supplement your web site’s income and if you haven’t already signed up, then you need to do it this instant! So what exactly is Google AdSense?
AdSense is an ad serving application run by Google. Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text, image, and video advertisements on their websites. These advertisements are governed by Google and generate revenue on either a per-click. You essentially sign up for free, paste some code on your website and every time an individual clicks the links on your site, you get paid a certain amount per click. Some clicks are worth more than others depending on the keyword the advertisement is targeting. This is because AdSense are contextually based ads, meaning that they show the links for people to click on based on the theme of your website.
For example if you have a website about free stuff then the advertisements AdSense will display will be generally be about free samples. Google is so intelligent they rotate the ads automatically and each ad contains advertisers that relate to the theme of the page. When a visitor to your site clicks on an ad you make a small commission. This could range from a few cents to several dollars on each click dependent on the site’s subject.
To maximise your earnings with AdSense follow a few simple instructions:
1) Adapt your page matter to a particular niche or focus. As you should know, page content that is tailored towards a specific theme is much more likely to trigger AdSense ads that closely match the content and is more likely to spark interest from your readers to click. My site focuses on free stuff, and often when I check the ads by Adsense closely align with my site’s content.
2) Blend your ads into your site’s theming. People are so conscious of advertisements that they’ll look over your AdSense ads if you make them look too much like actual ads. Remove the background and the border of your ads and make them merge with your own site’s background.
3) Never click on your own ads! It is enticing to earn that potential revenue for yourself but as we’ve mentioned before Google is clever and will find out and you’ll have your account suspended and you won’t get a payout.
If you just apply these 3 simple and effective tips, you will see an increase in your Google AdSense revenue and be well on your way to earning a sustainable second income.
More about FreeStuff4Free
FreeStuff4Free.com is a website that specialises in finding free stuff, free samples and freebies. This site is visually compelling and easier to navigate than text based free sites. The site is updated daily and dead links removed regularly. There are no scams and all freebies are 100% legitimate.
22
Dec
2009
Can Twitter Be Used To Make Money?
Is Twitter useful for business as a marketing tool? Since the hype peaked this year, I’ve often mulled over this question. Even during the peak of the hysteria over Twitter when Ashton Kutcher and CNN were racing to be the 1st to make it to 1 million followers, I just could not understand the hype. For those of you who have lived under a rock for the past 24 months and have no idea what I’m talking about, Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters shown on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or third party applications.
Whilst I do not think I will ever fully understand Twitter, it’s more a case of if you can’t beat them, then join them. So over the past 6 months, I’ve begun using Twitter to compliment my site where possible. Because I had no idea about Twitter, initially I was unsure on how to use it to generate revenue or traffic.
There are many uses of Twitter but I decided to use it to drive more traffic to my site and indirectly generate revenue through Adsense. Given my site focuses on free samples, the fact that I can use a free service is just great.
To begin with you will need to get followers. Basically I manually followed a couple of people and began from there. Obviously much like Google search, you want followers that are interested in your niche. So type your key word into Google and check out all the sites on Page 1. More than likely they will have a Twitter account. Start following all their followers and you will notice that you will increase in number. However after a while, you won’t want to keep manually following people because it’s time consuming. That’s where an automated following software comes in handy. We purchased a licence and have been using this service for a couple of months. We now have over 17K following us.
Also for efficiency sake, I’ve installed the Twitter bar that allows you to type your message into the URL bar for immediate posting instead of logging into my Twitter account. Once a day I update my Twitter account with the latest offerings and freebies, spending less than 5 minutes a day on Twitter.
All this and according to Google Analytics, I receive between 80-100 hits from Twitter a day. Is it worth it? Well I suggest it is after getting the initial setup. So whilst I still will never understand Twitter, as long as it continues to drive traffic to my site, I will use it.
More about FreeStuff4Free
FreeStuff4Free.com is a website that specialises in finding freebies, free samples and freebies. This site is visually compelling and easier to navigate than text based free sites. The site is updated daily and dead links removed regularly. There are no scams and all freebies are 100% legitimate.
15
Dec
2009
Optimising Your Site For Increased Adsense Income (Part 1)
For some time, I’ve been utilising Google Adsense on my site as a form of income. Whilst it’s not something I would give up my day job over, a couple of dollars here and there fast turns into a couple of hundred dollars a month. Can’t scoff at that.
But here’s the fantastic thing – no matter how much money AdSense is making for you right now, a few easy steps can increase that amount substantially. I read an article recently which I decided to implement and execute and managed to increase my Adsense income by 20%! If it’s that simple and there are tricks and tips on how to increase that revenue, then why not?
This is Part 1 that contains a selection of tips to help maximise your income from Adsense. Part 2 will be released shortly.
1) If you haven’t already done so, you must colour code your ads to match your web site palette exactly. Human psychology plays into this and research has demonstrated that people will click more willingly when adverts appear to be part of your site and not a stand alone function. Don’t use frames around your ads as that isolates the ads. Instead, in the AdSense code generation settings, make sure you choose the identical colour as your page background for the ad frame and the ad background. When choosing the adverts heading colours, match them to the equivalent colour of your page titles. Use the equivalent ad background shade as your page background. In addition, use the matching ad text font and colour as the wording on your pages. This one single tweak will possibly make the greatest difference to your click conversion rates.
2) Adapt your page matter to a particular niche or focus. As you should know, page content that is tailored towards a specific theme is much more likely to trigger AdWords ads that closely match the content and is more likely to spark interest from your readers to click. My site focuses on free samples, and often when I check the ads by Adsense closely align with my site’s content. It’s amazing!
3) Anecdotal study indicates that the horizontal banner design or leaderboard image ads are ineffective. This is possibly because they were the original ads and therefore people know it’s blatant advertising. So make sure you use the text based or vertical image adverts.
4) Get tips using Google’s own AdSense research at https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html to aid you in deciding where on to place the AdSense ad code. Placement is important. It needs to flow and feel like a part of the site.
5) Research competitive keywords using a keyword research or grab a list of the most popular keywords from various sources and use them in your web site pages where relevant. Targeting popular keywords will trigger AdSense ads on your pages that optimize those keywords. So the more popular the keyword or phrase, the higher AdWords advertisers are willing to pay per click therefore resulting in greater commissions.
Be on the lookout for Part 2 in a couple of days.
More about FreeStuff4Free
FreeStuff4Free.com is a website that specialises in finding free samples, free samples and freebies. This site is visually compelling and easier to navigate than text based free sites. The site is updated daily and dead links removed regularly. There are no scams and all freebies are 100% legitimate. Visit our website today for all your free stuff.