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Posted: 07 Feb 2010 06:34 AM PST

Guest post by Daniel Scocco from Daily Blog Tips.

I have been using Google AdSense to monetize my blogs and websites for as long as I remember. In fact it was the first method I ever tried (I made a whooping $15 on my first month… back in 2005). Over the years I migrated to other methods (e.g., direct sponsors and affiliate marketing), which made AdSense become merely an inventory filler. I was still making around $1,000 monthly from it, but whenever I could I would use other methods over it.

Then some months ago I started noticing an upward trend on the CPC of my sites, and I figured that I should give AdSense another try. I started applying some tricks here and there, and the next month I made over $3,000 with it (that is combining all my sites). I was pleasantly surprised, and I decided to keep using it actively on some sites.

In this article I want to share with you the tips and tricks I used to triple my AdSense earnings in one month.

1. I added units to my Big Websites

Daily Blog Tips and Daily Writing Tips are my largest websites in terms of traffic. They are getting close to one million monthly page views (combined). Despite that I was not using AdSense on them, mainly because the direct sponsorship model was working relatively well.

Some months ago I decided to load some AdSense units on the sites, however, and the results were very positive. Around 70% of the boost I generated to my earnings came from these two sites. At the same time I managed to keep the other monetization methods working fine, and no reader ever complained about the new ads (more on that later).

Even if your blog is already making money with direct sponsors and affiliate marketing, therefore, you could still manage to increment your earnings by strategically adding some AdSense units.

2. I added units to my Small Websites

As many webmasters do, I have a bunch of small websites scattered around the web. Some are on free hosted platforms like Blogger, and others are self hosted sites that I abandoned along the way. Most of these sites still get traffic, however. Not much, but combined the numbers get decent.

I figured that adding AdSense units to all these sites could yield some money, and I was right. The main reason is that, since these are abandoned sites and don’t have loyal visitors, I can place the units very aggressively. The result was a very high CTR (Click-through rate), which compensates the small traffic levels.

Don’t underestimate the earning potential of small websites, especially if you are willing to place AdSense units aggressively.

3. I used the Large Units

If you want to make money with AdSense you’ll inevitably need to use one of these units: the 336×280 large rectangle, the 300×250 rectangle, the 120×600 large skyscraper or the 728×90 leaderboard.

Whenever I tried to use smaller units the results were disappointing. Even if I positioned them aggressively the CTR was just too low.

All four units mentioned above can produce good results, but the best performing one is by far the 336×280 large rectangle, and that is the one I used to boost my earnings.

4. I placed the Units above the Fold

My first trial was to place the 336×280 large rectangle between the post and the comments section of my blogs. The results were OK. I then decided to try placing them below the post titles for one week, and the CTR skyrocketed. In fact I still need to find a placement/unit combination that will beat placing a 336×280 unit below post titles.

I knew this rule, but I guess I needed to test and get confirmation. The rule is: if you want to make money with Google AdSense, you must place your units above the fold.

5. I Focused on Organic Traffic

My main concern with adding a large AdSense unit right below my post titles was that some of the loyal readers could get annoyed with it. At the same time I knew that loyal readers become ad blind quite fast, and that the bulk of my money would come from organic visitors (i.e., people coming via search engines to my posts).

To solve this problem I decided to display the large rectangle only on posts older than seven days (using the Why Do Work WordPress plugin). It worked like a charm, as loyal readers don’t even notice the ad units when they are browsing through my recent posts, and organic visitors almost always see the ads because they usually land on posts older than seven days.

6. I started using AdSense for Search

I was not sure how much money I would be able to make with AdSense for Search, but I was not happy with the search results provided by WordPress, so I decided to give it a shot anyway.

Currently I am making around $60 monthly with AdSense for Search. It is not much, but if you sum it over one year we are talking about $720. On top of that the search results are as relevant as you’ll get, so it is a win win situation.

7. I started using AdSense for Feeds

Another AdSense product I decided to try was the AdSense for Feeds one. I opted to display the ads below my feed items (you can also place them on top, but this would be too intrusive in my opinion). The results here were pretty good, both in terms of CTR and earnings.

You obviously need a large RSS subscriber base to make this work, but I am guessing that even with a couple thousand subscribers you could already make $100 monthly from feed ads.

8. I played around with section targeting

Section targeting is an AdSense feature that allows you to suggest specific sections of your site that should be used when matching ads. You can read more about it here.

I found that on niche and small websites section targeting can help a lot. Often times Google was displaying unrelated ads on these sites because there weren’t enough pages. After using section targeting I managed to increase the relevancy of the ads and consequently the CTRs.

9. I tested with Different Colors and Fonts

If you enabled both image and text ads on your units you should be able to customize the colors and fonts. I did some testing with both of these factors, and it helped to increase the numbers. Nothing dramatic, but it was definitely worth my time.

You just need to track your CTR for a couple of weeks. Then change the color or font and track it for another week, seeing if you can beat the original CTR. If you can, keep the new format. If you the performance decreased, try a new color or font and track the CTR for another week, until you find the optimal combination.

On my sites the best results came from making the ad units merge with the look of the site, but on some sites contrasting colors perform better, so testing is a must.

Daniel is the owner of Daily Blog Tips. He is also the author of the Make Money Blogging ebook, which you can download for free by signing up to his newsletter.

Welcome to our first-ever guest blog post on Inside AdSense. We’re thrilled to have none other than Blogging Evangelist himself, Darren Rowse, to share his expert tips on AdSense optimisation.

Darren first discovered blogging in 2002, and initially thought he’d turn it into a hobby to supplement his full-time job. These days, Darren runs a handful of successful blogs, his most popular being Digital Photography School, and has co-authored a book. He also posts regular tips and advice on ProBlogger.net, a respected and successful resource for bloggers around the world.

We recently caught up with Darren at his home office in Melbourne Australia, and asked him about his experience with Google AdSense.

October 4, 2003 is a date I’ll never forget - that was a day that my life changed. It was the day that I discovered AdSense and added it to my very first blog. I added that first advertisement to my blog on a whim, with what I thought was the lofty dream that I might be able to pay for my blogs hosting costs. Over 5 years later, those little text ads have paid my mortgage, fed my family, and enabled me to move my blogging from a hobby, to a part time job, to a full time job and beyond.It’s not been an ‘overnight success’ by any means but as I’ve learned to use it, AdSense has been one of my highest online income streams.

My #1 Tip for Using AdSense

If I had to narrow my advice on using AdSense down to a single word it would be ‘experiment’. Let me explain.

That day back in October of 2003 I had no idea on what I was doing. The next day when I logged in to see how much I’d earned it was barely enough to buy me a coffee.

However, on that day I decided that those few dollars in earnings showed potential and I determined within myself to learn how best to use AdSense to grow that income. Almost everything I’ve learned since that day has been through trial and error.

It has been a long process of testing and tracking results. You see, while there are a few good home truths that seem to work on most sites, every website that I’ve used AdSense on is different. Some things work well on some sites, but it is rare to find something that will work on every site. As a result I tend to experiment with my use of AdSense in these six ways:

1. Ad Position - Most AdSense publishers have seen the neat little heat map that AdSense has produced to show where ads work best on websites. In general it works fairly well and is a great place to start, but make sure you experiment with new positions for ads and see what works best for your site.Hint: Ads near (or even surrounded by) content have worked the best. I’ve also found ads at the end of content perform well. People get to the end of reading your article and then are looking for something to do or click — an ad positioned there can work well.
2. Numbers of Ads - More ads earn more than less ads… don’t they? Unfortunately it isn’t always the case.Test different combinations and numbers of ad units on your site. There’s usually a ‘tipping point’ where you hit a ceiling of how many ads your users will accept — push it too far and you could hurt reader engagement, traffic, and in the long run your earnings. On the flip side of this, don’t be afraid to have more than one or two ads on a page, particularly if you have long pages with lots of content.
3. Ad Design - I can still see the first ads that I first used on my blog back in 2003. I can still see them because they fried their imprints into my retina — they were so LOUD!I figured that the ads would do best if people noticed them so I went for the most crazy color scheme I could come up with. Over the years I began to experiment with different combinations of ads and found that more subtle or blended ads tended to work best for me. Having said that, you can sometimes blend too much, to the point that the ads become invisible to your reader. So test different colors and designs of ads to see which work best. Use the ad rotating tool that AdSense offer publishers to rotate different designs to work against ad blindness among regular readers.
4. Ad Sizes - AdSense offers us a range of different ad sizes, so experiment with them all to see which works best. Hint: Some might think that the bigger the ad the better it performs. This is not always true.For example, I found that the ‘large rectangle’ ad (336 x 280) didn’t work as well for me as the smaller ‘medium rectangle’ ad (300 x 250). It turns out that more advertisers (at least those in my niche) prefer the medium rectangle ad as it’s a more standard ad unit size than the larger one. Again, the key is to experiment and see what works best for your site and niche.
5. Ad Formats - I’ve found that choosing image and text ads works better than just choosing text ads, but that’s not the only choice we get as AdSense publishers.AdSense also allow us to run link units, AdSense for search, etc. I’ve found that each of these different formats will work differently from site to site. I’ve had blogs where the link unit ads were the best performing units on the site while on other sites it didn’t really perform at all. You’ll never know unless you test it!
6. Which Content Converts? - One of the best advances that AdSense has made in the last year has been the integration between it and Google Analytics. To be honest I’m still digging into the metrics that this opens up, but the insight that this gives has amazing potential to increase earnings.By looking at this data you can see what type of content is converting and what isn’t. You can also see what type of traffic is converting and what isn’t. For example, I’ve found that search engine referrals are converting better than traffic from social media sites on one of my blogs. Knowing this is powerful as it tells you what type of ads to serve to what types of traffic, what type of promotion to put effort towards, and what type of content to write more of.

Test Track Test Track….

There are books, blogs, articles, forums, and other kinds of resources available to AdSense publishers to help them learn how to use AdSense better. However, in my experience the best way to learn is to ‘do’. Put time aside to try new things and then put more time aside to review what you learn.

But don’t leave it at that. When you learn something — test it against something else (do some research on A/B split testing to learn how to do this). This continual learning will help you to grow in your own expertise of AdSense and increase your earnings.

Posted by Darren Rowse - Blogging Evangelist and AdSense publisher

Friday, February 06, 2009 at 9:15:00 AM

Have you ever wanted to earn more money with Google Adsense? If you write and publish content for online marketing, I’m sure you have! The question of course is “How does one effectively optimize and organize his/her website content in order to increase his/her Adsense earnings?” The answer to this question can easily be summed up in three main steps: (1) keyword research (targeting terms and keywords with high search volume, and with as little competition as possible), (2) search engine optimization for traffic, and (3) split-testing and implementation of ad layouts that are proven to result in the most conversions (clicks).

Choosing Keywords to Target
Keyword research is an important part of online marketing. Whether you want to write articles or run Google Adwords campaigns, you should always start by doing your keyword research to figure out which keyword phrases you should target the most.
In contrast to many other Adsense publishers, I don’t target high paying Adsense keywords (well, at least not the highest paying keywords). What I usually do is target small niches and focus on getting high in the searches. Nonetheless, I must admit that optimizing your content with high paying Adsense keywords is certainly one of the best approaches to make more money with Google Adsense if of course you can overcome the competition and get a constant amount of traffic (higher Adsense paying keywords = higher Pay-per-click rates).
How to Find High Paying Adsense Keywords
Google Adwords provides a free keyword research tool to help publishers find keyword ideas and check out the highest paying Cost-Per-Click Keywords for Google Adsense, allowing them to run effective Google Adwords campaigns and write content with the highest paying keywords in mind.
If you already have a website, I would recommend that you check out your current keywords, and then optimize your content using related terms that have higher Cost-Per-Click rates.
Here is how you proceed:
1. First, go to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. It should look like this.

2. Select Website content
3. Enter your website URL
4. Click the Get keyword ideas button
5. Click the dropdown list arrow below Choose columns to display (Group keywords terms by common terms’ box should be checked)
6. Make sure that US dollars (USD $) is selected under Calculate estimates using different maximum CPC dib:
7. Type 100 in the box next to the dropdown list box and click the recalculate button
8. Click Estimated Avg. PCP title one time to sort by price and a second time to sort from highest to lowest.
10. Now you have a detailed list of high paying Adsense keywords that you can use to re-write your website content.
Finding New High Paying Adsense Keywords
You can increase your Adsense earnings even higher by adding new keywords to your current ones. Just follow the steps listed below:
1. Go to Google Adwords Keyword Tool
2. Select Descriptives words or phrases
3. Click the Use synonyms checkbox to select it if necessary
4. Type a keyword in the textbox
5. After typing in the characters in the picture, click the Get keyword ideas button
6. Click the Choose columns to display arrow and select show all in the dropdown list
7. Select US dollars (USD $) under Calculate estimates using different maximum CPC dib:
8. Type 100 in the box next to the dropdown list box and click the recalculate button
9. Click Estimated Avg. PCP title one time to sort by price and a second time to sort from highest to lowest.
10. Collect the highest paying keyword phrases, and use them when you write new content for your website.
Here are some high Cost-Per-Click keywords I’ve found using the method explained above:
school loan consolidation
school loans consolidation: $39.39
consolidate school loans: $35.02
consolidating school loan: $34.40
Domain name
available domain names: $24.60
buying a domain name: $22.25
buy domain name: $19.06
Note: Cost-Per-Click (different from Pay-Per-Click) is the amount of money an advertiser pays every time one of his/her ads is clicked. The publisher (that would be you) doesn’t get more than 60% of that amount.

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Affiliate Marketing Introduced 5
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Easy Profits Using PPC In Your Affiliate Marketing Business 15
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How To Avoid The 3 Most Common Affiliate Mistakes 23
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One of the best ways to get web surfers to see your products is to create a highly ranked website. Yet, to get a high Google or Yahoo rank, you need to have as much legitimate content as humanly possible.

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Since your content will be full of useful information, you will never have to worry about getting black listed by Google ever again!

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