Savvy Affiliate

Want to kick your AdSense up a notch?  Make sure you are following these tips

1) Blended Ads - Ideally your ads should be so unobtrusive that the reader doesn’t even know that they are their, but their mouse is magically drawn to point and click.  But in all seriousness if your ads look different than their surroundings (i.e. border or different background) than you are losing money.

2) Ads Placement Hot Spots - In order to get people to click on your links, you need to place your ads where people will see them.  For a blog that tends to be one of three places, either Above the content block, at the bottom of your post, or inside your post, like this.

3) Low Number Of Ads - Don’t over do the AdSense ads.  AdSense puts the highest paying ads on your site first.  The more AdSense blocks you have up, the less each one will pay on average.  If you limit yourself to only 1 AdSense block, you can maximize your revenue.

4) AdSense For Search - Consider replacing the regular search bar of on your site with a AdSense for search button.  AdSense for search can often pay more per click than your AdSense for content. Problogger does it, maybe you should think about it as well.

5) Look At Alternative Monetization Schemes - Although this post is supposed to be about optimizing AdSense, what you really care about is making the most money possible with your site.  AdSense can be one part of that, but it shouldn’t be your only method of making money.  What if AdSense decides to cut you off?  Can you recover?

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There Are Lots Of Things Your Can Do, But One Thing You Must Do

There is one very simple tip webmasters can use to increase their adsense earnings.  Although many people already do this, there are some that don’t.  How those people can easily increase their adsense earnings is by

Always make sure your adsense links are blue.   - You want your visitors to click on all of your adsense links as much as possible.   To click on your links they must know that there are links to be clicked on.    Some webmasters try to go fancy and edit the colors of the links to better match their site.  Don’t do this. 

Everyone recognizes blue links- Blue links harken back to the first days of the internet.  When people see blue text, especially blue underlined text they immediately recognize it as a link.  Other colored text, or text without underlines is not nearly as clear.  As such keep it simple, and keep your adsense links blue.

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Do More Ads Mean More Money?

One thing that new webmasters often do when they decide to first monetize their site is to immediately fill it up with adsense ads.  They display the maximum of 3 ads blocks, and usually include the search tool as well.   I am convinced that if Google didn’t limit the number of ads displayed then some people might have 5 or even 6 ad blocks on their page, convinced that having more ads would result in more profit.

But do more ads make more money?   Although it may be counter-intuitive having more adsense ads on your site may result in your making less money not more.   Consider Jane May, who saw a sharp increase in her profit when she went from 3 ad blocks to one.  Anecdotal evidence from other webmasters have shown similar experiences.   Show why do less ads make more money?

It’s all about CPC- Google always shows the most profitable (for them) adsense ads on your page.  Adwords buyers bid on keywords and Google ranks them according to their bids.   If you are showing only 1 adblock on your page you will only be displaying the top 1 or 2 bidders.  If you look at adwords, you will see that the top 3 bidders for a given keyword are often much more expensive than all the rest.  They bid high so that they can land in the top 3.  After advertisers are out of they top 3 on Adwords it is relatively unimportant where they land, so they can bid low.

Less Ads Increase Your CPC -  The less ads you display on your site, the higher each ad will pay.  If you have 3 ad blocks on your site the chance that any given user will click on the the more expensive ads is decreased.  By limiting the number of ads you display on your site, you can ensure that all your clicks are for the maximum mount of money.

Less Adsense Doesn’t Mean Less Ads - Just because you decide to limit the number of adsense blocks on your site to one in order to increase your CPC doesn’t mean you have to keep the number of ads on your site to 1.  By limiting the number of adsense ads you have the ability to increase your other ads without cluttering up your page!  Try limiting your adsense displays to 1 and try an additional monetization method such as text link ads.   I think that you will find that your total revenue from advertising will greatly increase.

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Is Adsense Losing Its Edge As A Revenue Source?

I often see questions on forums and blog comments from webmasters  who have seen a drop in their earnings or whose earnings haven’t grown as much as they thought that it would.  They ask if Adsense is dead as a money making source, and if they should look elsewhere for their revenue.

The answer is no, Adsense is very much alive and is in fact still growing.  Although this may be a shock to some webmasters, this comes right out of Google’s 2007 1st quarter report.

Comparing Year over Year earnings Google’s revenue shot up 46% from its network partners (Adsense) shot up 46% from the first quarter 2006 to the first quarter 2007.  More importantly, Google’s traffic acquistion cost, i.e. the amount of money paid to its partners, went up from $785 million to $1.125 Billion between 1Q06 and 1Q07.   Which means that there are 46% more adsense dollars out there this year than there were last year!

Looking at just the percentage of money that Google paid to its adsense partners vs. how much they brought in - In Q1 07 Google paid out $1.05 billion to its Adsense partners, they generated a net revenue of $1.35 billion off of Adsense.   Doing the math you can see that Google pays out ~43% of all its Adsense earnings!

What this means is that as Google grows, their adsense program continues to grow right along with it.   When you consider that Google is currently only capturing 5% of all the advertising dollars available in the United States, and much less than that in other parts of the world, you can see that Google’s growth potential is still tremendous.  As such, Adsense is a long way from being dead, in fact it is stronger than ever.

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The Google Adsense Team has recently issued a clarification on Where it is acceptable to place adsense

 Google did a good job of clearing up some confusion that I, and presumably some other bloggers had.   Basically they said that putting your adsense near navigation and content was fine, so that your users could see the ads and decide whether or not to click on them.

However it is not good to place your ads where users are likely to click on them by accident.  Doing this will result in too many misclicks in your account and your potential banning from Adsense.

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It’s A Common Question, So Here Is An Answer

One common question that people ask is how much can they make with adsense?  If you go to any blogger or affiliate forum you will see a question such as “I have a site which gets  200 unique visitors and 500 pages views a day.  How can I make with Adsense”

Although this number will very wildly by what industry your blog is in, a consensus answer seems to be that you can make $5 EPM.   The average blogger seems to make this amount, and my own experience seems to back that up.   In fact, over at online advertising they posted an article stating that Adsense Only Makes $1 EPM, and they got quite a few response, of varying emotions, stating that If you were only making $1 EPM with Adsense, you are doing something wrong.

So what does $5 EPM mean?  What it means is that for every thousand pageviews that your site gets, you will, on average, make $5 from Google Adsense.  Some of those earnings will in fact be from ads which pay based on the number of pageviews, but most will just be a function of

Your Page Views * Your Click Through Rate * Your Payment Per Click 

That is talked about in our article on The Adsense Equation.

So Do You Have Any Hard Numbers To Back That Up?- Although my blog is relatively new, not heavily monetized yet, and as such does not have enough page views to be statistically meaningful there is one blogger who is always happy to share his income.  John Chow stated that he made $1077 from Adsense in April.  He also states that he received 266,000 page views in that month.  Dividing that out gives him an $4.04 EPM.  Not too far off from our guesstimated $5 EPM.  It gets even closer when you consider he doesn’t have adsense on every page.   ( If you are wondering why I didn’t include his subscribers in those numbers, it is simply because the subscribers don’t see the ads and as such can’t be counted )

So How Can You Increase Your Earnings?  Well clearly if you have hit a roadblock as far as traffic goes, and you are already making more than $5 EPM from adsense you need to look at expanding your revenue in other ways.  ReviewMeis a monetization method for bloggers, as it allows bloggers to monetize their subscribers.  (Less Popular of course Is ReviewMen  … an opportunity for bloggers to make lots of money, but it does limit the topics your blog can cover )    Text Link Ads is another monetization method that is gaining in popularity

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Online Advertising has a recent post about the 7 levels of monetization for a blog

In it they rank the 7 levels of monetization, (with 1 being the worst), as

1) Adsense - Which they call they dregs

2) Affiliate Programs- A step above adsense, but barely

3) Ad networks - Now you are starting to make a decent amount of money

4) Automated Text Link Ads - Highly Automated, which is really nice

5) Fixed Text Link Ads - More work, you must sell them yourself

6) Graphical Banner Ads - Name Your own price

7) Fixed Monthly Sponsors - The Holy Grail.

I don’t entirely agree with what Online Advertising thinks.  For one I believe that they have too harsh a ranking of adsense.  They think that adsense pays only around $1 CPM, whereas I say that if you are getting less than $5 CPM with your adsense you need to do some Adsense optimization

I would rank that Worst Method of Advertising as Ad Networks- Ads networks give you the same disadvantages as Google Adsense, but without the benefits of customized ads to fit your site.  Next I would switch Fixed Text Link Ads with Automated Text Link Ads.  Although fixed text link ads can yield you a little bit more money, the shear time savings that automated text link ads can net you is well worth it.  The time savings can translate into more posts, which will make more money.

Other than that I agree with their levels of advertising.  As your site becomes more popular, consider trying to move up the scale. 

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Google recently put out a warning on where not to place your ads.  They put out this warning because they are worried that ads in those locations will result in too many inadvertant clicks by users not realizing what they are doing.  If Google has too many clicks of that nature, they are likely to be sued for click fraud.  Again.

So if you can’t put the ads by flash games, by your navigation, or by downloads, what can you do?

By analyzing those locations, we can determine where you should put your ads.  Those three places are all likely to get clicks.  Too many clicks.  So where can you put your ads that is also likely to get clicks?  By Images

Flash games, downloads, and navigation bars all draw attention.  What else draws attention?   Images.  If you have any kind of images on your site, experiment with putting your ads beside them, above them, and below them.  Try putting the ads near the caption.  People will look at the image, read the ads and click on the images?

Some might say that this is violating the spirit of Google’s policies.  However, everyone is striving to increase their click through rates.  Placing the ads beside images is a perfectly legitimate way to try to do so.

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Google Warns

Google recently put out a word of warning to advertisers about where they should place their adsense ads.  Google warns that if webmasters place the ads in the wrong spots, and their users mis-click on the ads too many times they can and will disable your account.

Places that Google doesn’t want you advertising

1) By Downloads - Google doesn’t want you to put your adsense ads near downloads.  They are afraid that too many people will mistak your ad for the download, resulting in fraudulent clicks

2) By Site Navigation - The same goes for site navigation.  If you put your adsense ads near the navigation of your site, especially near a pull down menu, you are asking for Google to end your account

3) By Flash Games - Flash games often involve active clicking.  Google is worried that by putting your adsense here, inadvertant mouse slips can result in fradulent dollars.

The bottom line is it isn’t worth getting kicked out of Adsense to try for a few extra dollars.  You should avoid putting ads in those places if at all possible.  So what does this tell us about where we should place the ads?  This article explains

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