Google's AdSense is a fascinating revenue-sharing opportunity for small, medium and large web sites.
Make money with AdSense
If you're a merchant running a lousy affiliate program, now's the time to improve it FAST.
AdSense is simple to join.
It's easy to paste a bit of code into your pages.
It's free to join.
You don't have to spend time finding advertisers.
Google provides well written, highly relevant ads – chosen to closely match the content on your pages.
You don't have to waste time choosing different ads for different pages.
You don't have to mess around with different code for various affiliate programs.
It's suitable for beginners or marketing veterans.
AdSense provides simple, easy-to-understand stats.
You can filter up to 200 URLs, so you can block ads for sites that don't meet your standards. You can also block strong competitors.
Inevitably, AdSense is competing strongly for space on web sites with all other revenue sharing opportunities.
If you own a small web site you can now plug a bit of code into your site and almost instantly relevant text ads that are likely to appeal to your visitors will appear on your pages.
As you can see, I'm really keen on this revenue sharing service. Unfortunately, there's no referral program – I can't earn money by telling you how good it is!
Disadvantages
One problem is inappropriate ads. You don't want spammy junk advertised on your site. Google's standards probably aren't as high as yours. You can filter out 200 URLs, but in some industries that won't be enough.
WARNING: To give you a good look at how AdSense works, I have filtered out only one site whose ads I don't want to appear on this page.
Also, I'd like to be able to identify and block ads that have very low payout rates, without doing a lot of sleuthing and messing around.
The ad panels say "Ads by Google" – free advertising for Google. You don't earn anything if someone clicks on that link.
The minimum payout is $100, which is regarded as too high by sites which don't receive much traffic. That won't worry experienced webmasters.
Also, sites that want to display AdSense ads may not include "other content-targeted and/or text-based ads on the pages displaying AdWords ads." However, human beings review the sites. Rejected sites have been able to appeal successfully.
"Confidentiality. You agree not to disclose Google Confidential Information without Google's prior written consent. 'Google Confidential Information' includes without limitation: ... (b) click-through rates or other statistics relating to Site performance in the Program provided to you by Google..."
That's really weird. Web site owners need to be able to share such information and discuss successes and failures.
A big disadvantage of the service is that Google doesn't say how much its AdSense partners will receive. You'll just receive an unknown share of the revenue.
Google says:
"How much will I earn through this program? The AdWords ads you are able to display on your content pages are cost-per-click (CPC) ads. This means that advertisers pay only when users click on ads. You'll receive a portion of the amount paid for clicks on AdWords ads on your website. Although we don't disclose the exact revenue share, our goal is to enable publishers to make as much or more than they could with other advertising networks."
Don't put all your eggs in the AdSense basket. If Google discovers fraudulent clicks on ads appearing on your pages, it can dump your site from the service, and refuse to pay you all revenue owed. Some webmasters who claim total innocence have had this happen to them.
Google has made several changes to its AdSense FAQ, clarifying varying things. For example, you CAN apply for separate accounts for separate web sites. I've done so, and checked with Google that it's OK. Read the rules – they look ambiguous to me. If in doubt, ask first! Google has added "channels" which improve the tracking. I strongly recommend that you experiment with these.
Sites with "excessive advertising" are being rejected.
Experiences with AdSense
The payment you receive per click depends on how much advertisers are paying per click to advertise using Google's AdWords service. Advertisers can pay as little as 5 cents per click and as high as $10 or $12 in profitable niches, perhaps even more sometimes. You earn a share of that.
So your payment rates can vary enormously.
In the past, I've talked to affiliates who were happy to receive $5 or $6 CPM (per 1,000 page views). My results from AdSense leave such affiliate revenues far behind.
If my results are typical, it helps enormously if you build very simple, uncluttered pages so that the ads catch the visitor's eye more than anything else.
Will those ads appear?
Publishers can choose to have their ads displayed only on Google or also on a large network of sites.
You can also use AdSense's preview tool to see which ads are being displayed to people in different countries.
Beware: If you choose certain topics, Google will not allow you to place AdSense ads on your site and you'll miss out on a very lucrative opportunity.
Such topics include gambling, firearms, ammunition, balisongs, butterfly knives, and brass knuckles; beer or alcohol; tobacco or tobacco-related products; and prescription drugs.
How much can you earn?
Let's say you have a goal of earning $100,000 a year from AdSense. Is that possible?
Let's see ... $100,000 divided by 365 = $274 a day. So your goal is to produce either:
274 pages which earn $1 a day
OR
548 pages which earn 50 cents a day
OR
1096 pages which earn 25 cents a day
The following are hypothetical cases. To earn $1 a day per page, you need, per page...
400 visitors, 5% click-through rate (CTR) and average 5c payout.
Or 200 visitors, 10% CTR and an average 5c payout.
Or 100 visitors, 10% CTR, and an average 10c payout.
Or 100 visitors, 5% CTR, and an average 20c payout.
Or 50 visitors, 10% CTR and 20c average payout.
Or 25 visitors, 20% CTR and 20c average payout.
Or 20 visitors, 10% CTR and 50c average payout.
Or 10 visitors, 20% CTR and 50c average payout.
Or 5 visitors, 20% CTR and $1 average payout.
Does that sound too tough? If so, you'd better look for more profitable keywords and ways to improve your click-through rates.
Let's try a different scenario. You choose more profitable keywords and make your $1 on average per page from, say, 10 visitors. 274 x 10 = 2740 pageviews a day.
That's looking easier to achieve. If your average visitor sees 3 pages, you now need 913 unique visitors a day.
Can't achieve those click-through rates and payouts? Then you'll either need more pages on your sites on more niche sites.
Some affiliates have a goal of writing one article a day and building one site a month.
Need a little more help reaching that $100,000 goal? Add affiliate commissions into the equation. Add a newsletter for repeat sales.
Choose the goal which best matches your site or sites.
Please note, because of the AdSense rules, these are all hypothetical cases. I'm not allowed to give real cases. Real CTR rates and payouts vary hugely.
It's fast
Google usually approves web sites in less than a day.
You can choose between either horizontal or skyscraper AdSense ads.
How AdSense matches ads to web pages
Google is doing a good job of finding ads that are highly relevant to the web pages.
Google says:
Occasionally Google gets it wrong. It places great importance on the file name. So be sure to use important keywords in the file name of each page, such as "contextual-advertising.html" for an article on contextual advertising.
You can check the relevance of the ads by looking at the text ads near the top-right of this page.
Sites using AdSense
Sites using AdSense include large information sites, affiliate-driven sites, forums and blogs.
"Chat" sites are considered not suitable. Some blogs are being rejected, but information-rich blogs are being accepted.
GoogleGuy explains AdSense
"...sites that provide solid content, especially niche sites that don't want to hunt down their own advertisers, should really benefit ... there's a whole universe of people who ... mostly produce informational sites, and the chance to recoup their costs without much effort is nice. I hope AdSense does encourage more diversity and voices on the web, because now smaller sites can work on what they're interested in – the content of their sites – without worrying very much about the costs of self-publishing information."
How to choose sites to block
The ability to block sites is especially important for sites that are not purely affiliate-income driven. For example, if you're selling a service or a product you won't want competitors' ads on your site.
You can find such competitors by doing some searches on Google for key phrases that are important on your site and looking at the AdWords ads that appear.
Affiliate programs versus AdSense earnings
Affiliate programs are often compared by looking at the EPC – earnings per click.
Here's how to calculate your CPM:
Let's say you earn $180 in affiliate commissions from 30 thousand (30,000) page views. $180 divided by 30 = $6. You have a CPM of $6. Not very inspiring, but not uncommon.
The AdSense stats display the effective CPM you earn.
If you have a very efficient site with a high conversion rate, AdSense may not be right for you – or perhaps it would be suitable for SOME pages, but not others. Remember, the more choices you give people, the more likely you are to confuse them.
However, if you're creating a large information site, or if you have a site that does not have a brilliant conversion rate, AdSense could prove to be a very profitable addition to your site.
How to boost your AdSense revenue
If you hear about people achieving high payments per click with AdSense, remember that's only part of the story. for high total earnings, you also need lots of page views and a high click-through rate.
Here are some ideas on how to achieve those three things:
If you're starting afresh designing a site specifically for AdSense revenue, you'll want a simple design that makes it easy to paste Google's code into a horizontal or vertical space on the site. For experienced webmasters, that's easy.
Use white space, so that the AdSense panel catches the eye.
Where possible, use ads high on the page. They catch visitors' attention.
Experiment with borderless ads high on the page. (You can create borderless ads by setting the border color to the same as the background color. Look in your AdSense control panel under "Ad settings".)
Try placing AdSense high in the left-hand column. That works well for super affiliate James Martell.
On very simple, one-column pages, making your article wrap around AdSense ads near the top-right of the page works remarkably well for me on a non-Internet marketing site.
Plain, bland pages with few competing hyperlinks result in higher click-through rates on the AdSense ads.
If you want to target certain high-priced keywords, use them in the file name, in the heading on the page, and in the first paragraph – in other words, use search engine optimization techniques.
If you change those keywords, Google will change the ads that appear on your page.
If you have trouble getting AdSense to serve relevant pages, check your anchor text – the words used in links on your page. Try changing some of those words.
Don't worry about losing traffic via those clicks. If you can earn maybe 30 or 50 cents or more per click, you WANT to lose visitors!
You'll also want keyword-rich pages, optimized to rank highly in search engines, so you can serve lots of pages.
Try using ads at the top of the page and again at the bottom. At first, this wasn't allowed but AdSense changed the rules and it's now OK.
One way to create articles quickly is use Gary Antosh's approach. He pays people to write articles for him - by the truckload. So far he has bought hundreds of them and paid only $5 per article. See How to buy articles for $5 - the details
For long-term success, write your own original articles on a topic you're passionate about. That way, you're writing for humans AND search engines.
Serious tracking to maximize profits
However, if you have a large site, you'll find AdSense tracking via channels is seriously lacking.
AdSense Tracker is a powerful php script that keeps detailed logs of all impressions and clicks on AdSense ads on all your websites without altering the ad code itself. The data can then be used to analyze the effectiveness of your sites, track different ad sizes and styles, or even individual pages.
You can track every click-through so you'll know what your visitors are looking for. This makes it easy for you to build more perfectly targeted, profitable pages.
If you just have a small site you probably don't need it. AdSense Tracker is a tool for professionals.
Keep in mind that some topics attract much higher payouts per click than others.
On the other hand, if you concentrate only on top-paying keywords, you'll face an awful lot of tough competition.
What you want are keywords that are high in demand and low in supply.
So do some careful keyword research before you build your pages.
Why are the wrong ads being displayed?
Here are four possibilities:
2. Advertisers can choose to advertise just on Google's search engine. They can opt out of advertising on the AdSense content network. Perhaps the advertisers you're interested in have opted out. To check, type a few phrases into Google and try to find some sites that are displaying Google ads and see which ads appear.
9 ways to do keyword research for AdSense pages
Here's how. Follow these steps. In step 2, "Create Ad Group", click on "Calculate Estimates" and "Recalculate Estimates". These show you the maximum you would have to pay per click to advertise for particular keywords or key phrases.
For finding new key phrases, you can also use the AdWords Keywords Tool. It may be useful. Sometimes it's not.
5. You can also experiment typing words into Overture's View Bids Tool. Let's say you type in "asbestos cancer". The top three advertisers often pay about $12 per click. So that would be an good choice for a topic – provided you're a specialist on mesothelioma.
For "debt consolidation", the top two advertisers often pay more than $9 per click.
For "debt consolidation", the top two advertisers often pay more than $9 per click.
Wordtracker has a free trial, but it's fairly limited. You can subscribe for as little as one day and do an awful lot of keyword research in that time.
I recommend you double check the results using Wordtracker.
SBI also has an "Analyze It" tool that helps you build keyword-rich pages that rank highly in search engines. It's simply superb. I use it and love it.
Site Build It! is an excellent choice for quickly building large, simple sites designed to rank highly in search engines – which makes it perfect for generating lots of AdSense revenue. Check it out.
QUICK SUMMARY: Build useful, simple sites – one topic per page – using valuable key phrases that are high in demand and low in supply. For researching, building and promoting easy-to-build sites that rank high in search engines, there's one suite of tools that's head and shoulders above all the rest – Site Build It!
Site Build It! builds sites that work for ANY small business. See the proof...
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