The AdSense Formula for Making Money - 2

Adjusting the ads is something you can do almost immediately:

Position the ads on the page in order to make them more noticeable. Google even publishes a helpful heat map for AdSense publishers.

Choose the best AdSense ad format that works for your site.

Change the ad colors either to make the ads blend in with your site or to make them stand out. Again, it varies depending on the site.

Whatever you do, DO NOT ENTICE VISITORS TO CLICK THE ADS. Google is very strict about this, see the AdSense program policies for the details.

Increasing the Average AdSense Price Per Click

Increasing the average price per click you receive from AdSense is the other strategy for increasing your overall AdSense earnings. You can do this by:

Carefully targeting your content, and/or
Filtering out and avoiding low-paying ads

Content targeting isn't just about creating relevant, unique content. It's also making sure that that content is written to target the higher-paying keywords associated with a given topic. This means:

Figuring out which keyword variations for that topic pay more. Often the more specialized variations and phrases pay more than the "generic" terms.

Ensuring that the keyword density of the content favors the higher-paying keyword variations. See the Vioxx Lawsuits page for an example of well-targeted ads due to appropriate keyword density.

And to reduce the occurrence of lower-paying ads, consider these two strategies:

Use AdSense's competitive filter mechanism to screen out the ads that you don't want.

Show fewer ads on a page. The fewer ads you show, the more the higher-paying ads get displayed and clicked.

Many publishers also report that their earnings increase if they remove ads completely from pages with few or no clicks. Again, the "less is more" strategy favors the higher-paying ads.

There's No Magic

As you can see, there's no magic involved to increasing your AdSense earnings. The Fundamental AdSense Formula is easy to understand, but that doesn't mean it's easy to apply the formula. It takes time and effort to do it, just like most things.