Little Known 'Boring' Websites That Make Incredible Money With AdSense

LOS ANGELES — Jerry Alonzy figured he'd be working into his 70s at least.

As an independent handyman at the mercy of weather patterns near Hartford, Conn., he'd always made a decent income that rarely grew.

Then he found Google and his life changed. Alonzy, 57, now makes $120,000 a year from the ads Google places on his Natural Handyman website, and he couldn't be more thrilled.

"I put in two, maybe three hours a day on the site, and the checks pour in," he says. "What's not to like?"

In return for placing its ads on websites and blogs, Google pays Web publishers every time one of its ads are clicked. Those clicks help keep Alonzy and his wife living comfortably and talking about moving to Hawaii. "All I need is a laptop and a high-speed Internet connection, and I can live anywhere."

The Internet may be a young person's medium, but the retired and those nearing retirement such as Alonzy have found that they can work the Web just as well. Sometimes, such "Gray Googlers" can live a richer, more financially rewarding life than when they were supposedly working.

"Google isn't just for kids anymore," says Google executive Kim Scott, who runs the company's AdSense program, the ad platform that provides the income for Web publishers such as Alonzy and others.

Take Jerrold Foutz. The former Boeing engineer, 75, started a website a few years ago devoted to one of his passions — switching mode power supplies, which help drive, for instance, the inside of video cameras.

He put Google ads on his smpstech.com site four years ago. After just one month, the first Google check was for $800. The second check totaled $2,000.

"I thought, 'Wow,' " he said. "This was the most amazing thing that ever happened to me. Something I thought would make $50 a year now equals my Boeing retirement check."

That comes out to around $25,000 yearly.

Foutz's experience is not an anomaly.

After Hope Pryor's four kids left home, she grew intrigued with the Internet and learned how to design a Web page. She didn't want it to focus on just her, so she posted some of her favorite recipes on the site.

Now, her Cooks Recipes site is bringing in nearly $90,000 yearly, mostly from Google ads. The holidays are the biggest-producing months of the year.

"Last December alone, I netted $30,000 from Google," she says. "There's not too many people I know who can walk into a car dealership and buy two vehicles at one time. I did just that recently."

While the upside of working with AdSense sounds exhilarating, it's not that way for everybody.

Scott says she posted an unsold novel on Google and earns about $5 a month from the AdSense ads on the site. Al Needham, 74, who runs a site about the care of bees (bees-online.com) from his home near Boston, reaps about $250 a month.

"Forget about getting rich overnight," says Alonzy. "It takes time to learn."

Jennifer Slegg, a consultant whose JenSense blog is devoted to tips for using so-called contextual advertising, says the easy part is getting AdSense up and running. Google provides computer code that must be copied and pasted onto a website. Figuring out how to do that "is very easy for new publishers."

Foutz says even if you've never cut and pasted code before (hint: On Windows PCs, highlight the text, press Control C to copy, then Control V to paste it), "Just follow what Google says. They have very easy-to-understand instructions."

Hard work, big reward

Introduced in 2003, AdSense was an outgrowth of Google's AdWords program, which put sponsored ads at the top of search results at Google's own site. Google created AdSense as a way to expand beyond search listings and onto hundreds of thousands of websites and blogs.

Google rivals Yahoo and MSN have similar programs, but they have found limited acceptance on the Web, where Google dominates both search, with more than 50% market share, and search advertising, with 90%.

Now everyone from big sites such as the New York Times and CNN.com to mom and pop operations such as Cooks Recipes and Natural Handyman have the familiar "Ads by Google" text-box somewhere on their site.

"With AdSense, we fund creativity on any topic," says Google's Scott. "If you have a subject you know something about, write about it, find a like-minded audience on the Internet and we'll take care of monetizing the content."

Or, as Joel Comm, author of the AdSense guidebook The AdSense Code, puts it: "People are amazed. They say, 'Really, all I have to do is write, Google will put ads on my site and pay me?' Yes, it's that simple."

There is a little more to it. The folks who reap the biggest rewards put in long hours setting up their site and feeding it lots of content.

"Write about what you know, write like mad and often," says Alonzy. "The more you write, the more opportunities you have to make money. If you post 500 pages on a topic, you'll have 500 pages with ads, and many more potential clicks."

Google's computers scan the content on Web pages to match it with appropriate advertisers. Articles on Alonzy's website about how to keep mice away might result in ads for pest control services, while a recipe for turkey casserole at Cooks Recipes might generate ads for diet tips and beauty makeovers.

"The beauty of our system is that we have so many advertisers," says Scott. "The content may not change, but our ads change every day. So you'll always see something different there."

Slegg says the biggest mistake new AdSense publishers make is clicking on AdSense ads — their own or others. That's a big no-no in Googleland, and can get you dumped from the program.

The computer won't break

Alonzy and other Gray Googlers say they haven't experienced any problems working in a young person's world.

"Many people my age are scared of computers; they think they're going to break them," says Needham. "The computers aren't going to break. But you won't find out unless you get in there and try."

At $250 a month, Needham's site generates revenue in line with its niche audience of folks who want to learn about bees.

"I bring in enough to fund a free vacation to Key West every year for the family," says Needham, a retired Department of Defense employee.

One stumbling block for many people is translating a great idea into a nice-looking Web page.

In the past, creating a Web page required knowledge of complicated HTML computer code, or learning off-the-shelf Web design software such as Microsoft's FrontPage or Adobe's Dreamweaver.

Now, Google and Yahoo have free tools to create Web pages or blogs. And many Internet website-hosting companies (such as GoDaddy and Brinkster) have online site creators that come as part of their monthly fees. Apple's iWeb is another such tool. With these, AdSense can be automatically added to your pages with the click of a mouse.

"When you retire, you have to have some interests," says Needham. "This is my indoor activity. I did a search online for how to create a website and found lots of good help out there for nothing."

The Internet, he says, opened up a new world for him.

"I started searching for other sites about bees and met some people from Australia with similar interests. We've since become friends, and I went to Australia last year to visit."

The same thing happened with Gail Bjork, 63, who runs the Digicamhelp site from her home base near Tampa. She designed her site but made a friend online in Ireland who has since redesigned it for a more professional sheen.

"My background was art," says Bjork. "I was an art teacher. I didn't know about code. My friend does. So now she handles the design, and I operate the site."

Bjork is a former local school board member who ran a print shop with her husband. A camera buff, she started the site because her friends were always asking for photo tips.

"This started as something to help my friends, and I've gone from a 14-page site to one with over 700 pages," she says. "I'm legally retired now — but not mentally."

Her site brings in around $1,500 a month. Bjork's advice to others: "For anyone, no matter what age they are, if they find something they truly love, write about it. You have nothing to lose but time. And it could really pay off."

SOURCE: nichegeek.com

Google AdSense Tips: Part 2

6. Be aware of risks when you change ad layouts too much.

I once had a system on the server to randomly differ between various AdSense layouts on the same page. Doing so I was hoping to add some good variety to keep the ads at least somewhat interesting and notable. Shortly after I stopped doing so and simply included a rather big static area for the AdSense to "do what it wants," the AdSense revenues for that site increased. Now, I don't know if this was a coincidence of some sorts, as revenues often go down or up even when you don't do anything, but it might well have been that there was a connection between adding too much homemade randomization, and lowered revenues.

At another time, during the redesign of this blog, I switched from one ad format to another for the end-of-posts AdSense ad space. This, combined with perhaps other layout changes, suddenly cut the ad revenues in half for the blog. It took me some time to realize that I had some ad channels* set up for the specific old layout size, and by changing this I must have kicked out all those advertisers who were pushing their ads through the channel.

*This setting can be found at AdSense Setup -> Channels.

7. Use competing ad systems when AdSense doesn't seem to work for a site. 

At CoverBrowser.com, which shows galleries of comic and book covers and so on, I tried including AdSense ads in "non-annoying" places in the layout (including trying to use AdSense affiliate links via AdSense Setup -> Referrals), but this didn't seem to work at all. However I then tried "affiliating" the "buy" link below individual covers, utilizing the eBay affiliate commission system offered byAuctionAds.com*. (Disclosure: Patrick Gavin, co-owner of AuctionAds, paid me for consulting before on other projects, like Sketchcast.com.) This worked a lot better, and as it was simply connected to an existing site feature, it also didn't add clutter.

A good start to find other ad programs is to search foradsense alternatives on Google... you will see a lot of lists which are dedicated to competitors. (Note that some of these competitors may be US-only.) You may also want to join an ad or blog network like The Deck, Federated Media(disclosure: I was part of Federated Media before), or 9 Rules. Before joining such a network – which might require you to show them your traffic stats and so on – check if their typical ads and campaigns fit with your site layout and your general ad type preferences.

*CommissionJunction also offers an eBay affiliate system but CommissionJunction has really low usability, in my opinion; setting it up is confusing.

8. Sometimes you may get a sudden increase in traffic, hence ad clicks, but you can't locate the source of the traffic.

 I'm using Google Analytics to track my sites, though AdSense is also a good first indicator of traffic explosions... because it will show the combined page views of all your sites (provided you include AdSense on all of them), as opposed to Google Analytics, where you need to check site by site individually.

However, sometimes even with Google Analytics, you won't be able to locate the source of your traffic because there's no specific new popular referrer being shown (a referrer is the site linking to your site, provided people click on that link). In these cases, it may well be that your site has been discussed in a TV show or similar, as the show won't "link" to you (but audiences will be entering your domain manually into the browser when they like what the saw on TV). When you feel that there has been a traffic explosion sometimes you may get additional email feedback in regards to your site, and it makes sense for you to ask your visitor: where did you first find out about the site? Maybe the can let you know about the name of the TV show, or magazine, or other "offline" source responsible for the peak. 

9. Consider using AdSense even when the page doesn't get any traffic yet. 

Who knows, some day the traffic suddenly explodes, and you might not realize fast enough and thus miss out on the action (as sometimes, traffic goes as fast as it comes).

On the other hand, reversely I would suggest to never do a site just to make ad money with it. That kind of motivation may lead to spammy sites that don't help anyone really. (If a project is great, it's great even if it doesn't make any money.)

10. Making money with AdSense takes time. 

In my experience, it may take many months to years for a site to gain enough traffic to make OK money through AdSense... if ever. I have almost never experienced any site making quick and easy money with AdSense (though you may be getting quicker results than me of course, as it depends on so many variables!).

I think for any site getting a couple of thousands of visitors a day, you might want to start playing around with AdSense to see where it takes you (if you didn't already include AdSense anyway just to see what happens, and following up on tip #9). As you are paid in US-$, the actual benefit the ad revenue will bring depends on your local costs of living as well (you might even ponder moving or going on an extended holiday trip if your local costs of living are too high for your site revenues to cover).

SOURCE: blogoscoped.com

Google AdSense Tips: Part 1

Google just released a Newbie Central for their AdSense program, those ads webmasters can include on their site to earn money for every click on the ad from a visitor (if you're using the program, part of the advertiser budget will go to you, and the other part to Google). I wanted to add some tips from my own experience:

1. Ads can work well in-between other stuff. On a games site of mine, some of the games don't contain ads next to the game area; the AdSense ad will only be shown in-between game rounds. This is the time the visitor is not concentrating on performing a task but might take a small break, and be open to the option of visiting new sites.
2. Put too much emphasis on AdSense and your site may be linked to less. The more available space you dedicate to AdSense on your site, and the less you differentiate between ads and content in your design, the more money you earn with the program, right? Not quite. While pushing the AdSense may result in short-term gains, it might also convince some visitors that the site is too crowded to be worth visiting again. And some of those visitors may also be bloggers or other people who might otherwise help to promote your site with links to it. And the less your site gets linked to, the less traffic it gets, meaning AdSense revenues may go down in the long term.
3. Even if you get huge traffic, the AdSense income from the site is more dependent on the site type and audience. Google targets AdSense ads automatically to the site content. Or at least, it does so ideally – but some types of content fare better than others with this targeting. I noticed for instance that AdSense does better on a games site than on a technology blog. I also heard people say that AdSense does quite good on product oriented blogs; say, one post solely about the iPod; another post solely about Gadget XYZ, and so on.
4. Image ads can be relevant and work for you, but they might also apall some visitors. Google's AdSense program gives you the option to choose between a couple of different ad formats. Two main groups are text ads vs text & image ads. When you choose the latter, Google will deliver what they deem works best for your content (or so one would hope, and it would be in Google's best self-interest to serve you the best possible ad, it seems).
   
   However, Google doesn't really know your layout preferences, and they don't really understand when your audience thinks ads are "too much"; and considering image ads include Flash animations (which you can't disable, once you go for image ads), Flash animations may well push some people away. One thing you can do is to only show image ads in areas where they don't disturb the content, e.g. at the end of posts. Also, you might want to listen to visitor feedback on the ads being served; I received emails before that the blinking ad on this or that site made a person want to leave the site, at which point I blocked the specific advertiser via the AdSense Setup -> Competitive Ad Filter option.
5. When it comes to context sensitive targeting, you can increase or lower the importance of certain parts of your page. To help Google find a matching ad for your content, you can use the HTML comment syntax by encapsulating more important parts with
   

   <!-- google_ad_section_start -->
   ... your important site content here ...
   <!-- google_ad_section_end -->.

   Or, to lower the importance of a section, use:

   <!-- google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) -->
   ... your not so important site content here ...
   <!-- google_ad_section_end -->

   (Google notes that it may take up to 2 weeks for this change to your site will be taken into account by the AdSense.)
   
   What if your site doesn't have any good matchable content to begin with, though? Say, the page just includes an image. Well, for the reasons of search engine optimization but also ad optimization you might want to consider using at least a descriptive title, an explanatory footer containing the important keywords or keyphrases (the kind of footer that actually helps the human visitor by explaining what the page is about). In the case of image content, reasonable alt and title attribute texts should be used as well.*
   
   *Whatever you do, don't resort to "keyword-stuffing" as it doesn't help your visitors and may get your page ranked lower in search engines.

Read more: blogoscoped.com

Targeting the ads by keywords

At this time, AdSense only targets ads based on overall site content, not keywords or categories.

If you'd like to display ads related to specific topics on your website, we recommend including more text-based content about these topics, including complete sentences and paragraphs, to assist our crawlers in gathering information about your pages and determining relevant ads to display. Please note that it may take up to 1 or 2 weeks before any changes you make have an effect on your ad targeting.

SOURCE:  google.com

10 Tips and Techniques for Google AdSense ( 6 to 10 )

• Content: Another pretty obvious is to put good content on the pages where we inserted ads. The more keywords are on our content the more likely to display advertisements and thus many visitors who are interested in them.
• Ad Formats: Google gives us various formats to display ads, including two different types: Image and Text. In principle we can let Google place any announcements either. The skyscraper and MPU are the formats I found most interesting. It might also be the ability to rotate the display format if we have server-side tools.
• Smart Price: The Smart Price is when the price adsense pay for a click on an ad is very low around $ 0.02 when the normal price is much higher.
•  Sales potential: It is possible to provide sales leads to Google with ads. To illustrate this case we will as an example having two sections in a website: articles and comparisons of products. Some ads placed on section comparisons are more likely to become a potential sale and therefore earn income higher than in the articles section where Google probably made ​​a discount by not providing final sales to the advertiser.
• Be honest: Finally, although not directly related never do you click from other sites. Do not use tricks to illegally atribuirte income since the end everything falls under its own weight. Better to consider a system of effective ads in which the two sides are winners and avoid you cancel the account.

SOURCE:  itsusefulstuff.com

10 Tips and Techniques for Google AdSense ( 1 to 5 )

• Colors: The color palettes that will place ads on our site are a very important factor to consider. There are two sides: those who prefer to integrate the ads to web design and those who prefer to note the ads to attract visitors.
• Use search forms: Besides text ads we have the ability to add a custom search engine for our site. This, besides being a nice touch on the part of Google to add a content search on our site, can bring us benefits if visitors access to sponsored links within the search performed.
• Increase your website traffic: Obviously, the more users come to our site the more likely to get more benefits. It is important to follow some rules for better web design and therefore better search engine indexing and more visits from them.
• Location: Quite important is where we will place ads on our site. You have to find a place to not disturb yet allow us to obtain good results. Google recommends following a pattern of hot spots: One can observe that the left upper and middle areas are the most effective.
• Ethics in advertisements: Google prohibits using phrases like “Click here” or “Click on the ads”, you already must be clear. Nor is it possible besides being very annoying to visitors, place ads so that they merge with the content or web site menus.

SOURCE:  itsusefulstuff.com

Google Adsense Tips For A Blogger

Google Adsense Tips, 3 Ways to Add Google Adsense to Blogger, Adding a Google Adsense Widget to Blogger, How to Add a Google Adsense Widget to the Sidebar…

As the Blogger platform is owned by Google it is not surprising that Blogger makes it very easy to add Google Adsense to your Blogger Blogspot blog. In this tutorial you will learn about different ways to add Google Adsense to your blog. Along the way I will be offerring a few tips about best placement of Google Adsense units. I have aimed this Blogger tutorial at new bloggers and beginners and assumes no prior knowledge of Google Adsense. Bear in mind that before you can start to add Google Adsense to your Blogger blog you will need to have created an Adsense account.

3 Ways to Add Google Adsense to Blogger

There are two main ways how to add Google Adsense to Blogger: one is to use a Google Adsense widget and the other is to use a HTML/Javascript widget. There is also a third way, which is outside the scope of this article, which is to hard code the Adsense code directly into the template.

Adding a Google Adsense Widget to Blogger

An Adsense widget is a container for the Google Adsense code. Once created it is easy with Blogger’s powerful interface to drag and drop widgets into different positions within your template. Google Adsense widgets can be added to the header, sidebar, footer, or body of your blog. A Google Adsense widget is created when you click on an Add a Gadget button in the Layout > Page Elements menu and then select Adsense.

How to Add a Google Adsense Widget to the Sidebar

The simplest way to add Google Adsense is to select Adsense from the range of gadgets offered in the Layout > Page Elements page. Assuming you are using one of Blogger’s standard templates you will more than likely be adding a skyscraper unit 160×600 or similar to the sidebar.

Google will work out the color scheme of the ad unit for you according to your template. You can override these settings if need be and configure the colors manually but stick with the default unless you have good reason not to. Another decision you will need to make is about the format of the ad unit. You can choose between text only and text and image. Personally I prefer text units for sidebarsas you get more bites of the cherry than with an image unit. Images only advertise one thing while text units may provide up to 5 different links. However if you need a particular look you might still need to go for the image unit which is why Google offer this flexibility in the first place. Bear in mind that the combined text and image units are considered to be the highest earners.

Add an Adsense Widget to the Footer

Another not so widely used place for a Google Adsense unit is in the footer of your blog. If your template has a footer (eg Blogger standard templates like Minima and Rounders both have footer sections) you can add a Google ad unit to this area too. Footers are becoming increasingly popular places to add information like Archives and Follower widgets so visitors are getting used to the idea of scrolling down to the bottom of the page to check out the footer.

A linked 728×15 ad is a good choice for a footer position especially if you have a Followers widget enabled in the footer. I place this linked ad unit directly above the Followers widget. I suggest you make use of linked units if you can – you are allowed up to 3 linked units per page. Linked ad units can earn revenue if strategically placed on your blog. Do keep in mind though that Google Adsense units nearer the top and middle of the page are more visible and are likely to be your top performers.

HTML/Javascript Widget

The second way to add Google Adsense to your blog is to use a HTML/Javascript widget. Make use of these if you want to have more control over your advertising and track your Google ad units. To get the code in the first place you will need to login to Google Adsense and create each ad unit in the size of your choice from the Ads for Content menu. This will allow you to set up a unique channel for each ad unit you create so that you can identify which are your top performing units. For every new ad unit generated Google Adsense provides the code which you will need to copy and paste into a HTML/Javascript widget positioned in either the sidebar or the footer position.

How to Add Google Adsense Between Posts

Blogger is such a powerful Blogging platform with so many great features. One of these features is the facility to set Adsense to appear between blog posts. All that is needed is to navigate to Layout > Page Elements. Click on the edit Blog Posts link and check Show Ads Between Posts (last in the list)from the Select Items menu. I usually select 336×280 ad unit size as this gives a good ratio of links for the size. I also prefer text units for this position too as again you are more likely to have a visitor click on a link if they are presented with quite a few. Save and view your blog. Blogger automatically places one of three Google Adsense ads directly below each of the first three posts. If you want to space the ads further apart you can do so though in my experience there really is no advantage in doing this.


Remember that you can have up to three ad units and up to three linked ad units displayed at any one time. If you have ads in another part of your blog for instance Blogger will automatically recognise this and only display 2 other ad units. Sometimes I notice there is a bit of a glitch with Blogger and it may not display sidebar ads in favour of 3 ads in between posts so you might have to play around with this a little to get the positioning you want.

Note: To Center the Google Adsense Ad Unit

1. Go to Layout > Edit HTML
2. Check the Expand Widget Templates box
3. Make sure you back up your template before proceeding
4. Find the code block beginning with this line:

<data:defaultAdStart/>

1. Scroll down until you find these lines:

<div class=’inline-ad’>

<data:adCode/>

1. Change these lines to the following:

<div class=’inline-ad’>

<P ALIGN=’center’><data:adCode/></P>

1. Save template

Read more: infotech1s.com

Google Adds Currency Reporting Options To AdSense

By Chris Crum

Google announced that it has added a new currency feature to AdSense, enabling publishers to view performance reports in currencies other than their specified payment currency.

Apparently this has been a much-requested feature, and Google has responded accordingly.

You can access the feature in your AdSense account, where you’ll be presented with a bunch of currency options.

“Please note that when viewing performance reports in a different currency from your payment currency, monetary values might not be completely accurate due to currency fluctuations,” notesGoogle AdSense payments specialist Miki Noda. “In addition, changing your reporting currency will not affect the currency in which you get paid.”

Just go to the performance reports tab, click the Columns drop-down in the upper right corner, click the Currency drop-down, and choose a currency. Click apply. That’s pretty much all there is to it.

Image: Google

SOURCE:  webpronews.com

What You Need To Build An Effective Adsense Site

Need to Optimize your website, first read through our Search Engine Optimization articles to get the edge

What You Need To Build An Effective Adsense Site

One of the greatest lies about making money online is this: Build a site, put up some Adsense ads on it and you will be raking in the dough. If only that were true, but unfortunately it isn't that easy.

The trick to putting up an Adsense site that actually makes money is this: You need to have a site that displays ads with the most profitable keywords available and get traffic to your site the cheapest way possible.

So how do you know what are the most profitable keywords? You can use the Google AdWords Traffic estimator. The basic functionality is available for anyone to use, even without an AdWords account. Just enter your keywords in the text box at the top. You can leave all the other fields blank for now. Push the Continue button at the bottom of the page and you will see how much each of your keywords costs to get the #1-3 spot in Google AdWords.

How does this help you to find profitable Adsense keywords? First of all, you are splitting the price of the keyword with Google every time someone clicks on your ad. The actual percentage is not know, but most experts agree that it is about 50%. If a keyword costs $20 for the number 1 spot and someone clicks an ad on your page that uses that keyword, then you will get somewhere around $10!

You should know that high priced keywords do not mean high levels of traffic. The traffic estimator will also tell you the number of clicks per day that each keyword is getting in the number one spot. What you need are keywords that are a balance between the most money and the most clicks per day.

Another thing you need to know before building an Adsense site is which keywords to use to bring in the most traffic. You don't want to go up against ten million other sites that are all talking about the same thing that you are. What you need is a niche topic, something that people are hungry for information about. Here is a step by step process for finding a niche topic.

1. Download a free keyword tool from http://goodkeywords.com.

2. When you get it, enter the most general keyword about your topic that you can find. It will give you a list of related keywords from the Overture search engine along with the number of times each one of those keywords was searched for in the last month.

3. For every keyword that the Good Keywords gives you, enter the following search into Google: allintitle:yourkeyword. Look at the number of results that Google displays for each keyword.

4. Divide the number of results by the number of searches and you will come up with what is commonly referred to as the R/S ratio. In economics, this is called Supply/Demand.

5. Look for keywords that have a high number of search, but a low R/S ratio. I wouldn't choose any keyword unless there were at least 1000 searches per month and an R/S ratio of 2.0 or less.

6. Take the most profitable keywords in this group and build your Adsense pages around them.

Alright, so you have the most profitable keywords that are in high demand. You now need to have some content related to each keyword in order to get Goggle to put the right kind of ads on your page. You can either write this content yourself, or you can go to one of the many free article websites on the net and grab some free articles related to your keyword. Just make sure to give the author credit for the article, it's not nice to steal.

Once you have your article, start putting your Adsense ads in the middle of the article, about once every few paragraphs or so. I have found that this is the most effective way to get people to click on your ads. You are allowed up the three sets of Adsense ads per page, so place them wisely.

That is really all there is to making a profitable Adsense site. Just find the best keywords, get some articles about them, add your Adsense to them, drive traffic to these pages, and start making money.

Read more: stormwebhosting.co.za

Top 10 Ways to Supercharge Adsense

by Eric Reynolds

There is no question I hear more than, "How do I make more money with Adsense?" While most of this information is public, newbies seem to have a hard time finding everything in one place. So here are my top ten ways to supercharge your Google Adsense earnings, in no particular order (use these tips for the Yahoo Publisher's Network as well):

#1. Use the heat map! - Who has more information about Google Adsense than Google? If they are going to take the time to research the best placements for ads, why bother trying to figure it out yourself? They have more time and resources than you... trust them on this one. If you make more money, they make more money. Which brings me to #2...

#2. Did you know Google has an Adsense blog? - Updated frequently with Google tips on Adsense, this blog will give you some of the best information out there. Keep an eye on this one, it often has new posts that let you know of new features before they are officially released.

#3. Blend your ads in with the rest of your site - Take the time to change the ad colors to blend in with the rest of your site. It's been proven that a blended ad can perform better than the default ads.

#4. Don't have too much content on one page - This isn't something that a lot of people think about, but having too much content can confuse the Adsense system, creating some very irrelevant ads. If you must have a page that takes 45 minutes to scroll down, use section targeting tags ( and ).

#5. Stay on top of your stats - Check your stats daily! Click bombing (competitors clicking on your ads over and over) is real and can kill an account. Checking your stats lets you know where and when people are clicking. Also, use the channels feature. If you only check your stats once a month, be prepared to switch to the Yahoo Publisher's Network after being banned from Google.

#6. Use Adwords to target Adsense - Did you know that you can use Google's other network, Adwords, to drive traffic to your site? A cheap $0.05 keyword may bring you a visitor who clicks an ad on your site worth $1.00 per click. When used correctly this technique can bring you a large increase in Adsense earnings.

#7. Use the Leaderboard Ad (728×90) - This ad format has always been a winner for me. I have seen CTR (click through rate) go up an extra 3 percent when adding this ad format. I have also seen earnings decrease when removing it.

#8. Read the Digital Point Forums - In my opinion, this is the single best Adsense resource on the Internet. When I have a question, this is where I go.

#9. Use keyword tools - If you are one of those people that like to try and target high paying keywords, use the Keyword Selector Tool from Overture (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion). I'm not someone who creates posts based around certain keywords, but this technique does work.

#10. Increase your traffic - Traffic equals money, simple as that. Make sure you are writing quality content, stay the course and stay away from posting about what you had for lunch just because you think you need another post. Use SEO (search engine optimization) to help the search engines find you. Last but not least, submit your articles to sites such as Digg, Fark, Del.icio.us, etc... who knows when an article with make it to the front page?

SOURCE:  voices.yahoo

AdSense revenue share

For displaying ads with AdSense for content, publishers receive 68% of the revenue recognized by Google in connection with the service. For AdSense for search, publishers receive 51% of the revenue recognized by Google. These percentages are consistent, regardless of a publisher's geographic location, and are not in any way averaged between publishers. We don't disclose the revenue share for other AdSense products; the revenue share varies for other products due to different costs of developing and supporting these products.

You can view revenue share details in your account:

In the "Account information" section, you'll see each revenue share displayed next to "Active products."

We believe our revenue share is extremely competitive. However, revenue shares alone can be misleading, so we encourage you to focus on the total revenue generated for your site. For example, if Google’s auction of ad inventory on your site generates $100, with our 68% revenue share you'd receive $68 through AdSense. Another ad network might offer an 80% revenue share, but only collect $50 from advertisers, so you'd receive $40.

With the vast number of advertisers competing to appear on AdSense sites, our system ensures that you're earning the most possible for every ad impression you receive.

SOURCE:  support.google.com

Simple Changes Doubled My Adsense Revenue

By Darren Rowse

Several simple changes in my Adsense approach and layout have almost doubled my blog’s revenue. The results were so drastic and eye opening that I convinced a friend (www.oneprojectcloser.com) to make the same changes to his blog with even better results. The changes involve two simple ideas that can be easily incorporated into any Adsense monetized website or blog.

I’ve been blogging for over two years now and growing traffic, authority and readership slow and steady. Along with the steady increase in traffic the site has continued to increase it’s Adsense revenue at a similar pace with no sudden increases regardless of all the changes and adjustments I’ve made. That was true until I took the time to study many different published Adsense approaches. As I read all of these different approaches three distinct ideas came to the forefront.

Three Important Adsense Approaches

• Less is More – This concept is really simple yet I hadn’t really given it much thought before. First off the top ad is the highest paying ad and you want that in the best possible position.

Secondly, if you’re using all three of the allotted Adsense units on a given page then there are quite a few ads all competing for attention or a click through. However, if you only use one Adsense unit then you’re limiting the number of ads served and improving the likelihood that one of those ads will get clicked. Therefore, the theory is that an advertiser will be willing to pay a higher rate for less competition.

• Size Matters – If you read enough Adsense guides you’ll find that the 336 x 280 Large Rectangle is the most effective Adsense unit. It typically offers four ads and they are likely to be very related to the topic based on the position between the post title and body.
• Position, Position, Position – Placing your Adsense unit above the fold is imperative for success. This makes sense to me for one reason. Every day my site (and I assume most sites) gets a majority of it’s traffic from search engines. This traffic is generated from people searching for something. So when they land on my page and they decide that it’s not the content they were looking for then I want them to see the Adsense unit right where they land so that becomes an “outclick” option.

My Old Adsense Layout Included:

1. 468 x 60 Text Only Unit located in the header area of my page.
2. 468 x 60 Text Only Unit located between the post title and the body of the post.
3. 468 x 60 Text Only Unit located at the end of the post before the comment section.

Revised Adsense Layout Includes:

1. Remove the old 468 x 60 Text Only Unit completely and replaced with an affiliate banner. The idea here is to remove some of the units in order to address concept #1 of Less is More.
2. Replace the old 468 x 60 Text Only Unit with the 336 x 280 large rectangle unit. This unit is above the fold between the post title and body which makes it a very prominent position. This change addresses both of concept #2 and #3 for Size Matters and Position.
3. Remove the old 468 x 60 Text Only Unit completely. I actually replaced this with the new Chitika Jumbo unit which is also performing quite well. Again the removal helps address the Less is More concept.

Summary Of Improved Adsense Layout

While I’d be naive to think that this will double any and all Adsense revenue for any site I think the principal is worth evaluating on all sites. The concept is really simple; make one large, well positioned ad do all the work. This will make your page look cleaner and it’s likely to improve your revenue immediately. It’s also important that you follow some of the basic suggestions of blended ads that match the color and fonts of your site. So far I’ve done this on two of my sites and a friend’s site with the same result, improved Adsense revenue.

Read more: problogger.net