Placing Google AdSense ads on your website has to be one of the easiest ways to generate income with your site. Signup is free and all you have to do is put the ads on your site.

But easy does not always mean simple.

Google makes it easy to sign up, generate an ad and put it on your site, however, it's not always so simple designing your site for interest, finding high paying keywords and placing your ads so that they attract maximum clicks.

Here are a few surefire tips that will help draw interest to your site and your ads while helping you get the clicks that will make you money …

1. Build content rich sites

Content rich sites do several things for you. They keep viewers on your site because you are providing information of interest. It's also important to keep the information refreshed periodically with up-to-date and current content. This is not only useful for your viewers, the search engines like it as well.

Sites containing useful content will also help establish you as an expert in your field allowing viewers to respect your opinions and suggestions. But most importantly, good content will keep your viewers coming back to your site. They will bookmark your site more often and notify their friends a lot more.

2. Research and use higher paying keywords

Develop site pages using topics that contain high paying keywords while keeping the keywords relevant to your topic.

The Overture website has a free 'keywords bid tool' that is excellent for showing you what advertisers are paying for keywords.

For example, using this tool I can see that the keyword 'pet medication' has a maximum bid of $1.51 while the keyword 'pet name' has a maximum bid of $.11. If I were looking for informational pages to add to my pet site, the clear choice here would be to develop a page about pet medications and optimize that page for the keyword 'pet medication'.

3. Place your ads in the upper left hand quarter of your website

Studies show that people almost always scan your site from the top left working down. Placing a vertical skyscraper ad in that section can help increase your click through rate from 2% to as much as 30% or higher.

4. Don't use horizontal banners or ads

Google recommends that you use vertical as opposed to horizontal ads. Web surfers see lots of horizontal banners and ads and they almost instantaneously avoid them.

According to Google, wider ad formats such as the large rectangle and inline rectangle also tend to perform quite well. This is probably due to the fact that they are more reader friendly allowing you to read more text at a glance without having to skip a line and return to the left margin every few words.

My experience is that positioning these ads just before or just after your main content can increase your clickthrough rate substantially.

5. Avoid the Dead Zones

Google research has shown that there are zones within your site that won't generate clicks. These areas are the top right of your site, the bottom right-hand corner and the very bottom. Ads in these areas are often ignored. Keep your ads to the upper left, and center or just above or below your primary content.

6. Coordinate the ad colors to match your site colors

Google AdSense offers an array of colors that you can use to display your ads. Choose the two main colors of your site and use those colors for your ad. Keep the URL link of the ad in blue since this is the link color that most viewers are use to. The idea is to blend your ads with your site content so as to invite more clicks.

7. Follow the AdSense program policies to the letter

Google keeps a close eye on how their ads are displayed and they will cancel you immediately if you break the rules. Google AdSense is an excellent way to bring in some extra revenue so don't risk losing a good thing.

If you're marketing online, you might find that not everything you do or everything you promote brings in a steady income. 

Some months may be good, some months may be not so good, some products do well, and some don't. Every month can vary, there is one old standby that consistently bring in steady income for me – it's my AdSense earnings.  Every month I get a steady consistent income. 

That's because I have cool strategies I've learned, and no, they aren't my own strategies, for heaven sake my strategies were pulling my down, nope I listened to Joel Comm and purchased 'Adsense Secrets'.   It's amazing how just one subtle yet simple adjustment can increase earnings by 50%, and in many cases even more.

What's really cool is that Joel has just released his 2008 ver 4 of Adsense Secrets. Previous versions sold for $97 but now he's practically giving away for $9.95. 

I was puzzled at first at the low cost and thought perhaps he lowered the quality of the book but that wasn't the case at all, I did figure it out though  

If you purchase Adsense Secrets you'll be getting a small sales pitch for some other products Joel is marketing, which by the way are some excellent products so you may want to take a peek, but the additional sales page you are presented with is a small price to pay for getting the latest and greatest version of Adsense Secrets for $9.95. 

I also purchased my copy yesterday, read through it yesterday afternoon and already made a few AdSense changes last night, it's still too early to tell but I did notice this morning as I checked my Adsense earnings that they were UP!  

So it's already obvious to me that for $9.95 even just one good tip could boost my monthly income which makes it totally worth it to me. 

It's hard to say how long Joel will continue to offer Adsense Secrets for $9.95 but I wouldn't wait, he could end it at any time. 

===> Download your copy of Adsense Secrets today

So what’s the secret to getting Adsense to generate enough income to make it worth your while?

Here are a few Adsense tips for higher revenue that have worked for me.

Niche sites produce higher Adsense payouts

Niche web sites typically generate more revenue simply because of the better search engine placement they get from being tightly focused.  But not just any niche will do.  The idea is to choose a niche that does well in the advertising market and that merchants are willing to pay more for advertising.  Finance and loans is one such example.

Target the right keywords

To complement the above statement you need to find the keywords.  High paying keywords will point you to the high paying niche markets.

So you definitely want to find the keywords that pay the most.  Overture use to have a nifty keyword bidding tool that told you how much was being bid for a keyword however that tool is no longer available, too bad because I really liked it :- (  But after searching around for some time I came across Keyword Country

I found it to be quite useful for finding keywords. I’ve used Wordtracker a lot and still use it for my websites, blogs and advertising but found that it doesn’t give me the CPC and the variety of the high paying keyword data that I need for using Adsense.

The problem is that a keyword may have a cost per click (CPC) of $50 or more, but its estimated cost per click (EPC) may only be $0.80.  Consequently the problem to overcome is finding keywords that have a high CPC but also offer you a high EPC; you also need to know that there are enough advertisers for keywords. So you need a good tool that’s going to give you this information accurately and Keyword Country does a great job of giving you thorough data.

Placement of Adsense Ads
Google suggests that the wider ads perform better and this is because of their reader-friendly format.

If you have an article page, placing ads directly below the end of the article typically perform better. That’s probably because when a visitor finishes reading an article they are thinking about what to do next, if there’s a compelling ad right there for them, they are likely to click on it.

AdSense blocks wrapped between the quality content also works well.  You can use the medium or large rectangle format and place it in the flow of your content or to the right or left of it for best results.

For the websites having poor quality content, placing the Ads before the start of the content works well, but keep in mind that if you have a poor quality content website, you might get a high number of clicks, but you will be getting low priced ads. On the other hand, if you have quality content that keeps the visitors interested you may get a low CTR, but you will be getting high priced ads and regular visitors.

If you have horizontal links at the top of your page or at the bottom of your page that look like this:

Home  |  newsletter  |  About  |  Free Ebook  | Archives |  forum

Try displaying one of the following Adsense horizontal link units directly under your horizontal links:

(468×15) Displays up to 5 links
(468x15_4) Displays up to 4 links
(728×15) Displays up to 5 links
(728x15_4) Displays up to 4 links

Blend your Adsense Ads for Higher Revenue

If you can blend your ads into your website so as not to make them look like ads you’re likely to get more clicks.  For example, removing the border and changing the background color so it blends with your sites background color is a popular strategy.

Use the same color schemes for you ad that your website uses. If your headline text color is green then using green for your ad’s title will help it blend better.   I like to keep the text of the ad in black and I use a dark gray color for the actual link color.  Some suggest that keeping the link color in blue is better, however preferences vary there and I haven’t experienced much of a difference in click through either way.

Blending your ads is pretty standard stuff but I’m amazed at how many people don’t do this.

Use the Adsense Heat map
Google’s done their homework in this area and based on tests and experience their Adsense Heat map illustrates the best locations on your web page to place your ads for higher click through.

It’s also a good idea to keep your ads above the fold of your website.  Keep in mind that this map is just a guideline and everyone will experience different click through rates, so it’s always wise to experiment and take notes on what works and what doesn’t.

Google Adsense Update:

Google Adsense just recently updated (Feb, 2008) their Google AdSense Online Standard Terms and Conditions located at:

https://www.google.com/adsense/localized-terms

If you use Adsense you would have received a notice to agree to the changes.  What you may not have noticed is that Google is requiring Adsense users to update their website’s privacy policy.

If you look closely at the terms and conditions under the ‘program participation’ section, you will notice at the end of the paragraph the statement that says:

“You must have and abide by an appropriate privacy policy that clearly discloses that third parties may be placing and reading cookies on your users’ browser, or using web beacons to collect information, in the course of ads being served on your website.  Your privacy policy should also include information about user options for cookie management.”

This means that if you use Google Adsense Ads on your website you must place a notice within your privacy policy that mentions the above.  If you need an example you can have a look at my Homenotion Terms of Use.

For a lot more quality professional tips, Joel Comm, the Adsense specialist, is practically giving away his Adsense Secrets

Best,
Elizabeth

I've used Google Adsense ads for a few years now and they bring me in a steady paycheck each and every month.  However, if you use Adsense you may have noticed that your monthly income has declined a bit.

Now there are several theories for that, in fact Jason Lee Miller over at Webpronews has a few ideas that are definitely plausible but in my opinion, it's probably due to a combination of factors.

The bottom line is that whatever the reason, it's probably not a good idea to rely on Google Adsense as your sole source of income.  We all know Google likes to change things and what seems like a goldmine one month may turn into a lump of coal the next.

But I'm still a fan if Google Adsense and I use the ads on many of my websites because I can get a fair amount of income from them, however it helps to know that there are websites and website topics that can make it harder to make money with Google Adsense while others do very well.      

For example, political sites or blogs can generate tons of traffic but political ads don't generally pay very much.  Also it's hard to get the right ads to serve your site.  Political blogs generally take a political side or point of view and getting the right ads to complement your site's viewpoint is difficult at best. During election season there may be more advertising competition however typically they don't generate very high bids. 

The same is true for religious sites; again it's hard to serve ads that correctly relate to your sites beliefs or views and the ads don't pay well.

Celebrity or gossip sites don't do well either, you would think so since there are so many of them, but even though they can bring in high traffic they don't bring in a lot of high product value. You can associate celebrities with movie tickets, DVD's or concert tickets and try to promote those types of items on your site but as far as advertisers go, most aren't shelling out the big advertising bucks.

Other sites that tank when it comes to Google Adsense are gambling and adult content sites. Google doesn't allow advertising on sexually explicit sites and they are not fond of gambling either.  Not sure about drug sites but Google doesn't allow them for Adwords so they may not allow the Adsense ads either.

Now where Adsense does seem to do well is with Skincare.  I have a skin care site that covers several topics of skin care. The section of the site that gets the most traffic is the anti-aging skincare.  The products sold on that site bring me about 23% of the revenue while 77% comes from the Google Adsense ads.   Kind of sad for the products but the Adsense does very well.

Another top adsense earner are the tech blogs.  Most tech advertisers pay top advertising dollars, so it doesn't surprise me that tech sites do pretty well.  If you own an internet marketing website you may also notice your Adsense Ads do quite well.

I'm sure there are other sites that do pretty well with Google Adsense and I'm sure there are some that don't.

Leave a comment below and let us know about your Adsense experiences 
 
Try this Free PDF guide on how to use Adsense for making the most money on a consistent basis.

While reading Webpro news this morning over coffee I couldn't help but click on the item about 'Adsense Earnings Down'. 

It caught my eye because I've noticed a drop in Adsense earnings myself over the past few months and it appears that many others have as well.

According to Google, how much an ad pays can depend on a number of things such as the advertiser's bid, the quality of the ad, the other ads competing for the space, the start or end of an ad campaign, and other advertiser fluctuations, but what Google doesn't say much about is how much benefit is placed on what happens after the click such as whether there is a buy or if a form gets filled out, etc., …which is something I always wondered about. 

In any event, Google does stand by their 'Content is King", theory stating that the higher quality the site, the more likely the publisher gets high quality, costlier, better-converting ads.  

OK, add good content, yes I can get behind that, it's what I do but, like many things with Google they just aren't consistent with what they preach. What about the sites that violate Google's own rules like sites that have nothing but Google Ads but no content?

And of course, Google uses the old standby 'recession'. They hint that recession in the economy may mean recession in your Adsense payouts as well.

One possible nugget of hope that Webpro pointed out is that if you have many sites with one Adsense account, you could experience a hit on all of your sites, which indicates it may be better to create a separate account for each site.  Will this help, it remains to be seen.

What does all this mean?  It may mean that Google Adsense had a good run but in the overall scheme of things, this may be the start of a wind down. In my experience, what really counts when it comes to making money online is to create content that visitors will benefit from, establish trusting relationships with your visitors and practice good SEO and website optimization.

If your Google adsense revenue has gone down in the dumps have a look at Joel Comm's Google Adsense Secrets, at $9.95 he's practically giving it away.