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Monday 30 March 2009

AdSense is Stupid When...

There are times Google's heralded ad affiliate program isn't in your long term business interest. Oh no I said it!

AdSense isn't the unstoppable revenue engine for every eBusiness. Before I am taken out and flogged by the eCommerce pundits -- please let me explain what I mean in my defense.

I make revenues from AdSense at a very high click-through rate. I experience high click-through rates with AdSense without resorting to questionable tactics like tricking site users with photos (the AdSense trick and tip dujour).

So my perspective is from one who has made decent income from AdSense to fund aspects of his business like advertising seminars -- and outsourcing to his virtual assistants. Yes, AdSense is a legitimate and significant revenue source. However evaluate AdSense with some type of balance.

By now you may have heard about people like Joel Comm's six figure income with AdSense, or Jason Calacanis of Weblogs being on his way to generating 1 million dollars in AdSense revenue. Google's Ad revenue sharing affiliate program for publishers certainly seems to be an eSales Nirvana for many webmasters.

But there are obvious and not so obvious times not to use AdSense ads on your sites. Let's list - examine - and explain them below.

1. On Sales or Mini-sites

This is a no-brainer. If you are trying to sell a particular product that is important to your bottomline, you don't want AdSense ads distracting your customers from either joining your email list, or hindering your site's online sales process.

However I do see hybrid sites that are mini-sites or full scale eCommerce sites, with AdSense at the bottom of their pages. This might not be so bad since only 1% - 15% of your site visitors will either buy from you or fill out a form.

The thinking with this approach is you might as well make money from disinterested parties using up your server's bandwidth.

2. SEO Business Sites

If your livelihood depends on search engine optimization or marketing for a living you might want to think twice about displaying AdSense Ads on your site. I can tell you this from personal experience. I once was on top of MSN for search engine marketing in my local area. I concentrated on my local area because I found people felt more comfortable hiring an eCommerce consultant locally.

One day my site fails totally out of the MSN index. After intense study I noticed that I obviously had a filter on my site from MSN.

I analyzed all the top ranking sites in MSN and noticed the only difference between me and the other top ranking sites was I had Google AdSense ads on my site. Someone at MSN felt that my AdSense ads, and perhaps to a less extent, my book on SEO, was getting a free ride in the MSN search engine database.

In fact I noticed that there were no sites with AdSense ads for at least the first 3 pages. Plus the sites with AdSense were only using 1 ad unit at the bottom of the home page (there were very few of them in the top 5 pages).

I knew it was strange to not have AdSense ads on the top Internet marketing sites. This prompted me to scan other industries where I noticed the same trend.

Many of the leading SEO gurus have sites that have been banned from the top listings by the search engines. It seems the more visible you become, the more of a target your sites are to the search engine auditors.

Some of my sites are still on the top of MSN with AdSense ads but that doesn't mean they won't also be targets in the future.

Let's face the facts. MSN and Yahoo! have competing ad networks to Google's, and this competitive situation is rife for a potential backlash against SEO sites with AdSense ads.

Many SEOs will point to exceptions to this position. However you have been warned!

Think about it, how long will MSN and Yahoo! sit back and watch SEO driven websites use their search indexes to fund Google? Did you know SEO in MSN and Yahoo(!) --- is much easier to obtain.

Therefore optimized sites are creating an ad sales wealth transfer from MSN and Yahoo into the pockets of Google! It won't be long before Yahoo! and MSN begin to devalue ranking on AdSense sites in their databases -- if not outright ban them.

If you are in the search engine business stay search engine neutral, or create multiple sites for different search engines.

3. When AdSense Becomes Your Only Business Model

When you become so myopic in your thinking that you build a business solely on AdSense revenue -- think again my friend. Why build a business solely on the largess of Google?

I don't know if your realize it or not, but the sites making the real big AdSense money usually have a following that doesn't depend on the search engines. Internet mavens like Chris Pirillo or Joel Comm have been on the Internet a while and have followings for their websites. Therefore they can consistently make six figures with AdSense.

These content powerhouses are an asset to Google and not the other way around. But do you think Google is going to sit back and watch just anybody make big bucks off of their top rankings?

If you do a search on most keywords you will notice many of the top ranking sites are news sites, .gov sites, or .org sites these days. The only exception is in industries where these sites don't really exist like eCommerce industries (clothing, shopping, etc.).

No doubt in most industries you will notice a conspicuous scarity of AdSense sites in the top rankings. In other words don't bet your future fortunes on AdSense.

An IPO based on projections of AdSense revenue isn't in the future for the average eBusiness. Think of Google AdSense as supplemental income. Building a business solely on AdSense revenue isn't just silly -- it's just plain stupid.



About the author:
Kamau Austin is the publisher of over ten websites. See more of his eCommerce and Search Engine Commentary can be found at:
http://www.eInfoNEWs.comand http://www.SearchEnginePlan.com

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Sunday 29 March 2009

6 steps to Adsense Domination

When you make your living online, you realize the need for multiple streams of income.

One of the easiest and most lucrative ways to generate a secondary income, which also happens to be passive, is via Google’s Adsense program.

I’m sure you’ve read the claims of a few individuals generating five figure monthly incomes from Adsense. For many of you, I’m sure you are wondering why you aren’t making this same income yourself.

Well, wonder no more. If you follow my simple six step system, you will be well on your way to healthy Adsense profits within three months.

Are you ready? It’s now time to pay attention.

Step 1 – Preparation

The key to making money with Adsense is all about numbers. BIG numbers!
Sure, there are a few people making serious money with less than ten sites, but these are the exception. Your goal will be twenty-four sites in three months. That’s just TWO sites per week!
In order to accomplish this, I recommend one of the many available page generation tools available today.

Step 2 – Determine Your Markets

In order to maximize Adsense income with only twenty-four sites, you must know which markets are paying well.
To break this down even further, you need to know which keywords within those markets are paying the most.

Step 3 – Register you domains

Once you’ve identified and chosen your markets, you must register domains appropriate to those markets. For example, if your market is ‘Cabbage Patch Dolls’, a domain such as http://www.cabbage-patch-doll.com/ would be appropriate.

Step 4 – Create your site

Using your favorite page generation software and keyword list, it’s time to develop your site. There are several key points to bear in mind when you develop these specifically for Adsense.

1. Format – Always use the large 336x280 large rectangle.
2. Border – Match the same color as your background.
3. Background color - Border – Match the same color as your background.
4. Link = "0000CC"
5. Color_url = "999999"
6. Color_text = "333333"
7. Position – Far left or center and just above the page fold (Top 25% of site)

Step 5 – Verify and track your site

Visit your site and make sure all links work and that the sites appear to your satisfaction. You should also check out the ads Google is displaying. Are they targeted to your primary high paying keyword? If not, recreate your site using your high paying keyword in a higher density throughout your site.

Make sure you track your Adsense format, position, and traffic with a tracking system specifically designed for Adsense. Once you know your stats, you can adjust for maximum clickthroughs and higher revenues.

Step 6 – Get your site listed in the search engines

This is simple… no tricks involved. Simply rent links to your site. A PR7 or PR8 link will do the job. While I’ve simplified the process here, you are now armed with enough information and resources to make some serious money with Adsense.




About the author:
This article has been authored by Keith Baxter, the founder of http://www.topkeywordlists.com
If you want to maximize your Adsense income and learn how to drive massive amounts of traffic to your website from the search engines, visit the site now. Only 203 spots are available at the special low introductory rate.

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Thursday 26 March 2009

Adsense and the Surfer

AdSense is an easy program to grasp: it's a great form of an advertising bringing a lot of benefits to every person in the chain. And of course, seeing the results it can have on a business (and a publisher) people encourage this form of publicity.

For the browsing audience this is probably the most straightforward model available, because they can be directed to a lot of new sites they wouldn't have otherwise found. Needless to say, if you have an AdSense banner on your site, and a large number of visitors you'll know it offers a great financial benefit.

But why does it work for the people clicking the links, as opposed to a standard approach?

It is aided by today's society. With bloggers and information based articles on the internet, people may be encouraged to complete purchases, which adsense can provide links to relevant suppliers whilst also benefiting the publisher.

And the good thing about this is that it works for site visitors as well. In fact Google realized that by pleasing the people who are looking for something, and directing them to what they need faster, everybody wins.

It is because of this that a lot of websites promote through AdSense in both content and search. They do it because they ultimately learned that it works for everyone.

If we look in the past, we can realize that this kind of publicity has a great impact over the people, especially in the last few years. When we enter on a web site and we see a graphical banner, our first idea is to cancel it out of our mind, because it's of no concern to us.

That's why traditional banner advertising is wrong. It's precisely because people are becoming savvy that they don’t look at a flashy banner because they think they'll be losing their time with it.

We've gotten accustomed to banners that don't interest us. And we're accustomed to them having nice graphics. So we naturally associate the two things and think that a banner with nice graphics has nothing to tell us.

But we might look at a text-ad because we've grown accustomed to them being targeted at what we're looking for. Basically these advertisements have marketed themselves into being looked at by any visitor.

This is a typical "no fluff, just stuff" situation. And in the end it means the visitors will see what they're interested in, not some random cool graphics you throw at them.

As stated above, site visitors adopt this advertising mechanism, because it is efficient in leading them to pages of interest and can offer ton of things they really want to see. Someone coming across an article on adsense was probably looking for shoes or doing research on shoes when they came across the article.

And most importantly for everyone, including visitors, this scheme can only improve as the process gets further refined to make ads more relevant to what you're looking for, not just a couple of keywords on a site.

Nowadays, it is because of AdSense that Internet surfers are looking after more interesting related things from banners, and the companies behind the site (Google and the advertiser) need to have better ideas to display, as expectations have increased a great deal.

So could "Do no evil" actually work in today's cut throat competitive marketplace? Well, as you can see it can and it does. And you, as a visitor are the one who gets to enjoy this the most. Advertising becomes less of a burden and more of a benefit, and is still a benefit you can choose to ignore.

Less obtrusive banners; banners that you're actually likely to be interested in and click means you'll be less annoyed by surfing the web and feel like you as a visitor being offered a relevant service.

Although some may feel reluctant to read articles that are there purely to compel consumers, undoubtedly without this consideration they are useful. Ultimately the adverts mean that you don’t have to go back to your homepage every time you are compelled to complete a purchase.






Sunday 22 March 2009

When AdSense Goes AWOL

No matter how hard you work to optimize your page, there are going to be times when Google just can’t figure out which AdSense ad to deliver, so it defaults to delivering a PSA (Public Service Ad) instead.

Now I don’t have any problem with charities, but I give to the ones that I choose to give to. Since I don’t have a non-profit license of my own, the goal of my web site is to make money and I depend on Google AdSense revenues to help pay my bills. Someday I want it to fund my retirement as well, so I can’t afford to have non-revenue PSAs showing up on my site.

The good news is the Google understands the human’s basic greedy nature, so it provides us with an alternative to donating our precious web real estate to charitable organizations. That alternative is known as AdSense Alternate Ads.

As strange as it seems, this feature allows you to let Google competitors into your site. Don’t worry, Google is allowing it with their eyes wide open. They even tell you how to set up the alternate ad code to work on your site and they let you do it right in your AdSense control panel.

Once you add the code to your site, Google will pull ads from whatever service you defined rather than serve a PSA. Google will do that even if those ads are coming from Yahoo, or Overture, or your grandmother’s attic.

This goes a long way towards ensuring that you never lose an opportunity to monetize a visitor’s time spent on your site. How nice it is of Google to gives us that opportunity.

Who do you choose?

Ah, now that’s the big question. Most people head straight for Overture or Yahoo, but there are other fish in the sea worth considering. In fact, some of these fish make their living almost solely by serving replacement ads for PSAs. Run this search (http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official_s&hl=en&q=google+psa+alternatives&btnG=Google+Search) on Google and you’ll have plenty of options to choose from.

Why bother?

Sometimes Google doesn’t have any ads in its inventory to match your site’s keywords. Sometimes Google gets confused and can’t figure out which ads to deliver, so it grabs a PSA ad.

Google also has a not-so-readily-available list of what it calls “stop words”. When the Google AdSense spiders detect these words on your page they automatically trigger PSAs. Some of the more commonly known words include severe profanity (think: George Carlin’s 7 Words You Can’t Say on T.V), as well as other words which may very be quite legitimate for your site such as pharmaceutical, drugs, death, dying, abortion, and the list goes on and on. At least we THINK that it goes on and on but no one really knows for sure outside of a trusted few Google staffers.

But no matter what the reason, you don’t want non-revenue ads running on your site. There’s no excuse when Google makes it so easy to keep the revenue flowing.



About the author:
Diane provides marketing and internet profit tips.
For more Google AdSense tips, visit http://www.adsense.deeljeabiz.com
Email : deeljeabiz@gmail.com


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Saturday 7 March 2009

Where’s the best place to put Google Adsense Ads?

Why, on your web pages of course. Ok, just kidding. The real question should be: “Is there really any truth to the rumors that where you place those Google AdSense ads can actually improve response?” According to my best information, the answer to that question is: Yes.

Google’s own AdSense experts say that that there is a direct correlation between the placement of the AdSense ads and the resulting clickthrough.

When ads are placed in “content zones”, rather than in “advertising zones”, response rates on Google AdWords goes up. There are also indications showing that ads appearing on the right side of the page get clicked more than ads appearing on the left side.

Advertising analysts with degrees in human behavior and psychology have spent thousands of man-years (people-years?) studying how people read printed and Internet content and what it takes to get them to respond to ads. While some of these studies are proprietary, or are only available to anyone with $10,000 or more to spend on a copy, other studies have been made public and can be read by anyone who is interested.

Google themselves has released some relevant information which is focused directly on increasing your Google AdSense response. You can read their findings here (https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html).

Of course, all of the studies in the world aren’t worth a hill of beans if the findings don’t work on your web site. That’s why it is important to test, test and test again. Experiment with your Google AdSense placement and track the results over a period of time. Google provides response tracking tools in your AdSense control panel. Learn how to use them. As you begin to see what may be only subtle differences in response, you’ll be able to determine what works best for your particular site. But don’t get complacent. What’s working for you now might not work next month if you change your site design or content.

One of the most important factors in determining placement of your ads is the type of content that your site delivers. If you are primarily an e-commerce site, and you have a lot of pictures and ad copy for your own products competing for attention against AdSense ads, then it is going to be a particularly tough challenge getting any kind of decent Google AdSense clickthrough. It is situations like this that require very thorough testing and a lot of trial and error.

Blogs seem to have a lot of success generating high response rates to Google AdSense listings. Perhaps it’s because blog readers realize that ad revenue is the only way that their favorite blogmaster can keep the lights on, so the readers think of clicking on ads as a way to make a donation.

Regardless of what the experts say, your best bet is to tailor your Google AdSense ad placement to what your own experience shows works best for you. In the end, you’re the only expert who matters.




About the author:
Diane provides marketing and internet profit tips.
For more Google AdSense tips, visit http://www.adsense.deeljeabiz.com
Email : deeljeabiz@gmail.com





Wednesday 4 March 2009

What makes Google AdSense system so special?

The basic arrangement in which Google AdSense system works is such that Google has the basic control over the Ads that are displayed on the websites subscribed to Google AdSense system. Of course, the website owner can customize how an Ad looks and also block/filter certain types of Ads on their website. The Ads that Google serves are ‘Senseful’ Ads (these Ads are actually relevant to the topics that the website discusses/ caters-to). This is something that is not found in other advertising programs/systems. This creates a win-win situation for everyone.

The people who are visiting the website (that contains Google AdSense Ads) are doing so because they are interested in the product/service/topic that is discussed on that website. It would be of little use to them if you were to serve Ads that are not related to the topic in any way. On the other hand, Ads related to the topic of the website would really prove useful to the visitor. They might actually be interested in a product or service that is being advertised through Google AdSense Ads. So, website visitors get a richer experience due to AdSense program.

Website owners get revenue for displaying the Google AdSense Ads and for the clicks they receive on the Ads. So, they are happy too. As far as businesses/advertisers are concerned, they get a system (AdSense system) for targeted advertising that is both easy and economical to operate.

Moreover, Google AdSense Ads are presented in a much better way than the banner Ads or other types of Ads. Most of the Ads are simple text Ads that are clear and concise. The website owners find it easy and the advertisers find it easy too. Google AdSense is really one of the best advertising programs available today.






Sunday 1 March 2009

Treble your Adsense Income in 60 MInutes

Google's Adsense is one of the most powerful weapons in website publisher's arsenal. It enables you to monetize your sites easily and if used properly can generate a very healthy income. However, if you're not using it properly and maximizing the income you squeeze from it, your leaving money on the table – something we all hate doing.

Boosting your return from Adsense can be done very easily and quickly, and you'll be amazed by the results.

I ran Adsense on my sites for over a year before I discovered these techniques, and like many people, I though I was doing pretty well. My click through rates and CPM figures were very healthy, and I didn't honestly think that they could be improved a great deal. How wrong I was. Immediately after I implemented a few quick changes my click through rate more than doubled, and by doing some fine tuning I manged to get nearly three times as many people to click on the ads as had been previously doing so.

The first technique is one that was 'discovered' by the amazingly helpful Debs, on SiteSell's SBI! forums. When I read it originally, it made sense and I decided to goive it a go, but I wasn't prepared for the immediate impact it would have on my income. It involves making only a few simple changes to the format and positioning of your Adsense ads.

Firstly, forget about using banners or skyscrapers. These ad formats are almost universally ignored by surfers. Why? Because we've all been conditioned to recognize a skyscraper or banner as an advert and as these adverts are rarely of any interest, we ignore them. What's needed is a way of integrating Adsense ads into the editorial on your site as seamlessly as possible. To do this you need to do three things:

1. Use the 250 x 250 rectangle format
2. Make the background color of the ad the same as the background color of your site, or as close to it as possible.
3. Make the ads border less by setting the border color to be the same as the background color of the ad.

These changes can be made by logging into your Adsense account and creating a custom format. Just select the 250 x 250 ad format, and create a custom color palette. Use the color picker to pick the coor you want. The JavaScript is automatically generated at the foot of the page, ready for you to copy and paste into the pages on your site.

Now, you need to position your ads where surfers are most likely to click on them. Research using retina scanning technology has shown that the place that surfers tend to look at first and most often is the top left. I don't know the reasons for this, perhaps it's because that's where we're used to seeing the most useful search engine results (at the top of the rankings) and search engines are the sites we most often visit, so we automatically look at the same place on other sites.

Whatever the reasoning, as soon as I made the above changes to my Adsense ads, click through rates doubled, immediately.

The second technique is much newer and one which is entirely based on my own experience. Google has recently added a new type of Adsense format, called Ad links. This displays a series of links on your page in the same style of Ad unit as regular Adsense ads. When a user clicks a link they are taken to a page of adverts that resembles regular Google search results. As a publisher, you are paid every time a user clicks one of those ads.

Adventurous soul that I am, I jumped in with both feet and started to trial Ad links on my most visited pages as soon as it was launched. I'm using the four links in a square box format, positioned top left of my page content. After a few weeks of running Ad links alongside regular Adsense ads, it's clear that the return on Ad links is about a fifth to a quarter higher than regular ads. There's no clear reason for this but one explanation may lie in the fact that clicking on an Ad link takes the user to page of 'results'. When a user clicks on one of these, you are paid for the click. If the user finds what they want, great, if not, it seems that they hit the Back button on their browser and try again, just as you would for normal search engine results. Then they click on another result, and you get paid again. So it's possible to be paid more than once from the same Ad link click. Now, this reasoning is speculative, but it does make perfect sense in the light of my Ad links results.

Finally, Adsense has some excellent tracking statistics that allow you to track your results across a number of sites on a site by site, page by page, or just about any other basis you choose. This is a very powerful tool and you should use it to find out which ads are performing best for you and fine tune your Adsense and Ad link ads accordingly.

So you see, by spending an hour or so of your time making a few adjustments to the Adsense ads on your sites, you can very quickly treble your Adsense income. Give it a go, you'll be amazed by the results.




About the author:
Kenny Hemphill is the owner and publisher of The HDTV Tuner and has been using Adsense for two years.
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