What is Google AdSense?

What is Google AdSense?

by: Jakob Jelling

In the mid 1990’s websites used to earn income by receiving money from advertisers by publishing or allowing companies to deploy a banner ad campaign on your website. Usually these banners would be brilliantly designed to catch the eye of the consumer along with a short message. The website in turn would receive a tiny profit from a clickthrough, which was when a customer actually clicked on the banner and went into the website and purchased the product. This was considered trafficdriven income. It was the industry standard until Google came along.

Google has since revolutionized the clickthrough market by using an innovative approach to advertising, Google AdSense. The beauty behind getting involved with Google now more than any other search engine is due to Google’s straightforward approach to a banner/contentfree home page. You would sign up your website for affiliation with Google and upon approval your site would be given special code to place the targeted ads on your website. Basically saving Google the space and inconvenience of having to deal with banner ads.

You still may be wondering what Google AdSense actually does. AdSense is a program in which you get paid for targeting your readers to another websites product or service.

A click through is measured when someone actually clicks on the hyperlink. Many web sites now have Google AdSense ads employed. Google AdSense uses Google Adwords content and services in a display box that you place strategically on your website. Google Adword customers pay Google a determined amount of money which will be paid to the website from Google. Since the popularity of Google has risen to such prominence, AdSense affiliates can make a nice amount of money should they be able to deploy the Google AdSense box properly on their website.

Other sites like Earthlink and Ask.com also employ the same technologies through click through methodologies. The more people that visit popular sites and see your name or hyperlink associated with a product the better chance your site will be seen. Remember, you will be paid a small amount per click for some websites and much more for others. What determines the amount is how much the Adwords advertiser places on each click.

Advertisers can pay as little as .50 per click in upwards of $5 (even more). Often campaigns are budgeted for a period of time. The amount budgeted will be rationed over a period of days, the less days involved or the higher price per click the higher the ranking. The more traffic you receive will increase the possibility of a sale and a click through fee in your account.

In short, Google’s idea to market itself from the inside out has changed the way websites are doing business. Starting as an AdSense affiliate is a practical approach to making money using one of the hottest tools on the Internet today.

About The Author

Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.sitetube.com. Visit his website for the latest on planning, building, promoting and maintaining websites.

This article was posted on August 23, 2004

by Jakob Jelling

Are You Tired of Google Adsense How Steve Found

Are You Tired of Google Adsense How Steve Found a Replacement for Google Adsense

by: Steve McArthur

Many people who have tried to make money on the internet in the last couple of years have done quite well using Google Adsense, myself included. About this time last year I was making about $5,000 a month.

I was using several different software programs that are readily available such as Traffic Equalizer, Ranking Power, and Traffic Dynamo.

A few other programs were very promising, including one that I had high hopes for that used random text generation. Invariably I would create a new web site, put it up on a server, blog and ping it and away it would go.

The spiders would come and I would get good listings in Yahoo and Google which delivered a goodly amount of traffic, which in turn created above average Google Adsense incomes.

Alas, it was too good to be true. What always happened was that these types of machine generated sites would slowly begin to erode in ranking in the search engines therefore causing my Google Adsense income to slowly dissipate to almost nothing.

However, I finally chanced upon a Google Adsense substitute which allows me to generate a replacement for my lost income much easier than I did before with a lot less hassle.

Google Adsense is still a viable and great way to go if you have web sites that generate large amounts of traffic. However, my life is much simplier now that Iกm doing it a different way and to me simpler is better.

About The Author

Steve McArthur

Who else wants to earn $5 to $10 a day per domain?

I found an Adsense substitute http://www.exiee4.info/goldkey/

This article was posted on August 08

by Steve McArthur

The One Simple Trick That Can Double Your Adsense

The One Simple Trick That Can Double Your Adsense Revenue

by: Brad Bahr

Iกve been working with Googleกs Adsense program for a while now. If you’re not already in the program, why not take a look at it now at https://www.google.com/adsense. I really like Adsense. It makes me money and itกs easy to work with. Just some simple copy & paste into your webpage and you’re done. Right?

Wrong! You can do it that way if you want. Who knows? Maybe youกll get lucky and get a lot of clicks. But if you’re really serious about making a lot of money with the program, you’re going to have to tweak it a little.

Iกve invested quite a bit of time experimenting with the program. When I first signed up, I got some clicks and made a tiny bit of money. That wasn’t good enough. I knew there must be a way to get more of my visitors to click on the ads.

Google has a strict policy about not pointing to the ads in any way or asking people to click on them, so there were two things I couldn’t do. What else was there?

Then I remembered reading an article once that discussed the psychological impact of colors on the human mind. I started researching everything I could find on the subject.

After a lot of reading, many tests and periods of watching my clicks go up and down, I found the one color combination that seemed to work the best.

Testing previously done at supermarkets had revealed that the same product could pull more sales from just changing the colors of the label. What were these colors? Red and yellow! The combination of these two colors has an immediate impact on the person who sees them. They make your eyes stop and focus. They pull your eyes right to that part of the page. They grab your attention! Iกm not sure exactly why the combination of red and yellow does this, but it does. On one of my sites, I changed my Adsense ads to a bright red border and a yellow background with black text and URL.

My click through rate more than doubled with just that one simple change. Thatกs what worked on my site. Your siteกs color scheme may work better with a slightly different color combination. Try lots of different color variations. Make a change in the morning and let it ride for the whole day. The next morning, try a different set of colors. Change the border, background, text. Change everything you can. Most importantly, keep detailed records of the color scheme you used, click ratio and revenue generated.

After youกve done all the experimenting you want to, go back to the most profitable one and let it run for a week or so and see how it does. Iกm always trying different colors even after my run of good clicks with red and yellow. There are a lot of color combinations to choose from. You never know when youกll find just the right one.

(c) Brad Bahr All Rights reserved

http://www.nononsenseinternetmarketing.com

About The Author

Brad Bahr is the author of the NEW eBook: กHow to ‘reallyก Make Money on the Internetก. Itกs filled with no nonsense, practical information. To get your FREE copy of the book, go to ==> http://www.nononsenseinternetmarketing.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on March 19, 2004

by Brad Bahr

Google AdWords and AdSense A Dynamic Small Busin

Google AdWords and AdSense A Dynamic Small Business Marketing Duo

by: John Jantsch

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last year or so, you probably know that Google has become the king of the search engine hill. There are many reasons for this but number one in my opinion is that above all else they put value on content. Today I want to introduce you to two very powerful small business advertising options created by Google.

These two ingenious programs have all but revolutionized the way advertising is done on the web. Warning: If you are thinking…กweb advertising isn’t for me, I just need a few more clients around the blockก…you better read this or be prepared to have your competitors eat your lunch.

Goolge AdSense Again content is king at Google. This program allows web site กpublishersก to add some code from Google and receive กcontent relevantก ads on their site from other site owners. Here is an example those ads in the box on the right of the page are delivered by Google and are matched to the content on the page. When someone surfs to the page and decides to check out one of those ads, the web site owner earns a portion of the advertising revenue that Google collects.

The key here is that if you go to a site about quilting, you will see ads about quilting and not about dog grooming. I know this sounds so obvious but Google was the first to really figure this out.

This program has worked so well that some website owners are actually building content specific sites and paying for them solely through AdSense revenue. Small business owners should consider adding this feature to pages on their site for several reasons.

Iกve already mentioned the fact that there is money to be made, but what many site owners are finding is that because Google is so respected and because the ads are highly targeted…they are no longer looked at by surfers as ads, they are looked at as content.

Some will even go as far as to say that by putting the Google ads on your site you actually better your chances of higher rankings with Google. Google flatly denies this claim and I don’t think it is true but I do know that Google AdSense ads should be on every small business ownerกs site. (Google AdSense)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Another Warning: This is somewhat complex stuff. This article is only meant to introduce you to the power of these programs. Check out Google Cash by Chris Carpenter for a deeper understanding of ways to make this work for you.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Google AdWords Iกve already talked about those ads you see on websites, well those ads need to come from somewhere don’t they. AdWords is Googleกs program for advertisers.

Any site that wishes to participate bids for กkeywordsก that are relevant to their product, service, or site and then creates ads to attract hits. These ads show up on private websites, like this example, and on the right side of Google search results like this search for กFree sales letters and toolsก As you can see from this Google search you received the content related sites that you searched for but you also get some related ads that are sponsored.

Now here is where Google is genius. Instead of simply subjecting surfers to any ads that anyone is willing to pay for, they actually police the ads that are running. On some pay per click programs, whoever is willing to pay to most wins. Google uses a performance model. In other words an ad that is the most relevant and therefore receives the most clicks will move ahead of an ad that may pay more but isn’t as effective. This simple philosophy is why Google has quickly dominated the PPC world.

Okay…and now the really big innovation

Regional targeting. Google recently introduced a system that allows advertisers to target certain metropolitan markets only. In other words, a remodeling contractor who only wants to do kitchen remodels in say, Denver, can bid on the keyword phrase กkitchen remodelก and only have his ads show up for people who live in and around Denver.

The implication this has for local small business owners is staggering. In the example above, our Remodeler can now tap into highly targeted web traffic for pennies per lead. In my opinion, small business owner who learn the ins and outs of this medium will dominate their markets. (Google AdWords)

Look for more on this topic in the future.

Copyright 2004 John Jantsch

About The Author

John Jantsch is a marketing consultant based in Kansas City, Mo. He writes frequently on real world small business marketing tactics and is the creator of ขDuct Tape Marketingข a turnkey small business marketing system. Check out his blog at http://www.DuctTapeMarketing.com/weblog.php

This article was posted on April 01, 2004

by John Jantsch

Understanding Google AdSense

Understanding Google AdSense

by: S. Housley

Google AdSense allows webmasters to dynamically serve content relevant advertisements on web pages. If the visitor clicks one of the AdSense ads served to the website, the website owner is credited for the referral. Googleกs AdSense program essentially allows approved websites to dynamically serve Googleกs payperclick AdWord results.

Website maintenance related to AdSense is very easy and requires very little effort. Webmasters need only to insert a Google generated java script into the web page or website template. Googleกs spider parses the AdServing website and serves ads that relate to the websiteกs content. Google uses a combination of keyword matching and context analysis to determine what ads should be served. The java script calls the ad from Google and will ensure that ads are served each time a visitor goes to the web page.

Early on Google implemented a filtering system that allowed webmasters to prevent a specific domainกs ads from being served on any websites in their account. Ad blocking meant that webmasters could prevent their competitorกs ads from being dynamically served on their websites.

Google provides a wide variety of ad formats to match the most suitable option with a website. Webmasters can select from a handful of preformatted towers, inline rectangles, banners and buttons. The ad boxes can be modified by webmasters to resemble the websiteกs color scheme. Examples of how different the various text boxes and color schemes appear on similarly themed sites can be viewed at:

http://www.ringtonesoftware.com (scroll to the bottom)

http://www.ringtonescentral.com (scroll to the bottom)

or

http://www.policecentral.com (download left side)

http://www.policesupplies.com (scroll to the bottom)

Ads can be geotargeted based on the visitorกs location. Advertisements containing content in English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Japanese, or Spanish are all available.

Channels

Google recently introduced channels, enhancing AdSense reporting. When a channel is selected Google modifies the java script to include additional tracking. The additional tracking information allows webmasters to track a variety of metrics across their sites. Channels can be used to measure performance on various domains, differences in revenue with various ad sizes, or placement. By assigning each group of pages to a specific channel and comparing results in custom channel reports webmasters can work at increasing their AdSense revenue.

Optimizing

Google determines the content of the ads that are shown, webmasters serious about earning revenue from Google AdSense can use the following guidelines to optimize their website and ensure that targeted and relevant ads are served. If Googleกs spider has not crawled the site and determined the nature of the content, public service ads may be served. Public service ads will not accrue any AdSense revenue if clicked. As a result Google allows webmasters to designate alternate ads. Alternate ads allow webmasters to utilize the ad space in the event that Google is unable to serve targeted ads to the web page. By specifying an alternate image, HTML page, or ad server the advertising space can always being used effectively.

Web page content on pages that ads are served should be static not dynamic.

Ensure that the robot.txt does not prevent the web page from being spidered. Robots.txt fileกs will need to be removed or the following text will need to bedded to allow Googleกs content bot to crawl the site: Useragent: Media partners Google

If the website contains frames, select the ‘framed page’ checkbox when generating the ad layout code for that website.

The body of the page and title of the page should contain contextual words that indicate a common theme on the web page.

Revenue Earned

Although Google doesn’t disclose the exact revenue share or percentage that webmasters will earn, webmasters will receive a portion of the amount paid for clicks on Google ads on websites.

AdSense Conclusion:

Overall, Google AdWords can provide great supplemental income to webmasters with content sites. Implementing and maintaining Google AdSense program on a content site requires very little effort and can often bring a steady stream of additional revenue for webmasters.

About The Author

Sharon Housley manages marketing for NotePage, Inc. http://www.notepage.net a company specializing in alphanumeric paging, SMS and wireless messaging software solutions. Other sites by Sharon can be found at http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com, and http://www.smallbusinesssoftware.net

This article was posted on August 12, 2004

by S. Housley

Googleกs AdSense Soon To Have New Rival?

Googleกs AdSense Soon To Have New Rival?

by: Michael Cheney

A large part of Googleกs multibillion dollar annual turnover comes from its nifty AdSense advertising program. The software enables website owners to drop in a piece of code to their pages that then serves advertisements provided by Google.

How Does Google AdSense Work?

It all works dynamically and the adverts that are displayed based on the content of the page. So if a website owner places the Google AdSense code on a page about holidays then holiday ads are delivered onto the page automatically by Google.

Everybody wins because when people click on one of the ads the advertiser gets a visitor, Google can charge a rate for the clickthrough and the website owner who is serving the ad gets a share of this revenue.

Itกs been an excellent model for all parties concerned and especially as Google has enabled even small website owners to take part which means accumulatively Googleกs advertising real estate is absolutely vast.

Is The Monopoly Over?

But there may be trouble ahead for Google as, according to sources at CNETNews, Yahoo! is planning a very similar service to challenge Googleกs.

The two search giants have been up against each in the search advertising arena already but it is only now that Yahoo! seems poised to launch a monopolybreaking attempt on Googleกs AdSense program.

This is all great news for smaller website owners as it means the two search goliaths will be vying to provide the best service and offering the best rates to compete for the lucractive ad space.

When Should You Accept Advertising On Your Website?

Well itกs a difficult call. Do it too soon and you risk deterring visitors from staying on your website. Do it too late and youกll find that when you DO finally implement it people might not have seen it coming and they may leave your site in droves!

The best policy to adopt is, just like Google, to focus on RELEVANCE. Don’t bombard your visitors with advertisements that are totally unrelated to their needs or interests or totally separate to the content you provide on your website.

And remember often times it can be better to foster relationships and trust with your visitors with one eye on the longer term view rather than hit them with ads to make a small amount of cash in the shortterm.

About The Author

Michael Cheney is Author of The Website Marketing BibleTM. Take the Free 7Part Course กInternet Marketing Made Easyก and get your free sampler of ‘the Bibleก here: http://www.websitemarketingbible.com/marketing/.

This article was posted on March 22

by Michael Cheney

Affiliate Alternative; Google Adsense

Affiliate Alternative; Google Adsense

by: Sharon Housley

The Rise and Fall of Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs were once a great source of online revenue, a savvy webmaster with an eye for marketing could easily parley a site into a money making machine with a little luck and effort. However, the evolution and growth of the Internet has hampered the growth of fortune making affiliate programs. Constant search engine algorithm changes, along with the search engineกs clear distaste for sites participating in affiliate programs; have made it a little more difficult to earn a healthy affiliate revenue. An influx in the use of software programs that terminate cookie tracking and privacy programs that prevent webmasters from tracking referrers, have also hindered the affiliate sales channel. While it is still possible to make money through affiliate marketing, other alternatives ought to be considered.

A Healthy Alternative or Supplement

Googleกs Adsense program allows approved websites to dynamically serve Googleกs payperclick Adword results. This has become a popular alternative and an effective revenue sharing program for webmasters. Googleกs spider parses the adserving website and serves ads that relate to the websiteกs content. While the Googleกs Adsense program still has some issues, they are making efforts to improve it.

The website maintenance related to Adsense is very easy and requires very little effort. Webmasters need only to insert javascript into the webpage or website template. The javascript calls the ad from Google and will ensure that ads are served each time a visitor goes to the webpage. If the visitor clicks one of the Adsense ads served to the website, the website owner is credited for the referral.

The implementation, while simple, has its drawbacks. Google dictates the format of the ads. Webmasters can select from a handful of preformatted text boxes that lack creativity. A recent improvement allows webmasters to modify the ad boxes to resemble the websiteกs color scheme. Still, a far cry from some of the creative ads webmasters are accustom to.

The example below reflects how the color scheme can be modified to match the look of the website, but the ads physically don’t fit well into the overall website design.

sample modified to match sites color scheme:

http://www.hospitalsoftware.com (scroll to the bottom)

Google determines the content of the ads that are shown/ Sometimes the ads are poorly targeted, and of no interest to the website visitors.

sample of poorly targeted ads:

http://www.realestatesupply.com

Adwords can be a great addition to a website, and when well matched to the content the revenue stream from Google is consistent and effortless.

sample of effective Adsense program:

http://www.policesupplies.com (scroll to the bottom)

http://www.smallbusinesssoftware.net (scroll to the bottom)

Not that the Google Adsense program is not without its problems.as the reporting provided by Google is lacking. Google has not implemented any way to track multiple sites that serve ads; they simply show the number of ads served, the percentage of clicks received, and the revenue earned each day. Google does not disclose the amount of the revenue they share, what percentage of the revenue they earn and what someone can expect to receive for each click. Webmasters with multiple sites will have difficulty determining which websites are producing the money in the Adsense program.

With affiliate programs many webmasters implement a new browser launch with each click off the site, Adsense removes the visitor from the website and there is not currently an option to launch the visitor into another browser.

Early on Google implemented a filtering system that allowed webmasters to prevent a specific domainกs ads from being served on the website. Ad blocking meant that webmasters could prevent their competitors ads from being dynamically served on their website.

Overall, adwords are great supplements to websites where affiliate programs are either not performing or when affiliate programs don’t exist that target the sites content.

Give it a Try

Implementing and maintaing Google Adsense program on a content site requires very little effort and can often bring a steady stream of additional revenue for webmasters. Consider supplementing content and see what happens.

About The Author

Sharon Housley manages marketing for NotePage, Inc. http://www.notepage.net a company specializing in alphanumeric paging, SMS and wireless messaging software solutions. Other sites by Sharon can be found at http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com, and http://www.smallbusinesssoftware.net

This article was posted on March 15, 2004

by Sharon Housley

What to do When AdSense(TM) Serves the Wrong Ads

What to do When AdSense(TM) Serves the Wrong Ads

by: Dave Lavinsky

The most common frustrations among AdSense publishers are 1) Google serving inappropriate ads on their web pages, 2) low clickthrough rates and 3) low payouts per click. This article discusses the first frustration, which is highly correlated with the other issues, and discusses what webmasters can do to combat it.

To begin, it is important to understand how Google determines what ads to serve via the AdSense program. This explanation goes back to April 2003 when Google acquired Santa Monica, CAbased Applied Semantics. Applied Semantics’ products are based on its patented CIRCA technology, which understands, organizes, and extracts knowledge from websites and information repositories in a way that mimics human thought and enables more effective information retrieval. A key application of the CIRCA technology is that it allows Google to, without human intervention, understand the key themes on web pages in order to deliver relevant and targeted advertisements.

However, the CIRCA technology is not always accurate or appropriate to the page. For example, in a general web page about health topics, AdSense is currently serving ads for insulin even though only two words in one paragraph relate to insulin. Rather, the site is much more focused on dieting.

One explanation may be that the CIRCA technology is tied to keyword pricing and inventory (e.g., AdWords(TM) advertiser daily budgets), and that AdSense serves ads that it hopes to maximize revenues. However, this often violates a critical AdSense rule if the ads do not relate to the topic discussed on the web page, visitors will not click on them. Likewise, TopPayingKeywords.com always tells clients never to try and trick AdSense. That is, if customers are coming to your page from a link or advertisement for one topic (e.g., hair styles), never try to create a page about an unrelated topic (e.g., mortgages), just because that unrelated topic is an expensive keyword. While you will be serving expensive ads, because the topics are not correlated, visitors are unlikely to click on them.

Getting AdSense to serve the correct ads is a trialanderror process. In the health page example above, all it took to get AdSense to remove the insulin ads was to remove the paragraph in the text that mentioned insulin. Fortunately, AdSense often updates itself within just a few hours, so it’s easy to keep modifying your site until the most relevant, and hopefully most expensive, ads are served.

About The Author

Dave Lavinsky is the President of TopPayingKeywords.com, a firm which tracks and publishes databases of the 15,000+ most expensive PPC keywords.

http://www.toppayingkeywords.com

This article was posted on January 28

by Dave Lavinsky

Thinking of Using Hit Exchanges to Boost Your Adse

Thinking of Using Hit Exchanges to Boost Your Adsense Revenue? Think Again

by: John Wooton

So, youกve added Adsense to your site and you are getting a few clicks. You could be thinking to yourself, How do I get a massive amount of visitors to bump up my earnings? If you’re anything like me, you hear those stories about webmasters that have added Adsense and are already earning five figure incomes per month, and you start to see the dollar signs.

So you start brainstorming. You come up with a few ideas: email marketing, ebooks, trial software, etc. The thirst for Adsense dollars (and maybe a few affiliate dollars) is your main drive. Pushing massive amounts of traffic through your site can give you quite a thrill ride.

Then along comes the well known email that markets the traffic exchanges. If you aren’t familiar with traffic exchanges, itกs really very simple. You see, you sign up for their service (which often times is free) and your website is put in a list. The way the free traffic works is that you surf the web using their browser, browsing sites that are in their directory (or list) and every 30 seconds you can refresh to a new site. As you continue to do this, it builds up credits for your account that you use for other people who are using their browser to see your site.

Itกs a cyclical service. You see their site, they see yours. And since you can have as many browsers going (among the many traffic exchanges) as your computer can handle, you can theoretically build up a large quantity of hits on your site in a relatively small period of time.

It seems like a great thing, and for many it fills a very necessary niche, so I can’t say that the traffic exchanges are a bad service. I would use them in anything else that I am doing. I would, however, make a very big distinction.

First, I know and respect the techกs at Google and I know that when they make a new program for their visitors and webmasters to use, they make it for the benefit of everyone. That is the case with their Adwords and Adsense programs, both targeted to helping webmasters make money through advertising (albeit the opoosite ends of the scale).

So when I put an ad on my website, I know that I am offering a service to the advertiser (through Google) to reach their target market. And ethically, I should only be paid when I provide that service (someone clicks through that ad to their site). There are extreme ethical problems if you were to use traffic exchanges with the Adsense program to try and cheat the advertiser out of his hard earned dollars.

Plus, if you haven’t figured out by now, Google knows what you are doing. They have specific ways of knowing what is a legitimate impression, versus what is a hit generated by a traffic exchange. Your numbers quickly dwindle if you use a hit exchange and you run the risk of being kicked off the program.

Plus, often times you have to go through two websites wasting a full minute of your time before you get one hit directed to your website. Building up over time, it eventually it all adds up.

Take, for instance, the กsurf contestsก. This is where they tell you who has racked up the most surfing in the week. These numbers are huge… up to 10,000 page loads. When you add it up, thatกs over 84 hours of one week that is taken up trying to earn an extra 1,000 hits on your site. Not very worth it to me.

The best way to use the Adsense program is with a website that you have that is established and has a constant stream of visitors going through it. Thatกs the goal of the program, make money off of an existing site and its content.

About The Author

John Wooton

Author and Creator of the SEO Journal Blog Step by step instructions on making the most of your search engine submissions.

http://seojournal.blogspot.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on September 11

by John Wooton

Optimize Site Navigation For Higher Adsense Earnin

Optimize Site Navigation For Higher Adsense Earnings

by: Bas de Baar

A lot of webmasters that use Adsense as a source of income, are going after the so called high paying keywords. There are methods to determine this, you can even buy lists that hand them over to you. However, after they have put up there ขhigh payingข pages there is no sound of the expected cash.

Having those pages is one thing… Driving visitors towards them, is another. The easiest, and most obvious way to funnel people to your high paying keyword pages, is by optimizing your site navigation for this purpose.

When people visit your website, they don’t always view just one page. They also get from their entry page to another page that they might find interesting. They find this page by links that are provided to them on their page of entry. How you help people to get around on your site is what is meant by ขSite Navigationข.

A typical website has a menu on each page; a menu that gets them from one section to another on your site. What decides them to click on a link to another section is the words used to indicate the link. ขFree Resourcesข or ขDownload ebooksข might get their attention.

In respect to your Adsense earnings, you should track your site navigation to drive people to your high paying pages. I have some pages that get a lot of traffic from search engines, but the earnings on these pages are very low. So I use some clever navigation on these pages to lure people to some higher earning pages. By using this technique you can turn some cheap clicks into dollars.

How to start the testing?

First of all, you must have something to track, something to compare. Second, you must select some high earning pages you want to funnel your traffic to.

To get the fastest results, you should select some of your highly visited pages.

Then you have to think about what might convince people on a particular page to move to a high earning page. Try to find some description that would get their attention. Next step is to think about a suited location to place the link on the webpage.

Within the article itself, on the bottom as recommended resources, just above the main menu… Get creative and, especially, look around at other site to see how they do it (e.g. Hot Pages list, or Most read articles are very common).

You don’t have to stick with plain text links. You can also use some graphic to get peoples attention. Look around, and get ideas.

As with the testing of Adsense ads, try different texts on different pages, so you can get a feeling of what works and what not. Mix and match, put links on top, put them on the bottom.

And after that, it’s just testing, tracking, testing and tracking again.

About The Author

Article by Bas de Baar, author of the free ebook กAnalyzing Adsense For Niche Websitesก. To learn how you can increase online profits by testing and analyzing, go to: http://www.AffiliatePotion.com.

This article was posted on April 03

by Bas de Baar

Using Google AdWords to Increase your Adsense Prof

Using Google AdWords to Increase your Adsense Profits

by: John Gall

I had been using Googleกs Adsense program to generate some revenue from my various web sites. Prior to Adsense, I was never previously paid to run these and did so for a hobby. Overall I was pleased with the income I was generating. The only drawback was that I was always looking for ways to get people to my sites. I enjoyed working to bring in more visitors but felt that if I looked at my earnings vs. the hours I worked, the economics weren’t making sense.
Then I figured out that certain sites were paying way more than the minimum .05 cents per click. I reasoned that if I could get pay visitors .05 .10 to visit. Then if they clicked enough ads that paid much more than I paid, then Adwords could be a viable way to increase traffic to my sites.
So I paid my $5.00 setup fee and added my two most profitable sites. That same day my traffic jumped dramatically and as I thought. Visitors who came in via Adwords were more likely to click other Google ads on my site. My conversions went up and I thought why not put all my sites on Adwords.
This was where some careful research was needed. I found that some sites I run had adwords sponsors who were only bidding the minimum. Remember the concept was to under bid the advertisers on my sites. While my traffic skyrocketed, my expenses for a few sites seemed to outweigh any benefit. When my reports came in it was clear that I needed to use Adwords for only the sites that featured high bidding advertisers. This creates margin for those visitors who come in via paid ads but do not click to my own sponsored ads.
The exception would be if my site was offering a product or service. Then it would be well worth sticking with Adwords on those sites just to get more buying traffic. Because my sites are purely informational I had to watch carefully to ensure I was putting money into Adwords where it was working for me. In some cases I upped my bid on some keywords that were clearly bringing in steady traffic that converted well.
Googleกs new offering called Websense may change this a bit. By allowing you to put Googleกs search form on your site and then paying if your visitors search off your site and click other sponsored links it may make those underperforming sites profitable again. Time and further research will tell.
The moral of the story is that Adwords is a great way to dramatically increase your profits when using Adsense. Care needs to be taken to see that you are putting your money where it is most effective.

John Gall Gall Consulting Elk River, Minnesota

http://www.gallconsulting.com

About The Author

John Gall is a full time IT Manager and IT Consultant in Minnesota. He runs several websites as a hobby featuring content similar to that in this article.

http://www.gallconsulting.com

http://www.sandalspictures.com

http://www.napavalleypictures.com

http://www.winesilove.com

This article was posted on June 21, 2004

by John Gall

AdSense is Stupid When…

AdSense is Stupid When…

by: Kamau Austin

There are times Googleกs 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 clickthrough rate. I experience high clickthrough 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 Commกs six figure income with AdSense, or Jason Calacanis of Weblogs being on his way to generating 1 million dollars in AdSense revenue. Googleกs 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. Letกs list examine and explain them below.

~~~~> 1. On Sales or Minisites

This is a nobrainer. 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 siteกs online sales process.

However I do see hybrid sites that are minisites 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 serverกs 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.

Letกs face the facts. MSN and Yahoo! have competing ad networks to Googleกs, 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 itกs 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: www.eInfoNEWs.com and www.SearchEnginePlan.com.

This article was posted on September 12

by Kamau Austin