The Secret of Making Money With AdSense - Revealed!

In Part I of this series on making more money with AdSense, entitled The Secret of Making Money With AdSense - Exposed!, we demonstrated methods of blending AdSense Ads within your pages in order to increase conversions.

On Google AdSense's example page we see an example of placing AdSense in a way that will contrast your page elements (background color, font color, etc.). Do you think this will work for you - to have your Adspace stand out from your content? We don't think so.

See the example below:

Do you need to learn more about Ad formats? If you are going to use AdSense or any other advertising network, you must be comfortable with deploying both the right size of Ad format and the right style (Text, Image, Flash, Video, Link) to maximize your earnings.

Keyword Management

One of the biggest mistakes we see on the thousands of blogs we visit, is a lack of focus. After landing on your homepage, I don't know what your blog is about? It isn't that your site's layout is bad, and your content is pretty-well written. But, who is your traffic demographic? In other words, who did you envision would read your blog when you created it?

You do realize that many readers stick to a particular niche or category of blog topics and subject matter? Yes, you write for the world, but it is your core audience that you should be targeting that will provide you the most conversions.

"Source Blogger, are you getting off-topic? How did this relate to AdSense?

The reason we speak about keywords is that Google delivers ads targeted to your content and to your audience. You should have a general idea how they accomplish this:

• Contextual targeting
  Google uses such factors as keyword analysis, word frequency, font size, and the overall link structure of the web, in order to determine what a webpage is about and precisely match Google ads to each page.
  
• Placement targeting
  With placement targeting, advertisers choose specific ad placements, or subsections of publisher websites, on which to run their ads. Ads that are placement-targeted may not be precisely related to the content of a page, but are hand-picked by advertisers who've determined a match between what your users are interested in and what they have to offer.

"Source Blogger, I'm getting really annoyed with all this talk about "keyword management" and "audience targeting." You make it seem as if I did not plan these things before I launched my blog." 

Creating a blog is simple these days. But, creating a successful blog takes a great deal of technical proficiency and strategic implementation.

 We know you want to write unrestrained. We know that sometimes elements of search engine optimization (SEO) can be burden.

Can I show you an example of some of the SEO methods that are encouraged to optimize your keywords? Check this out:

How do you feel about that above example? Could you write post after post, hundreds, if not thousands of posts over the life of all your blogs, in this format? 

At Source Blogger, although we do feel that SEO is definitley near the top of the list in optimizing your blog, if you wrote with only keywords in mind (typically referred to as writing for search engines), do you think you would alienate a lot of your potential followers and subscribers? How would your current, blog traffic feel if your articles became more robotic?

Keywords and AdSense 

All keywords are not created equal. The Google AdWords system is based on a very competitive method of being the highest bidder for a given keyword. While that may present challenges to the advertiser, this can work to your advantage in regards to income potential.

There are a lot of online myths. Some webmasters claim to have received up to $50 or more a click using AdSense. For many of you, unfortunately, your clicks have yielded you pennies, right?  
Your goal is to target your AdSense Ads to your traffic. If your blog is about photography, auto repair, pet care, etc., AdWords advertisers will be targeting the most frequently-used keywords based on the theme of your blog. Advertisers know they can potentially reach their target audience through your blog.  

When your blog is very broad in scope and less-targeted, the likelihood of reaching their target audience becomes less-likely, thus, your click conversions pay less. That would only be fair to the advertisers, wouldn't it? There goal is to see value from their advertising dollars beyond the costs they incurred above their ad budget.  

Help advertisers to help you!  

It's that simple. Does that mean I want you to go out and research what keywords receive the highest payouts? Um, no...but, you should be familiar with using some tools that Google offers, like the Search-Based Keyword Tool, for starters. 

"Source Blogger, I know you gave us heat maps and recommended Ad placement by Google, in the last article, but just between you and I, where should I place Ads on my blog pages?

The reality is that there is not one perfect, universal method on this. You will have to systematically attempt every strategic method in order to get the best results (clicks/conversions).

Ads near (or even surrounded by) content have historically worked the best. AdSense blocks embedded in your content can be an advantage. Why? Because the reader, while focused on your content, has their eyes in a near-direct path to your AdSense blocks. This could go on for 15-30 seconds depending on how fast they read and the length of your blog post. We cannot think of any better means to generate revenue, can you?

At Source Blogger, we recommend you consider placing ads at the end of your content. Give your reader some continuity by placing relevant, targeted ads at the end of your article. Readers often travel to many sources before making a decision, let your Google AdSense ads be the "jumping point" for this. 

By choosing to display image ads in addition to text ads, you can help ensure that you'll have all available advertisers bidding to appear on your site. Both text and image ads will compete in the same auction to display on your pages, and we'll automatically display the ad(s) that will be most effective for you on your site.

The best place to put your Adsense units to generate the most interest in the ads displayed is right within the content of your site so your text actually has to wrap around the ads. If there is any secret to Adsense, this is certainly the biggest one. If your visitors have to read around the outside of your Adsense block, they may have your ads in their sight for 15 to 30 seconds depending on how much text you have and how fast they read. That’s an eternity on the net and gives a huge advantage to ads that are placed outside of the content of your site. Other placements of Adsense will never generate the revenue this kind of placement will. 

Ad Channels

Use custom Ad Channels for each of your ad placements, for example, “Top 5 Link Unit Blue Palette” or “Left Side Navigation Image Skyscraper” etc. Tweak, track and measure the success of each of these custom channels so you know what gives you the highest CTR(Click-Thru Rate. Some ad formats and colors will work better than others, but you won’t know which until you can compare them to the rest of your Ad units.

Do not think of the AdSense on your page as a whole, but as a team. You want to retain the strongest players!

OK, we know over the recent mini-series on AdSense, this may have been a lot of new information for you.

We hope you take some of the information you learned here and incorporate it into your blog's AdSense / revenue strategies.

If you enjoyed this series on AdSense, as much as we enjoyed sharing this with you, you will want to become a member of the growing, Source Blogger community.

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