Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Turning Traffic in to Adsense Traffic
If you've been running AdSense ads on your site for quite a while and you feel that you aren't making as much cash as you could, in 99.99% of cases you're right. Most people feel frustrated that they cannot generate the revenues they expected, and this is down to traffic levels as well as click through rates.
There are many ways to turn traffic into AdSense traffic and here is a short list of them with a description for each.
The first thing that you need to do is tune up your site's contents. While for some people this isn't an option (if you're running a forum for example it's a lot harder) most people can make their AdSense sites veritable cash cows.
To begin, you should find out what your site's keywords are. This is a basic technique in SEO (search engine optimization) known as keyword density verification. A good tool for this job is SEO Density Analizer.
You should then take this list of words and search the Overture Search Inventory or Google AdWords Sandbox to find out what other words could be doing better then what you currently have.
From that point on try to keep your site focused on the things that appear mostly in the keyword suggestions you receive. Try to include those keywords, or at least some related keywords as often as you can in the links on your site.
Because of the way Google AdSense works this is a sure way to increase your earnings because you'll get better ads in your AdSense banners, similar to how you would get a better Google PageRank
It's also important that you continuously add new pages to your site. This is very important, as the more pages you have, the higher the chance is that you'll get more hits on your ads.
It's also very important that you choose the appropriate formats for your AdSense banners and the best locations for them. While this is a much wider subject you should generally know that the top three Google AdSense formats are: 336x280 large rectangle 300x250 medium rectangle and 160x600 skyscraper.
Make sure you choose the appropriate colors for the ads, as making them too different from your site's content (or just different in a bad way) is sure to make visitors regard them as banners which have nothing to do with the site itself.
Make sure these ads are positioned where they'll generate the highest amount of profit. Most times, that location is said to be right before the beginning of your site's actual content.
On pages with a long text body, you might find skyscrapers to do better, simply because users get exposed to them for more time. Also, for sites with news or similar items, you might find a good position to be at the bottom of your content, because that's when people are finished reading your story and are looking for something else to do.
You should use more AdSense units if you have a lot of text on your page. Just make sure not to overdo it because you might find that you will get a lot lower CTR and lower revenues then you were getting in the first place by employing this technique inappropriately. You can add as many as three units, so use them wisely.
There's a Google AdSense Preview Tool that will let you visualize what ads would get served on your page and it can come in very handy as a testing mechanism.
Just make sure you respect the AdSense policy regarding click fraud. As a pointer you could place a picture next to your adds, just make sure to leave some room in between in order to make sure this isn't regarded as encouraging visitors to click the link.
Of course there are more ways to increase AdSense traffic from your site, but these should serve as a good starting point for income maximization.
Tools for Adsense
If you're just boarding on the AdSense train, and looking to find a quick way to make the profits you've seen all being pulled of all over the Internet, you might be interested in a couple of tools.
These software tools are designed to aid AdSense publishers in getting a better understanding on how traffic flows through their site. Some will help you in understanding which keywords gain you more money and which locations give you the best AdSense payment.
One of the best such tools available is AdSense Gold (http://www.profitbooks.com/go/astracker) which allows you to have a better understanding of which ads and formats actually get more clicks and which are useful or nearly useless.
This program works by tracking views and clicks on all the publisher's pages. It even goes as far as offering you the possibility to see which referrer each visitor came in through.
There's a free tool called SynSense (http://www.singerscreations.com/RSS/Posts/235.asp) which is more of an AdSense monitoring tool. This sits in the tray and offers actualized AdSense stats as you hover your mouse over its icon. It's a very nice tool for those which like to be informed on how their AdSense is doing at all times of the day.
Google provides you with stats in a csv format on their site. So someone made a tool that can automatically download such files and extract a lot of information from them. The name of this tool is CSV AdStats and it is available from http://www.nix.fr/en/csvadstats.aspx?q=download
It has a large number of features, including the possibility to highly customize reported stats, exporting data and charts to other formats. It's in French but the language can very easily be changed to English.
Of course any tool can only access these stats as often as 15 minutes but the authors are well aware of that fact and none of these tools will get you in trouble with Google because of that.
If, however, you're browsing content most of the time, and your tool of choice is the Firefox Internet browser, there's an extension for this program that allows you to view the stats in your status bar.
Again, this software is aware of Google's 15 minute rule and enforces its usage, 15 minutes being the minimum time between updates. The Google AdSense notifier for Firefox can be obtained from http://code.mincus.com/?p=3
There is also a program called Golden Keywords out there that helps you in getting the best keywords for your site. It's really efficient and very easy to use. It does come with a price tag though, it costs $49.95 and it can be obtained from http://www.regnow.com/softsell/nph-softsell.cgi?item=8616-2
So as you can see, software developers are making more and more programs meant to help you in your quest to maximize your AdSense profits. But before you go out looking for them remember that Google has a few features of its own as well.
It does offer some reports (albeit a bit more limited) and using the 'channels' feature is a good way of finding out which ads on your site are really bringing in most of the revenue.
Be on the look out as new tools appear daily and make sure to invest time in your site, as that is the real key in success with AdSense.
How Much Money Will I earn Through Adsense?
If you're looking at Google's AdSense program you're surely asking yourself how much you could make from such a program, and you probably think you can't make as much as you can from traditional advertising schemes.
Google, of course, keeps a great deal of secrecy regarding how much AdWords advertisers pay per each click directed to their site and the same applies for how much AdSense banner holders make from their websites.
While there's nothing official, rumors circulate around the Internet concerning the amount of cash a website can earn by using AdSense. And many people (illegally) disclose how much they have been making with AdSense. There are stories of people raising over one thousand dollars per month using AdSense.
There are also stories of people exceeding $100,000.00 per month but it's a bit hard to believe such stories. The truth to the matter is that if you have a small website and you just want it to support itself, and don't wish to reach your pocket for its maintenance costs you can probably do this with AdSense.
AdSense is also very good for people who host a lot of pages. Even if the said pages don't generate a lot of traffic individually, every click counts and you can earn up with a lot of money by doing this. And that just goes to prove that sometimes quantity matters nearly as much as quality.
There's no telling how much money you're going to make by using Google's AdSense but you can sort of tell for yourself, before actually starting, by taking a few things into consideration.
First, is the amount of visits you get every day. While there's no way to estimate precisely on this, you can generally make a safe assumption that if you have a lot of clicks per day you'll be making good money.
Also, this depends on what exactly your site is about. If your site is about anything popular (music, sex, whatever) you're bound to get a lot of banner clicks. These have a coefficient associated with them, called the CTR (click through ratio).
Basically, what it translates to is that if a large proportion of your site's visitors click the ads you'll be making more money. And the best way to do this is to have some popular content in your site, ensuring the links direct users towards popular items as well.
Then of course, there's the position and number of ads on your website. While you don't want to overdo it, having many links will undoubtedly generate more income for you as a webmaster. Do not however believe, that if you just add a lot of ads in an important portion of your site, visitors could always just skip them (and be assured that many do just that).
There's something between an art and a science to positioning your ads. People generally look in certain places and never look in others, and knowing this a website author and/or webmaster can do a great deal of things to increase his earnings with AdSense.
All in all, the amount of money you make with AdSense depends on many factors. But if you have a site with interesting contents and/or many pages, and if you see a constantly large amount of traffic every day, you can bet you'll be making a lot of money with AdSense.
Even if you aren't in the above categories, AdSense is still worth using because there's very little hassle in setting it up, and many times it can help financially support the site, whilst being a nice bonus to get through the post at the end of the month.
How Adsense Changed the Internet
Ever since Google came up with the master idea that is AdSense, the web has transformed in a variety of ways no one would have ever suspected. Some of these are good changes others aren't.
This is a small exploration of how a brilliant marketing scheme has taken the web by storm. It deals with the changes advertisers and publishers and even website visitors have undergone ever since AdSense has become a daily part of our on-line lives.
Even before AdSense came out a lot of people were advertising through AdWords. It ensured a lot of publicity through getting your site listed at the top in Google search queries. It took away a lot of the pain and price of SEO and the large amount of time you had to wait until you were finally on top. It made launching a website, a realistic way to instant profitability instead of a long term strategy with no immediate returns.
Through the use of AdSense, the possibility appeared of having your ads appear on just about any site on the Internet that has anything that even resembles your company is all about. And so it's for that reason that AdSense has brought a new sense of advertising to the Internet. Before PPC poorly ranked web pages had to advertise offline to get any real initial exposure.
Companies no longer have to hire expensive professionals to create extremely elaborate advertising campaigns. There are no high costs of running your ads on websites which you have to personally look for.
All you do is come up with a couple of meaningful words for your business, sign up with Google AdWords and let Google take care of the rest of the equation. Although it requires day to day management automation saves significant time for advertisers.
Of course, probably the largest change in the way the Internet works due to AdSense comes from the publishers' point of view. Whereas one would previously have to jump through many hoops to get a website to even support itself now people are making fortunes off their sites. This leads to motivation for content, and resources for web surfers.
That generally means site publishers have to worry more about what content lies on their site, and the overall way their pages look rather then be concerned with the economic specifics of maintaining a sites profitability. Although time is invested in adsense, a large capital investment is not.
It's no surprise that the blogging phenomenon exploded when AdSense came out a few years ago. Anyone could just write a page about a subject he was passionate about and making a living out of it through AdSense.
And thirdly, one can't ignore the impact AdSense has had over the casual everyday web surfer. Whereas people used to not even notice banners altogether (which psychologically is a very interesting thing to observe) the situation is completely different for text ads.
People nowadays will take a long look at a sponsored ad. Why? Well because the whole setup brings forth a feeling of confidence about the advertiser. People don't ignore a text ad as easily as they do a graphical banner.
Another thing to note is that graphical banners have become even less profitable nowadays. It is because of this that many people are walking away from affiliate type networks to AdSense.
Of course, there are bad effects as well, with people making websites solely for the purpose of running AdSense on them and just as well, with a large phenomenon of 'click fraud', people creating artificial clicks for various reasons.
But Google does try to control such behavior, and really isn't to be blamed for such individuals' actions. All in all Google AdSense is transforming the way the Internet works and it's doing so mostly in a good way.
Now those with ideas can write them down, and make money from them. Those looking for content can find it easier, and those looking to attract a customer base can do so in a targeted way. Adsense has changed the internet through supporting the economic interests of businesses, and the utility of consumers.
