Placing ads on websites has been one of the most popular ways to generate income online. Why? Because it's easy to place ads, it is free to sign up to most advertisers, and you can still have a simple content-based website - no need to accept credit cards, create sales pages, buy products, or anything other than your normal webmasterly activities.
Unfortunately, many people who create good content sites never succeed at monetizing them - either they don't get enough traffic, or just don't get enough clicks on their ads. Luckily, there are many techniques to solve any problem you may encounter. The easiest of this is ad placement. Now, proper ad placement will differ slightly depending on the type of site, layout, content, and other factors, but there are some general guidelines to follow:
- Make sure you read the AdSense terms of service - many people earn money and lose it because they violate the TOS and get their account terminated. Don't lose your money for no reason.
- I would recommend using the maximum number of allowed ads - including content ads, referral ads, and a search bar. This will increase clicks significantly, since a user who has no interest in your content ads might still search on your search bar or download products from your referral buttons.
- Make sure your ads don't look like ads; That is, don't put different colored borders (generally no border is best), don't use contrasting colors (try to match the colors of your site), and try to ensure that the fonts on your site are similar (the same, if possible) as the ad fonts. This way, the ads will look like they are part of YOUR site, and your visitors will be more likely to click them (they look like links).
- In general, VERTICAL ads placed on the RIGHT side of your site will do well. Why? Because people read left to right (in most languages), and their eyes will follow your content right to the ads on the right. Makes sense, doesn't it? Then why does everyone still use the 'leaderboard' and other horizontal banners? This is not to say that horizontal ads will never work, but statistically vertical ads will probably do better in terms of click-through rate.
Once you have figured out your ad placement, you might need to control your ad content. Luckily, Google allows you some control over what ads are placed on your site. You can exclude certain advertisers (usually to exclude competitors), use content targeting to tell Google where to look for the keywords you want in the ads, and you can specify the category of the ads you show.
In general, you should always use 'ad channels' to track your ads - this will show you the stats for one ad unit (or more if you've added more to a channel). You should generally use a separate channel for each ad unit, as this will allow you to tweak your ads for maximum profitability. When you make a change to an ad, note what that change did to your click-throughs, average amount earned per click, and anything else you might want to track. This will show you exactly what tweaks improve your earnings, and by how much. The AdSense reporting tool is very good for this, especially if you use "This month, by channel" to track your changes and results.
Those tips should increase your earnings slightly, but there are many more ways you can improve, including:
-getting more visitors
-putting up more sites
-targeting your ads even more
-tracking your visitors' stats
-and more!
If you would like to learn more about AdSense, and how you can earn a full time income with your websites, you'll want to get "AdSense Empire" - a complete guide to setting up or improving your earnings quickly and easily. Check it out here:
http://www.theinternetincomesystem.com/AdSenseEmpire/
To your continued success in building your Internet empire!
by: Peter Stolmar
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