Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Google Adsense Articles


What is Google Adsense

How Google Adsense Works

Smart Pricing vs Click Fraud

Google Adsense Ebooks


Adsense Ebook 1 - Adsense Revenue Exposed
An introduction to Google Adsense and some good tips to increase your Adsense Revenue.

Adsense Ebook 2 - Google Adsense Secrets - What Google Never told you about Adsense
It's probably the best Ebook ever written on Google Adsense. Adsense Guru, Joel Comm has shared some invaluable secrets in this book and Adsense Publishers will definitely be in high spirits after reading it. Highly Recommended.

Adsense Ebook 3 - Adsense Mint
Free + Good Content = Must Read. A good book on Adsense and how you can make some serious money from it. It’s also a step-by-step guide on how to make a website, gathering content, link building etc. It’s also a good guide on making a Niche Website.
Recommended.

Adsense Ebook 4 - Adsense Report
Another free Ebook on Google Adsense. It’s a collection of articles on Google Adsense and related issues by various writers. It’s free so you can give it a shot.

Google Adsense Tips - for Advanced Users


Use a Three Column template for high CTR

How to predict your Adsense Earnings

Save yourself form Smart Pricing

Adsense Alert - Adsense Tool

Adsense Alert is a tool that can download your Adsense Account information for you. With this tool you won't have to log in to your Adsense Account again and again. You can set up an update interval and Adsense Alert will automatically download all the latest information for you. It tracks all your Adsense information like impressions, clicks, CTR, CPM and earnings. And this data can be displayed in the form of charts for better analysis. Further you can also set up alerts if a certain condition is met. It also allows you to save all this data in CSV files. For example if you want to notified when the clicks exceed a certain number, Adsense Alert will tell you.


Product Website
Download Trial
Buy Adsense Alert

Some Screenshots of Adsense Alert :

Adsense Software
Adsense Tool

Google Adsense Tools and Trackers

Adsense Log : a tool for monitoring, tracking, and analyzing your adsense data. It’s free if your monthly Adsense Revenue is less than $100.
Adsense Log

AsRep : A very good Adsense Tracking tool. It can even track which Ads were clicked and more such detail. It has to be installed on the server of your website.
asRep

Adsense Alert : This tool can download all your Adsense Data so you won’t have to log in to your account again and again.
Adsense Alert

Adsense Ebook 4 - The Adsense Report


by F. Terrence Markle

This book is a collection of unique articles written on Google Adsense Marketing.

Some of the articles in this book are :

The Adsense Factor - An introduction to Google Adsense. Also talks about choosing the theme of your website and keyword density.

Understanding Google Adsense - Optimizing, Channels etc.

Google Adwords and Adsense - How Google Adwords and Google Adsense make contextual advertising possible.

Getting approved by Adsense in a Jiffy - Some tips on getting your site approved by Adsense i.e. getting an Account with Adsense.

Making Google Adsense Work for you

Make money with Google Web Search

6 Steps to Adsense Domination: some tips on succeeding with Google Adsense.

Using Google Adwords to Increase your Adsense Profits - Adsense Arbitrage
Relevant Ads Increase Adsense Profits - An adsense publisher shares his experience on how he optimized his site to get relevant ads, which resulted in higher CTR and more revenue from Adsense.

Optimize Site Navigation for Higher Adsense Earnings - How you can increase your Adsense Earnings by driving your visitors to "high paying" pages.
One simple trick to double your Adsense Revenue - some guy's advice to use certain colors for your ads to get more clicks.

There are some other articles as well but I didn't like them too much. Frankly speaking, this book may do some good to absolute beginners other wise you can give this one a miss.

Download Adsense Report

My high CTR template

A lot of webmasters claim that the best Adsense ad formats are Small Rectangle or Large Rectangle. They say that placing one of these rectangles right at the top of the page just above the content has given them highest CTRs and thus more money. Well may be this might be the best Adsense configuration for them but I have experimented widely with all the Adsense Ad formats, their colors and their locations. And after all these experiments I have found that vertical skyscrapers in a three-column template get the highest CTRs.


Normally blogs have a two-column template, with content in a wide column and Navigation Sidebar in the other column. In my template I have added another column right in between the Content and the Navigation Sidebar. In this middle column/bar I display 1 or 2 Skyscraper format of the Adsense Ads. So it looks something like this :

We all know that the best location for your ads is a place, which attracts the highest amount of attention. Now what would attract more attention than something displayed right in between your Content and the Navigation bar. My CTR almost tripled after I changed my template to this layout. This layout has worked so well for me that I use it on every single blog that I have. Think about it guys if it wasn't working then why the heck would I use it on my own blog ?

I suggest that you Save your old template in a file and try this one for a week and see the results for your self. If things don't workout for you (they will, I know) then you can always switch to your old template.

In case you don't like the color scheme of this template, you can edit it like you edit your other templates (it's your usual CSS). If you find this a bit troublesome then you can ask me for help. Here is the download link:

Download my Three-Column Template (Text File - Copy and Paste)
XML File (Direct Upload)

asRep - Adsense Tracker

asRep is probably the greatest adsense tracking tool available.

asRep tracks the impressions and the clicks of Adsense ads on your web pages. The adsense data displayed by Google Adsense is limited and delayed. On the other hand asRep provides you with detailed reports in real time.

Tracking Features :
  • It tracks the impressions of the page, Adsense ad units, and Adsense search boxes.

  • It tracks the clicks to the Adsense ad units on the page.

  • It tracks the searches done via the Adsense Search Boxes.

  • Specialized click detection algorithms for MSIE, Gecko DOM (FireFox, Mozilla & Netscape) and other browsers.

  • It can capture the date-time of the impression and the click, URL of the page, URL of the referring page, Color and Format of each Ad unite, IP of the visitor, URL of the ad that was clicked, search term the user entered.

  • It is 100% compatible with Google Adsense Terms of Service.
asRep can also protect you from Click Fraud :
It can send you an email if a visitor clicks more than a given threshold in a given duration.

asRep comes in PHP and Perl and it has to be installed on your website server. It can be installed on any Server that provides PHP (or Perl) and a mySQL database. This means that you may not be able to use this product on a blog hosted on some blogging service. You will have to have a web space of your own and host your blog there to use asRep to track your blog's adsense.


Cost : $50
Product Website
Download Adsense Rep
Buy Adense Rep

Keyword Research Tools

Here is a list of some Online and Offline tools that you can use for Keyword Research ( to find appropriate keywords for your site and to find the CPC, Search Volume, Search Trends, Competition etc) :

Google Adwords

Yahoo Inventory (Overture)

Wordtracker

Keyword Discovery

Keyword Elite Software

Adsense Ebook 1 - Adsense Revenue Exposed


by Michael Rasmussen and Jason Tarasi

This book is basically for beginners although there are some sections that advanced users may find helpful.

Some of the topics it covers are : Introduction to Adsense, Ad formats, Customizing ads, Ad placement, Adsense for Search, Referrals, Adsense Policies, Researching Keywords, Developing Content, Tracking and Reports (Channels), Do's and Don'ts of Adsense, Google Adsense for RSS feeds and Blogs.

Buy Adsense Revenue Exposed

Adsense Ebook 3 - Adsense Mint


by James Fraser

This book is a better guide on making a Niche Website than it is on Google Adsense. Still it does talk about Google Adsense but not in a great detail and you are unlikely to find anything new about Adsense in this book. However this book is one of the tutorial on finding a Niche Topic for your website/blog. And at the end of the day it's the topic/subject of your blog that plays the most important role in determining the amount of money that you can make from your site.

Some of the topics that this book covers are :

Indtroduction : What is Google Adense and How I can Make Money From it ? How to find and exploit a profitable Niche Market ? - What is a Niche Market ?, Why consider Niche Marketing ?, Finding a Profitable Niche ( Basically this section guides you on how to find a profitable Niche (a Niche Website is a website that is focused on a single topic/subject) Markets using Google, Overture and other free online tools, the second part shows how you can assess the competition in a given Niche Market and finally how you can choose a topic that is not only profitable but also unexploited and where you won't face too much competition from other websites.

Creating the Website : Choosing your domain name, On Page Optimization, Gathering Content for Your Website.

Link Building : Why it is important to build links, How to get qulaity inbound links.

Adsense Implementation : How to register with Adsense, The basics of Adsense, Choosing the best Ad format, Ad placement, Ad color, the best trick in the book, Tracking Ad performance (channels, tracking scripts)

Google Adsense Success Stories

BattleDiabetes.com

This fellow was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes a couple of years back. So he decided to learn more about the disease and to share this info with others he launched a blog called BattleDiabetes.com. He blogs about happenings in the diabetes research world, prevention of Type 2 diabetes via diet & exercise and other such topics. He has added Google Adsense Ads, Auction Ads and Text Link Ads to his blog and makes about $40,000 a year from his blog.
Read more about his blog at : http://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-blogging-success-story-diabetes-blog-earns-40k-per-year/5240/


Pvrblog.com

Matt Haughey was interested in Persoanl Video Recorders (PVRs) so he started a blog about them especially the TiVo® brand. He blogged about TiVo features, shortcuts, new models, reviews, hacks and PVR industry news. At that point of time he didn't realize that he could make money out of this blog. But the popularity of his blog grew rather quickly and his blog received about 5000 visitors every day. Matt thought that it would be nice if the blog could pay for its own hosting, storage and bandwidth overcharge fees. So he signed up with Google Adsense and started displaying their ads on his blog. Since then Matt has been a huge fan of Adsense. He hasn't disclosed the amount of money he makes from his blog but I am sure that he makes a lot of it as Personal Video Recorder is a high CPC keyword and also his blog receives phenomenal traffic.
Read more about his success with Adsense at : https://www.google.com/adsense/static/en_US/PvrBlog.html
You can read more about Matt on Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Haughey


www.plentyoffish.com


Markus Frind of Vancouver, Canada wanted to practice his programming skills in ASP.NET. So he launched a free online dating website called www.plentyoffish.com. The site required member ship area, password protection, database management and a lot of programming skills and Markus thought that it would a good learning experience for him. At that point of time Markus didn't know that he could make money from his site, all he wanted to do was learn some new programming skills. But his site became very popular in a rather short period of time. There were a lot of online dating services on the Internet but they charged a monthly fees of $40 to $50 from it's members. Plentoffish.com on the other hand was completely free and this made it even more popular and soon it became a major online dating service in countries like Canada, USA and UK.
                         Markus became famous in the Adsense world when he published a picture on the internet in which he is seen holding a cheque of $ from Google Adsense. Initially people didn't believe him and said that the cheque was fake etc. But later Google confirmed that the cheque was genuine and it was then that a lot of Adsense publishers realized the potential of Google Adsense. Here is the famous picture of Markus holding his huge Adsense Cheque :

Adsense Log - Adsense Tracking & Analyzing Software

Adsense Log is a monitoring, tracking, and analyzing tool for your adsense data.

Adsense Tracker

Features :
Automatic monitoring of your data. It can check your account in any interval you want (e.g. every 15 minutes). Adsense Log will alert you (with a sound/pop-up window/SMS/email) only when new data is available.

Track Adsense Data - extensive statistics: impressions, clicks, revenue, click through, CPM and EPC. Daily, Weekly or Monthly views. Daily averages, best channels and many more options.

Analyze Adsense data - Adsense Log can analyze your CTR, Page Impressions, Revenue, CPM and other numbers, and provide you important messages - it can inform you of your highest earning Channel and can also alert you of a channel that needs your attention, what's the situation of your website, did your CTR increase of decrease after the changes that you made to your Ads/Website the other day.

Graphical Representation of Adsense Data - Adsense Log can display many types of graphs, about every kind of statistics available, for your Content, Search, Referral and channel data.

Price : $50 , it's free if your monthly earnings are less than $100.


Some Screenshots of Adsense Log :

All Adsense Data Tracked

Adsense Tracking - Adsense Log

Graphical Representation of Adsense Data

Adsense Tracker
Google Adsense Tracking Software

Google Adsense Videos

What kind of Sites use Adsense ?

Adsense Guru Joel Comm describes what are the types of sites that can make money from Google Adsense.
What kind of Sites use Adsense ?

Some Adsense Tips

Some useful Adsense Tips to boost your Adsense Revenue.
Some Adsense Tips

Ad Format and Placement

Jole Comm shows which Adsense Ad Format works the best and what are the locations that can give you a high CTR.
Ad Format and Placement

Blogging and Adsense

Adsense Guru, Joel Comm shows how Blogs can make money from Google Adsense. In the second part of the video he makes a brief comparison between Google Adsense and Yahoo Publishers Network (YPN).
Blogging and Adsense


Joel Comm's success with Google Adsense

Joel Comm talks about his success with Google Adsense. He shows how his journey with Adsense began in 2004 and how by November 2005 he was making more than $22,000 in less than a month.
Joel Comm's success with Google Adsense

How Google Adwords Works

Joel Comm shows how Google's Advertising program - Google Adwords Works
How Google Adwords Works

Should you buy a made for Adsense Website

Joel Comm answers whether or not you should buy a Made for Adsense Website.
Should you buy a made for Adsense Website


Selecting the Right Adsense Colors

Joel Comm's advice on Color optimization of your Adsense Ads to improve your CTR.
Selecting the Right Adsense Colors

How to add Adsense Ads to your blog

A Step-by-Step guide on how to add Adsense Ads to your blog on blogger.com
How to add Adsense Ads to your blog

Adsense Deluxe

Everything you wanted to know about Adsense Deluxe
Adsense Deluxe

What is Adsense Arbitrage

A tutorial on what Adsense Arbitrage is and how it works.
What is Adsense Arbitrage

A good advice for Adsense Publishers

Joel Comm advices Adsense enthusiasts to make websites based on their passions rather than trying to make websites which they think have more monetary worth
A good advice for Adsense Publishers

5 ways to increase Google Adsense Earnings

5 tips on how you can improve your Google Adsense Earnings
5 ways to increase Google Adsense Earnings

How Google Adsense Works

Joel Comm shows how Google's Ad Serving Program - Google Adsense works. Must watch video for Adsense newbies.
How Google Adsense Works

Can you make money with Adsense on membership sites ?

Joel Comm describes how you can make money from sites like Forums, Message Boards and blogs.
Can you make money with Adsense on membership sites ?

How to make money with Google Adsense

For new comers.
How to make money with Google Adsense

Why Most People Fail at Adsense

Lisa points out some of the common mistakes that most Adsense Publishers make.
Why Most People Fail at Adsense

Adsense Arbitrage

Owner of Shoemoney.com says that websites practicing Adsense Arbitrage are not going to get banned and he also talks about why he thinks so.
Adsense Arbitrage

Biggest mistakes people make with Adsense

Joel Comm's list of mistakes that people make with Google Adsense. Must Watch.
Biggest mistakes people make with Adsense

Basic Optimization

Some basic tips on optimization of your Adsense Ads.
Basic Optimization

A success story from India

A news channel interviews India's most successful blogger, Amit Agarwal.
A Success Story from India

Adsense Ebook 2 - Google Adsense Secrets - What Google never told you


by Joel Comm

It's probably the best ebook ever written on Google Adsense. If you are tired of reading the same old Adsense tips on various websites and are looking for some genuine and novel tips to increase your adsense revenue, then you have got to read this. This book not only shows you how Google Adsense Works, it also guides you on how to build content for your website, how to track the results of your adsense optimization, website optimization and keyword optimization, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and building traffic.

Some of the topics that this book covers are:

Basics: Getting Started with Adsense, How to tweak your Ads to get more clicks, Using Colors to Increase your Clicks, How to maximize visibility and response, Controlling your ads, Building Content.

Advanced: Adsense Response Tracking, Making money form Google Search Box, Making Adsense Work with Internet Communities, How to read your visitors like a book, What to do before you apply for Google Adsense, List of Useful tools and Adsense Utilities, Tools to keep track of what works and what does not work, Other Pay Per Click (PPC or CPC) programs, Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Must Read !

Buy Google Adsense Secrets - What Google never told you about making money with Adsense

Video - Adsense Deluxe



Everything you wanted to know about Adsense Deluxe, a wordpress plugin.

www.jackhumphrey.com

Video - What is Adsense Arbitrage




by Karl Stadler
A good video describing what Adsense Arbitrage is.
You buy low CPC keywords from Adwords, this brings in traffic to you site with Adsense Ads of high CPC. You earn profit form this difference in the CPC values. But to make profit in this manner you have got to have a very high CTR, which is difficult to obtain. If you don't have a high CTR then there is a good chance that you might be loosing money instead of making profits. Thus getting results out of Adsense Arbitrage is not as simple as it sounds in theory. Also it is noteworthy that Google has been disabling a lot of accounts that were practicing arbitrage.

www.site-reference.com

Video - A good advice for Adsense Publishers


by Joel Comm

Joel Comm advices Adsense enthusiasts to make websites based on their passions rather than trying to make websites which they think have more monetary worth or belong to more profitable niches. Jole points out that traffic is the key to earning revenue from your site. If you have traffic on your site then there are a lot of ways to monetize it. And you will have traffic only if you have quality content on your site, which is easier to build if you are passionate about your subject.

Video - 5 ways to increase Google Adsense Earnings


by Mal Keeman

1. Blend the ads with your template
2. Place the ads correctly
3. Choose the right format
4. Wrap your content around the ads.
5. Maintain relevant content.

www.site-reference.com

Saturday, October 27, 2007

How Google Adsense Works

- by Joel Comm

Joel Comm shows how Google's Ad Serving Program - Google Adsense works. If you are new to Adsense then this video is a must watch for you. Jole Comm describes how Ads are added to your page, how contextual ads are displayed and how you earn form these ads.

www.adsense-secrets.com

Video - Can you make money with Adsense on membership sites ?



by Joel Comm

Joel Comm says that membership sites are a great way of making money from Adsense as the content is user generated and every post is unique. So you can put adsense on forums , message boards and blogs but if your membership site is password protected then Google bot will not be able to read the content of your site and so Adsense won't work.

Note : I am not sure but I think I have read somewhere that you can use a robots.txt file and allow Google Bot and Adsense Bot to bypass your password protection and thus Adsense can work on your password protected site as well.

www.askjoelcomm.com

Video - How to make money with Google Adsense



For new comers.
Lisa shows how you can make money from Google Adsense. Some very basic instructions for starters.

www.2createawebsite.com

Video - Why Most People Fail at Adsense

This video is basically for Beginners, nothing much in here for Advanced Adsense Users



Lisa's instructions:

- Don’t make a website that deals with too many topics
- Choose your favorite topic, something that you are interested in
- Make niche websites and focus on your theme
- Check other sites with similar topics, see what they have that you don't
- Try to make you site the best in your niche

www.2createawebsite.com

Video - Biggest mistakes people make with Adsense


Biggest Mistakes people make with Adsense - by Joel Comm

Not being familiar with Google's Terms of Service
  • Clicking own ads

  • Don't invite others to click your ads

  • Using the wrong Ad blocks

  • Using the wrong Color Palettes

  • Poor page placement

  • Doing Adsense Halfway

  • Not using channels

  • Not testing

  • Not checking and analyzing statistics

  • Not using Ad Link Units

  • Building only throwaway sites

  • Building huge sites overnight

www.adsense-secrets.com

Video - Adsense Arbitrage



Owner of Shoemoney.com talks about Adsense Arbitrage. He doesn't describe Arbitrage in great detail, basically he is saying that websites practicing Adsense Arbitrage are not going to get banned and he also talks about why he thinks so. If you don't understand Arbitrage then this video won't be of much use to you.

www.shoemoney.com

Video - Basic Optimization



Chris talks about how he makes money from Google Adsense. Then he gives some optimization tips to one of his readers. Basically talks about how to blend the ads properly, which ad format works better and where to put the ads.

www.live.pirillo.com

Friday, October 26, 2007

Blend Adsense Ads with your site

"Your AdSense ad units should complement your overall site design, not detract from the user experience. Ad units that mirror the look and feel of your site can surprisingly increase the effectiveness of your ads." - Google Adsense
In other words - Try to use the same color combination for your ads that you have used for your website. i.e. match the background color for your ads to the background color of your website, the title color of ads to the tiltle/heading color of your website etc. This blending of ad colors to the colors of your site will soften ad appearance and soften ad blindness.

Please note that this tweak is not to fool your readers into thinking that the ads are a part of your site and get some accidental clicks. All it is meant to do is remove that alien look from your ads when their colors are not customized. Also note that accidental clicks do you more harm than good (I will write about this later). Customize the colors of your ads and you are bound to notice a remarkable imporvement in your Click Through Rate.

You can user free softwares like Pixie or Color Picker to pick up the colors of you blog or elsewhere.

Which ad format works the best?

Google Adsense Ads are displayed in a variety of formats (sizes or layouts) Google Adsense Ad formats. You can choose to display Adsense ads in any of the given formats but please note that the format that you choose can significantly influence your CTR (Click Through Rate).

No one can really predict which adsense ad format will give you the best results, but you can keep experimenting with different Adsense ad formats on your site and try to find out what works the best for you. Also it is noteworthy that many successful webmasters and bloggers have claimed that Medium Rectangle (300 x 250) and Large Rectangle (336 x 280) right at the top of the page above the content have given them the best results. But this does not mean that the same Ad placement will work for you as well. The best way to find out the best Ad format and ad placement for your blog/website is to keep experimenting. Use channels to monitor how well each format is doing. It may take you some time but eventually you will find out which Ad format works the best for you.

Note: Two of the most successful ad formats are:
  1. Medium Rectangle (300 x 250) or Large Rectangle (336 x 280) at the top

  2. Skyscraper (120x600) or Wide Skyscraper (160x600) in a three column template.

Use channels to monitor your growth

As an Adsense publisher you may want to know which page is earning you the highest revenue, or if you have multiple websites then you may need to know which of your sites is making you most of the money. Also you might be curious to find out which color combination and location/position of your ad blocks works the best for your site and gets you the highest number of clicks. Well you can use channels to know all this and much more.

"Channels enable you to view detailed reporting about the performance of specific pages and ad units. By assigning a channel to a combination of pages or ad units, you could track the performance of a leaderboard versus a banner, or compare your motorcycle pages to your automobile pages. Channels can also be used to track the performance of each of your separate domains (websites), so you can see where your clicks are coming from." - Google

There are two types of channels from which to choose: URL channels, and custom channels.

URL Channels
URL Channels can be used to track the performance of the URLs (website/webpage addresses) that you provide.

With URL Channels you can:
  1. Track the performance of two different sites and find out which site is earning you more money .

  2. Track the performance of an entire website. By entering the top-level domain name you can track all pages on that domain.
    An URL channel of http://www.ahsin.net will track the performance of all the pages on the site www.ashin.net

  3. Track the performance of all the pages under a certain directory by entering a partial URL.
    e.g. : an URL channel of http://www.ahsin.net/golf will track the performance of all pages in the Golf directory.

  4. Track the performance of a particular webpage by entering the full URL of that page.
    e.g.: http://www.ahsin.net/golf/how-to-swing.html
Custom Channels
Custom channels allow you to track the performance of specific ad units based on your specified criteria. You can use Custom Channels to :
  1. Track the performance of different Ad formats and find out which works better. For example you may find that vertical banners at the side work better than the large rectangles at the top.

  2. Track the performance of ads with different color combinations. (You may realize that ads with black background are getting more clicks than ads with red background)

  3. Track the performance of ads at different positions/locations of your site. This may help you find the best position for adsense ads on your site.
Thus channels help you understand what's working for you and what's not, so that you could customize your pages and your ads , and make the maximum amount of money from Adsense.

Adsense Heat map - where should I place Google Ads on my page?

It is important that you choose the placement/location of your Google Ads very-very carefully. Every website has certain locations/places which attract more attention than other parts of the site. And these locations are the ideal places to display your Adsense ads as the reader is more likely to notice your ads in such positions and this means that your ads will be getting more clicks.

Now this ideal position of Ads varies from site to site depending on their content and layout. For example a photoblog or image-gallery will have a different "Ideal Ad position" than a content-based site. Also the layouts/templates of websites vary tremendously and so do their "Ideal Ad Position".

Google advises you to ask yourself the following questions when considering where to position your ads:
  • Where is their attention likely to be focused?

  • How can I integrate ads into this area without getting in the users' way?

  • How can I keep the page looking clean, uncluttered and inviting?

Google has also designed a Heat map to help you choose a better position for you Adsense ads.

adsense heat map
The lighter colors indicate a weaker ad position (ads perform badly) and the darker colors indicate a stronger ad position (ads perform well) with the darkest color indicating the best ad position.

Please note that although this heat map is a very good example, it might not have indicated the best position for Adsense ads on your site. Have a long look at your website/blog; try to see it as a reader not as a webmaster/blogger. Try to figure out what brings people to your site, try to find the locations that attract more attention than other parts of your site. Place your ads in those locations or adjacent to those locations.

Note: On pages where users are typically focused on reading an article, ads placed directly below the end of the editorial content tend to perform very well. It's almost as if users finish reading and ask themselves, "What can I do next?" Precisely targeted ads can answer that question for them. -- Google

How to predict your Adsense earnings

Ok, you have launched a new website/blog and added the Google Adsense Ads to it. Now you want to know how much this new website will earn you, say after a month. Is there any way of predicting or estimating your Adsense earnings from a website/blog after a particular period of time? Well there is one, but it is based on the assumption that your per day traffic is fixed (ie you get a fixed number of visitors everyday).

Here is how it goes:

In your Adsense Reports you must have noticed a column called the Page eCPM. eCPM stands for "Effective Cost Per Thousand Impressions". eCPM is calculated by dividing the 'total earnings' by 'total number of impressions'.

In simple words eCPM is the amount of money you earn for every 1000 page impressions of your website. Say the eCPM of your site www.myFirstWebsite.com is $ 21.73 then it means that for every 1000 page impressions of this site you earn $ 21.73. Now lets assume that this site gets roughly 200 page impressions per day which means you will be earning [21.73/1000 x 200 = $4.346 per day]
( eCPM/1000x Page Views Per Day). Now that you know how much you earn from your website/blog per day you can calculate your monthly earnings. (Earning per day x 30). In this example the monthly earning will be $4.346 x 30 = $ 130.38.

Please note that in this method you assume that your per day website traffic is constant or at least within a certain range (you can calculate the average). Also your CTR is independent of your page impressions, on a good day you may get 40 clicks and on a bad day you might not get even 4. All these factors make this method of calculating your monthly earnings from Adsense rather unreliable but I think that you will agree that there is hardly anyway of estimating your monthly earning from Adsense. So the data provided by this method might be a bit obscure but it can definitely help you get a rough idea of your monthly earnings and a little insight of how well a site is doing.

Adsense Glossary

Cost-per-click (CPC)
The CPC is the amount an advertiser pays each time a user clicks on his/her ad. Google AdWords has a CPC pricing system.

Cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM)
The CPM is the amount an advertiser pays for every 1000 times a user views his/her ad and an impression is recorded.

Clickthrough rate (CTR)
In AdSense publisher reports, clickthrough rate (CTR) is the number of clicks an ad receives divided by the number of times the ad, ad unit, or page is shown, depending on the type of impressions you're viewing.

Page Impression
A page impression is generated every time a user views a page displaying Google ads. We will count one page impression regardless of the number of ads displayed on that page. For example, if you have a page displaying three ad units and it is viewed twice, you will generate two page impressions and six ad unit impressions.

Effective CPM
From a publisher's perspective, the effective cost-per-thousand impressions (eCPM) is a useful way to compare revenue across different channels and advertising programs. It is calculated by dividing total earnings by the number of impressions in thousands. For example, if a publisher earned $180 from 45,000 impressions, the eCPM would equal $180/45, or $4.00. However, please keep in mind that eCPM is a reporting feature that does not represent the actual amount paid to a publisher.

Channel
A publisher-specified group of pages used for reporting purposes. Publishers can create channels to track specific metrics across pages, sites, and domains.

URL channels
URL channels are a tool you can use to view more detailed reports about the performance of ads on specific domains. Our Optimizing with Channels guide provides a good, detailed explanation of how to use URL channels effectively.

Custom channel
Custom channels are a tool you can use to view more detailed reports about the performance of specific pages and ad units. Our Optimizing with Channels guide provides a good, detailed explanation of how to use custom channels effectively.

Section targeting
Our section targeting feature allows you to improve your ad targeting by highlighting specific sections of HTML and text content that you'd like our crawler to emphasize or ignore.

Revenue share
Each AdSense publisher receives a percentage of the cost an advertiser pays for user clicks or impressions on their ad. This percentage is referred to as the revenue share. Google does not disclose the revenue share for AdSense.

Ad format
The way the ads are displayed on a publisher's site. You can choose the format that best fits your site. For example, the banner ad layout will display up to 2 ads horizontally across the page and the skyscraper will display up to 4 ads vertically. All formats can be viewed on our Ad Formats page.

Ad impression
An ad impression is reported whenever an individual ad is displayed on your website. Different ad formats will display varying numbers of ads; for example, each time a vertical banner appears on your site, you'll see two ad impressions in your reports. In addition, keep in mind that the number of ads in any ad unit may vary depending on whether the ad unit is displaying standard text ads, expanded text ads, or image ads.

Color palette
AdSense offers publishers the ability to customize the colors of ads that appear on their sites. Color palettes allow you to make sure that the ad text, background, and border colors complement your website. For added variety and freshness, you can even choose to rotate through up to 4 different color palettes at a time.

Contextual Advertising (Content-Targeted AdWords; Content AdWords)
Google leverages our award-winning search technology to deliver relevant ads to content pages of sites and products in our network (including AdSense web sites). Our technology draws upon our understanding of the billions of pages in our search index and our ability to crawl webpages to figure out which keywords would lead a user to the page. Then, we match ads to the page based on those keywords.

Geo-Targeting
AdWords advertisers can choose to show their ads only to certain locations and languages. The AdWords ads served on an AdSense web site will therefore depend on the advertiser's geo-targeting and a user's settings.

Link unit
Link units are a type of ad format that displays a list of links relevant to the content of any page. When a user clicks on a link, they're taken to a page of related advertisements. You can view examples of all available link unit formats on our Ad Formats page.

Landing Page
As part of the Onsite Advertiser Sign-up feature, your landing page is the customizable page advertisers will view when they click on the 'Advertise on this site' link in your Google ads.

More Adsense Glossary at Google's Adsense Support

Smart Pricing vs Click Fraud

The biggest challenge in front of Google Adsense was Click Fraud. To save itself and the advertisers from Click Fraud, in 2004 Google introduced Smart Pricing. Under Smart Pricing the CPC (cost per click) value of an advertisement by Google is not fixed but is decided by a variety of factors, the most important one being the conversion rate of the clicks (that is the number of clicks resulting in online sale, registration, phone call, newsletter sign-up etc).

In simple words if Google notices that clicks on a certain advertisement (on a particular website) are not converting into customer action like sales etc, Google will reduce the CPC of clicks on such ads. If clicks continue not to convert then Google can reduce the CPC value of such clicks to the minimum. This means that if the CPC value of the ads on your site is $ 7.45 but the clicks on these ads are not converting then Google can reduce the CPC value of such clicks to as low as $0.03.

What it means for people who do Click Fraud?
BAD NEWS!! Very, very, very Bad News. You can keep clicking on the Adsense Ads on your website/blog and Google will keep reducing the CPC value of your ads. You can make 100 clicks on your ads but you will earn only about $ 3 for those 100 clicks, as the minimum CPC for Adsense ads is $0.03.

Adsense has evolved and to make money from it, the webmasters too will have to evolve. Now you can't make money from Adsense by making low quality sites and involving in tactics like Click Fraud. The message is clear, make high quality sites with great content, bring in targeted traffic and Google Adsense will reward you for it, make low quality sites and practice Click Fraud and you will earn in cents and ultimately be banned.

What is Smart Pricing ?

Smart Pricing is a phenomenon through which Google determines the CPC value (Cost Per Click) of Adsense Ads on individual websites. Through Smart Pricing Google reduces the CPC of Adsense Ads on websites on which clicks on Adsense Ads have low conversion rates ( i.e. clicks on ads don't lead to online sale, registration, phone call, newsletter sign-up etc). Smart Pricing was introduced by Google in 2004 and since then a lot of webmasters and bloggers have experienced a dip in the CPC values of the ads on their websites resulting in lower Adsense Revenue.

What is Smart Pricing?
What Smart Pricing means for Website Publishers/Bloggers?
How to survive Smart Pricing?

What is Smart Pricing?

Smart Pricing is an attempt by Google to provide more ROI (Return on Investment) to people who advertise through Google Adwords.

Google earns a major chunk of its money from ADWORDS publishers and to show these publishers that Google values their money it has introduced Smart Pricing. Under Smart Pricing, Google analyzes data across its Adsense network, and if this data shows that a click is less likely to turn into business results (e.g. online sale, registration, phone call, newsletter sign-up), Google reduces the price the Adwords Publisher has to pay for that click.

What Smart Pricing means for Website Publishers/Bloggers?

Smart Pricing spells TROUBLE for a lot of website publishers/bloggers. Since Smart Pricing is designed to reduce the CPC of Ads on which clicks don't convert, a lot of webmasters have experienced a significant decline in their Adsense Revenue after their sites got "Smart Priced". Smart Pricing is even more critical for Webmasters as Smart Pricing does not effect just one individual webpage or website but and entire Adsense Account. This means that one poorly converting site can result in the smart pricing of an entire adsense account (i.e. the CPC of Ads on all your websites in that Adsense Account will be adversely affected).

I would like to mention here that Smart Pricing only hurts websites with poor Content; websites with high quality content will actually be earning more money because of Smart Pricing.

How to survive Smart Pricing?

There are only three ways of dealing with Smart Pricing:

1) Remove the Adsense Ads from websites/blogs that have a low conversion rate. This will minus the Adsense Revenue from low converting sites, but your overall Adsense Revenue will boost up very significantly as the CPC value of Ads on your other sites will improve manifolds after removing the Adsense Ads from low converting sites. Many webmasters say that their Overall Adsense Revenue doubled after doing this.

2) Get a separate Adsense Account for low converting Websites.A lot of webmasters have created multiple Adsense Accounts to save their high converting websites from being smart priced because of their low converting sites.

3) Make Niche Blogs with "High Quality Content". A Niche Blog will ensure that you get "targeted traffic" which will lead to a higher conversion rate for your website.

http://adsense.blogspot.com/2005/10/facts-about-smart-pricing.html

What is Google Adsense ?

Adsense is an ad-serving program run by Google. Website owners can enroll in this program to earn revenue from their website by displaying ads from Google Adsense. These ads are administered by Google and generate revenue on either a per-click or per-thousand-impressions basis.

Google utilizes its search technology to serve ads based on website content and the user's geographical location. The ads are so relevant to the content of the website, that the readers find them useful. It is this contextual/relevant advertising system that has made Google Adsense the most successful advertising program on the Internet.

Here are a few examples of "Relevant Ads" displayed by Google Adsense:

1) www.nameadog.com



This site is about naming and training dogs. It has some tips on naming dogs, some articles on dogs and some puppy photos. So basically it's all about dogs and the ads displayed on this site are also about dogs (mostly about naming dogs and training them).

2) www.battlediabetes.com



This is a blog on diabetes and it covers issues like "How to battle diabetes", "Diabetes and exercise", "Diabetes and Sex”, "Diabetes and Insurance" etc. If you see the adds on this site you will notice that all of them are related to diabetes (Control Diabetes, Info on Diabetes, Weight loss products etc)

>> The point I am trying to make is that Google Adsense displays ads that are relevant to the content of your site so they do not put off your readers; rather they find such ads useful.

How to add Adsense Ads to your blog

A one page article focusing on a particular topic is good enough to add Adsense to your Blog. But it is always advisable to add some more content to your blog because Adsense Robot goes through your content to determine what your site is all about so that it could serve relevant advertisements on your site. Hence I would advice you to create at least 5 Posts of average length before adding Adsense.

How to add Adsense Ads to your blog at www.blogger.com
How to add Adsense Ads to a blog at a blogging service other than blogger.com

How to add Adsense Ads to your blog at www.blogger.com
1) Login into your Blogger account. Click on "Layout" button under the Name of your blog.



2) You will be take to the "Template" section and you will see the "Page Elements" layout of your blog. Locate "Add a Page Element" button on the right side of your page (above the "Blog Archive").



3) A new Window will open and asked to "Choose a New Page Element". Locate "Adsense" and click on "Add to Blog".



4) You will be asked to “Sign Up for Adsense Account”. Fill in your Email Address and Language and click on “Create Account”.



5) Adsense will send an E-mail to your e-mail address asking you to confirm your membership by clicking on a link. Click on that link, you will be taken to a form, fill it up and you will be given an Adsense Account.



6) Go back to your Blogger Window and click on “Continue”. Now you will be taken to the “Configure Adsense” section where you can choose the Format (Size and dimensions of your Advertisement block) and Color combination of your ads.



7) In the Format menu choose “120 x 600 Vertical Banner” and also choose colors of your choice. Finally click on “Save Changes”. Adsense has been added to your blog. Go back to “Page Elements” section of template and you will see a new “Adsense” block in your Sidebar.



8) Click on “View Blog” to check out your Blog and the Advertisements placed by Adsense.

How to add Adsense Ads to a blog at a blogging service other than blogger.com
1) Go to Google Adsense

2) Click on " Sign Up".

3) You will be asked to fill up a form (your blog/website address, country, name, address, phone no), fill it up.

4) Google will review you site, this may take about a day.

5) Google will then send you an e-mail to inform you if they have accepted you as an Adsense Member or not (They accept most of the sites, if you don't have adult content on your site and are not trying to sell arms or drugs then you don't have anything to worry about).

6) Once Google Adsense accepts you as a member, they will e-mail you your Username and Password for your Adsense account.

7) Login into your account , click on "Adsense Setup" and copy the small piece of code shown there and paste it into your blog template or in the HTML of your webpage.

Getting Started - How to make a blog

Hot to Make a Blog
This is a step-by-step guide on how to make a blog. There are a lot of free Blog Publishing Services on the internet, but www.blogger.com is one of the oldest and also one of the best free blogging service. So here I will show you how to make a blog at www.blogger.com.

1) Go to http://www.blogger.com/ .On the bottom-right of the page there is an orange color arrow stating “Create Your Blog Now”. Click on it.



2) Fill Up the small registration form and click on “Continue”.



3) Blogger will now ask you to “Name Your Blog”. Fill in your desired blog name and click on “Continue”.



4) Now Blogger will ask you to choose a template/layout for your Blog. Choose a template that appeals to your eyes and click on “Continue”.



5) Your blog has been created. Click on “Start Posting”.



6) Give a Title to your Post and in the Compose Box type a Paragraph/Article on any topic. Then click on “Publish Post”.



7) You will be informed by Blogger that your Post has been Published. Click on "View Blog" and see what your blog looks like.



That's it, your blog is ready.This is the first post of your blog. You can add more posts to your blog by logging into your blogger.com account and clicking on "New Post" link below the name of your blog. Blogger also allows you to change the "Settings" and the "Template" of your blog.

How to find the monetary worth of a topic/keyword

As I have mentioned earlier, the CPC value (cost per click, the amount of money you receive for one click on an Ad) of different Ads is different. Under Google Adsense the CPC value can vary from $0.03 - $ 50 or even more. This CPC value is determined by the intensity of competition between Advertisers (more competition = higher CPC). Now the amount of money being spent on Advertising in different markets can vary tremendously. For example a Multinational Firm selling computers may spend millions of dollars on advertising , on the other hand a small publisher trying to sell his books online may have an advertising budget of just a couple of thousand dollars.

The point I am trying to make is that some topics/keywords have a higher CPC than the others.

And therefore it is mandatory that before starting a new blog you check out the CPC value of the topic of the blog and some of the main keywords of your blog. I am not saying that let CPC be the only consideration when you are choosing the topic/subject of your new blog, but if you wish to make some serious money from blogging then you need to keep an eye on the CPC. I suggest that you make a list of your favorite topics (on which you would like to blog about) and then check the out the CPC of each of these topics and go for the one that promises to pay the highest.

Here is a list of tools that help you find the CPC of a topic/keyword :

1) Google Adwords - The Sandbox Tool
Google Adwords is the best place to find the CPC value of a topic/keyword. It not only gives you the CPC value of your queried keyword but it also gives you a list of about 200 keywords related to your query along with their CPC values. Further Google Adwords also allows you see the advertiser's competition for this list of keywords and this can be very helpful to choose a high paying topic.

Hot to find the CPC of a keyword

Google Adwords Keyword Tool

2) Google Search
Although Google's Search page does not give you the CPC value of keywords, it can be a very good indicator of Advertiser’s competition for a given keyword. When you use Google to search for something Google searches the net and displays the results on the left side of the page. On the right side of the search page Google displays it's ads that are related to the searched keyword.
Now the number of Ads displayed varies for different keywords. If more number of Ads are displayed then it means that the Advertisers competition is high for that particular keyword and vice versa.

Find CPC of a Keyword

www.google.com

How to choose the topic of your blog

If you are blogging for money, then you should choose the topic/subject/theme of your blog very very wisely. It's the topic of your blog that determines the amount of money you are going make from Adsense or any other Advertising program.

A mediocre blog on a popular and ad-attracting topic makes way more money than a very well made (quality content) blog on a topic which is neither popular nor attracts a lot of advertisers. You can put hours and hours of work in your blog and create the best content in the world, but if you haven't chosen the topic of your blog wisely then you can very well forget about making any significant amount of money from Adsense.

Here is a list of issues that you must consider before deciding the topic of your blog :

1) Passion
Always blog about something that you are passionate about. If you are genuinely interested in a topic then it will be easier for you to write about it and work will seem to be fun. Also you may need to research on your topic to get more info and add more content to your blog. All this will be much easier if you are passionate about the topic you have chosen.

To make money from your blog the most important thing that you need to do is provide quality content. The better your content, the higher your earnings. And it will be much easier for you to build quality content on a topic that you yourself are driven about, something that you are passionate about. It might be very tempting to blog about topics that are very popular or that promise a higher CPC (cost per click), but if you really want to succeed in the long run then blog about something that you are passionate about.

2) Popularity
Blog about something popular, something that could grab the attention of a general audience. There are many reasons why I ask you to do this.
i) A popular topic will bring more traffic to your site. A popular topic will bring in more traffic from search engines and also it will be easier for you get some incoming links.
ii) It will be easier for you to build a brand or make a name for yourself. You may have just 5 pages in your blog but if the content in them is of high quality then your visitors will remember your blog and you will have more repeated visitors. Keep adding more content to your blog and it will become famous in very little time.

If you choose to blog about a less popular topic or a topic that caters only to a specific audience then you will struggle to get a significant amount of traffic and your adsense earning too might not be very thrilling.

3) Monetary Worth
Blog about a topic that has a high Monetary worth .Google Adsense pays you when visitors of your website/blog click on the Ads displayed by Adsense. The amount of money you get for one click is called CPC (Cost Per Click). The CPC of every ad is different and is basically determined by the competition between advertisers (users of Google Adwords) , so clicks on some Ads pay more than the others. Now Adsense is a contextual advertising program, that is it displays Ads that are relevant/similar to the content of your blog.

So if you blog about a topic that is highly sought after by the advertisers then the CPC of the Ads on your blog will be higher. There are numerous tools on net like Google, Google Adwords, Overture bids etc that let you find the monetary worth of a given topic/keyword. Read more at : How to find the monetary worth of your blog

4) Unique Content
By unique content I mean something new, something exclusive, something that's never been said before. Search Engines love unique content and your visitors too will remember your blog if you provide them with something new and fresh. So can you create unique content on your chosen topic ? If yes then go ahead and make a blog about it, if not then keep looking for a topic about which you have something new to say. Your ability to create unique content on a given topic, basically depends upon your interest in it. You will find it easier to write unique content about issues that you yourself are passionate about.

5) Enough Content
Can you create enough content on your chosen topic ?

6) Competition
If you choose to blog about a very popular subject then be ready to face a lot of competition from other bloggers.

How much other bloggers are making from adsense ?

If you want to see how much other bloggers are making from Adsense search for "Adsense Cheques" in any search engine.

Below are some scans of Adsense Cheques and links to blogs/websites showing Adsense Cheques.

Check out this Adsense Cheque

A blog full of scans of Adsense Cheques - hundreds of cheques

India's most Successful blogger Amit Aagarwal talks about how much he makes from blogging

Another Adsense Cheque

How much money can you make from Adsense

A forum discussing Adsense earnings

Adsense Check

Adsense Cheque

Adsense Check

Adsense check

adsense cheque

adsense check

adsense cheque

adsense check

adsense cheque

Google "Adsense Cheques" and see what comes up.

How much can you earn from Blogging?

Well there is no limit. There are people who make just 20 cents a day and there are people who make hundreds of dollars a day.The amount of money you make from Adsense (as I have mentioned earlier, Adsense is the biggest and the best source of revenue for a blog so I will focus on Adsense over here) depends on just one factor:

1) the number of clicks on your Ads(ads on your blog).

(Adsense does pay you for Ad impressions as well but the major chunk comes from the Clicks on the Ads.)

The number of clicks your Ads depend on quiet a few factors :
1) The number of visitors your blog gets.
2) The topic of your blog. If you are writing about something that's really popular and your content is good then there is a good chance that your blog will get a lot of visitors and a lot of clicks on your Ads.
3) The quality of your content ( A high quality content will bring targeted traffic which will result in more clicks)
4) Your Ad Placement.

These are just a few basic factors. There are a lot of other things that influence your earnings and as you keep blogging you will find that there are a lot of things that you can do to increase your earnings.

Although there is no way to predict how much you will make from blogging or adsense, I would suggest that you guys go through the following exercise :

Let's assume that you already have a blog, your blog is rather small with just 5 pages on it. Let's also assume that you have added Adsense ads to your blog and are making about 20 cents a day from it (which means that in one month you will make about $6 from Adsense). Now 20 cents a day is not very inspiring is it? Actually it’s rather daunting. But before you start thinking that you can't make money from blogging and decide to quit it, let's analyze the situation a bit deeply.

You are making $0.20 per day from 5 pages.
That means that you make $0.04 per day from 1 page.

Now let's assume that you keep adding 3 pages (posts) to your blog every day.
So by the end of the month you will have about: 5 old pages + 90 ( 3 x 30 ) = 95 pages in your blog.

now you make $0.04 from 1 page so from 95 pages you will be making $0.05 x 95 = $ 3.8 per day.
So after one month your Adsense Revenue will be of 3.8 x 30 = $ 114

Actually it will be much more than that as more pages means that the Search Engine will rank you higher, further more pages also mean that Search Engines will show your site for more keywords then what they used to do when your blog was of just 5 pages. Both these factors will bring in more traffic leading to more clicks and more money.

Let's suppose that you liked this boost in your earnings and decided to keep adding 3 pages a day to your blog.
So by the end of 2nd month your blog will have about 95 + 90 ( 3 x 30 ) = 185 pages.

So your per day earnings from these 185 pages will be: $0.04 x 185 = $ 7.4
which means that your earnings at the end of 3rd month will be : $7.4 x 30 = $222

If you keep going this way by the end of a year you will :
have 3 x 365 = 1095 pages in your blog.
from which you will be earning :
$0.04 x 1095 = $ 43.8 per day

which means your monthly earnings from then on will be : $43.8 x 30 = $1314

Actually you would have much more than that for a variety of reasons ( you will know about them when you read about how adsense works). So you see making money from blogging is just about commitment and persistence ( I forgot to add patience).

One thing that I would like to mention here is that its not compulsory that you have to add pages to just one particular blog. If you feel that you have said enough about a certain topic and have nothing more to blog about it then think of a new topic and make a new blog about it. The important thing is adding content everyday.

How blogs make money ?

A blog can earn money in quiet a few ways but the most common and the most rewarding are : Advertising Programs and Affiliate Programs.

1) Advertising Programs
Displaying Ads on one's blog has become the most common way of earning money from blogs. Advertisers pay you on the basis of Cost Per Click (CPC), that is they pay you some money for every click on the ads or for every thousand impressions of their ads i.e. every 1000 times their ads are displayed on your blog. These days there are a lot of Advertising Programs on the internet but the best one is Google Adsense and on this blog I will be mostly discussing Adsense only as it is the oldest, most reliable and the highest paying Advertisement Program.

Once you have made a blog you can request Google Adsense to give you an account and display their ads on your blog/website.(its very easy and un-complicated). Adsense will then give you a small piece of code which you will have to add to the template of your blog (again a very easy process). Once you have added the code, Adsense will start displaying Ads on your Blog.

When visitors come to your blog and click on these Ads, Adsense will pay you for it. You can log into your Adsense Account at any time and see how much money you are making. Adsense pays you every month through cheque provided that you have earned at least $100 in that month.

2) Affiliate Programs
Affiliate Programs are similar to Advertising Programs. The only difference is that Advertising Programs display a variety of Ads of different products and services on your blog, while under an Affiliate Program you will have to display a Banner/button/link of a particular product or service. They pay you in the same manner as Advertising Programs do, that is either Cost Per Click or for every Thousand Impressions of their banners etc.
Some popular Affiliate Programs are : Amazon(sells books and merchandise) , Linkshare, CJ.com, ebay etc.