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By Robert Benjamin
Almost everyone has probably heard of AdSense by now, if not
then I am pretty sure you have seen AdSense and may have not
even known what it was. To explain AdSense, I must first tell
you a little about ' AdWords ', Adwords is a Pay-Per-Click
(PPC) advertising system that is available through Google the
search engine. You create a small text ad, which is placed on
Google's search result pages, the ads match your websites
subject or content. You bid or set a fee that you are willing
to pay Google every time someone clicks on your ad, this is a
great way to get highly targeted traffic that can turn into
sales, subscribers, or whatever you are trying to achieve with
your website traffic.
Now that I have explained Adwords, I can now tell you about
AdSense. AdSense makes it possible for website owners to earn
money by simply letting Google place ads on their web pages.
AdSense ads can be either text or images, the ads can be
altered to blend into the webpages, so they don't make your
site look junky or poorly designed. AdSense ads are highly
relevant to the content of most webpages, for instance if you
place AdSense ads on a webpage that sells Coins, you will get
ads about selling coins or other coin related subjects. Every
time a website visitor clicks on one of the AdSense ads on
your
webpage, you earn money, and every month after your first
balance reaches one hundred dollars, Google will send you a
check or you can have the money deposited into your checking
account. The AdSense program is a great way to earn extra
money
if you have a website, it's easy to make a few dollars every
day, and some folks are making thousands of dollars per month
doing it.
When I first started Adsense, I placed the ads on my webpages
and it wasn't very long until I had made a small amount of
money, a few days later my account balance had grown even
more.
I was pretty happy, but I thought to myself, after reading a
lot
of articles, I am not making nearly as much money as others
are
making with AdSense, something must be wrong. Then I thought,
maybe my website doesn't get the traffic that the others are
getting ? I chatted with a lot of people on the internet that
were in the program, and I discovered that the amount of
visitors I get, was higher than some of the traffic they
receive. You may think that 200 - 400 unique visitors a day is
low for website traffic, you are very wrong, the average
website gets a lot less per day, especially if your website is
only a few months old or is not optimized for the search
engines, or it's subject matter has a very low search demand.
If my website was getting a nice amount of traffic or
visitors,
why was my AdSense earnings so low ? The first thing that I
discovered that was wrong was ' adsense ad placement ', that's
right, you have to study each webpage's layout that you plan
on
placing the ads on. Wherever your webpage has sections or
areas
that grab and hold the visitors attention, this is a prime
area
to place a section of AdSense ads, in other words, place the
ads
on your webpages where folks will notice them. We are
currently
allowed to place up to 3 different AdSense ad sections or
groups on each webpage. I found after some testing that the
best places for my ads are, just under the title or sub-title,
near the middle of the page, and near the end or bottom of my
page. If you place one section of AdSense ads near the top of
your webpage, folks entering your site will probably notice
the
ads, and if they scroll down a ways and theres more ads, that
increases the odds that they will notice them also. Probably
the best place to place one section of ads is at the bottom of
your webpages, right after your last bit of text or
interesting
reading, but make sure you place the ads before any other
links,
because when visitors are ready to leave your site, they may
leave by clicking on one of your ads, earning you money, and
if
you have other links showing before your ads, they may leave
your site by clicking on one of them. So after I studied the
layout of all my webpages, I went back through and
repositioned
the AdSense ads, almost immediately I noticed my earnings
increased.
I left my webpages alone, and about three months later I
received my first check in the mail, it wasn't a lot of money
but still for really doing no physical work I was very glad to
get it. My earnings slowly started getting better and better
after that first check, the next month I received another
check, then the following month I got another and so on. After
having been in the AdSense program for about 8 months, and
chatting with more folks who were also in the program I found
that my earnings were still low compared to some other people.
I then discovered another method that increased my earnings
even more. I noticed that my ads stood out from the rest of my
webpages text and content. I had always thought, I should make
my ads a different color than my webpages background so folks
would notice my ads, and click on them, I was totally wrong.
Almost everyone that has been on the internet for any length
of
time, has become so accustomed to seeing banners and other
flashy ads that almost everyone now has what is called 'ad
blindness', that is, when they visit a site they are
automatically turned off or they ignore anything that looks
like an ad. I used the Adsense editor and I changed my ads
background and border colors so they matched the background
color of my webpages, and I changed the text color of the ads
so they matched the text color of my webpages content. The ads
blended in very well, to me they were barely noticeable from
the rest of my webpage, but right away the number of clicks on
the ads increased, and the earnings went up even more.
I left my webpages alone and for another couple months my
earnings stayed about the same, I was content with the
results,
but my earnings were still not as good as some of the other
folks who received roughly the same amount of traffic that I
did. Then I found out that they had done something else to
their AdSense ads, something that made the ads seem to really
get peoples attention, they were placing images near the ads,
it seemed adding images made the ads look unique and it helped
make the amount of clicks on them rise. So I searched the
internet and I found some little icons and images that matched
the content of my webpages, and near where the Adsense ads
were
shown, I displayed the images by adding a simple html image
tag.
I asked google if adding the images was within the AdSense
rules, and I was advised that they were fine as long as they
didn't make folks click on the ads, by this I mean, you cannot
have a flashing sign that says, ' click these ads ', or you
shouldn't have a scantily dressed girl pointing to the ads
saying ' make me happy - click here ' or stuff like that, just
make some nice little images that pertain to your webpages
content.
The next couple months or so, my earnings still continued
rising slowly. By this time, besides my regular webpages I had
been working on several BLOG's pertaining to different
subjects, so I thought I might as well place AdSense ads on
all
of my blogs also and make even more money. For a couple weeks
my
earnings went up quite a bit, and I was very happy, then all
of
a sudden, just like someone turning off a switch, my AdSense
earnings plummeted. I was now making in a day, what I had made
when I first joined the program, what the heck happened I
thought to myself ? My traffic was still slowly rising, the
number of clicks was rising, but for some strange reason, the
earnings per click, (EPC) had dropped a lot, it was horrible.
Then I learned that Google had introduced a new feature or
system into the AdSense program, called 'smart pricing',
'smart
pricing' automatically adjusts the cost of an ad click. Using
Googles system of analyzing AdSense data, if it shows that a
click from one of your webpages is less likely to turn into an
online sale, or other business result for the Ad publisher,
the
amount you earn per click in AdSense is greatly reduced. When
'smart pricing', was introduced, some AdSense users saw their
EPC drop to as low as 3 cents a click, where before 'smart
pricing', that same click might of earned them a dollar or
much
more, this was quite a drastic drop in earnings. What is
horrible about 'smart pricing', besides the earnings loss to
AdSense users, is that one site or webpage can trigger it, and
once triggered by that one webpage, it effects your entire
account and every webpage you have will now earn substantially
less per click. Remember awhile back when I had added AdSense
Ads to my BLOG's, that seemed to be what had triggered smart
pricing for me. The BLOG's were on numerous subjects, but they
were not business or real professional sites, so hardly any
business results such as sales, occurred from folks clicking
the ads on these sites. After I removed the Adsense ads from
the BLOG's, it took about a week, then I noticed that the EPC
was once again climbing back up, yes the 'smart pricing',
spell
had been broken.
If you are thinking about trying AdSense, or if you are
already
in it, beware of the smart pricing curse, or if it has already
effected your earnings, try removing AdSense ads from your
webpages a few pages at a time, the smart-pricing system is
evaluated each week, so it will take a few days to see if you
have removed ads from the page(s) that triggered it.
rwtroll.dealspot.hop.clickbank.net
You may publish this article in your ezine, newsletter or on
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corrections.
About The Author: Robert W. Benjamin has been in the software
business on the internet for over 5 years, and has been
producing low-cost software for the past 25+ years. He first
released software on the AMIGA and C64 computer systems in the
late 1970's-80's. rwtroll.dealspot.hop.clickbank.net
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