Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

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August 8, 2006

A 30-Second Tactical Guide to Adsense

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 8:52 am

by James Martin

New Blogger Logo

So you’ve started a nice new blog, you have a funky domain, some content and you’re all up and running. A few weeks later you magically come across a blog by the name of ProBlogger run by Darren Rowse. You find out that he works from home and earns a very respectable income from blogging.

Your mind goes into overdrive, maybe I can earn money from my blog – but how does he do it?

For you Successful-Blog readers, I’m going to briefly delve into the wonderful world of Adsense.

WARNING – this covers a very basic guide, however I will reveal a few tactics that you may be unaware of…

Introduction to Adsense

Adsense is a publisher’s god send. Google Adsense is a contextual advertising system that allows publishers (people who own/run websites, blogs) to place advertisements on their site. When people click an advert, the publisher will be paid for that click.

Signing up is easy; however you must have an already established website with real content. Click here to signup for Google Adsense.

Once your site has been approved you will be able to select an advert type, color and shape. Below I will list some tips that you should try and stick to when choosing these options.

What works:

    1) Blend the ad into your content as much as you can. If your blog background color is white, make your advert background color and border white as well.

    2) When considering a “link color”, try making it the same link color as the links found on your blog. If your blog has links in the content, what color are they? Apply the same color to your Adsense adverts.

    3) If you’re unsure about what color to use for links, stick with blue. It’s a standard across the web and when people see text that’s blue, it screams “click me”.

    4) Location is important as a well placed advert can be the key to success. 468×60 adverts work well above your blog content; horizontal link units work well too.

    5) Another 468×60 advert works well under the first post, click here to learn how to place an advert under your first blog post. (WordPress only!)

What doesn’t work:

    1) Skyscraper adverts don’t work too well on a blogs sidebar; they just scream “I’m an ad!” and generally don’t attract much attention.

    2) Ads with borders. Though some people have success with them, the majority don’t. You could always test it, on one week, off the other.

    3) Bright, ugly colors. Don’t go there.

Big No-no’s

    1) NEVER click your own adverts. This is a big no-no and Google have devices in place to detect fraudulent clicks.

    2) Never ask your readers to “click on your adverts”, or have headings that state “please click my ads to support this site”. This is strictly forbidden as per Google’s terms of service.

How much will I earn?

The question that gets asked the most is how much will I earn or how much should I be earning. The trick to this question is that different content will receive a different CPM. (Cost per thousand impressions). There are keywords that will attract a higher CPM, while others won’t.

There are people who write content specifically designed to include high paying keywords as to attract higher earnings. But that is a whole new story and generally isn’t considered true blogging as the user is publishing content made for Adsense, and not the readers.

The general consensus is to create content that is valuable and useful to REAL surfers. MFA (made for Adsense) content won’t make you rich overnight and with so much competition, you’re better off creating real content that you love writing about.

I’m sure Liz will agree :)

James “Jamsi” Martin

__________
Check out James’ blog, Workboxers. His approach to business blogging is refreshing, inquisitive, and intelligent. Workboxers a great read, packed with information in the right size nuggets. I always catch myself remembering his posts long after I’ve read them.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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10 Comments to “A 30-Second Tactical Guide to Adsense”

  1. August 8th, 2006 at 9:32 am
    Aaron B. Hockley said

    I run AdSense on two blogs, and consistently find sidebar skyscrapers to be my best-performing channels…

  2. August 8th, 2006 at 9:41 am
    ME Strauss said

    Hi Aaron,
    Do you have a product blog? I understand that Adsense does really well there in every form.

  3. August 8th, 2006 at 10:59 am
    Big Roy said

    My blog is only about a month or so old, it was started on Blogger. But I quickly realized a couple of things. Even though I was only doing this as a hobby it was going to take up a lot of time. If it was going to take that much time I figured why do it half ass. So I got a domain and switched to Wordpress. Not that Blogger isn’t good; Wordpress just gives me many more options.

    Now to get on topic. When I started, ads were something that weren’t even on my mind. (After all this was just a hobby.) I have never liked Google ads. Somehow to me they look cheap and on many sites detract from the overall look, IMO.

    My blog is about the Imus Show. If anyone is familiar with the show you know he sells books and to a lesser extent music. So on my blog I decided to go with specific Amazon ads that relate to the books or music appearing on Imus at a given time. Even though my blog is young I have sold a few items.

    I don’t ever plan on making a lot of money. Just enough to cover the hosting fee would be nice.

    Sorry for the long ramble. Imus is on vacation this week so my urge to write hasn’t been fulfilled.

  4. August 8th, 2006 at 11:03 am
    ME Strauss said

    Roy,
    Your comments are welcome. Yours is an opinion held by many. It has a right to be here.

  5. August 8th, 2006 at 8:33 pm
    Jamsi said

    Aaron,

    You see that’s why it’s so hard to determine what works and what doesn’t. I’ve have many cases where skyscraper banners don’t perform due to the point of having NO CTR!

    The biggest way to fix this is to test. Tweak and test some more.

    Good luck :)

  6. August 8th, 2006 at 8:36 pm
    ME Strauss said

    I agree with that for sure. I’ve never been good at Google. That’s why I had someone else write the article. Thanks Jamsi for writing the article. It helps to get all of the information that we can get.

  7. August 10th, 2006 at 6:08 am
    Bloggers Buzz » Blog Archive » A 30-second Tactical Guide to Adsense said

    [...] James Martin at Successful Blogging has written A 30-Second Tactical Guide to Adsense which covers some of the basics of Adsense placement, color selections, what doesn’t work and also what not to do. [...]

  8. August 10th, 2006 at 6:09 am
    Real Blog Money | Blog Archive » A 30-second Tactical Guide to Adsense said

    [...] James Martin at Successful Blogging has written A 30-Second Tactical Guide to Adsense which covers some of the basics of Adsense placement, color selections, what doesn’t work and also what not to do. [...]

  9. August 12th, 2006 at 12:42 pm
    Working at Home on the Internet said

    [...] A 30-Second Tactical Guide to Adsense by James Martin Guest writting for Successful Blog… James explains some fine points for the Novice Blogger about using Adsense. [...]

  10. October 30th, 2006 at 12:16 pm
    Cash Money World » Blog Archive » Adsense Tweaking - It’s all in the Content said

    [...] If you’ve been playing with the Google Adsense program, you’ll know that advertisements are served contextually, meaning ads appear that relate to the content on your website. A major mistake some web publishers make is that the content is too varied and covers too many topics. If you’re writing a blog about tennis, seo and horse back riding, Google’s going to be more confused than an eskimo in the Sahara. [...]

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