Tips Adsense : Expanded Text Ads — Shrinking Control Or Expanded Income?

        Take a look at the ad format samples on the AdSense site and you’ll see a bunch of squares and rectangles filled with ads. Most of those ad units will contain more than one ad. On those units that do contain just the one ad, like the button or the half-banner, the ad will fill the space neatly and look pretty subtle.

You might be surprised then to put a skyscraper or a leaderboard on your site and find just one giant ad, written in super-sized text.

ll the effort you’ve put into picking the right ad for your site, testing to see which formats work best and calculating which will give you the most clicks will have gone right out of the window.

Tips Adsense : Link Units — Great Little Stocking Fillers

An ad format that has already proved its worth, when used correctly, is link units. If you’ve ever bought Christmas presents for children, you’ve probably bought stocking fillers. You dole out hundreds of bucks on some state-of-the-art electronic gizmo, toss in a couple of toy cars that cost a dollar each just to fill up space and give the kid more to unwrap... then watch him spend 90 percent of his time playing with the car that cost 10 percent of your total gift budget. Ad Link units have the potential to be equally profitable. They’re very small, almost unnoticeable... but when used well, they can be extremely

Tips Adsense : Gadget Ads — Clever But Are They Effective?

I’m optimistic about video ads. I’m not sure yet about Gadget ads. These are rich media ads that might contain animation, Flash games and interactive content. At the moment advertisers are big brands like Coca-Cola and I suspect it’s likely to stay that way. Ads like these cost a lot more to design and program than a text ad, a graphic ad or even a home-made video ad. They can pay by impression or by click but I’m skeptical that you’ll get many clicks. An early test showed that only a third of one percent of viewers actually interacted with the ad. The problem is that they just look too much like ads. Most users have learnt to ignore them. If you do want to test them though, you’ll need to opt in to

Tips Adsense : Video Ads

        There is however, one type of image ad that you should welcome on your website: Google’s video ads. These are an excellent addition to Google’s inventory and for sites that get them, they can bring very impressive returns. Instead of receiving the sort of static image that just gets ignored, you’ll receive the opening still of an online video. The video is stored on Google’s servers so your download times won’t be affected, and it only plays when the user clicks the Play button, minimizing distraction to the user. That’s a good thing. If a user’s eyes keep drifting to a moving image when he’s trying to read your content, he’s going to get pretty frustrated and not want to come back.

Tips Adsense : Image Ads — Built To Be Ignored

Text ads should always be your first pick when you start to load up your site. Image ads should always be your last choice. A text ad offers many advantages over image ads:
A. With the right formatting, a text ad 'blends in' with your site content. An image ad will not give you the same freedom with its appearance, as the only thing you can play with is the size and positioning.
B. You can squeeze more text ads into the space that a conventional banner takes. People love to have more choices!
C. Properly formatted text ads don't look like clutter. Banners do!

Tips Adsense : Text Ads — Google’s Finest

Text ads are probably the types of ad that you’re most familiar with. You get a box containing one or a number of ads with a linked headline, a brief description and a URL. You also get the “Ads by Google” notice that appears on all AdSense ads. (Google changed this notice recently and it now blends in much better than it used to.) There are eight different types of text ad. The most popular is probably the leaderboard. At 728 x 90, it stretches pretty much across the screen and while it can be placed anywhere, it’s mostly used at the top of the page, above the main text.

Tips Adsense : Meet the AdSense Family

Google serves its ads in several flavors, with each of those flavors coming in a range of different shapes and sizes. It is very important to understand the differences between each of these ads. Some are ideal for particular locations. Some should never be used in certain locations. And some should be used very rarely—if at all.
The sample page at www.google.com/adsense/adformats lets you see all of the different kinds of ads at once. It even has links to sample placements that demonstrate how the ads can be used. For the most part, I’d recommend that you ignore those sample placements. I’ll talk about location in more detail later in the book, but for now just bear in mind that many of the ads in the samples are just too out of the way to be noticed. You can use them as a starting point if you want but you’ll save yourself a lot of time — and money — by taking advantage of the experience of myself and others, and following the recommendations here.

Tips Adsense : Don't "Look" Like An Ad

People don't visit your website for ads. They want good content. If you make the ads stick out with eye-popping colors, images or borders, that makes them easy to recognize as ads — and people work extra hard to avoid them.

The same goes for ads that are tucked away in the top, bottom or some other far corner of the page. So easy to ignore! If you want people to click, make the ads look like an integral part of your content.

Today's visitors are blind to banners, mad at pop-ups, weary of ads and skeptical of contests and giveaways. So how do you win their confidence? Simple. Don't make your ads look like ads!

Let’s begin by reviewing each of the different types of ad available from AdSense and explaining their uses... then I’ll introduce you to a few simple choices that zoomed my CTRs to incredible heights.

Tips Adsense : How To "Tweak" Your Ads To Make Them "Click"!

Ad Formats: “Dress” your ads for success!
How would you like your ads served? Banners? Skyscrapers? Rectangles? Squares? What about borders and background colors? The choices can be overwhelming. Many people let Google decide for them- preferring to stick with the default settings. Big mistake! From my own experience I can tell you that it’s like swapping a hundred-dollar bill for a ten-dollar one. For almost one year I settled for just a tenth of what I could have been making — just because I didn’t bother to control the looks and placement of my AdSense ads. The various ad formats, colors and their placement on the web page can be done in thousands of combinations. You can literally spend hours every day experimenting with every possible combination. But you don’t want to, do you? Let me give you a few ‘ground rules’ that have sky-rocketed the CTRs on my top-grossing pages:

What Is AdSense?

           Before signing up to AdSense, it’s important to understand what you’re signing up to. Many of the principles and strategies that I describe in this book make the most of the way that AdSense works. If you can understand where AdSense are getting their ads, how they assign those ads to Web pages and how they

Signing Up Made Easy

       First though, you have to sign up. Here’s how you do it. The sign-up page asks for a relatively small amount of information, not all of which is as obvious as you might like. First, you’ll have to tell Google whether you want an “individual” account or a “company” account — whether you’re a company with more than twenty

Google Policies

AdSense works. I know it works because I’ve got the stats, the checks and the bank balance to prove it. And all of the methods that I used to increase my AdSense revenues were completely legitimate and in line with Google’s policies. That’s important. It is possible to cheat AdSense. But you’d have to be crazy to do it.

As Easy as 1-2-3!

The bottom line is that there are three ways to increase your AdSense revenue.
1. By Tweaking the Ads to make them more appealing to your visitors;
2. By Optimizing your Website for better AdSense targeting (or what the Google folks call 'content

Links

Your search engine ranking will depend on a number of factors. One of those factors is the number of sites that link to yours. As far as Google is concerned if lots of sites about model railways link to your model railway site, that must be a pretty good sign that people who like model railways think your site is good. So they’ll want to offer it to people who search for model railways, bringing you lots of free traffic.

Once you’ve got your site up and running you’ll want to persuade other sites to give you links. You could offer to exchange links and you could even set up a page that contains recommended links so that you’ll have somewhere to put them.

There’s a range of other strategies and services that you can use. You can find out about those in Chapter 20.

Search Engine Optimization

However you decide to build your first site, people have to know you’re there. One of the most important ways to do that is get yourself a high-ranking in a search engine. There are lots of different search engines, but only three are really important: Google, Yahoo! and MSN. In Chapter 21, I’ll talk in more detail about improving your search engine rankings.
If you want to take a shortcut, there are plenty of companies which will make the submissions for you and they’ll even optimize your site to get you as high on the rankings as possible.

... Or Google’s Page Creator

    But blogs aren’t for everyone. Although they’re now one of the easiest ways to get online, they have to be updated regularly and aren’t the best option for static content.

    Fortunately Blogger isn’t the only way to get online fast. Google’s Page Creator makes building a website as simple as point, click and type.

Again, you get a template that you can edit freely, and you can also break into the HTML to paste the     

    AdSense code. Check to see how it looks, publish, and all you’ll have to do next is let people know where you are. And that’s where the disadvantages of creating a website using a free tool like Page Creator kicks in. With a website created through Page Creator, Search Engine Optimization becomes difficult. Your URL will be [yourname].googlepages.com, which is about as catchy a ball of slush. It’s unlikely to get very far in search engines and when you try to spread it around, it will simply make you look unprofessional. Page Creator can be a useful place to get started but it’s really designed to help people like teachers display information to a closed audience. It’s not a good way to earn a lot of money. If you’re keen to get started though, if you have an audience already set up... or if you just want to see your stuff online fast — and with ads — then it’s a fun toy to play with. And you can always move your content onto your own URL when you’re ready.

Getting Started With Blogger.com

Want to get up and running with AdSense really fast? One way is to open an account at Blogger.com. Blogger is like those old free websites that you could set up in a flash but which looked like they’d been cobbled together from bits of left-over graphics that no one else wanted. Except that the blog you create at

Blogger.com is the real McCoy. It’s professional, it looks great… and it takes just seconds to put together. All you have to do is choose a name and title for your blog, take your pick of the good range of templates available and get writing. You don’t have to worry about coding or design work or images or anything else. If you change your mind about the way your blog looks, you can just pick a different template. All that’s left for you to do is write… and add AdSense. Even that’s been made easy for you. Blogger.com lets you apply for

AdSense directly from its site. It even gives you a preview of where your ads will appear and how they will look. While you’re waiting for your approval, you can play with fonts and colors so that you’re all set up and ready to start earning. Of course, once you’ve done that, there are all sorts of ways to play with the layout and content. You can easily move the ads into the sidebar by clicking the Template tab and looking for the line that says:
<!-- Begin #sidebar -->
 <div id="sidebar"><div id="sidebar2">

Just paste the AdSense code directly beneath it. But that’s certainly not all. In Chapter 11, I explain lots of different, advanced strategies that you can use to maximize your AdSense earnings on your blog. You should certainly use them but more important is that you make a start.

With Blogger.com, you can do that in seconds. It’s a great way to get started, but you should think of it as blogging with training wheels. After a bit you’ll want to move to your own domain so you can really pick up speed!

Creating Content

   In Chapter , I talk in detail about building content and optimizing what you write to attract traffic and maximize your AdSense revenues. There are all sorts of ways to do that but for the moment just bear in mind that the ads that appear on your site will depend on the content on your pages. That’s how AdSense works: users click on the ads because they’re relevant.

    And that’s why it’s not worth putting up a site just to cash in on particular keywords. Google doesn’t like it and neither do users. If your site doesn’t genuinely interest your visitors, you’ll find it hard to get traffic, links and clicks on your ads.

    But there are still a lot of different ways to create content very easily that improves your income. I’ll tell you all about them in Chapter 11.

    It’s also worth remembering that Google doesn’t place ads on particular types of sites, so if you’re thinking of building a casino site stuffed with AdSense ads, you can forget about it; it’s not going to happen.

Before you build a site that contains any content that’s remotely controversial, check out the AdSense Terms of Service (TOS) to make sure that it’s allowed. It will tell whether your idea is sound or whether you need to think again.

Designing The Site

It used to be said that absolutely anyone could create a website. That was true: absolutely anyone who knew HTML. Today, you don’t even need to know that. Programs like Microsoft’s FrontPage or NVU (which is free; you can download it at www.nvu.com) let you create sites without you needing to know your tags from your tables. If you can use Word, you can create a website.
You can either have fun playing with the programs and designing the site yourself or you can hire a professional designer to do it for you.
Freelance sites like www.elance.com and www.guru.com are good places to advertise. You can invite designers to give you quotes and pick the best based on price and talent. Be sure to check feedback and portfolios though; a low bid is often low for a good reason.

Choosing A Hosting Service

       Your site is going to be stored on a hosting company’s server. (You didn’t want thousands of people dialing into your computer every hour, did you?) Again, there are lots of different options available depending on how much you want to pay and what you need.

       In general, you’ll want to make sure that you have about 50 megabytes of space (that’s enough for 100 pages!), full statistics reporting and most importantly, 24 hour service. If your site goes down, you’ll be losing money every hour it’s offline. If there’s a problem with the server, you want to make sure it’s fixed right away.

You get what you pay for with Web hosting. “Free” services will cost you more than you save in lost revenue, and you can pay up to $200 a month for dedicated servers. Twenty bucks a month is a reasonable price to pay and GoDaddy.com and NetworkSolutions.com both offer good programs.