3 Ways To Increase Your Google Adsense Revenue

November 6, 2008

Almost everyone seems to run Google Adsense on their websites. Oprah even has it on hers, so it’s got to be worthwhile. But Google Adsense seem to perform well on some sites and badly on others.

Obviously, to make a huge amount of money from Google Adsense, you need lots of traffic. But you also need to tweak your Ad placements, colours used etc, to discover what will work best for your site. And, you need to suss out what keyphrases will bring you a higher amount per click.

I’ve done ok with Adsense on other sites but on this blog my clickthrough rate has been lousy. In fact, sometimes it’s been as low as 0.01%. So I’m always trying to tweak it and find new tips to improve my Adsense earnings. According to Google Adsense Case studies, sites like Ask The Builder, Hometips, Woot and TestMagic are making mega bucks from Google Adsense, so I don’t see why we can’t do the same.

Tip 1: Increase Your Google Adsense Revenue By Choosing What Content To Match

I got the first excellent Adsense tip from Al of Self Made Minds. And Al is on target to make seven figures from blogging this year, so he’s certainly worth listening to (note - Al doesn’t write all his posts himself, he pays people to do it for him).

Al suggests that instead of allowing Adsense to choose which text in your posts, is most relevant for your ads, you choose your own. You simply pick out the text which you’d like Adsense to use when choosing your ads and wrap code around it, as he shows in this excellent Adsense code placement example.

Tip 2: Increase Your Google Adsense Revenue By Choosing Which Ads To Display

The other Adsense tip I got was from Vered of Momgrind. She was so tired of seeing ads she didn’t approve of on her blog, that she has set up her adsense account up to block ads from certain domains. This feature is also useful if particular ads pay badly, or do extremely well.

There’s two ways you can do it. You can click the competitive ad filter on your Google Adsense dashboard and enter the url’s of advertisers that you want to block from appearing on your website. Or you can click on allowed sites and list only the URL’s that you do want to allow on your website.

Tip 3: Increase Your Google Adsense Revenue By Becoming An Adsense Pro

Obviously, Google Adsense amounts paid per click can vary tremendously. Some keyphrases do pay in excess of $50 per click. But often, they’re for keywords that have heaps of competition and get little traffic. I’m determined to get Adsense working well for me, because once you do get it right, the income requires little effort to maintain. So I’m working my way through these Adsense video’s by Michael Cheney, who earns over $30,000 a month from Google Adsense.

If you’re not a member already, it’s free to join Google Adsense.. And if you’re already a member but you don’t think Adsense is right for your site, you might want to sign up to one of these instead.

Have you tried out Al’s, Vered’s or Michael’s ideas already? It certainly seems like a smart idea to control who advertises on your site, or which content Adsense uses when placing an ad.

Posted by cathlawson | Filed Under Ideas

Comments

14 Responses to “3 Ways To Increase Your Google Adsense Revenue”

Vered - MomGrind on November 6th, 2008 7:15 pm

The explanation on the “allowed sites” feature says:

“Allowed sites are sites or URLs on which AdSense publishers allow or wish to have their Google ads displayed. If a URL displaying your AdSense ad code is not on your Allowed Sites list, ads will still be displayed, but impressions and clicks won’t be recorded, advertisers won’t be charged, and you won’t receive any earnings for that URL.”

So it looks like those ads will still be displayed.

Thanks for the link!v

Vered - MomGrind’s last blog post..How To Get More Subscribers, And Why You Shouldn’t Bother
cathlawson on November 6th, 2008 9:42 pm

Hi Vered - I didn’t realise that. It’s not a very fair system then - you could still be advertising scammy sites and just not get paid for doing it. So it looks like folk would be better blocking sites through the competitive ad filter then.
Mike Huang on November 7th, 2008 3:40 am

Adsense is VERY VERY difficult. Bloggers don’t realize that using it on a blog doesn’t really earn you much money. Bloggers are smarter than to click on those anyways. This is why Adsense is mainly successful on sites that either have HUGE traffic (could be blogs) or sites that are entertaining or stuff like that.

When I blogged at bloggin-ads, I ended up using direct advertising opportunities instead. It made me more money than Adsense would ever, lol.

-Mike
Cath Lawson on November 7th, 2008 6:54 am

Hi Mike - I think it does depend on the type of site - as you say. Whether it works on a blog would depend whether all your visitors were bloggers.

I’m guessing yours probably were, as I remember you saying all your visitors came from Entrecard. That’s probably why you were paid such low rates for your direct ads. Entrecard users don’t tend to click on ads, or read much either.

Cath Lawson’s last blog post..Barrack Obama - A Leader In Twitter Use
John Hoff - eVentureBiz on November 7th, 2008 5:28 pm

Cath, thanks for doing the grunt work for us in discovering AdSense and then keeping us up to date. I’m watching closely on your discoveries and bookmarking these posts in an AdSense folder I have. On my list of to-do’s is to create a few websites with some affiliate links and AdWords.

Thanks for the tips!

John Hoff - eVentureBiz’s last blog post..30.1 Web Tools For Online Success And To Make Your Life Easier At The Same Time
cathlawson on November 7th, 2008 7:56 pm

Hi John - definitely implement the Al Carson tip. It’s improved my clickthrough rate a bit. Also I’m testing out different ad positioning so I’ll let you know how it goes.

By the way - I haven’t forgotten about your questions and I’ll get back to you with some ideas v soon.
Mitchel Winters on November 9th, 2008 12:15 am

Great article, I am going to make adsense my priority as well. There is just to much money to make in it, and more important easy to maintain.

Thank you for putting my focus on adsense. (I give it a Thumbs Up)
cathlawson on November 9th, 2008 1:21 am

Hi Mitchel, you’re welcome. Adding the code that Al Carlton mentioned has helped improve my clickthrough rates already. It’s definitely worth experimenting with Adsense.
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advertise online on February 7th, 2009 8:08 am

Your way is good, but adsense on each web/blog is different, so on my blog adsense is not well,

advertise online’s last blog post..The payment by review
Easy Google Money on July 2nd, 2009 4:43 am

Hey, those adsense tips are really good, sometimes when you get into what you’re trying to learn, you forget to pay attention to some of those things. Thanks for the info.