Google
Adsense tips to overcoming Smartpricing and maximizing your earnings
Google Adsense tips to overcoming Smartpricing and maximizing
your earnings
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.
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. http://rwtroll.dealspot.hop.clickbank.net
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