Smart
Pricing Killing Your AdSense Earnings?
Smart Pricing Killing Your AdSense Earnings?
When Google first started, you basically just earned a certain
percentage of whatever the AdWords advertiser was paying per click.
It was pretty simple. If the advertiser paid $1.00 per click and
if you as a publisher were earnings 50% of that, you made $0.50.
Easy. Google started to realize, though, that all clicks were not
created equal.
Clicks from some sites were more valuable than others, at least
that's what they figured. So they came up with an alogorithm, a
mathmatical equation for determining how valuable your AdSense account,
sites and pages are, and use that equation to determine what percentage
you get per click.
Speculation Galore
Smart Pricing has triggered a HUGE amount of speculation on the
part of AdSense publishers. Google is notorious for having very
little to say about the way its algorithms work. Their thinking
is that the less people know about it, the less chance they are
going to be able to cheat the system.
This lack of communication has caused all kinds of speculation
about how Smart Pricing works, what it looks for, etc. Nobody knows
exactly how it works, but I've got hundreds of websites, and track
everything. I've learned a few things about what Smart Pricing seems
to like and what it seems to not like.
What We Know For Sure
The one piece of information that Google has given out about Smart
Pricing is that it takes into account how well the visitors from
your site who click on the ads convert into customers for the advertiser.
In a perfect system this would be all of the information that Google
used. If your clicks converted well, you would be well paid. If
they converted badly, you would be paid less per click.
However, AdWords advertisers are not required to reveal their conversion
data to Google. Google gives them that ability, but a lot of advertisers
do not use it, so Google has to try and “guess” at whether
or not your clicks are converting for those advertisers.
What Smart Pricing Seems to Like
Smart pricing definitely loves themed websites. If your websites
is devoted to Widgets, and only Widgets, Smart Pricing tends to
reward your clicks better. The more narrow your targetting, the
better. However, Smart Pricing does not seem to penalize sites that
have a group of related topics.
So, for example, if your site is themed around Widgets but has
content related to Red Widgets, Blue Widgets, Green Widgets, Building
Widgets and Used Widgets, Smart Pricing seems to favor that. If
you have themed topics, it's appears to be best to seperate them
into subdomains or subdirectories. So don't put your articles on
Red and Green widgets where they can be found like so:
http://www.mywidgets.com/redwidgets.html
http://www.mywidgets.com/greenwidgets.html
Put them like this:
http://www.mywidgets.com/redwidgets/
http://www.mywidgets.com/greenwidgets/
Or better still:
http://redwidgets.mywidgets.com/
http://greenwidgets.mywidgets.com/
In line with theming, having a domain name with your keywords in
it also appears to be favored by Smart Pricing. So the “mywidgets.com”
example used above is a good one. Having a domain like “www.someunrelatedsite.com”
seems to draw penalties from Smart Pricing. So make your domain
name match your theme, and split up your content into related topics
in different subdirectories or subdomains.
What Smart Pricing Seems To Hate
The opposite of what Smart Pricing likes, it hates. Having too
many topics on the same site really seems to draw penalties. Having
a domain name that has nothing to do with the topic of your site
seems to draw penalties. And, as discussed before, if your site
does not convert well, you'll get hit with Smart Pricing penalties.
You can avoid a bad conversion rate by only focusing on quality
traffic to your site.
Get traffic from Search Engines and links from sites about topics
related to yours. Avoid cheap traffic brokers like the plague! They
send lousy traffic (most of which is fake “bot-generated”
traffic anyway and won't earn you a dime). You might be tempted
to try it out, but beware: zmart Pricing appears to calculate your
“value” once a week or so. That means that if you goof,
for the next week you'll get lousy paying clicks. It's best to get
it right from the get-go and avoid those mistakes.
Is Smart Pricing Fair To Publishers?
That's an interesting question that I've read debated a lot. Some
say that it shouldn't be up to the publisher to convert the traffic,
it should be up to the vendor. And if the vendor's site converts
badly in general, the publisher will get penalized. Whether that's
true or not I don't know only Google knows.
Other's say Smart Pricing was needed to help advertisers maintain
a good ROI (return on investment). They say that “bad”
traffic that doesn't convert well should not cost as much as “good”
traffic that does.
Regardless of what anybody thinks about it, or whether it works
or not, Google has implemented Smart Pricing. So you've got to know
how to work with it to maximize your earnings. Following the advice
outlined above from the start will help you to keep your click values
high.
About the Author Ravikiran Thummalapenta
is a professional software Develper who blogs about technology and
entrepreneurship his recent blog is ZillionBits
- a blog about number($) and technology. ZB is about learning skills,
sharing information and providing tips on how to make money online
Online.
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