Adsense Tips and Techniques

Google Adsense today is clearly the most popular Ad network for both publishers and advertisers. Being  the most favored Ad network for  Advertisers, it attracts most Ad inventory, which in turn makes it a good choice for the publishers as it has most ads to suite any type of content. While this is true, the online advertising landscape is fast changing with the aspirations of Microsoft to become a major player in this area, as is evident in its plans to buy Yahoo. Yahoo Publisher Network and Microsoft's AdCenter provide some popularalternatives for Google Adsense users.  If you are a publisher using Google Adsense, in this article we discuss about the strategies you need to consider and tips to maximize the revenue for your online content. We also discuss some basic rules you have to follow to properly use Adsense. Assuming that your primary interest is to make constant revenue from Adsense, you need to keep the following tips in mind to choose the topic for the website: Profitable Niche: Make sure that the niche is centered around some high paying keywords. Ads that are displayed on such website tend to pay more money per click. For example if you create a website about "Debt Consolidation", the Ads that are displayed for this content may pay you $3 or $4 for every click on those Ads. On the other hand, if you create a website about say, Jokes, you may get $0.05 a click (if you have Ads to display) if you are lucky. So a website with moderate traffic on a good (read 'profitable') niche may earn you more money than a website with high traffic but in a poor niche.  See article: How to build a Niche Site  Low Competition: Make sure that the niche you choose has little competition. If there is high competition for the niche you are working on, it will be very hard for you to appear in the first couple of pages of Google search results. Because search engines are main traffic drivers, it is important to be able to rank decently well on search results. The easiest way to start is to build a website around a topic that you know something about. Don't look at this as the website that is going to make you rich but as a testing ground to learn all the skills you need to know to build successful websites in different markets that will make you rich. Ones you master the techniques of Adsense optimization, then you may focus on creating niche websites that satisfy the above two conditions (Profitable and low competition). Can you use other Ad Networks along with Adsense? Sure. You are still allowed to add Adsense ads even if you already have affiliate links on your site. However, it is prohibited to imitate the look and feel of the Google ads for your affiliate links. One of the things you can do, however, is to utilize Google's custom palette to customize your Google ads, making them to appear a part of the web page itself. The idea here is to match background and links to match the theme of your site. People on the internet today are trained to click on a link that is blue, and if your Google ads have the same theme as your web page, it makes the Google ads appear to be a portion of your "content." You can also filter up to 200 URLs. This gives you a chance to block ads for the sites that do not meet your guidelines, and also block competitors. Remember that it is unavoidable that Adsense may be competing for some space on web sites that all other revenues are sharing. Owners of small sites are allowed to plug a bit of a code into their sites and instantly have relevant text ads that appeal to your visitors appear instantly on your pages. If you own many sites, you only need to apply once. Then , you are issued a unique "publisher ID", which can be used on any site you currently own. A small snippet of Javascript is placed on your site in the location you wish the ads to appear in, and generally speaking, the ads from Goggle will appear in minutes. This ends the hassle of having to apply to many affiliate programs, and keeping track of many different URL's and user ID's and passwords. Adsense Customization As Google ads are very easy to customize, and can be placed anywhere on your site you wish, you can experiment with placement, colors, and themes. Many tricks are available to the resourceful webmaster, including adding images in conjunction with your Google ads to make them more noticeable. See Customizing Adsense Ads for more details The payment rates can vary extremely. The payment you will be receiving per click depends on how much advertisers are paying per click to advertise with the use of the AdWords. Advertisers can pay as little as 5 cents and as high as $10-12, sometimes even more than that too. For example, it is not uncommon for advertisers to bid for up to $20-$25 on topics like "Mortgage Leads". If your results remain stagnant, it can help if you try and build simple and uncluttered pages so that the ads can catch the visitor’s eyes more. It sometimes pay to differ from the usual things that people are doing already. Google provides in its Adsense optimization demo what is called a "heat map". This is basically a diagram that shows the Adsense ad placement areas and their corresponding performance possibilities. Their recommendations seems to work in majority of the cases. See our Article:Optimizing Adsense Ad Placement It is still wise to look at other people’s information and format your Adsense in a like manner. A wise old business axiom is to "find a good business model, then copy it." Let others do the hard work for you, and learn from a successful site. Just think about it as doing yourself a favor by not having to work too hard to know what content to have. Look to sites that have high page rank, and carefully observe their layouts, their content, and placement of their ads. A little time spent doing research can put dollars in your pocket down the road. Publishers have the option of choosing to have their ads displayed only on a certain site or sites. You can also have them displayed on a large network of sites if you so desire. Google now has the option to allow other people to advertise on your site. This only makes good sense. If you are marketing to a tightly defined niche, you can place your own ads, written by you, on site that allow this option. The choice is yours, depending on what you think will work best to your advantage. Topics you can not put Adsense On:   It is important to note that  you cannot choose certain topics only. If you do this, search engines will not place Adsense ads on your site and you will be missing out a great opportunity in making hundreds and even thousands of dollars cash.   Topics to be avoided includes gambling, firearms, ammunition, tobacco or drugs. If you are being offered more cash in exchange of doing Adsense with these kinds, it is just like signing your own termination paper. With all the information that people need in your hands already, all you have to do is turn Google Adsense into your own cash cow. It all boils down to a win-win situation both for the content site owners and the webmasters or publishers.