When you bring up the best adsense layout for a high CTR many people will start to tell you to use the 336x280 on top of the fold and a 160x600 skyscraper on the right side. This seems to be the standard advice that is given out. While it is good advice there are other ad formats that can be implemented to improve CTR'S. Those ad formats are the link units.
When i look around at other niche sites trying to make money with adsense i do not see the ad units used to there maximum effectiveness about 80% of the time. In my opinion people tend to throw them up as an after thought, hoping they bring in some money once in awhile! Well if placed right the link units in adsense can dramatically increase your earnings.
My strategy for link units is very easy and used by some of the top earners in adsense, in fact i was doing it before i knew who the top earners were!!! My bubble was sure burst when i found out i hadn't came u with something new and unheard of!
What i do is a use the 200x90 link units and set them to display 4 ads. If you set them for 5 the font is so small you can never get it to look natural on your site. Place the ad link so it blends either on top of or on the bottom of your website navigation links. When done correctly they blend right in and people assume they are navigation links.
Another good strategy is to put the 728 x90 link unit across the to of your age under the header. These apar to be more navigation links and peole will click them as well, and quite frequently i may add.
However keep in mind that with the ad units you only get paid if they click on the google search results after they click the links on your page. The links on your age are basically a portal to another ad page. To date my CTRS have been very good with this method and my earnings have increased as well.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Friday, February 22, 2008
Optimum Adsense Layout Part1
Laying out your adsense ads is very important to getting good click through ratios on your ads. Put the ads in the wrong spot and you will be looking at low single digit click through. Put them in the right spot however and your click through will easily be well into the double digits.
If you read any of the "guru's" adsense tips they all say the same thing about ad placement. They tel you to put it above the fold and on the left hand column. That is good advice but it does not always apply to every site and every niche. Again i try to place my self in the users shoes and visualize what they are looking for and what they want out of a website and place my ads accordingly. By doing this i have found a few ad placement strategies that work pretty good for me.
What I mean by this is that someone looking for answers on hair loss wants info right away because they are concerned about a personal problem, they are not shopping yet just getting info and will more then likely back click if the first thing they see is ads. On the other hand if you provide good content and place the ads after the article your CTR (click through ratio) can shoot up alot. I like to place one or two 336x280 ads after the content, i have found that the ads placed on top of each other rather then next to each other generates more clicks for me. I have witnessed a 10% jump in CTR when the ads were one on top of the other rather then next to each other running across the screen. I attribute this to the ads on top of each other looking like search engine results and not ads.
As an example i followed adsense experts advice and put two 300x250 ads next to each other above the content on one of my medical niche sites . The CTR was 1.7%. After i added them to the bottom the CTR shot up over 10% almost overnight. The user got the info and the ads were seen as a place to get the solution, thats my analysis anyway!
But what about people who are say looking for a new exercise machine, these shoppers are not that desperate and are pretty much just surfing around looking at prices and other info. These people tend to be click happy surfers and tend to click whatever catches there eye. This is where a adsense block above the content does great. The thing i have found is that large products that people want but do not necessarily need tend to be areas where the clicks roll in. So building a site around large products like exercise equipment, pool table , etc can be great adsense earners. I think this is because they do not intend to buy online just get some information so they can go the local dealer and pick it up. Plus some of these niches have some pretty big companies in them so the payouts are usually pretty good.
But the bottom line is you have to test until you get your CTR where it needs to be to make money. Although some niches will just never generate clicks for some reason. Do not take this personal just move on to the next one.
Next Time i want to talk about link units and how then can be incorporated.
If you read any of the "guru's" adsense tips they all say the same thing about ad placement. They tel you to put it above the fold and on the left hand column. That is good advice but it does not always apply to every site and every niche. Again i try to place my self in the users shoes and visualize what they are looking for and what they want out of a website and place my ads accordingly. By doing this i have found a few ad placement strategies that work pretty good for me.
What I mean by this is that someone looking for answers on hair loss wants info right away because they are concerned about a personal problem, they are not shopping yet just getting info and will more then likely back click if the first thing they see is ads. On the other hand if you provide good content and place the ads after the article your CTR (click through ratio) can shoot up alot. I like to place one or two 336x280 ads after the content, i have found that the ads placed on top of each other rather then next to each other generates more clicks for me. I have witnessed a 10% jump in CTR when the ads were one on top of the other rather then next to each other running across the screen. I attribute this to the ads on top of each other looking like search engine results and not ads.
As an example i followed adsense experts advice and put two 300x250 ads next to each other above the content on one of my medical niche sites . The CTR was 1.7%. After i added them to the bottom the CTR shot up over 10% almost overnight. The user got the info and the ads were seen as a place to get the solution, thats my analysis anyway!
But what about people who are say looking for a new exercise machine, these shoppers are not that desperate and are pretty much just surfing around looking at prices and other info. These people tend to be click happy surfers and tend to click whatever catches there eye. This is where a adsense block above the content does great. The thing i have found is that large products that people want but do not necessarily need tend to be areas where the clicks roll in. So building a site around large products like exercise equipment, pool table , etc can be great adsense earners. I think this is because they do not intend to buy online just get some information so they can go the local dealer and pick it up. Plus some of these niches have some pretty big companies in them so the payouts are usually pretty good.
But the bottom line is you have to test until you get your CTR where it needs to be to make money. Although some niches will just never generate clicks for some reason. Do not take this personal just move on to the next one.
Next Time i want to talk about link units and how then can be incorporated.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
First Step to Picking Your Adsense Niche
I constantly see people on the various message boards like www.warriorforum.com asking how to make money with adsense. I usually try and help those people out the most i can and send many private messages a day. That is why this blog was started to give some one a place to go to learn about adsense and what has worked for me.
The first step in any adsense campaign is to find your niche. Many people say do it about something you like, i say do it about something you can make the most money with and you will grow to like it. I have sites on topics i think are very boring but the amount the bring me per click motivates me to keep writing content and articles for those sites so my income grows every month.
The way i find a niche is first think what do people like, want and need. This can be done by watching home shopping channels, Oprah, and many other places like Google trends and ebay pulse or popular print magazines. In fact I found one of my best niches in Maxim magazine!!!
I then look at the niches and see what ones are more prone to information seeking and not product buying. What i mean by this is that if a woman wants to buy a purse she wants to see a picture of a purse and be able to buy it, she does not want to see a 300 word article on Gucci handbags. She will more then likely hit the back arrow within 1 second of your page loading. A niche like this has proven to be a loser and have very low click through ratios.
On the other hand if you had a niche site on "how to make you home more energy efficient" a person visiting expects to see articles outlining the process and will stay on your site loner and more then likely click your ads to get more information
The next step is to see if the niche is actually profitable, this can be tricky because what you make per click is a percentage of what the advertiser is willing to pay to advertise on the content network of Google adwords. This is usually much lower then what they are bidding for adwords keywords directly. As a safe bet bids for clicks of $2 or more are where you should start. Anything under $2 and it tells you there is not alot of money being made in that niche which translates into low content network bids by advertisers and a lower payout for you.
There are free ways to do this but I have very little time to do multiple things at the free sites that a good tool can do for me. I use a tool called nicheinspector to check out the potential earning potential of a niche. What nicheinspector does is along with providing you with a very accurate keyword list it also provides you with the amounts the advertisers are paying for clicks in google adwords plus the number of advertisers. Again I look for niches that pay from $2 and up, some of the higher paying niches like mortgages and insurance pay out alot but they are also very competitive and hard to rank well in. On the flip side less competitive niches ma pay less but you will in most cases get more traffic so it should even out in the end. The number of advertisers is also important to look at, usually 20 or more advertisers will be good any less and the amount of displayed ads may not be at the optimal level.
Nicheinspector also has a very cool brainstorm function which will randomly generate search topics and there click bids. If you see something you like you can narrow the niche down and build a site around it. This is a great function when you have a mental brain block you need to get by!
The first step in any adsense campaign is to find your niche. Many people say do it about something you like, i say do it about something you can make the most money with and you will grow to like it. I have sites on topics i think are very boring but the amount the bring me per click motivates me to keep writing content and articles for those sites so my income grows every month.
The way i find a niche is first think what do people like, want and need. This can be done by watching home shopping channels, Oprah, and many other places like Google trends and ebay pulse or popular print magazines. In fact I found one of my best niches in Maxim magazine!!!
I then look at the niches and see what ones are more prone to information seeking and not product buying. What i mean by this is that if a woman wants to buy a purse she wants to see a picture of a purse and be able to buy it, she does not want to see a 300 word article on Gucci handbags. She will more then likely hit the back arrow within 1 second of your page loading. A niche like this has proven to be a loser and have very low click through ratios.
On the other hand if you had a niche site on "how to make you home more energy efficient" a person visiting expects to see articles outlining the process and will stay on your site loner and more then likely click your ads to get more information
The next step is to see if the niche is actually profitable, this can be tricky because what you make per click is a percentage of what the advertiser is willing to pay to advertise on the content network of Google adwords. This is usually much lower then what they are bidding for adwords keywords directly. As a safe bet bids for clicks of $2 or more are where you should start. Anything under $2 and it tells you there is not alot of money being made in that niche which translates into low content network bids by advertisers and a lower payout for you.
There are free ways to do this but I have very little time to do multiple things at the free sites that a good tool can do for me. I use a tool called nicheinspector to check out the potential earning potential of a niche. What nicheinspector does is along with providing you with a very accurate keyword list it also provides you with the amounts the advertisers are paying for clicks in google adwords plus the number of advertisers. Again I look for niches that pay from $2 and up, some of the higher paying niches like mortgages and insurance pay out alot but they are also very competitive and hard to rank well in. On the flip side less competitive niches ma pay less but you will in most cases get more traffic so it should even out in the end. The number of advertisers is also important to look at, usually 20 or more advertisers will be good any less and the amount of displayed ads may not be at the optimal level.
Nicheinspector also has a very cool brainstorm function which will randomly generate search topics and there click bids. If you see something you like you can narrow the niche down and build a site around it. This is a great function when you have a mental brain block you need to get by!
How I came To Be Involved With Adsense
A brief overview of my history and how i came to Internet marketing. I began my working career as a tool and die maker back in 1992 at the young age of 18. I really never liked it much but never quite made the career change i always wanted. Most of that was due to the fact that by 22 i was making a tad under $50,000 a year working 45-50 hours a week. Not bad for a kid who still lived at home!! In 2002 i started my first business online, i was a reef aquarium supply E-tail store and it did better then i expected. My 2nd year sales were around $250,000 but I only cleared $22,000 and was working full-time on the store after working full time in the shop. Needless to say with the small amount of money being made, dealing with the rude customers and increasingly junk products made in china i decided to call it quits in 2004. At that time i was given the opportunity to become a mortgage broker and decided to leap at the opportunity. I did pretty well and continued on in to 2006. At this time the company i was working for went out of business and a large amount of my commissions went unpaid. That landed me right back in the Tool and Die Shop were i still currently am working. I started my Internet marketing back in march of 2007 after reading about adsense in a magazine article and slapped it up on my mortgage site and made $11 the first month. After that i was hooked and began to promote my site more and build smaller niche sites built around adsense and have to been able through this small network of about 11 sites generate between $800-1000 a month with only adsense. While this is not a huge amount of money compared to some marketers it is a amount that can improve your lifestyle and be easily attainable on a part time basis
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