I often get asked what the secret is to making money with
Google's AdSense program.
This often comes from people who are dreaming of setting up
websites chock full of
high-paying
keywords for particular niche subjects and then sitting back
and watching the money roll in. "What's the magic formula?" they ask me.
If they're non-technical, I point them straight to my book,
Make
Easy Money with Google, and assure them that
they'll learn everything they need from it. They may
think
it's hard, but it's not, and the book explains it all in clear,
easy-to-understand language.
But what about the technical people? By this I mean the people
who've already set up a blog or website, who have registered
domain names, who are comfortable with basic Internet terminology
and concepts. What is the "AdSense formula"?
The only AdSense formula that you need to know is
this:
earnings = number of clicks * average price per click
This is what I call the Fundamental AdSense Formula because
you can derive almost every AdSense "secret" directly or indirectly
from this formula. Do you want to earn more with AdSense? You have
two ways of doing it:
- Increase the number of clicks, and/or
- Increase the average price per click
Your earnings will only go up if you do one or the other, and ideally
both. It's an obvious formula, yes, but it's amazing how many
people lose sight of it in their quest for increased AdSense earnings.
Increasing the Number of AdSense Clicks
Increasing the number of times the ads on your site or
blog are clicked is the most obvious strategy. There
are two general strategies you can follow:
- Increase the traffic to the site, and/or
- Adjust the ads to make them more "clickable"
Getting traffic is hard and takes time, so don't look
at it as a quick fix. The best way to get traffic is to
provide useful, unique content and to rank highly in
search engine rankings for keywords related to that
content. In other words, use standard search engine
optimization techniques. Do not "buy" traffic
or use "link farms" or other dubious techniques.
Other tips for getting traffic:
- Publish articles, even free ones, with links back
to your site.
- Include a link to your site in the signature at the
bottom of your emails or in any forum postings you
make (if the forum allows it).
- Participate in forums/groups related to the
content of your site or blog. The key is to participate,
not lurk, and don't just post messages promoting
your site.
- Add comments (relevant ones only, please) to other blogs,
you can usually link back to yours. (This won't help
your search engine rankings, but it may allow others
who are reading those comments to find your own site.)
- Syndicate your content (trivial if you have a blog)
and make sure that the content is registered with
syndication aggregators.
- List your site in relevant directories.
Adjusting the ads is something you can do almost
immediately:
- Position the ads on the page in order to make them
more noticeable. Google even publishes a helpful
"heat map"
for AdSense publishers.
- Choose the best AdSense ad format that works for your site.
- Change the ad colors either to make the ads blend in with your
site or to make them stand out. Again, it varies depending on the
site.
Whatever you do, do not entice visitors to click the ads.
Google is very strict about this, see the
AdSense program
policies for the details.
Increasing the Average AdSense Price Per Click
Increasing the average price per click you receive from
AdSense is the other strategy for increasing your overall
AdSense earnings. You can do this by:
- Carefully targeting your content, and/or
- Filtering out and avoiding low-paying ads
Content targeting isn't just about creating relevant,
unique content. It's also making sure that that content
is written to target the higher-paying keywords associated
with a given topic. This means:
- Figuring out which keyword variations for that topic
pay more. Often the more specialized variations and phrases
pay more than the "generic" terms.
- Ensuring that the keyword density of the content
favors the higher-paying keyword variations.
See this
page for an example of well-targeted ads due to appropriate
keyword density.
And to reduce the occurrence of lower-paying ads, consider
these two strategies:
- Use AdSense's competitive filter mechanism to screen out
the ads that you don't want.
- Show fewer ads on a page. The fewer ads you show, the more
the higher-paying ads get displayed and clicked.
Many publishers also report that their earnings increase
if they remove ads completely from pages with few or no clicks. Again,
the "less is more" strategy favors the higher-paying ads.
There's No Magic
As you can see, there's no magic involved to increasing
your AdSense earnings. The Fundamental AdSense Formula is
easy to understand, but that doesn't mean it's easy to
apply the formula. It takes time and effort to do it, just
like most things.
About the author: Eric Giguere is the author of
Make Easy Money
with Google: Using the AdSense Advertising Program, an introductory
AdSense book published by Peachpit Press. Make Easy Money with Google
shows the average, non-technical computer user how easy it is to
build a money-making blog or website with no experience required. The
book steps you through the entire process: finding and creating
the right content; registering a domain name; setting up a simple
site or blog; joining Google's AdSense pay-per-click program; and driving
traffic to your site or blog. Find out more about the book from the
companion site MakeEasyMoneyWithGoogle.com
or by contacting the author directly at eric@makeeasymoneywithgoogle.com.
Copyright © 2005 by Eric Giguere. Permission is granted
to reproduce the article in electronic newsletters
or on websites provided that the complete article text is
included, unchanged, and that neither the copyright declaration
nor this license are removed. This article was originally published
at http://www.MakeEasyMoneyWithGoogle.com/adsense-formula.html.
A plain text version of The
AdSense Formula is also available from
http://www.MakeEasyMoneyWithGoogle.com/adsense-formula.txt and
can be distributed in place of the full HTML version.
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