Adsense Reborn?

Many people have said that AdSense was dead, I personally disagreed with this although I have severely cut back on the number of AdSense site I have. Less than 18 months ago I had in excess of 1.5 million pages indexed all with AdSense on them. I was earning almost $5000 per month. Now I have less than 20 sites. This was partly because my income per 1000 clicks from Clickbank is 20 times more than I get for AdSense clicks.

So why I am starting to focus on AdSense again?

In the past few days Google AdSense have changed the clickable area of the ads, you will now find that just the title and the URL are clickable and the background and description aren't. This will have a negative effect on your CTR if you have your ads blended into your site as you'll get far fewer accidental clicks.

On the other hand this might mean that more advertisers will feel that the content network is now a better place to advertise. I am sure that this is what Google are thinking and that over the next few months the revenue from ads will go up. Google wouldn't introduce something that was going to make a long term dent in their profits.

Over the next few months I believe that the amount per click for AdSense will rise as smart pricing starts to take a back seat. Quality sites with quality content will be rewarded with more advertisers vying to place ads on sites and therefore higher clicks.

If you have an Adwords account you will have noticed that many of the recent changes have been targeted at getting people to advertise on the content network. The more that do the better it will be for quality publishers.

To take advantage of this coming upsurge in AdSense you should start to build good quality sites with unique content. Start with finding niches that have lots of competing advertisers and good traffic. Then find a good quality domain name with no hyphens and make sure it's a dot com.

Using free tools like The Google Adwords External tool and Wordtracker's Gtrends Tool and bulk domain availability checkers you should be able to find some great niches and Domain names. These niches will have traffic from the time you build them which will give you a head start.

You next need to create content for both the site and to distribute to generate traffic. I am not going to pretend that it's easy but by spending time on each site and making sure that you build the traffic up you can soon start to generate a decent income from each site. Set yourself a target figure for each site that can either be visitors per day or daily income and focus until you reach it.

Restrict the number of ads on the page, Google will display the highest value ads first If you are displaying 12 ads on the page the first may pay $1.50 but the last might be paying 10cents. By restricting the ads to 1 set of 4 you will be certain of getting paid the highest possible amount.

One thing that most people fail to take into account about AdSense sites are their value when sold. A site earning $200 per month will be sold for between $1500 and $2000 depending on the amount of traffic. If the site is poorly monetized then the new owner may even pay more if the amount of traffic is high.

AdSense is most certainly not dead in fact I believe it's about to make the finest comeback since Lazarus!

Want to know how to create income from AdSense and other income streams for free ? Read the Income Academy Blog.

The Google AdSense Basics

This article explains basics of placing Adsense ads on your website. I think this is very interesting article with a couple of simple tips that will help you to increase your Adsense CTR.

In this post we will go over the layout for your pages and discuss why they are a key part of your Adsense earnings.

With AdSense you can place up to 3 ad blocks on your web page. You will find different theories on whether or not it is most effective to have your ads blend in with or stand out from the content on your page. While some would say they have better results when the ads stand out, in my opinion it is best to try and make them blend in with the rest of the site as much as possible so that your visitors will see them as content rather than advertisements.

Try mixing the ad blocks throughout your content to create a natural flow through the page. The proper positioning of your ads should be done with great care. The goal is to position your ads where your visitors are most likely to click on them. According to research the first place most people look when they visit a website is to the top left of the page.

Although it may seem to be a good idea to add bright borders, colors or links to make you ads pop out on the page, you will want to take in to consideration what your visitors are looking for when they come to your site. If they are there looking for information or a solution to a problem they would be more likely to click through on a link that appears to be content rather than one that looks like an ad. If they are there shopping for a product you may do better to have your ads stand out. The key lesson here is....always keep your visitor in mind when you are building your pages.

Google has run tests that show horizontal ads tend to receive more clicks than vertical ones. This is because a person is more used to reading horizontally, so they are more likely to be attracted to this layout. The larger rectangular ads that read horizontally have been proven to get more clicks as well.

Another tip for ad placement:

There are certain areas to place ads that are thought to be more likely to encourage a greater click through than others. For instance:

- above the page footer.
- below the navigation at the top of the page.
- on the top left hand side of the page.

Keep in mind that near the middle above the main content is thought by many to be the best place to put your ad blocks. Let's say that you have 3 ad blocks on your page, but still want more. What can you do?

Here comes Google's link units to the rescue. You are allowed to add these in addition to the standard 3 ad blocks without breaking any of the Adsense rules. These link units are a great way to incorporate ads that can look like they are a natural part of your site's navigation menu, but when they are clicked on they take the reader to a page of targeted ads that are related to the topic of your site.

I know this is a lot to think about, but it is very important to take the time to think about your page layout. If you get stuck for ideas just start surfing. See what other sites are doing and where they are putting their ads. You will get some great ideas!

Author of this article is Maher Aljabri