How To Make Money Blogging by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs » AdSense

Wordpress Hack – How to Insert Ads in the Middle of Your Content!

max — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 22:03:43 +0000

The other day I showed you my latest Adsense heat map that I have been working on for 3+ years. Mind you, that’s the only way I can give back to the community of bloggers. It’s not going to help me in the least bit because I will have more competition but I feel that it’s important to give back. Karma I call it.

Anyways, here’s how to insert ads after 1-3 sentences after your content. (Or you can change the $tcount>=1 values to something like $tcount>=3 if you want to show ads after more sentences.)

You can even show additional ads at the bottom of your content if your blog post is a long blog post versus short.

Here’s the code that will let you insert ads at different places in your content.

You need to replace in your single.php file (usually) with the following code:

See here for the code

The above code will print your first Adsense block after the first HTML tag p, which is usually a paragraph block or 1-3 sentences.

There’s also an option to print a second Adsense block after 4 ps for longer blog posts. This ad block won’t show unless your blog post is super long. I don’t really use the second Adsense block much. You can also change the $tcount>=4 to something like $count>=2 if you want your second Adsense block to show after the 2nd

block.

There’s also many ways to customize this code such as detecting images. For example, I used additional code to detect whether there’s an image in the very beginning of the post. If that’s the case, I will want to show the ads under the image because I think it looks better as far as web design/usability goes. I can have that code up too if more of you guys want it.

Here’s some additional div tips for styling your Adsense ads.

If you want to wrap to the right for 336×280 ads:


Replace this line with Adsense code here

If you want to wrap to the left for 336×280 ads:


Replace this line with Adsense code here

If you want to just display ads without wrap, with Adsense left aligned:



Replace this line with Adsense code here

If you want to just display ads without wrap, with Adsense center aligned:




Replace this line with Adsense code here

In general, I find that wrapping your Adsense around text can be good for CTR plus look great with your overall site design.

At other times, I find that Adsense aligned-left with no text wrapping (with white space on the right) gets a lot better CTR.

Just test the different locations to see what works best for your niche.

Instead of putting the ad after the content, it’s simply common sense they will perform better if you put it within the context of your content and higher up on your blog post.

The amount of CTR increase skyrockets plus why not?

Of course, just make sure the overall site design and user experience are still maintained, no one wants to read ad-plastered blogs, even though I am on the very edge.

Enjoy and don’t forget to share the code with other Wordpress bloggers out there!

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

Wordpress Hack – How to Insert Ads in the Middle of Your Content!

How to Show Adsense Ads Only to Search Traffic! (and less annoying to your regular readers)

max — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 10:31:10 +0000

Over the years, I’ve realized showing ads to only search traffic is a pretty good idea, especially if you don’t want to bombard your regular readers with a whole bunch of ads.

You can also not show ads to image traffic as they don’t convert well most of the time.

But let me give you a simple javascript example that uses cookies to only show Adsense ads to your search engine visitors coming from either Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, or MSN. You can easily add more search engines if you want to by modifying the code.

Another thing I am doing is to show ads for about 60 seconds using cookies until they expire. (after visitors enter the site from a search engine) I think that is a good feature to implement. You don’t want to show ads just to the landing page to your search engine traffic, you want to keep showing it while they browse other parts of your site because search engine visitors are most likely to be interested/click on ads.

Now that we got the theory/concept out of the way, let me show you how to make your Adsense ads behave so they don’t annoy the hell out of their readers.

This can be great for either sites that are performing poorly (low CTRs, mostly image traffic) or quality sites you don’t want to bombard with ads. I don’t use this for my main site Zedomax.com but I use it for my other sites where my web traffic is high but my CTR is low. Using this code, I was able to bring the CTR up on those high-trafficked sites while improving regular user experience by showing ads only to search traffic visitors.

First Code

Put this code somewhere in your header file.

Second Code

Put this code where you are going to show the ad:

First Code Explained

Let me explain the code a bit. Basically the first part of the code will save a cookie to the user's computer if they come from image search or regular search. The cookie is set to expire in 60 seconds so that there's enough time for your Adsense ad exposure while search engine visitors are visiting your site and ads don't show after those 60 seconds to not annoy your new visitors so much. But you can change the value to shorter/longer if you want to.

This first code should be in your header file such as header.php so you can detect where your visitors are coming from, no matter which page they enter from.

Second Code Explained

The second code is the actual adsense code written in javascript, you will have to replace the google_ad_client and google_ad_slot value with yours. Change the pub-xxxxxxxxxx and yyyyyyyyy to the one you see when you generate your Adsense code. Don't touch the quote characters as that will mess it up, copy exactly and only change the variables I told you to change!

Does my code change the Adsense code and violate ToS?

No, my code doesn't change the Adsense code at all, it just translates it into javascript. The actual output code is exactly the same as code provided from Google. You can actually use PHP to do the same but the reason I use javascript is because my blogs use Wordpress Super Cache, which caches the PHP code. When PHP code is cached, it will cache the detection function also. In essence, PHP code used with Super Cache won't work because it will stay on the last PHP if statement.

In short, javascript works well along most platforms because it's processed in real-time by the browser. So that is why I used javascript here.

What you can get from this?

If you are reluctant to put more ads on your website, you can use this code to only show ads to search engine traffic. That way, you don't drive away your loyal readers.

For sites with low Adsense CTRs, it might be a good idea to show ads to only search traffic as your CTR will skyrocket if you do. Poor CTRs can be mostly from lack of content or image search traffic, both which don't convert well into overall revenue. Especially for those of you who get a lot of traffic, having low CTR can be bad, as it can lower your overall Adsense earnings due saturating overall CTRs.

Credits

I didn't create this code all myself, I built on top of the code created by Stephen Cronin over at Scratch99.com. Thanks for the code Stephen.

What I added is the additional cookie code plus expiration so your ads stay around for a minute before disappearing.

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

How to Show Adsense Ads Only to Search Traffic! (and less annoying to your regular readers)

Adsense CPC Optimized Placement Heat Map!

max — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:59:15 +0000

For those of you who have trouble making any money with your Adsense revenues, you might want to try the above heat map. And to those who have been following my older Adsense heat maps from last year, you might want to update it with the one I am showing you here because through the years, I have gotten better at improving my Adsense revenues through better placements.

Now, this map can be seen on the single articles pages of my main blog Zedomax.com (such as this one).

Let me explain why I made this Adsense optimization heat map. It looks so simple yet there’s a lot of research and time I have put into this so please bear with me.

The best performing ads are (based on my 3+ years with Adsense and driving 30M pageviews) is the top left corner right after your blog post headline.

Why?

Because that’s where people’s eyes go first. Also, if you have a sidebar on the left side or you have sidebars on both sides of your website, that’s fine too. I have other blogs where sidebar is on the left side but people will still look for the content side, just make sure your ads are on the “left” side of the content side.

Also, you can embed your ads so they are integrated with the rest of your content but I usually don’t do that.

Why?

You want your readers to really focus on the ads first, just like TV ads. If you have content around your ads, this will cause ad blindness more often than not based on my testing. For some, it may work well, for longer articles.

So, have your ads clear of content. You can put your content above or below the ads. The main point is that you want to have focus.

If you think that will not look good for the design of your website, that’s fine too but just know that maximum revenues are achieved when you can make readers completely focused at the task at hand, that of reading ads first then content.

Why do I have no ads on this blog?

Ads are great for making money on sites with some good level of web traffic. If you aren’t getting at least 1000 unique users per day, you shouldn’t really aggressively advertise but rather work to get more web traffic and loyal readers.

Trust me, I don’t even like putting too many ads myself and if you put ads on blogs/websites that don’t even get 1000 unique visitors per day, you are mostly likely shooting yourself in the foot.

I know, I know, you want to make money right away but you still also need to focus on building a readership and web traffic to a level.

Plus, for example let’s say you put ads all over your website that gets 200 unique visitors per day, you aren’t gonna get that much clicks anyways plus your revenue will be a lot smaller because you have such small number of visitors.

I have found that having at least 1000 unique visitors per day is a good rule of thumb to go by before you even start putting ads. Of course, depending on your niche, this could be slightly lower, maybe 500.

This blog itself currently gets less than 1000 unique visitors per day, I will put ads on here someday but not until I reach the initial 1000.

Just use your common sense and don’t put ads on your site if you are not ready. Or at least start with ads after the content.

Now, let me go on with the Adsense map here. You will see that I have put a rectangle Adsense block, either of the sizes 336×280, 300×250, or 300×250. Try to use the biggest ad size that will fit as bigger sizes mean higher revenues.

You can also put “private” ads on the right side of the Adsense ad to “fill” the blank space if you want. But make sure you test and it doesn’t affect your Adsense CPC. Depending on your niche, this might differ. In my case, filling the space on the right sometimes will lower my CPCs or sometimes it will raise it. Just make sure to test both options and you will find the right combo.

Now, after the first Adsense rectangle block, I have content, perhaps 1-3 sentences. I have used custom code for my Wordpress theme to put another Adsense rectangle block after the 1-3 sentences.

Why?

Because if you want to achieve the highest CPCs and higher reader-attention for the ads, you want to place your ads as high as they can be. (if your goal is to make the maximum revenue)

After all the content, I use Google AdManager and Adsdaq to serve private affiliate ads or CPM ads. This is the worst performing spaces for Adsense so I put my private/CPM ads there. Don’t put more ads there because it will saturate your Adsense revenues. I try to stick with 2 big Adsense rectangles at most.

Don’t put Adsense rectangle ads on Sidebar

I don’t put any Adsense rectangle ads on the sidebar because simply they are the worst performers due to ad blindness. People can easily recognize that ads on the sidebar are ads and will simply ignore it. You can try testing it but I bet your results will be like what I said. One more thing, don’t put ads on your header either unless it performs much better than the first Adsense rectangle. I highly doubt it but you can always test it.

KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid)

When it comes to user experience of actually browsing your site, you need to keep your ads to a minimum. Although I have a lot of ads on Zedomax.com, you will see that ads are “clearly” divided from my content. You need to make it easy for users to distinguish ads from real content while you place your ads where readers will pay attention most. This keeps your readers as happy as possible while letting you maximize your revenue potential.

So, that’s it, you just need two big square blocks for your main article pages. No need for any extra Adsense blocks because you want to place your ads where people will read the most. Otherwise you will saturate our own Adsense revenues because you are offering more ad spaces.

I used to have like a whole bunch of ads as seen in my very first Adsense heat map here but I am making more money now by having less ads but placing them higher on my blog.

Extra – Category Pages

Above heat map is for your article pages, where the actual contents are. Now, for category pages, you can place more ads and customize it.

For my Zedomax.com blog, I actually rearranged my blog theme to have 1 left side bar, 1 ad block, and 1 content block, which is 3 columns. You can see an example here.

Why a different layout for Category Pages?

I don’t want ad blindness so I have completely changed my theme so it looks “fresh”. Plus I have blended my ads so they are informational and offer more options for users since they are not trying to read just “one article” rather they are trying to find something. This means ads could potentially be more helpful if your readers don’t find the content they are looking for.

I won’t get into the details of how I did my category pages but it’s an example that you can make your website into different layouts for different sections. By having fresh look to your category pages, you can avoid ad blindness and also offer the readers more options to choose from.

You don’t have to copy my style but if your theme is same everywhere throughout your site, you might want to look into giving it a fresh look for certain pages such as the category page.

I can tell you that my category pages perform 2-3 times better than before, where it was the same as my article pages.

Should you use Chitika along with Adsense ads?

In my previous heat maps, I told you that Chitika was a great source of revenue. Based on years of testing, I have found out the opposite it true. You can easily saturate your own Adsense revenue when using both Adsense and Chitika because Chitika ads will sabotage your CPC. Just make sure to use 1 of them, either Adsense or Chitika but don’t mix them together as you will only be shooting yourself in the foot. You can read my full in-depth analysis of that here.

Well, good luck and if you are having trouble or you want me to review your ad placements, you can always e-mail me at zedomax[at]gmaildotcom, tweet me @zedomax, or leave a comment. I will be glad to help you as much as I can. (for free! hurray!)

Bonus – Show ad to search engine traffic only!

If you simply believe that above heat map will not make your website look good, here’s an alternative. Instead of putting ads where they “look good” but will worsen your Adsense revenues (such as the sidebar), just use the above map but only show ads to your search engine traffic so you don’t annoy your regular readers with ads, see more on that here.

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

Adsense CPC Optimized Placement Heat Map!

Chitika CPC Sabotage – WHY I Stopped using Chitika!

max — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 03:54:21 +0000

Chitika has been one of my favorite ad platforms to make money with my blogs. Recently, I’ve realized that using both Adsense and Chitika on the same site/blog can be bad for your online revenues, and possibly sabotage your Adsense revenues.

Why?

The main problem lies in Chitika’s revenue share along with publishers. If you just have one website and you already get a good CPC/eCPM with Chitika, that’s fine but for me, I need a different CPC/eCPM for every blog I run since I manage about 30 different blogs and CPC/eCPM tend to vary a lot depending on the niche/topic of the blog.

I have e-mailed Chitika team countless times (since last year) asking them to explain to me why I am getting the exact same CPC on every one of my blogs regardless of the niche.

At best, my CPC will vary between 1-3 cents, which is like saying they are the same or fixed CPC.

I usually get a response that they will take a look at it next week or next month. I figure that either they have a bigger fish to fry or this is probably why they are making money.

Don’t get me wrong, I was one of the first to promote Chitika when it was starting out but sometimes I need to set the facts right and the only way I can do that is by blogging it about it when I can’t get a clear human response.

So, let me tell you an example why I am PEEVED. For example, average CPC for Adsense on one of my better blogs is near 1 dollar while the CPC on Adsense for one of my shittier blogs is around 20 cents.

According to that, I should be getting something between 10 cents and something 5 times more around 50 cents on Chitika (if my shittier blog was getting about 20 cents on Adsense). Even then, advertisers should have a good enough reason to keep using Chitika instead of Adsense to promote their products/services since CPC is cheaper on Chitika.

But no, Chitika gives me almost the exact same CPC for every blog that I have, that is around 12 cents on a really good niche and 8 cents on a crappy niche while Adsense can vary from a dollar to 20 cents. That’s about 2-10 times difference and that works out to be a lot of money in the course of a year.

It would be wise for me to just put my shittier blogs on Chitika but I like Chitika, I want to put more of their ads on my premium sites.

So WHY IS THIS SO IMPORTANT?

Because if your CPC on Chitika is let’s say 5 times lower than on Adsense, it gives “incentives” for advertisers to advertise more on Chitika for the same website/blog. In return, this “sabotages” your own Adsense earnings because advertisers are now bidding for the same keywords on Chitika instead of Adsense for 5 times less. Of course, depending on the placement of your Adsense and Chitika, it can vary but because Chitika gets a higher CTR (shown only on search traffic), it might make sense for advertisers to advertise the same product/services on Chitika instead of Adsense if there were two options. Chitika ads target search traffic and U.S. traffic, which is where you get paid most on Adsense anyways.

I’ve actually done some testing and in about a month, I’ve lost about 20 to 30% of my Adsense revenues by having Chitika units along with Adsense units. Of course, this is only true if you place Chitika units in premium locations such as near the Adsense unit. If Chitika ads are already somewhere in the way-bottom of your website where no one sees/clicks, you probably are not sabotaging your Adsense revenues.

Stop the Adsense Sabotage!

To test it out, I did stop using Chitika on most of my blog for couple months on my premium blogs for a period of a month or so from December 2009 to January 2010.

The results were rather fantastic as my Adsense earning rose by more than 20-30%. I had the best Adsense earnings of my lifetime. The revenue I gained during this time on Adsense proved to be much more than revenue I would have earned if I used Adsense along with Chitika because Adsense pays you much more to begin with.

What can Chitika do now?

Chitika needs to be more open about how they do business, be more transparent. What us bloggers need to know is how exactly CPC is decided on Chitika and what kind of revenue share is offered.

And if revenue share is offered, publishers need to be paid the same percentage, not a flat CPC.

I know some top bloggers are using Chitika probably because they got a great revenue share but medium-to-small publishers like me can be “had” by being offered only a flat CPC that never changes. (Yes, it’s like you work so much harder and paid the same, like a communist country or you are a slave/dumbass.)

Every time I asked Chitika to raise my CPC for my niche blogs that I know for a fact that make more money per click, every time they have either delayed (it’s been almost a year since I started asking them) the response OR ignored my e-mails. (I have e-mails to prove it.)

When it comes to sensitive issues like me getting paid every month, things need to get resolved within days, not when-never.

So I am blogging it.

The Economics of Online Marketing

If you are already getting crappy numbers for your Adsense CPC/eCPM, you are probably not going to benefit from this blog post, perhaps work on getting more web traffic. But for those of you experiencing the same thing as I am, you need to be aware that simple economics of the online advertising marketing says you will be sabotaging your own Adsense earning in the long run by using Chitika with it.

PPC companies like Yodle, have an automated bidding system for all types of PPC program such as Google Adsense, Yahoo Publisher, MSN, etc… etc… This means that if their automated bidding system finds a cheaper CPC for the same site/keyword, it’s going to bid there, not at your high-paying PPC programs.

I am sure there’s many other similar systems out there and if they are out there, you could be sabotaging your own Adsense revenues by adding Chitika or any other lower-paying ad networks.

Simple Math

Let’s say you offer the same hotdog at Wal-mart(e.g. Adsense) for $5 and at Target(e. g. Chitika) for $1, where will you buy your hotdog?

Same analogy here, either you need to negotiate a really good revenue-share (CPC) with Chitika or you might be sabotaging your own Adsense ads. If you can make up enough clicks with Chitika and get a good CPC from them, you might be better off Chitika. This is true of my shittier blogs while it’s the opposite for most of my premium blogs.

The only way Chitika will come out of this is to offer publishers “fair/better share” of their CPC rates. The greatest part about Google Adsense program is that it’s automatic, publisher can get paid anywhere from 10 cents to even 5 dollars per click, depending on the bidders and the market. Publishers are paid fairly for the niche on Adsense while on Chitika, they seem to be human-controlled, resulting in a flat/fixed CPC, not reflective of the actual bidding market.

As far as I can tell, every publisher on Chitika is getting paid a flat fee of 9 to 12 cents regardless of how much they are selling those clicks for to advertisers. That “flat fee” revenue sharing model is where the problem lies. Publishers can be driving a ton of more quality keywords/traffic and still get the same CPC.

Hey, if Chitika is indeed selling those clicks for super low prices, they can make more money by raising CPC of high-paying niches accordingly and also make more money for the publishers in the process. It’s a win-win situation.

Perhaps Chitika’s system isn’t set to do that right now and if it’s not, I am highly disappointed because all the years I’ve been using Chitika (almost 3 years), I have been losing thousands of dollars through CPC sabotage.

Chitika has been always been one of my favorite companies but if they can’t fix this problem , I don’t see how they can grow further.

Of course, it could also be that Chitika is already charging more for high-paying keywords (I don’t know because I’ve actually never advertised on Chitika) and taking most of the revenue share. And that, my friend, could be why I am not going to use Chitika on my blogs anymore because Chitika is taking all the money while publishers do all the work.

For a company to succeed in the long run, they need to realize that their customers are smart and they need to treat each one as one of their best customers. Chitika has been awfully great on new innovations such as customization of ads but the response for my CPC questions have been very deceptive.

But is this a deceptive practice?

Well, it kinda is because I’ve asked Chitika reps many times to clarify me on the topic but no one answers. My honest wish is to keep using Chitika and that Chitika treats their publishers fair and square, answer their questions promptly and honestly, just like how your mother treats you.

Chitika need to be transparent about how they do business, especially when it comes to money. Google might not be so transparent about how much revenue share they offer to their publishers but they are transparent about the fact that different keyword niches will pay lower or higher, and that isn’t 1 or 2 cents difference. You can see it on your Adsense dashboard in real-time.

I work very hard for my money.

I am sure many of you bloggers/website publishers work very very hard for your money. The reason I write this blog post is to let you know that your hard-worked money is well-earned and there should be no one in-between to sabotage your efforts.

The simple math of demand and supply I outlined in this blog post clearly says adding Chitika ads along with your Adsense ads will “sabotage” your Adsense earnings. It took me actually almost 3 years to realize this, I feel stupid.

I really hope Chitika team will look into this major problem of fixed CPCs and get their system straight. Otherwise, I will be removing them from the rest of my shittier blogs too. No hard feelings.

Don’t e-mail/call me again until you have fixed the problem, I know last time I got a call because I was testing this.

I just want you to know if you are one of those people and you are using Chitika along with Adsense, test out my theory and let me know what happened. (in the comments or at zedomax [at] gmail.com) If your revenue stays the same I guess that’s fine but if it rises a lot, you know where to send Christmas presents to.

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

Chitika CPC Sabotage – WHY I Stopped using Chitika!

Google’s Ultimate Secret, “Relevancy”, and How It will Help your Online Business/Blogs!

max — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 01:08:12 +0000

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For those of you who have been trying to promote your online services/products or website(blogs), you will have to understand first why Google has succeeded, taking over power players like Yahoo and MSN using “relevancy”.

Relevancy is the key to success in any online business. Whether you sell potato chips online or provide content on your blogs, being “relevant” in anything you do online makes you stronger, bigger, and better.

Look at Google’s Adwords and Adsense systems, the one single ingredient they use is called, “relevancy”.

Even you and me, constantly go in vicious search cycles on a daily basis because you need to find websites that are most “relevant” to the keyword you are searching for.

The greatest part about Google is that they base everything including their ads on relevancy, something Yahoo has a LOT of catching up to do. I am also a Yahoo ad publisher and one of the biggest reasons I cannot promote them as much as Google is because their ads not relevant.

Google also does not show ads if they do not have inventory of advertisers that are not relevant to the content. For example, when you do a search on Google and sometimes there’s no ads. That’s because either there’s no advertisers for that keyword or the ads simply aren’t relevant.

How can relevancy help your online business?

EVERYTHING, if you make your ads relevant to the sites you are advertising on, you will raise your online conversions or you will make your readers happy.

The worst thing is to put ads that are not relevant to your blog such as “buy a knife” when you have a blog about stopping wars and peace.

Whatever it is you are doing, you will gain much from making your ads relevant to your content.

Well, that’s my thought for the day. Build relevance into everything you do online and the people will come.

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

Google’s Ultimate Secret, “Relevancy”, and How It will Help your Online Business/Blogs!

Blog DIY – Where to Put Your Adsense Ads for Blogs!

max — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 18:59:01 +0000

UPDATE: See my latest Adsense CPC Optimized Placement Heat Map here!

Long time ago, I released my Adsense optimized heatmap for increasing your CTR (Clik Through Rate).

Well, I have some more great news for you, I have further optimized my Adsense ads and here’s bunch of quick tips that will help you make more money with Adsense, all the while making your regular visitors happier.

Don’t put ads on your homepage and index pages. These are the main pages of your blog, particularly those from index.php. The reason is that the homepage of your blog isn’t “targetted” content since you might have more than 1 blog post in the same page. Thus, your Adsense ads won’t be as relevant so your CTR will be a lot lower than your single pages. (single.php) I’ve started removing all ads from the homepage and has increased my overall CTR and CPM. Plus, another great benefit for you is that site visitors in general don’t like a website cluttered with ads.Furthermore, you don’t want your first-time visitors to click away from the homepage, you want them to stay longer. By having zero ads on the homepage, you guarantee that the first-time readers will at least click once within your site to an interesting blog post they like.
Put your ads on single pages. These are the pages that receive most of your Google organic traffic. The single pages are highly targetted because they contain one blog post.
Test the different Adsense ads provided in my Adsense heat map and take out any ads that don’t perform. As a general rule of thumb, I remove any Adsense ads that do less than 1% CTR. I rather put another affiliate banner or private ads in those less performing spots. You want to increase your overall CTR, that makes your site more valuable for advertisers on Google. This is simply common sense. If you were an advertiser, you would want to advertise on ad placements that get most attention and most clicks. Even me, if I want to sell an affiliate product, I place it where it gets the most attention/CTR, not bottom-right sidebar banner that no one will look at.

For now, that’s the 3 tips that can change your Adsense earning as much as whopping 25% based on my testing. Results may vary but if you keep testing, you won’t regret any positive results you get while you can always go back to your old format if it doesn’t work out.

You don’t make more money because you bring more traffic, you make more money by bringing in higher “quality” traffic. The only way you can prove that to Google Adsense and advertisers is to optimize your ads and improve your overall CTR.

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

Blog DIY – Where to Put Your Adsense Ads for Blogs!

Adsense DIY – How to Use Competitive Ad Filter to Filter Out Irrelevant Ads!

max — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 20:12:23 +0000

Sometimes, your Adsense CTR can drop drastically on certain days and it may be because you have irrelevant ads on your blog or website.

As good as Google AdSense is at crawling your blog/website to serve the most relevant ads, there are times where you will simply get irrelevant ads.

For example, sometimes I have furniture advertisements out of no where on my tech blog that is totally irrelevant to my tech visitors.

If you see those kind of advertisements, it will drive down your CTR because the ads are not relevant to your blog readers. Plus, they even annoy the hell out of me because I don’t want to see ads that are not relevant, it makes my site look unprofessional.

There is a solution however, you can easily block those irrelevant ads from coming back so your users can see relevant ads thus driving your CTR back to normal.

To do this, simply go to Adsense Setup->Competitive Ad Filter, and enter the URLs (example.com). Those ads should stop appearing within 5 minutes or so.

Another important point here is that you want to actually type the domain name only without the www. For example, you want to type “example.com“, not “www.example.com” or “example.com/blahblahblah“. Doing this will block ALL ads from that domain, no matter what subdomains or pages its coming from.

In other times, your Adsense CTR can also drop drastically due to “ad spammers”. These people aren’t really “spammers” but I like to call them “ad spammers” as they will somehow buy a bulk of cheap graphic ads and keep “spamming” your blog/website with their ads only.

For example, you might see majority of your Adsense ads for one company. Depending on what that company is advertising, it can drive your CTR up or down.

If those ads drive your CTR down, you need to take them out as you are being “ad spammed”. Simply use the competitive ad filter to filter them out.

Plus, I rather see a bunch of different advertisers on my Adsense ads than a monopoly by a single advertiser, especially if those ads are irrelevant or simply driving your CTR down.

As a rule of thumb, if your CTR goes down, it probably means that your visitors are annoyed by your ads because it’s irrelevant or spammy. Make your visitors happy by showing more relevant ads, your CTR will probably go up and it will put a smile on your face.

On the other hand, if your Adsense ads are very relevant and not spammy, by means go ahead and do NOTHING. Like the old saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

UPDATE: Before you try the method above, try section targeting your blog/website, especially if you have a lot of extra content.

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

Adsense DIY – How to Use Competitive Ad Filter to Filter Out Irrelevant Ads!

Best Adsense CPC Niches

max — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 01:29:24 +0000

A lot of people have asked me which “niche” has the best Adsense CPC return and I can tell them to go use

I can tell you that looking for the best Adsense CPC niche is right in front of your nose, the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, which tells you exactly how much people are bidding on certain keywords.

Did I baffle you? Of course, the best CPC niches are already known public, the most important thing you need to know is that making money online doesn’t soley depend on CPC, it also depends on the average CTR of your niche. Without the CTR, no matter how great your CPC is, you won’t make money.

I’ve had niches where CTR and CPC is high and makes as much money as other niche blogs that have 10 times more web traffic.

So, in all, don’t waste your time looking for the best CPC niches, there really isn’t one. If someone knows about, he/she probably won’t tell you. Think about it, why would people want to reveal their great CPC goldmine, so everyone can make a blog about it and inflate that niche? Lol…

What you should really focus on is what you are passionate about first. Check out my post on free ideas for blogging niches.

BUT, if you really want to find out how to find the best CPC niche, I can tell you how to go about it:

1. Pick couple niches that you think would do well and find out how much CPC is on Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

2. For every niche, try finding a blog about it on Google simply by typing. If there’s already 100 blogs about that niche, it’s probably not a good idea to go that route even if CPC is skyrocketing high.

You simply need to research and find out how much competition you have. For some competitive niches such as techonology, there’s “never” enough blogs about it. (another secret)

On the other hand, if there’s no (or little) blogs about that niche, you could probably do well making a new blog.

Well, there, I told you my secret, I hope you go find your best CPC niche now and make sure to subscribe to my blog as I got some more cool stuff coming.

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

Best Adsense CPC Niches

Adsense for Domains!

max — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 20:52:56 +0000

Well, I am experimenting with AdSense for Domains today, I should have some more results later today but this can be a great niche market for those of you who want to make some easy money using domains.

I see a lot of opportunities where you can buy existing domains and make money with it.

You can play around with it yourself in your Adsense dashboard.

Also look at the conversion rate of parked domains. they are much higher than industrial average, THAT is surprising.

Another interesting fact is that these parked domains do convert better than regular ads. I know for a fact there’s been a lot of complaints from advertisers that their Adwords ads are on parked domains but if it works better than normal ads, I don’t see why not to try using it more.

What is it?

Many publishers have approached us looking for a way to monetize their domains, and today, we’re excited to announce the expansion of AdSense for domains. This product allows publishers to earn revenue through ads placed on undeveloped domains.

I will have more updates on my little experiment, so subscribe and stay tunned folks.

via Adsense Blog

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

Adsense for Domains!

Getting Stumbled on StumbleUpon Will Decrease your Adsense Revenue!

max — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:41:35 +0000

Well, I have been studying this for awhile and concluded that getting your blog posts stumbled on StumbleUpon will on average, decrease your Adsense revenue by 20-30%. (I can attest to losing around $2000/month due to my stupidity of using StumbleUpon.)

Don’t get me wrong, StumbleUpon is a great source of free traffic but it’s not good for your Adsense.

Let me explain why:

1. Stumblers who visit your blog post often are too ad-smart or “ad-blinds”, those who know what a Google Adsense ad looks like and will never, ever click.

2. When you inflate your web traffic levels with lots of impressions and no clicks, your CTR goes down dramatically. Even if you receive 20-30% more web traffic on a given day, that can translate into 20-30% LESS revenue even with more impressions, simply because you have inflated your CTR too.

Think of it as if the government was printing money. They could print unlimited amounts of money but that would only “inflate” the money market and make your money less valuable.

It’s the same thing with Adsense, you DON’T want to inflate your web traffic. (On the other hand, more “search” traffic from search engines are good, they are your high-quality web traffic most likely to read and click ads.)

Now, there are exceptions to this rule such as your blog post was so tight that you had 100 thumbs up AND you receive over 20,000 visits in one day. This could inflate your CTR but because you get so many impressions, you are BOUND to make more money.

The crazy part about this is that there’s a fine line between being able to make more Adsense revenue with StumbleUpon and not.

If you want to keep using StumbleUpon, by any means go ahead, but remember to only stumble your best, best, and best posts that might get stumbled crazy. (and bring at least 10-20K visitors per day)

All those other blog posts you bring in extra couple hundred visits using StumbleUpon are not worth it as they are inflating your Adsense CTR down and decreasing your revenue.

Now that said, I hope this helps you. It took me over 4 months since last September to realize this.

Recently, I took some break from stumbling and my CTR just shot up back to September 2008, when I was making more money with less web traffic.

StumbleUpon is great otherwise for non-Adsense sites such as photography or you simply enjoy stumbling.

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

Getting Stumbled on StumbleUpon Will Decrease your Adsense Revenue!

How to Use Adsense to Check and Balance your Web Stats!

max — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:25:26 +0000

Once in awhile, I find that having multiple sources to check web stats very useful.

As an example, my stats system (whether that’s SiteMeter, StatCounter, or Google Analytics) failed to record 100% of real traffic stats.

Now, I could have just sat there and wondered, “Why did my traffic just surge?”

But I found the answer by checking my Adsense stats, which showed that the stats system was off and that I was receiving more web traffic.

Of course, you can have multiple stats systems but Adsense is a great alternative to check and balancing your web stats.

I could have spent hours on trying to figure out what when wrong last night but I didn’t have.

I hope this helps you the next time your stats system is off.

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

How to Use Adsense to Check and Balance your Web Stats!

How to Make Money During Obama Inauguration!

max — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 00:45:07 +0000

Well, I should have really posted this before the Obama Inauguration but didn’t really have time to.

Anyways, opportunities for making money online are endless if you can get in at the right time.

During Obama Inauguration, my web traffic stats soared about 20% over regular days and also made a bunch of money from “Obama Inauguration” searches.

Basically I did a bunch of Obama Inauguration related blog posts, most of which I did because I am happy that Obama become President but also to make money in the process.

Blogging is writing about your passions online but it’s even better if you can make money while doin’ it.

Let me just say the this one blog post yielded almost $50 in a period of just 5-6 hours. Now, these blog posts won’t keep making that much money at that rate because people stopped searching for “Obama Inauguration” as of 3 or 4PM yesterday.

The opportunity lay somewhere between 5-6 hours before 12PM yesterday and couple hours after when a lot of people were searching for the Obama Inauguration livecasts.

Well… you can still get plenty of post “Obama Inauguration” stuff such as pictures and whatnot. (hint…hint…)

While most people earned “less” money because everyone was watching the inauguration, I made “more” money and also helped spread free knowledge.

You need to work when everyone else is resting and rest when everyone else is working. This is something I realize more and more as a blogger and internet marketer, “think the opposite”.

There’s thousands of opportunities like this, even Valentines day. Every holiday or special event is an opportunity for bloggers to make money.

Lately I have been feeling I am giving out too many secrets so I might have to shut this blog down soon.

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

How to Make Money During Obama Inauguration!

Feedburner now moving to Feedburner.Google.Com

max — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 23:03:11 +0000

Feedburner, which was acquired by Google last year, is officially transferring its system to Feedburner.Google.Com.

If you log in to your Feedburner account, you will notice that you can “move” all your feeds to Google.com.

I believe this is due to the enhanced features Google is adding and also to automate adding Adsense ads to your feeds. (which is a LOT of money for Google, advertisers, and publishers)

Before, I know Feedburner was buggy and although Adsense feature was there, it never worked for me for some reason.

Here’s a screenshot of the new Feed stats dashboard: (Looks way cooler now as a graph)

Also check out the blog post from Adsense for Feeds Google Blog on the new graphs.

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

Feedburner now moving to Feedburner.Google.Com

Christmas Adsense Update, Less People Searching?

max — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 20:01:54 +0000

As an internet marketer who relies on search and Adsense campaigns to make a living online, you need to check Google’s traffic often to see what’s going on.

For Christmas, Google’s traffic and overall world search traffic tends to dip a little as most people are celebrating the birth of Chirst, or Christmas.

So, if your Adsense earning have been down last couple days or so, I am here to tell you not to worry.

Here’s a quick look at the overall Google traffic in the last year or so:

As you can see, the overall traffic dips considerably during the end of the year but will surge back up in the middle of January.

Here’s a close-up of what’s happening in the search world last couple days:

As you can see, if the overall Google traffic is down, your earning will likely to be down too.

On the other hand, if your blog/website is Christmas-oriented, you might expect a “surge”.

Well, I hope that helps and if you’ve been worrying about your Adsense earnings, don’t worry and go to that Christmas party with your friends and family.

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

Christmas Adsense Update, Less People Searching?

Adsense Link Units Versus Regular Ad Units

max — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 21:06:08 +0000

I’ve recently got a comment from curtains gal about a possible “flaw” in the new Adsense Heatmap I created couple weeks ago.

Anyways, I did further testing by removing all the Link Units for couple days and found that Link Units and regular Ad Units are 2 different types of advertising so having both in your blog will actually increase revenue and won’t affect your CTR. (btw, I did lose couple hundred bucks during this testing…)

Link Units are probably bidded on differently than Ad Units so it’s okay to put them, it won’t saturate your ad prices.

Hope that helps!

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

Adsense Link Units Versus Regular Ad Units

Ad Optimization is SEO

max — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 04:22:45 +0000

First of all, I want to thank the guys over at Chitika, Vik and Ryan for great customer support.

Today, I will talk about ad optimization and how it’s completely related with SEO.

SEO, Search Engine Optimization, is the process of optimizing your blog/website so that you will show up first or near the first page of search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

Now, how is this directly related with ad optimization?

Well, your ad is basically like the ones found on Google search, located on top and the right side.

If you can understand how SEO works (in the Web 2.0 world, not Web 1.0 pleez), you will be able to position your Google Adsense or Chitika ads better and make more money in the process.

I believe there are 2 types of internet users:

1. Readers – These people are seeking information, that’s really all they want.

2. Searchers – These people are seeking information too but they are not readers, they will keep “searching” until they find what they “want”. A lot of these people are looking to “buy” something and a lot of advertisers are “selling” stuff.(of course)

From the point of view of an blog/internet marketer, you need more searchers than readers because they tend to “want” something and will do whatever it takes to find what they “want”. (even if that means clicking on an ad and they know it’s an ad)

Even myself, I tend to click on ads when I find myself “searching” for hours and can’t find anything.

That’s the mindset behind searchers.

Readers, on the other hand, really don’t buy stuff much and they simply need to fill the void of information in their head such as “how to make sushi“, as 1 example.

Readers are also classified in blogging as “RSS Subscribers”, they are your core audience and of course, readers can be your early-adaptor people who will spread the word about your blog.

Now what is the point of this?

Well, to tell you the truth, if you want to start making money with Adsense, Chitika, or whatever, you will need to focus and concentrate on getting more searchers.

I’ve even developed a new blogging theme that markets your blog as a search engine.

Now, changing your blogging theme probably isn’t the only way but that’s the best way I found so far.

Even if you don’t change your blog theme, you can apply this simply by making your search bar bigger on your website and placing ads before the search results.

Chitika even hooked me up with custom ads that can be shown in the middle of my search results, how cool is that? (I will dive into that later down the road…)

I am going off topic here but I do see a big future for a company that has great customer support.

Anyways, I am going to write a book soon, I’ve been telling people about it and I can’t go to sleep every night because what I found could possibly boost your Adsense/Chitika income by 2X at least. (Well, it’s all pretty much on this blog, spread out somewhere, but I need to put it in professional writing and published.)

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

Ad Optimization is SEO

New Adsense and Chitika Optimization Heat Map Version 2!

max — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 17:54:28 +0000

UPDATE: This heat map is outdated, please see my latest Adsense Heat Map here!

As you know, I did provide my high CTR, high EPC heat map for integrating Adsense and Chitika into your blog/website. Well, after much thought, I have actually removed half of my main ads while increasing CTR and EPC altogether.

So without delay, here’s the new simplified version of the heat map that will make you more money, while keeping it simpler and not so annoying to your readers with bombarded Adsense ads:

Now, you will notice that the right portion is empty on the top Google Adsense and the bottom too.

Please note that, this is actually the right way, you don’t want to put your ads in the center or to the right.

99% of people tend to read left-to-right, top-to-bottom, the best Adsense placements are always going to be near your top-left of the blog/website.

From design standpoint, having the empty space might feel like you need to add something. (Well, you can, just don’t bombarded with TWO Adsense ads, maybe affiliate ads might do good)

But with this new heatmap, my CTR and EPC has been going up because now people are bidding on less space for more money. (Less Supply + More Demand = Higher CTR and EPC)

Now, I have heard that CTR isn’t directly correlated with EPC and that’s true BUT you have to remember the simply economy of “Supply & Demand“, which is a major part of how Adsense and Adwords market work.

The greatest part about this setup is that it makes the reader “focus” on just one Adsense ad without being confused with content. After that, they can read all the content but the most important part is that we’ve eliminated bombarded ads with simple, more effective Adsense ads that’s going to be more friendly to your readers/visitors while increasing your CTR and EPC.

If you haven’t read my last post about “Less is More“, you will want to as it has everything to do with this new heatmap.

Enjoy~

From your Web 2.0+ Consultant, Max Lee

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

New Adsense and Chitika Optimization Heat Map Version 2!

How to Boost 20-30% More “Search” Web Traffic on your Blog!

max — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 20:54:45 +0000

Well, I have been working kinda hard lately, not getting enough sleep so my video might be hard to understand but I am showing you how you can boost 20-30% more “search” web traffic on your blog.

I simply don’t have time to go into detail in writing as of now but when I get a chance, I will make sure to make some real diagrams to explain how everything works.

Here’s links to the videos in different formats:

Blip.TV

YouTube

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

How to Boost 20-30% More “Search” Web Traffic on your Blog!

How Search Engine style blogs will increase your CTR!

max — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 06:56:58 +0000

Download latest version of Flash to view video!.

Click Here to View in Full Screen Mode

Well, here’s possibly the biggest new blogging theme style ever, a blog theme focused on ’search’.

“People who tend to search click ads more. They need to find what they are looking for.”

Download the theme here

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

How Search Engine style blogs will increase your CTR!

Adsense Optimized Search Engine Wordpress Blog Theme!

max — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 22:57:01 +0000

I have some exciting news to tell you, that is the new Adsense Optimized Search Engine Wordpress Blog Theme.

Basically, the layout of this new theme allows people to easily search for anything on your blog.(You can see example at Zedomax.com here)

My research and analysis show that people who “search a LOT” tend to have higher chance of clicking on ads, simply due to the fact that that’s how Google works too.
Anyways, this new theme can drive your CTR much higher. (in theory still and experimenting)

I will have this theme free available for download soon on this blog. Plus, I will have a pro version which comes with extra AJAX features (that I will be developing).

If you want the free pro-version without having to pay, write a blog post about this blog post and I will put you on my guestlist.

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

Adsense Optimized Search Engine Wordpress Blog Theme!

Zedomax Blog Internet Marketing 101 E-Book!

max — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:30:43 +0000

Well, as promised, I am actually going to apply what I blogged about last couple days by providing you with a new Blog Internet Marketing 101 E-Book.

This E-book is pretty much composed of all the best blog posts I have made in the past.

Although I could have written an E-book from scratch, I made this E-book in about 30 minutes using scraps of blog posts on this very blog.

You can get it here.

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

Zedomax Blog Internet Marketing 101 E-Book!

Adsense and Chitika Optimization Heat Map!

max — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 21:52:23 +0000

UPDATE This heat map is REALLY REALLY OLD, please see my update Heat Map for Maximum Adsense Revenues!

UPDATE: Please check the Latest Adsense/Chitika HeatMap HERE

A lot of people have been asking me that it’s hard to believe that you can make money with Adsense and I have to tell you that I change around my Adsense ads at least 5-10 times a week to just it right.

So, after all my hundreds of experiments using Adsense and Chitika to maximize my income, the above Adsense Chitika Optimization Heat Map is something I live by and I have to say, this is my secret. (But don’t worry, I have very little readers and subscribers, the secret IS SAFE!)

Anyways, let me go over what the heck above Heat Map is. (Yes, it’s probably quite different from the Google Heat Map but I assure you, it works)

The main money makers with Adsense for me is always the Adsense ad in the upper-left hand corner.

Depending on your website design and width of the site, you can use anything from 200×200, 250×250, 300×250, or 336×280.

What I try to do is fit TWO of these ads on top before ANY CONTENT. (Find the right size that will fit TWO of these ads)

Why?

People who tend to come through Google search tend to “like” reading the Adsense ads and will click more often than if your Adsense is at the bottom.

If you look at any of my sites, you will see this pattern and I have been experimenting too.

Now those two ads are probably going to be your best performers. I have tried countless different configurations such as the 468×15 before the content and sadly, I always revert back to this.

The 468×15 or 728×15 Link Unit ad after your content is a pretty good performer too, don’t forget to wedge that in there.

For putting 120×90 pixel Link units, looky here.

Now since Adsense allows you to put 3 regular Adsense ads on your site, put another one AFTER your content as shown. For the empty space on the right, I recommend filling it with a Chitika MPU or Minimalls ad. (find the one that fits)

As for Chitika Premium ads, try to put one right after the 2 Adsense ads on top and another one right after the content. These only show when people click through a search term so you want to make sure people see it TWICE, once on top and once after content to maximize the chances of them seeing the ad.

I know I know, you tell me that your website will be filled with ads. But if you are serious about taking Adsense to maximum revenue, this is really what you have to do.

As for me, I don’t have a choice whether there’s too many ads or not, if I am not getting paid, I might as well get a 9 to 5 job.

If you don’t believe me, just watch TV, how many ads do you see every hours? Probably 3 or 4. Yes, even if you pay your comcast bills, you still have to watch “ads” to get free TV. (Yes, THAT is ridiculous)

In comparison, you putting those Adsense ads before the content is trivial.

Oh one more thing, don’t put Adsense ads on your sidebar, they never perform. You can test it out but I am pretty sure most sites will perform better without it.

Instead sell the inventory ad private ads that people can buy.

Well, this isn’t final but this is the best heat map that money can buy right now. (and it’s free!)

One thing you need to also do is make sure you are getting at least around 1000 uniques per day, without at least 1000 unique visitors, it’s almost impossible to make any money on Adsense or any other type of advertising.

Once you reach 1000 uniques (or before that too), you should really apply the above heat map for maximum revenue.

Let me know if this helped you double or triple your earning.

Happy Adsensing!

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

Adsense and Chitika Optimization Heat Map!

Making Money with Adsense is Like Hunting!

max — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 17:51:09 +0000

Today, we will compare how making money with Adsense (or any other advertising program) is like hunting.

Let me explain.

Before the days of bow and arrows, humans would setup “traps” to catch big animals such as deer, wild pig, etc…etc…

Now these “traps” are comparable to Adsense ads. Basically, you need to set the trap where the deer or the wild pig would be walking over.

Good hunters know the “sweet spots” and they place their traps there.

Bad hunters don’t know jack and they place their traps where no animal would go by.

In comparison, you need to put your Adsense ads where people would actually “see” and “read”. That is the only way people will actually be interested enough to click on your ads.

Now you see, there’s hunters that feed their family plentifully simply because he/she is smarter than animals.

For those dumb hunters, their family will struggle to stay alive.

Do you have your Adsense ads in the right places?

This could mean revenue that can keep you going or you might have to struggle if your ads are in the wrong places.

Be smart, and put them Adsense ads in the right places.

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

Making Money with Adsense is Like Hunting!

The Best Niche Market for Adsense Ads!

max — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 21:30:33 +0000

The best niche market I have found for Adsense ads really are the local niche markets.

What do I mean by “local” niche markets?

These are regionalized, localized markets that have an audience of one city, one county, or in other words, a small audience.

Why would you benefit from such a small market?

Well, it’s really common sense. Because the audience is so small, your click rate skyrockets.

What is a “local” niche market?

Well, the “best” Adsense performer blog that I have is SFOneOfAKind.com. It’s a blog about luxury real estate in San Francisco.

I cannot tell you more details than it’s the best performer as far as CPC (Cost per Click) is concerned.

It’s actually one of my “dead” blogs that I’ve began to monetize and blog as of lately.

There are tons of other “local” niche markets you can find such as “New York City Automobile Blog” or “Los Angeles Best Restaurant Blog”.

These are niche blogs that cater to only a very small portion of the internet audience.

Because the audience is so small, there’s more competition among the advertisers so in return, you the publisher can expect higher CPC.

Of course, this isn’t the case for everything, it’s always best to rely on trial and error.

Do you have a “local” niche market?

These local, niche market maybe the undiscovered gems among niche blogs and you my friend, just been told of another Adsense secret.

Now, go take your medicine and make a couple local, niche blogs to try it out yourself.

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

The Best Niche Market for Adsense Ads!

Adsense Secrets that they won’t tell you.

max — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 02:09:02 +0000

Today, we will talk about adsense secrets that the professional bloggers don’t tell you. What is it?

Well, it first and foremost includes capturing a niche market and not telling anyone else about it.

Once your niche grows big enough and you capture a good share of that market, you won’t have to worry as much.

It’s really about finding a good niche that not many people are blogging about. It’s simple as that and you need to keep trying different things until your revenue stream starts rising a little.

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

Adsense Secrets that they won’t tell you.

How to make money with Adsense on web traffic!

max — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 15:19:43 +0000

The most important thing about making money with Adsense is the fact that amount of money you make “ramps” up with the level of web traffic you get.

For example:

If your blog gets around 0 to 1000 unique visitors, chances are likely that you make somewhere around $0 to $5 per day.

But then, if your blog gets around 1000 to 3000 unique visitors, chances are likely that you make somewhere around $5 to $100 per day, depending on your niche market.

Now, if you look at the big spectrum of things, you will notice that the there’s almost 20 times difference between $5 and $100.

That’s right.

At a certain point, the number of your web traffic + number of clicks + CTR “ramps” up. I am not exactly sure how this happens but trust me, it does.

That’s what you should be targetting for, a steady growth of search engine traffic. Now, once you reach that “ramp”, you will suddenly start making 3-10 times more money.

If you are still struggling below web traffic of 1,000 uniques per day, it’s going to look REAL HARD to make a lot of money on Adsense. Once you get past 2,000 to 3,000 uniques, you might start actually making some decent money.

Well, that’s all for today folks. If you got some facts to point out, please use the comments form.

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

How to make money with Adsense on web traffic!

Where is the Best Adsense Placement?

max — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 15:13:21 +0000

Sorry, THIS POST IS OUTDATED, SEE MY UPDATED Adsense Optimized Heat Map HERE!!!

If you have noticed, I’ve put on some Adsense ads finally on this blog.

Where is the best placement for the highest paying Adsense ad?

Well, it’s simple, it’s the 336×280 pixel size right on top of your post.

Although I’ve proved it to myself already, there’s also this blog post you can check out that shows which ad performs the best.

What are my goals?

Well, I will attempt to start making money on this blog, talking about how to optimize your ads to make more money from your blog.

Other things I’ve done to increase CTR

As you can see in the above screenshot, I took the motorcycle out. It’s because it takes up WAY too much valuable advertising space, which is the top-left corner.

With those changes and Adsense ads on top/bottom of post plus a 160×600 sidebar ad, we will see how much money we can make over the next year or so.

Mind you, I probably won’t make that much money with this blog as there’s literally not enough traffic.

On the next post, I will explain further how to make more money with web traffic and show you how it correlates to everything.

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

Where is the Best Adsense Placement?

How to Adsense Optimization Video by Australian Adsense Team!

max — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 22:22:32 +0000

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1. Analyze web pages.

2. Setup custom channels

3. Optimize your ad placement/unit.

4. Maximize revenue from multiple units.

5. Track and measure your results.

I can’t tell you how many times that ad optimization is the key to success. If you cannot optimize your ads, you will never succeed or at least reach your full potential as an online businessman(businesswoman).

The optimization part might take you 3 days or 3 months, but once you’ve optimize, you can expect to make 3-5 times what you made before.

via adsense blog

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

How to Adsense Optimization Video by Australian Adsense Team!

Best Type of Traffic for Ad Clicks!

max — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 21:58:46 +0000

A lot of people don’t know that fact about web traffic and the fact remains that you need a special “type” of web traffic to get the people to be interested in your advertisements whether that be Google Adsense or whatever.

Here’s are some facts about what kind of people are more likely to read and click on ads:

1. Blog subscribers are overrated, they are the worst type of traffic that’d click on your ads. Besides, most subscribers are subscribers because they see your blog through an RSS reader, thus they’d even rarely see the ad at all unless you had feed ads.

Blog subscribers are the worst for making money because they know your site layout already, they are “ad blind”, as they say.

2. Traffic coming from Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, and social networking are worthless. Most of the time, they will steal your bandwidth and you pretty much don’t make any money unless you can “consistently” make the front page, in which case you will gain a lot of SEO, which is good for making money online.

Most people coming from the social networking traffic are too smart to even read your ads, don’t waste your time building up traffic this way. You might end up with 1000 more uniques per day but if that doesn’t convert, you are the one who end up wasting time. (Whereas if you only had 100 uniques from search engines, you’d probably make more money in comparison)

3. Traffic from Google search terms are the best for making money. People who click through a search engine more than often click out through Google Adsense ads. This is where the money is. If you can somehow increase the number of people coming to your site through Google, Yahoo, or any other search engines, you have the best type of web traffic, the people who read and click on ads.

So what’s the point of this story?

You need to spend 90% of your time blogging, consistently about your niche topic. Do not waste your time with too many social networks as they don’t give you “money” results. The social networks might earn you more readers and traffic but they simply don’t convert to money.

Also, don’t try so hard to get a lot of subscribers. Your subscribers should be subscribing to your blog because they are REALLY interested in keeping up with your blog news.

If you use contests and other methods simply to increase the number of subscribers, it doesn’t really help you when you are counting money at the end of the day.

Subscribers = The worst traffic for CPC advertising

Social Network traffic = Also worst traffic for CPC advertising

Random People who find your site through a search engine = This is your goldmine, if you can get the number of visitors coming to your site up to about 90% of total traffic, that is ideal for making money online.

Other people including blog experts might tell you otherwise but in my experience, this is what has worked and what is working for me. If you have further suggestions, I am ears are always open and you are welcome to comment.

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

Best Type of Traffic for Ad Clicks!

Adsense Hack – How to Make your Adsense Show up on the First Post Only!

max — Wed, 21 May 2008 17:30:12 +0000

Well, a lot of people think you can simply insert your Google adsense code in the index.php file and get adsense ads on every post.

You need to add a little PHP code so your ad only shows up on your first post.

To do this, add the following:

…Your adsense code here…

This simple php code can work on a blog or any other webiste. Basically, it only allows the code to show up once. Now there’s Wordpress functions to do it to, but why bother when a simple PHP code can solve the problem?

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

Adsense Hack – How to Make your Adsense Show up on the First Post Only!

Blend your Adsense Ads with your Blog Theme!

max — Sun, 18 May 2008 04:05:59 +0000

Okay, Missy over at Groovyvegetarian is my friend and I am not picking on her but here’s what she’s doing wrong:

Now, as you can see, she has a 468×60 ad when you go to the homepage and she has a 336×380 ads on single pages like here:

Now, here’s two things she can do to make a lot more money with Adsense and optimize her ads.

1. She needs to put a 336×380 ad OR TWO 250×250 ads side-by-side for her homepage.

2. The ads are still in default Google colors, she need to change the colors so it blends into the mild red she uses for her AHREF colors.

With the two changes, I am sure that she will get 2-3 times more clicks.

With so many people used to being “ad-blind” as they call it, if you make your ads look like Google ads, no one will click and no one will be interested in it.

By blending your ad colors into your blog theme, you can expect 2-3 times more clicks, thus 2-3 times more revenue.

Sounds like a simple idea but it works.

So if you are still using default Google ad colors, I highly you change that. (that means you Missy!)

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

Blend your Adsense Ads with your Blog Theme!

Inside Google’s Advertisers’ Auctions

max — Tue, 13 May 2008 01:55:00 +0000

Here’s a great explanation of how Google’s Adsense and Adwords advertising/publishing program works.

Basically, there’s an internal auction of all keywords and advertisers get to bid on them. So the CPC is really determined by advertisers.

Now, it’s up to you to find out which Publisher’s program gives you the best CPC for your money.

But how do they actually work? There are several steps in the process.

1) Each advertiser enters a list of keywords, ads, and bids.

2) When a user enters a query, Google compiles a list of all the ads whose keywords match that query.

3) The list of ads is then ordered based on the bids and the Ad Quality Scores, which measure the relevance of the ad to the user.

4) The highest ranked ad is displayed in the most prominent position, the second highest ranked ad gets the second most prominent position, and so on.

5) If the user clicks on an ad, the advertiser is charged a price that depends on the bid and Quality Score of the advertiser below it. The price charged is the minimum necessary to retain the advertiser’s position in the list.

via Googleblog

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

Inside Google’s Advertisers’ Auctions

Yahoo Publishers vs. Google Adsense – Test them noth and see How each Performs!

max — Mon, 12 May 2008 21:13:14 +0000

Well, I admit that I have been testing out Yahoo Publishers program in the last couple days.

Yahoo Publishers Program is basically Adsense from Yahoo. It launches about a year and half ago and it’s been steadily growing in number of advertisers and publishers.

Zack Johnson even made over $400K in just couple months.

But that’s not the point of this blog post.

The point is that I did a test with Zedomax.com and have found that:

1) Google Adsense provides better context-matched ads, meaning more people will click on your ads because they are more relevant.

2) Yahoo provides better payouts per click. (This might vary but for tech, this proved to be true)

3) You need to try both and test out to see which program gives you a better payout at the end of the day.

In conclusion, I am making 2-3 times more money now with Yahoo Publisher Program for Zedomax.com.

Why?

Because certain niche topics get better payouts with the Yahoo Publisher Program. For Zedomax.com, I actually get only 60-70% of clicks compared to Google Adsense, yet Cost-per-Click is about 3 times higher, so I end up making 2-3 times more money at the end of the day.

But I think this will only work if you are already getting a high number of clicks. If you are getting less than 10 clicks per day, you might not see as a big differece.

If you do get more than 10 clicks per day, I highly suggest you try them out.

I haven’t tested all the blogs so I might start doing that one by one and see how well it does for my other blogs.

Remember not to put Google ads and Yahoo ads on the same page, that’s against the ToS. However, you can put them in “different” pages and see how they perform.

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

Yahoo Publishers vs. Google Adsense – Test them noth and see How each Performs!

Which AdSense Ad Sizes are the Best Performing?

max — Sun, 11 May 2008 21:35:46 +0000

Well, I’ve been doing some testing lately and also analyzing different sites for which AdSense sizes perform the best.

In all, it turns out verticals and horizontals perform the worst.

The best performing ad sizes are the rectangles.

I also did a test with which rectangles perform the best.

The bigger your rectanges, the better they perform.

336×280 pixel rectangles outperformed every other sizes by 3-5 times.

I told you before to put the ads on top of your content. Now, if you are not using rectangle sizes, you are not taking advantage.

The rectangles can be a little bit annoying for your readers but heck, you need to make money blogging. If you have great content, you really need to take advantage, readers will still come if you have a lot of ads.

Try the rectangles, especially the big ones, I bet you will make 2-3 times more if you have not been using them.

Of course, there can be variations, but with the 10 blogs I tested, results always came out the same.

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

Which AdSense Ad Sizes are the Best Performing?

Your Adsense Account Could Be Banned Because Of StumbleUpon

max — Thu, 08 May 2008 16:33:26 +0000

Here’s a warning this blogger got from Google for using StumbleUpon to drive traffic. Although I don’t see how that could be a big problem if StumbleUpon was sending you real traffic but I do see that it’s probably best not to use StumbleUpon for a site that runs AdSense.

This is the message the blogger got from Google for SU traffic:

It has come to our attention that invalid clicks or impressions have been generated on the Google ads on your site(s) through users of third-party programs paid or provided with other incentives to visit your site. Such programs include, but are not limited to auto-surf, pay-to-surf, pay-to-read, or pay-to-click sites. Please bear in mind that if we continue to detect invalid clicks or impressions from these services on your ads, we may disable your account to protect our advertisers.

Just be aware and stick to brick and mortal natural search traffic. That is my advice.

via eyadmix

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

Your Adsense Account Could Be Banned Because Of StumbleUpon

AdSense for search now powered by Custom Search and Make Money by Replacing Your Search Function!

max — Wed, 07 May 2008 21:19:12 +0000

Well, AdSense search is now getting better as it’s going to be powered by custom search.

What does this mean?

Basically, AdSense search will use a custom search engine to index your sites better if you are using Adsense search on your site to make money.

Before, AdSense search was based on the same search engine as Google, meaning if some of your pages were not indexed in Google, it wouldn’t show up on your AdSense search results.

I have actually tested this over at Zedomax.com and found my AdSense search is now more accurate than before. This doesn’t help you get indexed better on Google but it does allow you more incentive to replace your blog search function with the AdSense search function.

Great stuff, I will have to add it to this blog too.

If you want to make couple bucks off blog search, I highly suggest you replace your exisiting blog search function with an AdSense search. You also get the power of Google on your site with custom indexing now so there’s nothing to lose…

Improved indexing of your pages: We’ve recently improved our indexing technology so that you can provide a more enhanced Site Search experience for your users. AdSense for search will now index even more pages of your site, as long as we’re able to crawl them, so that your users will see more results from your site in your AdSense for search results. Stay tuned for more updates on future crawl and indexing improvements!

Thanks to Josh for tipping me on this article.

via adsense

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

AdSense for search now powered by Custom Search and Make Money by Replacing Your Search Function!

AdSense HOWTO – How to position your Adsense ads for maximum revenue!

max — Tue, 06 May 2008 03:45:59 +0000

(Comparison of Zedomax.com and Mattresszine.com, Click to enlarge)

In a recent network study I did with Adsense ads all my blogs over in Zedomax Network, I found out that the most optimal position for your AdSense ads are to the top and left. Now above is a Screenshot of Mattresszine.com overlapped on Zedomax.com.

Why do I show you this?

Because the Adsense ads on Zedomax.com used to be at the way bottom. I started slowly changing the theme and moving the ads towards the top and to the left.

After the change, I did increase my CTR and CPM by 2-3 fold. (I am even thinking about moving it further to the top and left)

Also of the two Adsense ads, the left one performs better by 2-3 fold, weird isn’t it? (I am planning to even test out putting the sidebar on the left and put the ads there…)

I used to put my Adsense ads on the bottom of the post and on the sidebar. Uh oh, that is the worst place to put it unless you are experiencing some high CTRs. You might as well not put adsense. You need to put the ads where people would normally be reading the content, otherwise people will simply ignore the ads and you will make zilch.

You need to also think about the general population, over 50% of people still user 1024×768 pixel monitors in the world. That means anything outside that will not get many impressions.

After optimizing Adsense ads, I went from making just enough money to pay for server fees to being able to make a living on the internet.

That slight change can be costly, especially if you don’t know about how much money it can make you. It did cost me last 6 months of “how much could I have made”.

Now, depending on your niche blog topic, the ad placement perfomance could differ, but do try my advice if you ain’t making it right now. I am sure it will help.

Post from: I Make Money Online by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs

AdSense HOWTO – How to position your Adsense ads for maximum revenue!

How To Make Money Blogging by Creating Free Content for the World with Blogs » AdSense

Wordpress Hack – How to Insert Ads in the Middle of Your Content!

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