AdSensical : : Make Money Online

What is a good CTR?

2007-12-12T15:07:00.000-08:00

Enlighten People:

It depends on the kind of site you got. Some sites have trouble getting a 1% CTR. Others have no trouble getting over 10% CTR. Check the links at the end of the FAQ for tips on optimizing your site.

Why am I getting PSAs?

2007-12-09T11:43:00.000-08:00

Enlighten People:

Google has not yet crawled all the pages of your website.
Your page may contain sensitive content for which relevant paying ads will not be displayed.
Your website is using session IDs in the URL.
The AdSense code was placed within an IFRAME.
Your web pages are behind a login.
There are too many URLs added to your account filter list.
Your web page may not contain enough content.
Your site content is primarily in an unsupported language.

Your site has restricted access using a robots.txt exclusion. If you would like to grant Google's crawler access your pages, you can do so without granting permission to any other bots. Simply add the following two lines to the top of your robots.txt file:

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
Disallow:

Your website is using frames. In order for Google to serve better targeted ads to the content on your website, select the Framed page checkbox from the Ad layout code page when generating your ad code.

Blogger blogspot social bookmarks

2007-12-06T07:47:00.000-08:00

Enlighten People:

What is this? See four icons just above this line? This is it!

A lot of people asked me if I am familiar with any Blogger plug-in similar to Sociable for wordpress. Unfortunately my answer was always no. There are however tools to implement social bookmarks in Blogger but either they redirect you to another site or are just those one-button-wonders which never works as imagined.

Long story short; here is my javascript version with currently only four social networks but more will be added depending on interest shown by You dear visitor :).

How to use it? Copy link of your post in url field and press socialize!

preview:

copy/pasta below in front or at the end of your post:

pretext (optional)

url (it's a must)

title (if none script will assign an appropriate one)

Digg
Technorati
StumbleUpon
DelIcioUs

Search On Your Own Site

2006-12-20T23:03:00.000-08:00

Enlighten People:

Seeing as I never blogged about this, I thought that this would be a great time to talk about the new way of using AdSense for Search - from within your own webpage! Originally, when someone does a Google Search, they are taken to google.com and you can customize the colour and logo but it didn't feel like your own site. However, if you click "Open results within my own site" within More Options, you can choose a page for your search results to land on. You just need to make a landing page for the search results with your header footer and various sidebars and place code in that page where you want the search results - simple. This time you will get 2 sets of code however: one for the search box and one for the results page. And best of all, it works with all the features such as competitive filtering and such like so if you have a site (not like a blogger blog) you should convert now. Enjoy (note: I am going to be blogging more often now).

Place Ads in Middle of Blogger Posts

2006-06-09T16:17:00.000-07:00

Enlighten People:

When you make a Blogger template, you can place ads in the sidebar and on top. However, the positions of the ads are static. The main point is that you cannot place an advert inside a post. Correct?
Incorrect! Using a bit of Javascript techno-wizardry you can place AdSense ads in the middle of your Blogger posts easily. I don't promise, but it should increase your CTR. Let me show you how:

Log in to Blogger and go to Template
Find the <$BlogItemBody$> tag in your template
Replace it with:

<p>
<ItemPage>
<div id="adsensical<$BlogItemNumber$>start"></div>

<div style="margin:5px 0 -5px 10px">

</div>

<div id="adsensical<$BlogItemNumber$>end">
</ItemPage>
<div id="adsensical<$BlogItemNumber$>body"><$BlogItemBody$></div>
<ItemPage>
</div>

<script language="JavaScript">
//AdSensical Place Ads in Middle of Blogger Posts
//By hackman_3vilGuy http://adsensical-adsense.blogspot.com
//hackman {AT}caller {DOT}me {DOT}uk
var topbit=document.getElementById("adsensical<$BlogItemNumber$>start");
var bottombit=document.getElementById("adsensical<$BlogItemNumber$>end");
var s=document.getElementById("adsensical<$BlogItemNumber$>body").innerHTML;
var regexIndex=s.search(//igm);
if(regexIndex>0) {topbit.innerHTML=s.substr(0,regexIndex);bottombit.innerHTML=s.substr(regexIndex+14);}
</script>
</ItemPage>
</p>

Copy this code

Replace  with your real Adsense code you want to put in
Now in every post place  somewhere in the HTML (click Edit HTML) of the post where you want the ad to appear!

That's it! If you implement this you should hopefully get a greater CTR and therefore more cash and the method is within the ToS. This only displays the ads on item pages. If you want to display them on all pages then get rid of the ItemPage tags but watch out that you only have 3 ads per page. If you forget to put the tag in, your ad will appear just before the article. Enjoy, just please don't forget to link back here.

Developers - AdSense API released

2006-06-01T11:32:00.000-07:00

Google has announced a new API for AdSense (beta of course like everything else Google). I got really excited as I am a developer and thought it would be cool. It's sort of cool but wasn't quite what I was expecting.
For a start you need a minimum of 100,000 daily page views which rules out most people.
The purpose of this API is to set up and configure AdSense ads for your visitors without them leaving your site and going to the AdSense website. From your site you can sign up new users and choose ads for them. While they are using your site to place their ads, you will receive a (currently undisclosed) revenue share of what they make. Sweet!
Using the AdSense API, you can enable users to perform a variety of AdSense functions without leaving your website, including the following:
- Create an AdSense account
- Manage an AdSense account
- Create and modify AdSense for content ad units and link units, AdSense for search boxes, and Referrals
- View detailed reports to monitor performance and earnings

The AdSense API is mainly geared at web hosting, wiki, blogging and web publishing sites as they can be portals for the people using those sites to put AdSense in their content and make money. It can be accessed by SOAP so can be accessed by most modern programming languages like Java and C#. I haven't checked the terms and conditions but you should be able to make this into a desktop application.
Hopefully it will become more open and I will be able to give it a go.

Keyword density analyser

2006-05-28T12:57:00.000-07:00

The Google spider indexes your pages to find keywords. You can check your webpage's keyword density using the keyword tool below. As you know, having keywords in your text is the most important thing to get well targeted ads. I already posted on ways to implement keywords and content.
Just visit web address below and your content will be analysed and your keywords ranked.
Form is located at http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html

Just In: Video Ads

2006-05-24T21:17:00.000-07:00

Google AdWords advertisers can now advertise on your site with video ads as a new addition to the line up of text, Flash and image adverts currently available according to the AdWords blog. If you have selected image ads, you are able to receive these new video ads. There are 2 ways to make money from them - CPM - Cost per thousand impressions and CPC - Cost Per Click with CPM ads being charges per 100 views of the starting image and CPC ads being charged per click through to the website (not just playing the ads). The adverts do not start playing automatically - only when they are clicked on. Currently there is no way to opt out of video ads but soon there may be.
Is this really a revenue increasing ad unit or just something flashy that takes ages to load?

How to get them: They can't guarantee that video ads will appear on your site. However, if you want to make sure video ads could appear on your site, there are actually 3 ad formats that currently support them:

300x250 Medium Rectangle
336x280 Large Rectangle
250x250

also you need to opt into both text and image ads.

In the coming days, we will be adding click-to-play video ads to the
line-up of text, Flash and image ad formats currently
supported by the Google content network. At launch, video ads will be available
to AdWords advertisers in the US, Canada and Japan - but we plan to roll them
out to other regions shortly.Now, let's talk about the details.First, as with
all AdWords ad formats, video ads will compete for
placement on sites in the Google content network with other text, Flash and
image ads -- and, as with our other image ad placements, you can choose to bid
on a CPC or CPMbasis.
Second, these ads will be supported by both site- and keyword-targeted
campaigns. You can choose to serve your video ad on a specific site or on pages
in our content network that relate to your product or service. As always, you
have the ability to geo-target
your video ads internationally, nationally, or locally.Finally, unlike some
intrusive advertising, users will have complete control. When a page loads, only
a static image will be visible; the video will not start playing until the user
initiates it. He or she will be able to advance the video, pause it, adjust the
volume or click through to the advertiser's site, as you can see in the example
below:
But, you may say, video is only for big branding oriented advertisers.
We beg to differ. This feature makes video ads much more accessible to all
advertisers. Now, an owner of a small bed & breakfast in Lake Tahoe can put
a video tour of his beautiful chalet right next to an article that talks about
skiing the epic slopes of Squaw Valley.
[Google AdWords blog]

Referrals / Affiliate Income

2006-05-16T07:29:00.000-07:00

Google's been busy recently adding new Referral options to its Google AdSense program. Referrrals are affiliate links that instead of being PPC - Pay Per Click, you get paid for getting the user to do something like download a program. Now, instead of just buttons, you can have link referrals. These blend more easily with your site and can be integrated with your site content and styled however you like. However, AdSense still has a high level of control. You still have to place JavaScript ad code in the page and cannot change the text of the link.
Also, there are some new referral programs. As well as the original AdSense, AdWords and Firefox, you now have Picasa and Google Packs. New ad colours have been added, but you need to choose US English to get them.
However, I'm not sure that you do that well with referrals as the conversion is quite hard or underpaid.

Google Adsense - $100 when a user signs up and earns their own $100 in 180 days
Google AdWords - $20 when a user signs up and spends $100 in 90 days
Firefox - up to $1. Sometimes you can get only 10 cents for a Firefox referral as it depends on user location. US and UK are $1. Norway is $0.25. Other western nations about $0.50. Other countries like China and New Zealand are $0.10. Must be first time installation on Windows. Oh - it's not just firefox - it is FF with the Google Toolbar.
Picasa - photo editing software download for about $1. Must be first time installation on Windows.

It's a good additional source of income but it won't earn you loads unless you are good at pushing the AdSense referral. I've been having a go with some of the new links and buttons and have seen a definite increse in CTR - Click Through Rate and conversion rates.

Other affiliate networks are out there as well. I use Commission Junction which has the eBay.co.uk affiliate program (GBP 7 for a new user, GBP0.10 for a bid) and the eBay.com ($0.20 for winning bid). Also, there are a few other nice affiliate programs but I'm not too impressed. The Amazon.com associates program is really good. I wrote one review for a product, put an Amazon link on it and had a sale almost instantly with about 7%. Just you don't want a small amount of money in loads of accounts because that way you'll never get paid!

Google AdSense Law : : Not Getting Banned

2006-04-26T21:29:00.001-07:00

Enlighten People:

This is not definitely going to save your account. I hope to make a long list of everything against the terms and conditions. Don't be greedy. This is still unfinished work. I decided to do this as sometimes the ToS and Program Policies are a bit unclear.

1. Never click on your own AdSense ads. Simple. Final. Never ever. Click fraud is not good. Not even away from home.
2. Never ask someone to click on your ads. An over zealous family member may not understand and may decide to click 20 times to make you loads of money. Don't be greedy.
3. No dodgy sites with popups or automatic software installs. You know the ones saying you must click YES to downloading NoSpywareHonest or dialers. Can't change browser setting or anything.
4. Your site may not be loaded by one of the above ways. Don't register your site in dodgy places.
5. Don't touch your AdSense code. Not unless you definitely know you aren't going to mess anything up. Really. Especially don't add any premium keyword features (for massive publishers like Amazon) as these mean instant blockage.
6. Don't label ads with "Click Me". Or anything else. The only labels you are allowed are "sponsored links" or "advertisements"
7. Don't obscure ads. All text must be visible (no messed up colours) and they mustn't be in hidden DIVs or frames or whatever.
8. Don't try and trick Google. They are clever and also they have your money.
9. No Google ads alongside pr0n, gambling or illegal stuff
10. Make sure your page is never loaded inside an unrequested popup
11. No Google AdSense ads in emails. Also no error pages or thank you pages
12. Don't force ads to open in a new window and don't provide anything besides a direct link to the clicked on page. Dunno how you would do that anyway. I suppose with window.onbeforeunload. Anyway, you may not intersperse any content between the click and the content and the page they click on must be the exact place they arrive at.
13. Don't ever autofil the search box.
14. AdSense may not be used in an application. (including toolbars) - only websites.
15. Website publishers may not display ads on sites containing MP3, Video, News Groups, and Image Results. Copyright reasons.
16. Don't give incentives to click or bring unnatural attention to the advertisements. This includes "If you are interested in visiting one of our sponsored links during you upload, please right click on the advertisement to avoid interruption of your upload"
17. Don't display other contextual ads on the same page as Google ads. So, your site could rotate between displaying yahoo and adsense ads on each page but adsense and yahoo on the same page is a big no no.
18. You can't specify Google ads as alternative ads. Obviously.
19. Only 1 link unit, 1 referral button per product, 2 search boxes and 3 ad units per page. Strictly.
20. Only place ads and search boxes and referral buttons on a content page. No domain parking or pages specifically for the purpose of displaying ads.
21. No robots or click exchanges.
22. No link schemes or traffic boosting things
23. Page language must be one of the supported languages. (Sorry no Swahili or Tongue)
24. Nothing imitating Google AdSense ads, referral buttons or logos.
25. No competing search services such as MSN search
26. Just behave. I had to make a zed.

Well. That's about it for now. I didn't mean it to go from A-Z but as I had 25 laws I though I might just add an extra one. I'm sure I missed loads. AdSense is however a great scheme and probably for every horror story of somebody getting banned, thousands don't. Sign Up now if you haven't already and start earning loads (or a little).

Get Site Traffic

2006-04-16T20:24:00.000-07:00

Enlighten People:

It's simple. The more people that come to your site, the more chances you have of them clicking an advert and therefore more money for you. Also, Google Adsense's CPM - Cost per thousand impressions ads generate money for you with every impression so the more the better. Traffic = good. But what are the best ways of getting traffic?

Search engines:
That's the way most people find websites. They search for them. Try SEO - Search Engine Optimization and keyword targeting. If you manage to make it to the top 5 or so results on Google for a certain search you are likely to get quite a bit of traffic on those pages (depending on the content). Of course, don't just sit there. Submit your site to Google, MSN Search (beta) and Yahoo!

Signature:
Put your address in your email signature. Put it on all of your forum posts. Basically, link to your site everywhere. This is a sure fire way of getting a temporary (small) rush of traffic and increases your page rank.

Feature:
Write or do something amazing and get noticed. Try and get your site featured on a popular site such as Slashdot. This brings in a surge of traffic and gets your site noticed. Be careful though - if you have a site that only generates small amounts of clicks and one day you get a barage of them, Google AdSense may ban you.

Get them back + Keep it real:
Make sure to update content regularly. Once a person has visited your site they often come back a bit later. If they notice that nothing has really changed they may not bother anymore. Offer RSS and email updates so that you keep your visitors. Also, the more you update, the more often the search engines will index your site.

Of course, if you have poor content, your traffic level will not make so much of a difference to your income. Use channels to track your AdSense income for different sections and page impressions. Get earning.

How to Turn Off PSAs in Google Adsense

2006-04-07T17:49:00.000-07:00

When people first start putting Google Adsense code into their blogs, they are likely to get PSAs - Public Service Ads. These are adverts that earn you no money and only occur when Google can't find any real ads to show. Now, that space is much better spent doing something useful rather than stealing your visitors for free.
How do you turn them off?

Advanced: If you are using blogger and want to tinker, go to your template, find the adsense code and after google_ad_client = "pub-XXXX"; start a new line and copy:
google_alternate_color = "0000FF";
This will display a blue square. Ofcourse, your background may not be blue so copy the colour from google_color_bg = "000000"; and paste it where the colour is so that you now have, for example: google_alternate_color = "000000";.

Or Normal: Go to your Adsense account - Setup - fill in the design you want - go to Alternate ads or colours - choose fill space or url - paste new code. You can either show a solid colour or an alternative advert such as for an affiliate program such as Amazon. Make sure you are earning money from your site at all times. Money.

However, the best way is to have good content and keywords. That way Google Adsense will display the best relevant adverts for your website and give you the best revenue and return. I explained how sort of in my past posts.

Something to ponder: Currency Exchange

2006-04-06T23:54:00.000-07:00

You may have been saving up to get $100 for a while if you are just starting out with Google AdSense. This may not be you biggest worry but here goes. However, if you don't live in the US, your dollars are converted to GBP or EUR or some other currency before you get the money by the exchange rate of the day of the cheque being made.
The foreign exchange (currency or forex) market exists wherever one currency is traded for another. It is the largest market in the world, in terms of cash value traded, and includes trading between large banks, central banks, currency speculators, multinational corporations, governments, and other financial markets and institutions. The prices change rapidly.
If you are clever, I'm sure you could set a payment hold in your Google AdSense account until you think you can get more money (of your currency) from the $100. Check out the graphs. The higher the line, the more money you will get.

Enter your currency symbol: Exchange Currencies

Google AdSense Equation for Monetary Success_27

2006-03-27T21:02:00.001-08:00

Enlighten People:

There are many factors that govern how much money you can make. These can be sumarized in the following equation. Although not all of the factors are equal, you need to make sure that you work on all of them:

Google Adsense Revenue = Traffic Levels × High Paying Ads × Ad Position × Relevant Ads × Ad Design

Traffic Levels:

It seems simple enough - the more traffic that you get, the more chance that somebody will click on an advert. Try and write some pillar articles that get high on search results for certain keywords. Also, try to get Slashdotted. Having an article Slashdotted will bring a day of seriously high traffic (hope your server can cope). A lot of image ads and site-targeted ads as well as text ads are CPM. This means that your are paid for each time the advert is viewed. Having regulars is important as well, so write GREAT CONTENT.

High Paying Ads:

Obviously, the more paid for an ad, the more you get. You need keyword targeting! You might like to follow the AdWords set up and see what sort of prices are paid for certain keywords. You need to select a high-paying topic (about technology not toothpicks!). Also, make sure you sign up for image ads which have a larger CPC. Have a go - it's mainly trial and error and won't be easy.

Ad Position:

Don't hide your ads! Make them close by. You have the choice of where to place your Google AdSense ads. Put them in text flow or at the end of long articles.

Relevant Ads:

You really need to make sure that your ads are relevant to the topic or your CTR will be way low. Without keyword spamming, try using the tips in the keyword post. Make sure there are ads for your topic out there, check your sidebars for unneeded text, use section targeting. That should be it.

Ad Design:

The amazing thing about AdSense ads is that you choose the design. One Adsenser said that all ads should be on a bright red background with yellow text as the colours of McDonalds bring out an urge to buy. Contrasting ads work but the way most people make money is by making the ads blend and look like part of the site. Experiment with all different shapes, colours and sizes. Only you can find out what works for your site.

WARNING: - You may not see an instant increase in money and your income will be limited by the weakest element. If you have great ad visibility but badly paying ads, you won't make money.

Google AdSense Keywords and Content

2006-03-26T21:39:00.000-08:00

Enlighten People:

One way to make money with Google AdSense is by keyword targeting. As you probably already know, Google AdSense ads are contextually targeted. The Google AdSense spider / crawler / indexer searches your content for keywords and then displays ads for those keywords - contextually targeted adverts. However, AdWords advertisers pay different amounts for different keywords. Advertisers pay more for keywords where they are likely to make better returns and get more money for. A jokes page will likely have low paying ads ($0.02) whereas one about credit cards will have much higher paying keywords.
However, you should really only make content about stuff you can write about or are interested in. Also, if you have a website that is mainly targeted to a particular topic and you then put in a page about Student Consolidation to try and get a better CPC (cost per click) you will not get as much money as if you had a whole site about the keyword.The best paying keywords are about mesothelioma, life insurance, loans, mortgages, etc. Not really the most interesting topics but if you have a blog about electricals you can get quite a high CPC and therefore lots of money.

How to implement keywords:

* Find a keyword you want to target
* Write an article. You must have good content otherwise your readers will turn off.
* Inside your article you must have the keyword mentioned a few times
* The <title> of the page should contain the keyword
* The keyword should appear in at least one <h1> tag
* The keyword should appear in <b> (bold) at least once
* Don't overdo the keyword targeting as Google will give you worse ads as a result so keep the <meta> tags down.

Sign up for AdSense now and start earning money from YOUR website or blog.

What is Google AdSense?

2006-03-25T21:44:00.000-08:00

Google AdSense is a free advertising network that lets you sell advertising space on your website. Whenever a visitor to your site clicks on an advert, you earn money. The adverts are not just randomly chosen ads - they are relevant to your site's content.

As you can see on this website, the adverts are contextually chosen relative to the page content by the Google index spider / crawler. Also, they are dead easy to implement - just choose a few settings like colour from Google and copy and paste the HTML code it generates.

Where do Google AdSense ads come from? They come from the massive Google AdWords network. Whenever you perform a Google search or view a message in GMail, target ads appear at the side and top which are sponsored by the millions of AdWords advertisers. The advertisers bid on specific keywords for their adverts to appear for and each time your ads are loaded, there is an auction to see which ads for the keywords on your site will give you the best return. When somebody clicks on one of your ads, Google gets paid by the advertiser and a secret percentage is given to you, the publisher (apparently it is about 50%).

This is a great way to make money online from blogs and other websites. There are many factors in creating a successful ad-supported web site which will be covered soon. Sign up now and start earning by clicking the banner!

Make money online

2006-03-23T18:21:00.000-08:00

Make money online with Google AdSense. Yes, you too can have a website that generates income for you easily. Learn how in this blog. Hopefully it will contain SEO tips, high-paying keywords, layout tips and all other manner of AdSense money making schemes.