Welcome back! Have you joined my mailing list yet?
It seems like every time I'm hanging around on the Digital Point forums, I see somebody ask questions along the line of 'how can I make money online with my site?' only to be bombarded with a salvo of answers that contain one piece of advice.
Not that getting a random persons favorite network (most likely Google AdSense) is a bad thing, but many people fail to branch out beyond one network at a time and simply choose to sit around scratching their heads wondering why they aren't putting money in their pocket.
If you have ever watched any stock market advice shows, or listened to Dave Ramsey, you already know the best method. The answer is simple: diversify!
First, if your website is getting a ton of traffic, then Google AdSense might be a good thing to run. However, if you only rely on AdSense for income, you are not playing with a full deck. You are simply trusting that some of those visitors will click on the ads. Since that's not guaranteed (and many people tend to get ad blindness), you need to do more than just run AdSense.
You might look into something a bit more mouse-catching, like Kontera. No, I'm not saying replace AdSense...run both! Kontera, at least for me, gets more clicks because many people are curious about the double underlined keywords in my articles. Not only that, but there are many people on the net that aren't quite as marketing savvy as some of us, and see a link that looks a bit funny and are, for some unknown reason, compelled to click it just to see what happens.
Yeah, those are the people that want you to fix their computer on the weekends because their kids broke the dang thing on that internet...whatsit...
But lets' take this a step further. You can have all of the good traffic in the world, but if people don't click your AdSense or Kontera links, you get nothing. That's why, if you are pulling good traffic, you need to also get hooked up with a CPM ad network like ADSDAQ or AdBrite. That way, you get paid based on the number of impressions the ad makes, regardless of whether people click it or not.
Also, if your blog is well established, you could probably sell some adspace directly to readers or other bloggers in your niche. Pure profit is a good thing!
If you are only using one or two monetiziation methods on your site, you are missing out on untapped opportunity. Branch out! Get paid!
If you like these posts and want to stay in the loop, please subscribe to my RSS feed and follow me on Twitter. And if you really like this stuff, you can buy me a coffee! Oh, and if you like being an insider, be sure to join the mailing list...I never spam, but you will get some insider specials!
Tweet This Post
Note: I'm thinking that one of these things could be very useful when it comes to marketing and making AdSense rock. I'll let you figure out which one.
From TechCrunch:
Google turned in healthy third-quarter earnings largely thanks to the fact that Google is finally getting serious about cost containment. But that is only half the story. Going into the expected economic downturn, Google is now turning on every additional source of advertising revenues it can. For instance, so far earlier month it began offering AdSense in Flash games, new AdSense links at the bottom of Google Maps, and introduced click-to-buy buttons on YouTube videos. But there are at least two more ways Google is trying to juice those AdSense revenues: an AdSense search box and AdSense ads that link to syndication pages filled with . . . more AdSense ads!
Google might just be testing these, but these efforts are starting to get noticed. One reader who runs a site about Google Chrome
, for instance, runs AdSense. But instead of a regular text ad, Google served up the search box at left, inviting people to search for specific ads. In effect, Google is saying, “We are not 100% sure what ads you’d like to see, so why don’t you just tell us?” An ad-only search box is a departure from Google’s past policy of showing the most relevant results, with ads on the side. Although it is clearly labeled, some people might still confuse the AdSense search box with a regular Web search box. Others might find it more helpful than the regular text ad links. [Update: Some readers say this search box is nothing new, see comments].
More troublesome is Google Syndication. Another reader, Michael Oxley, noticed that the AdSense text links on his golf site are directing readers not to a product page with information about a “Tiger Woods Caddy” or “Golf Wear,” but rather to a Google Syndication landing page filled with more AdSense ads (see screenshot below). These landing pages are run by Google (they take you to a googlesyndication.com URL). These pages basically syndicate a bunch of other AdSense ads triggered by the keywords in the original ad that was clicked on.
If Google starts using its Google Syndication pages more widely (they’ve actually been around for a while, it seems, and are also known as Link Units), it could become controversial. That is because they seem to run counter to Google’s own stated policy for landing page quality, a factor that goes into how Google scores each ad. As this NYT article explains:
Google now takes into account the “landing page” that the ad links to, and, for example, gives low grades to pages whose sole purpose is to show more ads.
The lower the quality score, the higher an advertiser has to bid for a given keyword. Google itself provides the following guidelines to advertisers who want to improve the quality score of their AdSense ads (I’ve bolded parts for emphasis):
Relevance:
* Users should be able to easily find what your ad promises.
* Link to the page on your site that provides the most useful information about the product or service in your ad. For instance, direct users to the page where they can buy the advertised product, rather than to a page with a description of several products.
Originality:
* Feature unique content that can’t be found on another site. This guideline is particularly applicable to affiliates that use the following types of pages:
o Bridge pages: Pages that act as an intermediary, whose sole purpose is to link or redirect traffic to the parent company
o Mirror pages: Pages that replicate the look and feel of a parent site; your site should not mirror (be similar or nearly identical in appearance to) your parent company’s or any other advertiser’s site
* Provide substantial information. If your ad does link to a page consisting mostly of ads or general search results (such as a directory or catalog page), provide additional, unique content.
The question here is: Why isn’t Google heeding its own advice?
And is it in effect running house ads that it wouldn’t tolerate from an outside advertiser (or at least punish by increasing the minimum bid required to run them)? When times are tough, anything goes.
If you like these posts and want to stay in the loop, please subscribe to my RSS feed and follow me on Twitter. And if you really like this stuff, you can buy me a coffee! Oh, and if you like being an insider, be sure to join the mailing list...I never spam, but you will get some insider specials!
Tweet This Post
My Google AdSense account has slowly been increasing in monetary value. I'm sure many of you have noticed the AdSense stuff on this site, and you have all heard that it's a good thing to have for making some money. Today, I want to talk about another way to use your AdSense account to make money - by using other people's resources. No, it's not some black-hat method. Just keep reading.
I have been noticing several forums (including WiseBread and Digital Point) have a feature known as Ad Revenue Sharing using Google AdSense. The way it works is when you reach a certain number of posts, the admins allow you to ad your AdSense for Content code (which can be found under your Account Settings page in your AdSense account) to a special field in your profile options, and the forum uses this code to generate the ads, which help you earn money when they are clicked. Nice, eh?
A quick search for 'revenue sharing forum' should help you find several different forums to join. Be sure to use valid post responses when responding to a thread. You don't want to spam a forum just to reach your AdSense enabling threshold. Besides, most of the forums I have seen have rules against that.
Now, keep in mind it's not a rapid influx of cash, however it's something. With just one forum, I will get the odd click every now and then, which adds a few cents to my AdSense account each time. Remember, any money earned is good money.
If you are a member of a forum with these features, but don't have an AdSense account, I highly recommend getting one. They are free.
Have fun!
If you like these posts and want to stay in the loop, please subscribe to my RSS feed and follow me on Twitter. And if you really like this stuff, you can buy me a coffee! Oh, and if you like being an insider, be sure to join the mailing list...I never spam, but you will get some insider specials!
Tweet This Post
