Make Money Blogging - Google Adsense Tips Part 3

This is Part 3 of our Google Adsense Tips article series. We have covered getting started with Adsense and how to determine whether or not Adsense is a good match for you and your site. In Part 3 we will start bringing it together.

There are many factors that impact the revenue that you will be able to earn with your blog. In Part 2 we discussed estimated EPC but their are many other issues to consider when implementing Adsense. You could read entire books devoted to the subject but I will share with you what I think are the things that are important.

Take a look at my crude flow chart below:

This shouldn’t be hard to figure out. EPC is only one factor that will determine how much you are able to make when it comes to adsense. Traffic levels and quality is important, ad relevancy is critical and your click thru rate will all combine together to determine your actual income.

If you spend all your time minding one but not the others then you will develop an inefficiency. You need all 4 of these working in harmony to maximize revenue. Let’s discuss.

Traffic Levels

If someone has to explain that traffic level is very important to your earnings success then you might be in the wrong business. The more faces you can get looking at your ads then you are much more likely to garner a click than if nobody is visiting your site.

The more relevant the traffic to the topic then the better. For example Entrecard users aren’t likely to be the target audience for your adsense. Regular readers, social users etc would be much more probably to spend enough time on your site to want to click an ad.

Organic searchers are incredibly relevant and likely the most probable to click your ads. They came to your site via a search and your adsense should be somewhat related to that search as well so they make great candidates to click your ads seeking out more information.

Google is your best friend when it comes to adsense income.

Relevant Ads

The more relevant you can get your ads to your content then the better. Imagine your article draws readers who are interested in digital photography but you are running ads that advertise a bread machine. The chances of anyone clicking such a non-relevant ad are almost zero.

Adsense is contextual so you are a little bit at the mercy of Google but you can impact the ads that are served. Make sure your content is clearly written and include your keywords a number of times. You can also make sure the articles are of sufficient length in order to give Google the chance to determine what the relevant content consists of and serve up an appropriate ad set.

This will take some practice to master but if you are accustomed to writing articles around keywords then you will do just fine.

Click Thru Rate

A number of factors combine to affect your click thru rate. You don’t generate the first penny of income until someone clicks on one of your ads. You can affect this rate dramatically by positioning your ads in the right locations and tweaking the color scheme of your ad.

This is a subject that will take experimentation but a few factors seem to be universally agreed upon.

• Ads above the fold perform better. If your eye is drawn to the ad early then you are more likely to notice it and therefore potentially click on it.

• Ads that blend into their surroundings and look like part of the site perform better. Adsense allows you to blend our ads and match the color scheme of the surrounding site quite easily.

• Ads should be towards the left of the template or article. People read from left to right, they scan the page from left to right and they tend to skim. This means if anything is likely to be ignored it is the right hand side of our template. I know…this plays havoc with those of us with right hand sidebars but such is life. This is by no means proven, but a theory that I have noticed to be true. You can easily experiment for yourself.

Earnings Per Click

We’ve already discussed EPC at length in article 2 of this series. If you are adding adsense to an existing blog then you may be limited to what you are capable of here but if you are starting a niche blog to make money with then do the research and find a high paying niche right from the start.

You can be half as good in a high paying niche as you have to be in a low paying one to make the same money. Use the traffic estimator in Adwords to identify what adwords advertisers are paying for keywords. This is time well spent.

Also bear in mind that your EPC can be different than your competitor who is showing the same ad. Google will price you based on the performance of your adsense account. If you bring quality traffic that converts then you will be rewarded by Google. If you bring a bunch of clicks but no buyers, then you will be penalized.

It might not be fair…but life isn’t fair and neither is Google.

Weakest Link

It is important that you realize that you will only be as good as your weakest link. If you are lacking in any one of these areas then you won’t be maximizing the income available to you for that traffic level. If you have relevant ads, good looking content, high paying ads but nobody sees them then you will still not make any money.

Your success depends on your ability to blend all of these factors so they function well together, like the cogs of a machine. As our article series progresses we will discuss each factor in more detail in an attempt to maximize our adsense success.

Keep following this series as we explore each of these 4 ingredients to your success and we will discuss how to maximize each factor to make the most money from adsense.

In case you missed any of them….Part 1 and Part 2 can be found here.