Blogging to Help Boost Your Adsense Revenue

With the absolute explosion of blogs and the tools to create and maintain them, it's a pretty safe to say this trend is here to stay. So, let's examine what they are and what you can do with them.

What is a blog? Well, the word blog us a contraction of two words, web and log. In it's purest functional sense, a blog is a combination of an online journal and guest book. In a blog, the system administrator creates dynamic web pages using a web form. If allowed by the blog owner, visitors may add comments to blog entries.

How are blogs created? Basically, there are two options for creating blogs. First, you can create a blog one else's site. This is; by far, the easiest way to start blogging. The most popular blog creation service is Blogger.com, owned by Google. While this option is the easiest, you are constrained in many aspects of customizing your blog. Your second option is to host the blog on your own server. The most popular blogs include well known names; such as, WordPress, pMachine, and Movable Type. A list of open source blogs and a demo of the major ones is found at http://www.opensourcecms.com . When compared to the first option, these are little more difficult to setup, but as blog administrator, you have absolute control of every aspect of your blog. You can add different color schemes, known as, themes or you can add functionality to your blow through the installation of plugins or modules. In most cases, these themes or plugins are copied onto your server, and activated through the administration control panel. Viola! You have completed adding functionality or colors to your blog.

What can you do with a blog? While may personal or club blogs have the goal of simply relaying information to family or members, the humble blog has been thrust into many limelights. Internet marketers are using blogs as niche sites for: adsense income, membership sites, newsletter administration, shopping carts, forums, email list building - just to name a few. Political campaigns are using blog with their party members. Corporations are using blogs to keep customers, partners, and shareholders armed with new information. Universities are using blogs for capturing research data. All without the hassles of building and maintaining static web sites.

Why start a blog? Probably the biggest single reason for starting a blog is sharing your specialized information with like-minded individuals. There are secondary reasons; such as, compiling your storehouse of knowledge into a single location. With a blog, you can add an entry per day or an entry per week. It's all up to you - after you setup your blog.

So what are you waiting for, let's go blogging!

Adsense Tips from the Experts

So you want to increase your Adsense income? Log into your Adsense account, and look at your last month's stats. There are three key areas that contribute to your earnings: Impressions, Clickthroughs and Effective CPM. Improving your stats in any, or preferably, all of these three key areas will increase your Adsense earnings.

Impressions

Impressions are the number of times your webpages with Adsense ads have been viewed. You can increase Impressions by increasing traffic (preferably targeted traffic) to your webpages. Some of the best ways to increase targeted traffic to your webpages include:

-create more webpages, with relevant, focused content
-create more links to your webpages
-list your website/s under relevant categories in more directories
-set up a directory of relevant sites on your website and accept relevant reciprocal links
-write relevant articles, with your site information in the 'resource box' at the end of each article, and submit them to article directories

Clickthroughs

Clickthroughs are the percentage of viewers who click on your Adsense ads. You can increase Clickthroughs by increasing the relevance of Adsense ads on your site, and by tweaking the format and placing of your ads.

Although you can't dictat which Adsense ads show on your site, you can influence the relevance of the ads by maintaining a tighrly focused website. If every page on your site focuses tightly on the site topic, its more likely that the Adsense ads will too. For example, if every page of your site is about fishing, and the word 'fishing' appears several times on every page, its likely that your Adsense ads will relate to fishing.

The best way to tweak your ad format and placement is to invest in an Adsense Tracker, and test, test, test! People who have done this tend to suggest that the best format is the large rectangle, with background and border the same color as the page behind it, so that the ad blends into the page. The best placement is towards the center or top left of the first screen of the page. Try these suggestions first, and then track and test, to be sure of what works best for your pages.

Effective CPM

Effective CPM is a measure of your average earnings, per thousand clicks. You can increase your Effective CPM by selecting topics that attract high bids from Adsense advertisers, and building pages and whole websites on higher paying topics.

Although Google doesn't release information on Adsense bids, you can get a good idea of the top paying topics by looking at information on Adwords bids, or, for that matter, bids on pay-per-click search engines like Overture. There are a number of keyword research tools available, both free and paid, that can help you find high paying topics.

The Formula

So now you have the basics of increasing your Adsense income. Its a deceptively simple formula:

-Build pages and websites on high paying topics for the best Effective CPM.
-Format and place your Adsense ads for maximum Clickthroughs.
-Promote your sites to drive targeted traffic to your Adsense webpages for maximum impressions.

The Lazy Pig
from "The Adsense Jerk E-Wealthology"

I just picked up a new little adsense book called the "Lazy Pig"

The author claims to have a 7-step Adsense Method to make a ton of cash!

The book is OK for the most part. It's fairly basic but he does give one tip which I have used over and over again to make a ton of money. The trick while fairly basic could easily turn into something that brings in a few thousand extra dollars a month.


Can I spoil his surprise? Sure, just briefly cause I want to comment on it. But, I suggest picking up the book and seeing what its all about! There are some other great little tricks.

OK! The system is simple! USing XSITEPRO, he talks about developing little niche sites quickly and efficiently! But before doing this, investigate sites where you can get a lot of traffic for low keyword campaigns. Then use keyword companies like MIVA or ADwords to drive traffic to your adsense sites....

After doing this for about a month, you know have two very important elements.

1) A site making ADsense money
2) Traffic stats to back up your claims.
3) A site that can be sold for a lot of money.


Now take the site to eBay and sell it with both "Proof of Income, and Proof of Traffic" Never buy a site that doesnt have either.

Depending on how the site has done, you could probally sell this for an easy $400-$800 maybe more.....

Top 10 AdSense Tricks To Boost Your Commission
By Kalena Jordan © 2006

Google AdSense - http://www.google.com/adsense - is fast becoming the preferred way for people to earn an income online. Forget eBay and multiple affiliate programs. Whether you are a work-at-home mom trying to make a little extra cash or an Internet entrepreneur with hundreds of monetized websites, AdSense is truly the easiest way to earn money.

Simply sign up for a free account, grab your ad code and paste it in your site. But here's the amazing thing - no matter how much money AdSense is making for you right now, a few simple tweaks can increase that amount considerably. And I should know, after learning about these tricks, I more than doubled my AdSense commissions!

The self-proclaimed AdSense gurus and experts are sharing this insider knowledge, for a fee.

You can learn all these secrets from them, as long as you buy their e-book, sign up for their seminar or purchase their newsletter. But I'm going to share all their AdSense tricks for free. Here they are:

1) Color code your ads to match your web site palette *exactly*. Don't use frames around your ads. Instead, in the AdSense code generation interface, make sure you choose the same color as your page background for the ad frame and the ad background.

When choosing the ad heading colors, match them to the *exact* color of your page headings. Use the exact same ad background shade as your page background. Use the exact same ad text font and color as the text on your pages. You can see an example of this color-matching on my Search Engine Advice Blog at - http://www.searchenginecollege.com/blog.htm - notice the 4 link ad unit at the top and the skyscraper text ad unit on the left hand side under the heading Ads by Google as you scroll down the page? The link and text colors are identical to the color palette used throughout the rest of the page.

Near enough is NOT good enough. If you can't quite get the color matching right, use Google's built in color palette together with the RGB to HEX or vice versa color converter on this page - http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/Style. That handy little tool was a life saver for me.

This is probably the one single tweak that made the most difference to my commission levels.

2) Try not to use the traditional horizontal banner style or leaderboard image ads because people are blind to them.

3) Use Google's own AdSense optimization tips at https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html and visual heat map to assist you in deciding where on your page to place your AdSense ad code.

4) Research competitive keywords using a keyword research tool such as Keyword Discovery at http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/?id=22487 or grab a list of the most popular keywords from various sources and use them in your web site pages where relevant. This article - http://searchenginewatch.com/facts/article.php/2156041 - is a good source of frequently searched keywords. Targeting popular keywords should trigger AdSense ads on your pages that utilize those keywords. The more popular the keyword or phrase, the higher AdWords advertisers are generally willing to pay per click for it so the higher your commission on those clicks.

5) Incorporate the AdSense code into your page so that the ads look like a regular part of your site. You can see an example on this Internet Dating Stories site - http://www.lovestory.com.au/ - where link ads are incorporated within the regular left hand navigation of the site under the heading "Feature Links".

6) Use Google's new 4 and 5 link ad units wherever possible. They seem to have a much higher Click Through Rate (CTR) than regular ad styles. You can view all the AdSense ad formats at https://www.google.com/adsense/adformats.

7) Place arrows or images next to your ads to draw attention to them. You can see two different versions of on this search engine article library page - http://www.searchenginecollege.com/articles/article-library.htm - at the top (where a pointing hand directs your eye to the ad) and the bottom where 3 images draw your attention to each of the three AdSense ads.

8) Use the full allowance of multiple AdSense ads on each of your pages - 3 regular AdSense ads, plus 1 link unit. Use careful placement of these ads so they blend into your site and don't distract from your content. Clever use of this allowance can be seen on this page about bad Internet dating stories - http://www.lovestory.com.au/bad-stories.htm - where you see:

- 1 horizontal 4 link ad unit towards the top of the page under the first paragraph.
- 1 vertical skyscraper text ad unit about halfway down the left hand side under "Sponsor Links."
- 1 vertical skyscraper image ad unit down the left hand side under "Sponsor Links." - 1 horizontal text banner unit at the bottom of the page with images above each ad to draw attention to them.

You can also include 1 AdSense referral button in addition to the 3 other units.

9) Tailor your page content to a particular niche or focus. Page content that is tailored towards a specific theme is more likely to trigger AdWords ads that closely match the content and are therefore more likely to interest your visitors and inspire them to click.

Don't create pages merely for the sake of placing AdSense ads. Visitors (and search engines) can see through this ruse in an instant.

10) Use custom Ad Channels for each of your ad placements, for example, "Top 5 Link Unit Blue Palette" or "Left Side Navigation Image Skyscraper" etc. Tweak, track and measure the success of each of these custom channels so you know what gives you the highest CTR. Some ad formats and colors will work better than others, but you won't know which until you test, test and test some more!


About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running her own SEO business, Kalena manages Search Engine College - http://www.searchenginecollege.com - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing subjects.