The following is the 45n5.com list of Top 5 Adsense Tips.
These tips are geared towards sites where your adsense bottom line is your number one goal. This also my entry into Problogger’s Top 5 writing event.
1 – Put Your Ads First
Don’t be shy with your ads. Put your ads first. If you have content, the first content people read should be your ads. If you have a menu, the first items to click in the menu should be your ads. Don’t try and “trick” people, rather, simply give your visitors the option of choosing to click your contextually relevant ads first, and your other links second.
Here is an adsense layout I’m fond of.
2 – Use All of Your Ads
The sites I own that make the majority of my earnings from adsense I call my “adsense sites”. On a visit around my sites earlier in the year I noticed I wasn’t using all the ads I’m allowed, and didn’t have an adsense search box on not a single site.
Here is what the current terms of services allows:
• Up to three ad units may be displayed on each page.
• A maximum of two Google AdSense for search boxes may be placed on a page.
• A single link unit may also be placed on each page.
I’m still not up to using all the ads yet but I thinking upping my ads has kept my earnings steadier lately.
3 – Split Test
I still don’t do enough split testing but every time I do I either:
a. Find a better paying ad color/location
b. Find another ad color/location that doesn’t work
Here’s a tutorial on split testing your ads.
4 – Channel Your Ideas
For me, 75% of earning money online is psychological, and the rest is hard work and luck. The next tip helps my brain:
Each idea, or website, or blog, or new text I put on the internet, on an adsense site, is like a little worker bee for me that keeps on earning. Sometimes the worker bee doesn’t earn anything in a day, sometimes it doesn’t earn anything for a few days, and sometimes the worker bee starts earning nickels, dimes, and more after awhile.
My goal is to get as many worker bees out there, making me money. To do this I keep my normal adsense channels for domains, I keep some channels for testing, and then I have my worker bee channels (I use the name only for reference).
What are my worker bee channels?
Any time I have an idea for an article that might really do well in the search engines, I’ll write a few articles on the subject, group them together in their own channel, and bamn I just made another worker bee.
Any time I have idea to attempt some different content in a sub folder or a sub domain, I give it another worker bee channel. Anytime I think a few misspellings might work, or do some autogenerated content, or any crazy idea, I give the idea it’s own channel.
Eventually after doing this long enough, I now have many worker bees out there earning for me every day. Like I said, it’s a psychological way to look at things that works for my spirits and makes me feel like I’m giving myself the most opportunities to earn as possible (and justifies my “experimenting”)
5 – Do Your Own Thing
Quit reading about what works for other people. Do Your Own Thing! Try different things, try your own ad implementations, and by split testing your visitors will tell you exactly where they like to click the ads, not some goofball in some forum.
You will also find what works on one site of yours might not work on another, therefore what some boob like me has to say is completely irrelevant to your sites other than for ideas for you to do your own thing with, but you really don’t need me for that.
If you like this post then please consider subscribing to my full RSS feed. You can also Subscribe to 45n5 by Email and have new posts sent directly to your inbox.
Make Money Project says on May 8, 2007
I figure the people that click on my ads are the ones who don’t like my content. So I try to place the ads at the top and bottom.
Adding in a mix of other advertising works well too. I started testing contextual ads last week and get about the same CTR from them without lowering my AdSense CTR.
Michael