Increase Adsense CTR: Make Money With Adsense In Four Steps

AdSense Targeting

Not achieving a great click thru rate with your adsense ads? Section targeting is one way to get better ads to show up on your site.

To suggest a section of a page for Google AdSense to crawl, use the following tags:

<!– google_ad_section_start –>
text
<!– google_ad_section_end –>

To ignore a certain section of text on a page, such as a footer or sidebar, use the following tags around the content you'd like Google to avoid crawling:

<!– google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) –>
text
<!– google_ad_section_end –>

Before I start telling you how I made money with AdSense, I'm going to start by telling you that it took an entire year -- 12 months -- before I was able to get an AdSense check from Google. Yep, each month, my sites made less than $10, and it wasn't until a year later that I met the $100 threshold that Google requires you hit before writing a check.

And to be perfectly honest, it was the 12th month, August 2008, when I made $75 of those dollars. Luckily, I've finally figured out the strategies that work best for me and my niche. I've heard plenty of success stories in which someone placed AdSense on their site and within a month were getting checks of $2,000 to $5,000, but the majority of stories and questions I see, including in sites like Warrior Forums, are people asking how they can get past the $10 mark per month, let alone day, so that they can finally see a check.

More important than the site you decide to host your AdSense content on is the topic or niche you decide to write about.

When I first started writing, I chose a topic that I had written about before: cocktails. I had made a hobby into a career by writing about cocktail trends, conferences, and recipes in magazines (yep, the offline kind), so I thought that I could parlay that success into an online version. For months, I wrote about cocktail recipes and optimized my posts to include keywords that received a lot of traffic. Yet every month, even with ranking for high volume keywords and receiving anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 unique visitors per month, I wasn't clearing $10 in AdSense revenue.

Luckily, I didn't give up on that site. It was a hobby and I wasn't dependent on that site for my income. Good thing, because to this day, it still only produces approximately $100 every four months.

What I discovered, after really researching AdSense tips and tricks, was that the keywords I was writing about, although they received a lot of traffic, weren't high AdSense earners. Instead, each of the keywords I was writing about was estimated to earn less than $.05 per click. I had multiplied the $.05 per click by the monthly volume to get averages of thousands of dollars, but I soon learned that that math wasn't correct.

See, even if the keyword you are targeting is making Google $.05 per click (one of the lowest costs per click an Advertiser or AdSense publisher will see), the AdSense publisher won't see that full amount. On top of that, you'll never get the full estimated amount of traffic for that keyword on your site, let alone will they all click on your AdSense ad. If a keyword is estimated to receive 1,000 views per month, even if you can rank #1 organically for that keyword, you'll still be competing with AdWords advertisers and some of the organic listings for the initial click through. So lets say only 10% of organic searchers click on your search engine result listing (hopefully you'll receive more than that, but I'm because cautious here), how many of those 100 people will actually click on an AdSense ad on your page? Let's say again that only 10% of the people who land on your page (100) click on one of the ads -- that's only 10 people. Even if you were making the full amount that AdSense estimated for that keyword, $.05, you'll only be pocketing $.50 PER MONTH for that keyword that initially looked so promising, according to my original math.

So, here's where the research part comes in. Of course, if you're writing about a topic that you're passionate about, don't go ruining the article because of the keyword research you did. If you're writing purely for AdSense purposes, however, you'll want to run the Google Keywords Estimator tool.

In this tool, you'll type in the main keyword you're looking to target and come up with a list of relevant keywords. Next to that keyword, make sure to show both the Cost Per Click and Average Monthly Volume columns. This is where you'll start your research.

I tend to go for keywords that will get a minimum of 9,900 keywords a month, as that's an average of ~300 visits a day for just that keyword. You'll have to keep in mind that you won't attract each of those 300 visits a month, even if you rank #1 for that keyword in Google. Now, if you rank #2 or below, you can assume that you'll receive even less -- way less -- than the estimated ~300 visitors a day, so before targeting that keyword, figure out how hard it will be to rank in one of the top 3 positions for that keyword.

On top of the keyword search volume, you'll have to take into account how much AdWords advertisers are willing to pay for that keyword. If advertisers are only paying $.05 per click (CPC column), you can assume that Google will get approximately 75% of that revenue and that they'll pay out 25% revenue to AdSense. That's not an exact estimate, but for our purposes, it works.

Really, I'm just warning you to not go down the route I originally did, picking a keyword that made less than $.05 per click. Now, I try to target keywords that have a higher CPC AND have high traffic volumes each month AND that I can rank for, easily, within a few months.

Yep, that's a lot to take into consideration. You CAN write around the keywords that average out to lots of traffic at low cost per clicks if you're willing to write in volume (think thousands of articles), but you're running the risk of having many of those keywords not performing, especially if you won't be building links to each article. With that said, there are a lot of AdSense sites who do exactly this and make hundreds of dollars each month. Those people generally have many AdSense sites and the little they make from each keyword adds up.

There's two systems that I have followed to learn about "AdSense Math" and how to pick a niche that will be profitable: The Keyword Academy and the Shoemoney System.

The Keyword Academy was the first lesson I took that opened my eyes to "AdSense Math." Court and Mark, originally from Court's SEO School, outline the process of picking a keyword based on their calculations (search volume, cpc, percentage of people that will click thru to your site when your site ranks #1 for that keyword, percentage of people that will click on your ad once they get to your site). They also have a forum and lessons that detail how to analyze your competition (those that are already ranking for the keyword you're eyeing), where to place your AdSense code and how to optimize your content for said keyword, and how to build links to get your site ranking for that keyword. I am still a member of The Keyword Academy to this day (their tool that lets you upload keywords and automatically calculates their AdSense revenue potential plus the competition score is invaluable).

I've learned a lot from Shoemoney's blog that has helped me in the affiliate marketing arena. Shoemoney recently launched the "Shoemoney System" which is a set of video lessons detailing everything from affiliate marketing to selling products on Ebay to earning money through AdSense. Google "AdSense Check" and Shoemoney's smiling face, and site, appears in the first two positions. Shoemoney was one of the last people to receive an actual check from AdSense (they now mostly do direct deposit), but he also learned how to make thousands of dollars a month from AdSense -- in the check he received and that he's holding up in the picture, he made $132,994.97 in one month. So do I trust Shoemoney to tell me how to make money with AdSense? Yes. He's since moved his focus on to bigger things in the affiliate marketing arena, but he still knows the tricks to AdSense and, if you start making enough money with Adsense, you might want to start taking his advice about affiliate marketing, too.

Before you get started on discovering money making niches, I'm advising you to make a decision on where you want to place your content: an AdSense sharing site or your own web site.

There's pros and cons to hosting your content on an AdSense sharing site or your own web site, but either will make you money when the correct strategy is put into place.

An AdSense sharing site means that there's not a lot of technical expertise needed, they usually already have a number of links to their domain and only require a bit of linkbuilding to the specific page in order to get a specific keyword ranking, and the site will have already optimized the page layout in order to position AdSense ads in the best placement for optimal clicks.

On the downside, you'll be splitting upwards of 50% of your AdSense revenue with the AdSense sharing site when you host your content there.

As for hosting AdSense sites on your own domain, the benefits include being able to control the design and layout of the page, keep all of your AdSense profit, and test different positioning of AdSense ads in order to get the most clicks and revenue.

Downsides of hosting on your own domain include having to work extra hard to get links and trust from the search engines (especially with a completely new site), having to build out your site and deal with any technical difficulties, and running into the problem of not placing your AdSense ads in the correct position.

AdSense Sharing Or Buy A Domain Name?

So, where's the best place to host content in order to get the most revenue from AdSense? Both places are great in different situations. Yep, that's my answer.

Here's what I do, though: For a topic that I'm passionate about and willing to write in depth articles on a regular basis about, I buy a domain and hosting and begin building a tiny community around that site. When the site traffic builds up, I'll place AdSense ads throughout the site. One of the sites that I make over 30% of my AdSense income from every month is based on a domain that I own.

For topics that I'll just write once or twice about, I'll host that content on a site like HubPages. In those cases, I may enjoy writing about the topic, but the linkbuilding and additional effort it would take to make the site successful on my own isn't worth it to me. HubPages has provided a constant AdSense revenue stream for me in the last two years because of some crazy one-off topics (don't bother looking at my Hubs history pages -- I have a number of Hub aliases so as not to dilute one hub and to negate the risk of scrapers/lazy bums trying to steal my best ideas).

AdSense Revenue Sharing Sites

If you're 100% new to AdSense, I'd actually suggest testing out one, or all, of the AdSense revenue sharing sites. For starters, these sites will teach you how to make money with AdSense if you carefully analyze them month over month - where did they place their AdSense ads, which keywords did well on their sites for you each month, and how did they optimize their layout so that specific ads showed up? By getting comfortable with making money with AdSense each month through another site, you'll learn a lot of small tips and tricks that can help you eventually make money on your own site.

Now, where to start? I personally love HubPages as the hubs I set up rank high for keywords without a lot of effort, and their integration with Google Analytics and AdSense allows me to monitor which keywords are making me AdSense revenue and which hubs are performing the best.

But, I've also found that specific topics do better on specific AdSense revenue sharing sites, so it's best to test out a few different sites when you're first getting started. Here's a few to start off with:

• HubPages
• Squidoo
• InfoBarrel
• DocStoc

Hosting Your Own AdSense Web Site

Many have written about how to optimize your web site, which AdSense themes to use, and which colors work best for clicks, so I'm not going into that yet, at least not here.

I use BlueHost for buying all my domains and setting up hosting. Domains/URLs cost $10 a year and hosting costs $75 a year. What's nice about BlueHost is that I can set up hundreds of domains on one hosting account, something that is cost effective when you're running more than one AdSense site.

For the base of my site, I set up Wordpress and then use the Thesis theme. Wordpress has a number of plugins, including AdSense plugins, that make set up and maintenance easy, while the Thesis theme is easy to customize and is extremely SEO friendly.

Now that you have a keyword picked out and a site or Adsense Revenue sharing hub to host your content, it's time to actually create that content.

Usually, I write about topics that I actually like, so I'll take the time to write and research an article. However, every once in awhile I come across a keyword that has great Adsense earning potential, but I don't know much about the topic and it's not something I'm extremely interested in writing about. Trust me when I say that your article will NOT be interesting to readers if you're not excited about writing about it and, on top of that, those articles will take you forever to write. I can bust out a thousand word article in under an hour if I'm excited to write about the topic, whereas a 300 word article on a topic I have no interest in can take upwards of 2 hours -- a total waste of my time, really.

I tend to write about things that I know about -- I've had a lot of careers in my life, everything from managing PPC accounts and SEO clients to writing for magazines in really specialized industries. I also have some really random hobbies that I can take knowledge from.

If I need to research a topic further, I'll look online, head to a local bookstore and skim through books or magazines on that topic, or ping someone that I know in that industry.

Now, if you're not a great writer or you don't want to spend your time researching, you can go the outsourcing route. I've hired great content writers around the web to write articles for me, and it's been a great time save when there's a topic I want to focus on that I don't know much about.

Now that you've decided upon a site to host content, picked a money making keyword, and created content, it's time to publish your site and start building links to each page.

Hopefully you know that by optimizing your site for keywords will you better target your Adsense ads, but it will also help you with SEO. However, it's going to take both internal and external links to push you up the search engine rankings to one of the top three positions for the keyword that you are targeting.

When attempting to make money with adsense, I have a few methods that will get me quick, medium quality links, and a few methods that will get me higher quality links that aren't as easy (or fast). I'm going to keep some of the higher quality link tips to myself and instead focus on quantity, not quality. Here's the thing -- you want to rank for the keyword you've decided to focus your efforts on, but you don't necessarily want to your reader to sit on your page for 20 minutes reading that content -- you want the reader to skim and then click on an AdSense ad. So getting quality links will be a bit harder since you won't get many links naturally and you'll have a somewhat difficult time exchanging links with quality sites. That's not to say that you can't build a niche site out and provide quality content, get great links, and still make money with adsense; I've done so with a handful of sites. But I also make a lot of money with thin sites (not a lot of content or great content), and a lot of people looking to make passive income with adsense aren't looking to upkeep or maintain a popular website.