Introduction
In recent years, there has been a great deal of discussion and information concerning Google's AdSense program at
http://www.google.com/adsense.
There have been truckloads of eBooks and articles written on the topic.
But in the grand scheme of things, it is a profitable program that still gets overlooked by many who are just coming online to start a business, as well as those who have been around a while.
First, let's take a look at exactly what AdSense is and what it is all about:
AdSense is a program for webmasters which was implemented by the famous Google some years ago.
Essentially, a webmaster (a person who owns and builds one or more websites) signs up for an account with the program, and once they are approved, they paste the Google AdSense javascript code into the pages on their websites.
Google then starts serving ads to those websites, based on the keywords that it finds in the text of the page. When a visitor clicks on one of those ads, the webmaster makes money usually a few cents per click.
However, when a site has a great deal of traffic, and when the webmaster knows which keywords are the most profitable to target, there is a lot of money to be made.
It sounds simple enough, but it's really NOT that easy. First of all, you have to be approved and Google is picky these days. The good news is that once one site is approved, and you have a Google AdSense account, there is no need to seek Google's approval to use AdSense on any other site that you own, as long as that site is within the Google's terms of service guidelines.
Once you are approved, you have to know which keywords to target the ones that will make you the most amount of money per click, and how to write (or have written for you) content that makes those high paying ads appear on your site.
Finally, you have to learn how to drive traffic to your AdSense site. Without the traffic, you won't get any clicks, and without clicks, you won't be making any money.
Getting real, targeted visitors that are eager to click on your ads is by far the hardest part of being an AdSense publisher. There really aren?t any secrets here it is just a matter of learning to use some basic, proven site promotion techniques.
You may have heard gurus say that Google AdSense is dead?. If you haven't heard this, there will come a point when you will. But that really isn't true. In fact, there are thousands of people just like you that are making very nice livings from the Google AdSense program.
Usually when a guru says that you should not use Google AdSense, they generally mean that you are better off not using it, especially when you are promoting your own product, and your website is tightly focused on that product.
However, you can use Google AdSense for a site that was built specifically for the AdSense program (Adsense Ready Sites), or on sites that you are using to promote affiliate products as well.
You should also note that many successful AdSense publishers have more than one website. They typically have numerous websites, on a variety of topics on which they display the Google ads. However, there are also those that simply have one high traffic website, from which they make money from the AdSense program.
Regardless of this, all AdSense publishers start with just one website, and grow from there, and this is what you should be doing as well. You have to get the basics down, and learn the secrets that surround the profitability of Google AdSense before you can be successful with more sites.
Preparing For Your Adsense Account
The hardest part of getting started with AdSense is getting Google to approve your website. In fact, for many, it is easier to get a $100,000 bank loan than it is to get a free Google AdSense account. The key is to be prepared before you apply.
You can't start using Google AdSense on your pages until you are approved. This means that you must prepare to open an account, before you apply for an account.
The very first thing you must do is read Google's Terms of Service (TOS). If your site doesn't fall within the guidelines that Google sets out, it will be denied. Furthermore, even after you are approved and you start running Google ads on your site, if you break the TOS, you will be removed, and possibly banned, from the program.
Specifically, what you are looking for is the Program policies, which can be found at http://www.google.com/adsense. Scroll to the bottom of the page, and click on then Program Policies link. The first thing to note is that Google will not accept any site that is not complete.
This means that you can't have any pages that are under construction. All of the pages must be complete, and all of the links must be working. Make sure that all of your graphics are also appearing correctly, because even a broken graphic can prevent you from getting approved.
Google also has a set of Quality Guidelines that must be adhered to before you can be approved. These guidelines, along with the program policies, will tell you exactly what you can and can't have on your site, and what is expected of you and your site in terms of meeting the qualifications for a Google AdSense account. You can find these guidelines at http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html.
One mistake that so many would-be AdSense publishers make is not reading the TOS, the Program Policies, and the Webmaster Guidelines. Google lays these out in very specific terms, so there is no doubt as to the rules. They are also very serious about these rules.
Often, people skip this step in the preparation - reading the rules - work hard to build a site, only to be disapproved by Google, or to be approved, but then banned from the program later.
don't let this happen to you. These are rules that you must not only follow in order to get approved, but must continue to follow in order to stay in the
program. You don't want to spend days and weeks putting together sites, only to get kicked out of the program later. Google is very serious about this.
Once you've read the rules, and made sure you understand them, the next part of the preparation is doing research to find out which topics will be the most profitable for you, and getting the site built. We will cover these topics in more depth in a later article, but for now, you just need one website that will be approved by Google.
Remember that you only have to get approved for one site in order to get in the program, and from there on, you can publish as many sites as you want, on a wide variety of topics, and use Google AdSense on them, from the one account that you have been approved for.
While many just put up a website that will meet Google's standards, without doing any research in order to get approved, you could also take a little longer, and go ahead and build a site that you can use to target the high paying keywords.
This is totally up to you, and it really doesn't matter much which direction you go, as long as the site will get you approved for a Google AdSense account.
I usually recommend creating and building a blogger.com blog, and apply using that one. You may not know this, but Google owns Blogger...
Applying For Your Adsense Account
Once you are prepared to apply for a Google AdSense account, it's as simple as filling out a form. But there are some aspects of that form that can be a bit confusing.
In this section, I'll go over filling out the form, so that Google will approve you without any problems. You can find the form to apply for an AdSense account at:
http://www.google.com/adsense/g-app-single-1.
The first thing that the form asks for is the URL of your website. Note that even if you have multiple sites, Google only wants to see one. So, list the URL of the site that you have set up for the purpose of being approved for Google AdSense, and enter the URL like this: www.yourdomain.com.
You do not have to include the http:// part of the URL, and don't include any subpages of the URL, such as www.mydomain.com/mypage.html. Google wants to see the main page of the site, at the top level domain.
Next, Google wants to know what language your site is published in. If your site supports multiple languages, this is fine, but this isn't what Google wants to know. They want to know the primary language of the site this would be the language that you used to write the pages, such as English.
The next question on the form throws a lot of people into a tail spin. It asks if you are setting up an individual or business account.
Here is a way to simplify this question: If you do not have an office or business that currently has 20 or more employees, you are an individual. It doesn't matter what your future plans are. Next, select the country that you live in.
The following part of the form asks for your information: name, street address, city, and state. It is important to note that when Google pays you, the check will be made out to the name that you put here, and sent to the address that you put here. So, use the information that you need to use here in order to receive the check, and to cash or deposit the check.
After your name and address, Google wants your telephone number. They probably won't call you, but sometimes they will, if there is a problem or a question. Give a good phone number where you can be reached. You do not have to provide a fax number.
Here, you can also choose to receive Google's newsletter or not. Choosing not to receive the newsletter will not have any affect on whether or not you are approved.
Following this, there are five check boxes, all of which must be checked, before you can submit the application.
By checking these boxes, you are saying that you will not click on the ads on your pages, that you will not encourage visitors to click on your ads (incentives), that you are able to receive checks that are made out to you, that you will not place ads on pornographic sites, and that you have read the AdSense program policies.
Finally, you submit the form, and prepare to wait. Your site will be checked by a live human being. Approval is manual, not automated, and it can take up to three business days (72 hours) before you hear from a Google representative. That contact usually comes via email.
- Wait, what is this Product selection?
This appears on some application forms and seems confusing to many -- choose both: AdSense for Content and AdSense for Search. This means that you can run both, but don't have to run both.
You can have Google ads appear on your pages (AdSense for Content) and you can also include a Google search box on your pages (AdSense for Search), and when people use those search boxes, and click on sponsored ads in the results, you get paid for those clicks as well.
I Have My Account , Now What?
Congratulations!
Now that you've been approved for a Google Account, by building a site that Google would easily approve, and you've selected a high paying topic for your site, you are ready to get to work and build your first profitable AdSense website.
If you have not already done so (you should have), you really need to go and read the program policies that Google has set, as well as their Webmaster Guidelines. This will help you to build a better site, and to avoid issues that can and will get you banned from the Google AdSense program.
Your site should be full of content that uses your keywords. A keyword density of between 2 and 3% is great. This means that your keyword should be used approximately 2 to 3% of the time in your content. So, for a page that has 600 words of content, the keyword would appear twelve to eighteen times (600 x 2% or 600 x 3%).
There is more to it than targeting keywords. The content must be accurate. It must be readable and understandable by visitors and most importantly:
It Must Be Unique!
You should use all of the search engine optimization techniques as possible when building your site. Not only will this attract the right ads, but it will also help your site to move up in the search results, for the purpose of driving traffic to your site.
You want your site to look nice, to be informative, and to load fast. You want it to attract the right ads. You do not want anything on your pages that will irritate your visitor, such as blinking, blinding text or music.
Make it a site that you would want to visit, and then ask an uninterested party, such as your neighbor (not your best friend or your mother) if it is a site that they would want to visit, if they were interested in the topic.
Now, you are ready to place the AdSense javascript code on your pages. Log in to your AdSense account. Click on the AdSense Set up tab at the top of the page.
First, click on Channels, and set up a Channel for the topic of your site. This will come in handy later on, when you are analyzing which of your sites is pulling in the most money.
Next, click on palettes, and create a color palette that matches your site well. You want your Google ads to blend into your site. If they stand out like a sore thumb,
they will get fewer clicks, simply because people really do try to avoid advertisements.
You want the ads to look like content on your site. Once you've set up a palette that matches your site, click on products. Choose AdSense for content to create your ad units.
Here, you can choose ads that are enclosed in a box, or ads that are more free standing, but still just text links. It is a good idea to choose the link unit to add above or below your navigational links, and you can design your site navigation links to look just like the Google link units.
Above ? the perfect example of a well optimized ad placement
You can use the ad units (boxed in) on other sections of your site. Those who have been in the Google AdSense game for a while have done years worth of testing on the topic of ad unit placement.
Ideally, you will use ?text ads only? as your setting. Note that Google has limits as to how many Google ads can be used on your page, please check with the TOS.
As you can see, it is fairly easy enough setting things up, but it takes a lot more thought and effort than that. What you must remember is that you often only make a few cents when someone clicks an ad. Each click can pay as little as one cent, but I have seen amounts up to three dollars.
The most successful AdSense publishers are targeting keywords that pay the most amount of money. These AdSense publishers use a variety of tools to find out what the high paying keywords are. These tools include keyword research tools, such as Word Tracker and Keyword Elite.
http://www.wordtracker.com
http://www.keywordelite.com
They spend a great deal of time researching those keywords, finding out what the top keywords are, in terms of number of people searching for them, and what word combinations are being used. These are words and phrases that they will target in the content of their sites.
Next, they determine which of those top keywords topics pay the most money per click. Those who have been in the AdSense game for a while are not going to build sites that target keywords that only pay one cent per click!
These AdSense publishers use the tools that Google provides to help determine which keywords are paying the most to the publishers. Unfortunately, you won't find these tools inside your Google AdSense account. No, You need a Google AdWords account for this - http://adwords.google.com/
You see, Google has two programs that work together: Google AdSense and Google AdWords. Business owners use Google AdWords to promote their products and websites and it's those ads that are shown on your Google AdSense ads. The business owner pays Google for each click generated on your website, and Google pays you for the service.
It?s free to create a Google AdWords account. Once created, You just get in there and start using the tools that are there to see how much bids are for the keywords that you've discovered using keyword selection tools such as Word Tracker and Keyword Elite.
By doing this, you have access to the same information that the people who are paying for ads has, and this helps you to build more profitable AdSense websites.
This is a nice trick that Google won't tell you about, and that most AdSense publishers won't care to share it with you. Having a Google AdWords account is
the key to finding out which keywords are going to pay you the most amount of money per click.
Choosing the right high paying keywords, however, isn?t everything; You need traffic ? and lots of it, simply because low traffic sites will NOT make you a full-time living. This is why most publishers have more than one website.
They find the top keywords in terms of number of searches, figure out the keywords from that list that pay the most amount of money per click, and then build sites, lots of sites...
A successful AdSense publisher may have sites on topics such as fishing, weight loss, video games, making money, and many more. When you have multiple sites, you can make a nice living with a mid level amount of traffic to each site.
If you have hundreds of sites, like I have, you can make a living even with low traffic. So, here is some food for thought: The more traffic you have per site, the fewer sites you will need to earn a living from AdSense.
You need to decide on which path to go: Quantity or Quality?
Topic Selection?
Next you need to learn how the experts select topics for their Google AdSense sites. Choosing the right topics is the difference between success and failure!
Let?s take a look at the various tools that you will use, and how you will use them. First, you need keyword research tools. You can find out what the top keywords that are being searched for are with a web based tools such as Word Tracker, at http://www.wordtracker.com. There is a fee for using this tool, but you can sign up for a free trial.
But finding the most frequently searched for keywords isn?t enough. Once you have a good list of what people are searching for the most, the next step is to find out how profitable those keywords are.
Not all frequently searched for keywords are profitable, and if you hope to make a full time living with Google AdSense, you need high paying keywords.
Now, before you rush out in search of a list of high paying keywords, note that even if there was such a list, it would constantly be changing, just as the list of frequently searched for keywords changes.
Furthermore, you don't seriously believe that other AdSense publishers are going to share such a list, if one even existed, do you? They wouldn?t. You have to find this information yourself.
Here is where having a Google AdWords account will come in handy. You can see what the advertisers are paying to get in the top position of the search results for their keywords. Simply log in to your free Google AdWords account, and click on ?tools.? Next, click on Keyword Tool.
...or in case you don't have an Adword account, just go to:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Enter your keywords, and then in the drop down box below that, select ?Cost and Ad Position Estimates.? Type 5.00 in the last box, and hit ?calculate.? Now, Google will display possible keywords, based on the main keyword that you entered. Next to each keyword, you will see the estimated average CPC (cost per click) and the estimated position.
You want to view the CPC for the keywords that will fall into the top five on position, stated as 1 ? 3 or 1 ? 5. As of this writing, using the keyword phrase ?weight loss? you would see that the estimated CPC for ?best weight loss program? is 2.54. Now, as an advertiser, that is what you would pay per click for an ad that is being run on position 1 ? 3 when that keyword phrase is searched for.
As a publisher, however, you would not make 2.54 per click. Google wants their share as well. Google doesn?t state what percentage is earned by the publisher, however. It varies, and how that percentage is figured is Google's secret, and they are not sharing that information!
You basically have to pull a percentage out of the air to work with. Try using 30% as a guide.
Once you start getting clicks, you can then look to see what the estimated CPC is in AdWords, and then see how much you were paid for that click in AdSense to find out how much Google is paying you per click for that keyword. Again, this varies from one keyword to the next, so there are no set guidelines here.
Keep in mind that it?s maximum bid that?s displayed, meaning that?s what the advertiser would have to pay per click on an ad being shown on positions 1 to 3 in the sponsored search results.
Now imagine if you have lots of ad blocks on your page -- that will enable the cheaper ads to be displayed as well. You will discover that most of the time you?ll end up getting clicks on those, thereby making only a few cents...
My suggestion: Less Ad Blocks - Will Get You More Revenue Per Click!
Traffic Generation - Methods To Avoid
There are many ways to get traffic to a site. You will most likely do research to find out about those traffic generation methods.
Methods such as article marketing, forum marketing, pay-per-click advertising, social networking, blogging, and social bookmarking all work very well. But in the world of Internet Marketing, there are also traffic techniques that you should avoid, for various reasons.
?Incidentally, we?ll kick start this section of Adsense Profits Blueprint with traffic techniques you should avoid?
1. First, do not ever pay for traffic from a site that promises you a great deal of traffic in a short amount of time. The traffic that you get will not be targeted, and will be of no use to you at all. The same applies to traffic exchange sites.
In fact, many of these sites are scam sites, and the traffic that you get will actually be automated traffic, not real traffic. Pay-per-click advertising, or PPC as it is known, is not the same as these sites that promise traffic for a fee.
Go to Google and do a search for 'buy website traffic' and make sure NOT to buy from any of those, because this is useless traffic that in the end will get you banned!
2. Do not spend hours, or even use automated software to submit your site to free classified ad sites or free for all link sites. This only results in lots of spam for you. It does not result in traffic.
There is one exception to this rule: Craig's List works very well and it is free. The only catch is that you can't post identical ads in different categories or regions. You have to change the ad each time.
http://www.craigslist.com/
3. Don't use pop ups. People hate these, and most people now have software installed that keeps pop ups from popping. Avoid other irritating elements on your site as well, such as blinking text and music, and colors that clash. Your visitors will hit the back button in one second flat! Besides - popups are against the Adsense TOS.
4. Don't use false statements or exaggerated statements in your advertising. This may get you traffic, but it will irritate the traffic, and they won't click on links.
Instead, they will either close the browser, or hit the back button. You may not be selling anything, but this is false advertisement none-the-less, and it makes people very angry.
There are two huge mistakes that many newcomers make:
1. The biggest is doing nothing at all. You can build a site, but if you don't advertise it in anyway, you are not going to get a drop of traffic.
2. The second biggest mistake is not tracking your advertising. If you don't know what works, and what doesn?t, you will be wasting time and possibly money.
Track all of your advertisements to see where your traffic comes from, and where it doesn?t come from. In the end, you will be glad that you did.
Overall, that?s all that you need to avoid. Other than that, you need to make sure that you are using proven site promotion techniques, which are listed above.
These other outdated methods simply do not work. They are not worth your time, effort, or money. You need to know where the traffic comes from, and you also need to know how well your ads are performing.
You may have a great amount of traffic, but few clicks. It?s important to track the traffic and the ad performance, so you know what to fix!
Traffic Generation - Article Marketing
If you have an AdSense website, you need traffic to make money from that site! There are numerous ways to get traffic, but since we all have limited time, you want to cut right to the chase, and find out what works. Article marketing is one of the best traffic generation methods you can use.
Article marketing is a very successful and easy concept. It is used by all successful Internet Marketers, and when it comes to website promotion, you must look at things from an Internet Marketers point of view, even though, as an AdSense publisher, you aren?t exactly selling any product.
Again, the concept is easy. You write a short article, approximately 400 words long. At the bottom of the article, you write an ?author?s resource box.? This is just a simple paragraph of text that says who the author is, gives a little background info on the author, and most importantly - a link to the author?s website. It?s about five to seven sentences long.
Once the article is ready, you visit numerous article directories, which are also referred to as article banks and article repositories, and submit your article. That?s all there is to article marketing.
Now, many people use these article directories. They go there to find information, or to find content for their own websites, blogs, or newsletters. The article that you submitted is free for them to use, as long as they publish it with the author?s resource box intact, and they don't make any changes to the article.
Because so many other people can (and will) publish your article elsewhere, it becomes viral. This drives traffic to your site, on a continual basis. But one article submission is not going to be enough. You need to be submitting one article per week, to at least the top ten article directories.
Note that there are faster ways to get traffic, such as using Google AdWords, but article marketing is free, and again, the traffic that you will eventually get from the articles being published is fairly steady.
Here are five important tips for article marketing:
1. don't use the same content that you have on your site. Your site could end up getting penalized for duplicate content.
2. Before you write your first article, visit one of the popular directories, such as Ezine Articles at http://www.ezinearticles.com/ to see what your article should be like. You can also get ideas for your author?s resource box here.
3. Writers Block? Lack of time? Use PLR articles, or hire a ghostwriter to write and submit articles for you. Make sure that you are submitting one article per week! If you use private label rights (PLR) articles, make sure that you rewrite them before submitting them.
4. Make sure that the topic of your article matches the topic of your site, and the topic of the ads that are being displayed through your Google AdSense ads. This will get you the best results.
5. Use your keywords in your article. This is search engine fodder; it drives the article up in the search engine results, which in turn brings more traffic to your site.
don't expect immediate results. Sometimes, it takes the article directories several days, and in some cases, several weeks, to publish your article. You need to be using additional traffic generation techniques as well.
Even if you aren?t seeing results from your article marketing techniques, keep at it. Remember, it takes time for it to ?kick in,? but when it does, it is well worth the effort.
Traffic Generation ? Blogs
you've probably heard that there is a great deal of money to be made by using blogs ? whether you are into affiliate marketing, or an AdSense publisher. You can use a blog in several different ways.
First, you can use just the blog, as opposed to having a separate static website. You can also use a blog to drive traffic to a static website. Either way works, but in the long run, it?s easier to have a blog, with your own domain, hosted on a web server, than it is to operate both a blog and a website.
Promoting a blog is much easier and faster than promoting a website, because blogs are so interactive.
For instance, people can come to your blog, subscribe to it, leave comments on it, and go to their own blogs and write about something that you wrote about, quote you and leave a trackback. This works the opposite way as well.
To promote a blog, there are very specific things you do:
1. You ping your blog after each post. You can do this at a site such as http://www.pingomatic.com/, which will send the ping to multiple blog directories at one time.
2. You use social bookmarks each time you make a post, tagging the post with your keywords. You can quickly and easily send out multiple bookmarks at one time by using a free service such as http://www.onlywire.com/
3. You burn your feed at a free site such as http://www.feedster.com/. This lists your feed in their directory, so that people may subscribe before they?ve ever even visited your blog.
4. You visit relevant blogs that belong to others, and leave relevant comments (not comment spam) with a link back to your own blog.
5. You quote other people?s blogs ? just portions, not the entire post ? and link to it using your trackback feature. Your link to that post will automatically appear on their trackback list for that post, if they have enabled trackbacks.
6. You use the same promotional techniques that you use for a static website, along with the five techniques listed above.
If you can, make a blog post each day. Otherwise, you should be making a blog post each and every week, once a week. If you?re blog isn?t updated, you can't really promote it very well.
If you want to use the other method, where you have a blog and a website, you can do this as well. The idea here is to use the same promotional techniques for the blog, and then in each blog post, point to your website.
As you can see, if you are an AdSense publisher, this may be a bit redundant, since you can publish the same information on your blog, and it gets promoted in much the same way ? and you can put AdSense on your blog just as you can on static webpages.
Generally, if someone has both a blog and a website, it is because they are promoting several products, or their own product. Again, as an AdSense publisher, with no other source of revenue, it makes sense to just have a blog, instead of a static website as well.
Traffic Generation ? Video Marketing
Video is becoming increasingly more important to cyber citizens, and essentially to online business owners, and even to AdSense site owners. You can drive traffic to your sites with the use of video and free video websites. Everybody loves video. Even Google now offers video ads for AdSense.
Sites like Google Video, You Tube, and Yahoo Video get tons of traffic every single day, and you can easily take advantage of that. You have two options for creating video. You can use a digital video camera, or you can use screen capture video software.
With a digital video camera, you can make a video of basically anything, and then upload that video to your computer, and then to the video websites. With screen capture video software, you don't need a camera. You can just make a video of what is appearing on your computer screen.
For instance, if you have a website that reviews software, for which you earn AdSense revenue and affiliate revenue from software sales, you could purchase the software, and make a video that shows people how to use it. Videos such as these are in high demand. Just make sure that the video that you produce is relevant to the topic of your website.
Once you have a video, you want to be sure that it is of high quality. It should sound right and look right, and you may want to try it out on different computers to make sure that it is as good as you can get it. You do not want to present a video to the public that doesn?t have good quality, because this is a bad reflection on you.