At yesterday’s local SBI group meeting, I talked to the group about how Adsense has been a viable income stream for my SBI content site.
Basically, I put Adsense on well-trafficked pages that do not feature affiliate products or other products I am trying to sell. Obviously, the idea is that you do not want to take a customer away from your site for a click that will gain you a small amount of money if you can keep them on your site and possibly sell them something that will reap a bigger sale.
I feel that Adsense is a great addition to my monetization plan. There are a number of pages on my site that are perfect for Adsense- they are written about subject matter of interest to my visitors, but they do not monetize in-and-of-themselves all that well. I continue to write pages on my site that are good for my visitors that are also good for Adsense because they bring traffic to my site, and put Adsense income in my pocket. A good example is my section of dog name pages on my site- they bring tons of traffic to my site. It is a stretch to sell to someone looking for dog names a product at retail (at least it feels that way to me), but people on these pages do click on the Adsense ads to see more, so I make money. With Adsense, they only need to click on the ad for you to receive income. They do not need to actually follow through and purchase something, though it is great if they do.
I could spend time studying what gets the click and try to offer something similar for sale on my site, but since Adsense is dong well on these pages, I feel my time is better spent working on product information for the pages where the retail connection seems more obvious to me. The combination seems to work well.
It turns out that the top pages on my site are hard to find products for to sell directly on my site. I have tried a few products for sale myself on these pages and have not made any sales from them. Maybe I am just not as good at it as the advertisers.
I get tons of traffic to these pages- people looking for dog names , clip art and treat recipes, but the people are not ready to BUY the products I have found. These top twenty pages or so bring in the majority of traffic to my site, but my products do not sell well from them. So what to do???
My answer? Adsense!! Once I went full-speed-ahead with Adsense on these pages and started noticing where the placement got the clicks and what colors and formats worked best (track able by channels that you can set up within your Adsense account), I went from making $30 a month in Adsense to well over 10 times that in one month. The efforts pay off if you have traffic. You need the traffic to make the Adsense sales though, so it is important to build content and traffic first if you want to make money from Adsense. Keep in mind that my site is over two years old, and I am getting over 1700 visits to the site on average each day now (50,000+ a month). These “freebie” pages have helped build my traffic, so I see them as a good thing.
Adsense is easy to set up if you have not done it yet. Adsense is a Google product, so you will first need to set up a Google account. It will then be used for anything Google related/owned- gmail, Google Analytics, Google’s Webmaster tools and of course- Adsense.
Be prepared to fill out some paperwork online, since you will need to tell Google how you want to be paid for Adsense- whether you want it deposited directly into your bank account or whether you want to receive a check. You will also need to fill out some tax paperwork, because Adsense revenues are taxable income.
Once your account is setup, you can begin creating some ad layouts that can be placed on your site. Basically, you select the size and shape of ad that you want and choose colors that will blend with your site. A “wizard” will walk you through the process. At the end of the process, some code is generated that you can paste into the body of your pages. If you are using the Block-by-Block sitebuilder method in SBI, you will paste this code into a text block wherever you wish it to appear on the page.
To start, try one of the most popular ad formats (use one of the horizontal ad formats or the medium rectangle unit). You can set up a channel to track it in Adsense and make changes later, based on your results, but don’t let it hang you up too much. Just get three or four ads on your pages and you can get fancy later. Don’t let it stop you. Note- Google allows the maximum of three regular ad units, plus three link ad units, plus two Google for Search boxes on any one page. Keep it real and don’t try to put all eight on one page. Three to five different type ads can work on a page. Keep it looking clean and nice, yet put enough on your page so that they work for you.
Google has some rules regarding your Adsense account, so be sure to read through them first. One really important one is: NEVER click on the ads that are placed on your own pages because you will cause your own account to make money- not fair. Another is: You can blend your ads to coordinate with your site, but you don’t want to trick the customer. Don’t place them adjacent to images or try to trick the customer into thinking that they are content. There are other rules, and if you screw up, Adsense can drop you like a hot potato, so be sure to read through the rules so that you can adhere to them and stay in good standing.
I have added some (hopefully) helpful Adsense links for you below.
Lori- www.dog-paw-print.com
Adsense Login Page/ Sign up for Adsense
Page that shows all of the different Adsense ad formats and what they look like
“Getting Started with Adsense” video
Optimizing your Adsense Ads Video – by Google’s Australian Optimization Team
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