How to Build a Profitable Home on the Web — Episode Five
You’ve probably read fantastic stories of people who earn hundreds of thousands of dollars each year with Google AdSense. But did you know that for every publisher making huge money, there are thousands of people out there who earn next to nothing?
That sure doesn’t sound like easy money to me!
What gives, then? Why are some folks so successful while others toil away without any appreciable results?
The difference is all about the implementation, as top AdSense earners have literally built their sites with ad placements and earnings in mind. In much the same way as a farmer prepares fields for his crops to grow, powerhouse AdSense publishers have, in effect, cultivated places on the Web where earnings have the potential to blossom.
With that in mind, let’s focus on building a site that is ready to earn. We’ll start with two of the most basic, fundamental “best practices” for AdSense — ad placements and the types of ads to display.
Supercharge your blog’s earnings with Text Link Ads
Helpful links from this episode:
- Get the AdSense Deluxe Plugin and display AdSense ads within your blog posts.
- All examples in this series assume that you’re running your site on WordPress. Hook up with Colorteck, our NEW hoster, and avoid major hassles with a Fantastico WordPress installation that is second to none!
Great Tutorial on adsense placement for my WordPress blogs….
Bye, got to work on them right now!!
Thanks….
Interesting. I was putting the graphical block ads at the top, then placing the textual ones on my sidebar. I shall try the switch and see what happens.
Regards
buck
Buck,
Not all sites are created equal, and it’s quite possible that a different setup may work best for you. My advice would simply be to test out a few scenarios, and then compare them to see which produces the best results.
Based on information that I’ve obtained from books and the Web, a reasonable experimentation time frame is about two weeks.
So, make a change, wait two weeks, then make another change, etc. etc.
In some cases, it may be completely obvious after a couple of days that a particular setup is terrible. Naturally, you needn’t waste two weeks of income on something that you know doesn’t work.
The bottom line is that finding the optimal setup for any site requires tweaking and testing, and the format suggested in this video is one that is a proven performer.
However, if your site isn’t set up like this, then it’s conceivable that a different ad structure will produce better results.
Thanks Chris. I think my main issue is just having the time to study the adsense particulars more. I basically just signed up and put the coding in there. I have not had time to block ads, read documentation and techniques, etc, etc. As a result, my earnings are too embarrassing to even state (even though traffic is good).
I will do some testing, though, and I’m pretty sure what you suggested would have some positive effect.
Regards
Buck
ps. Besides, I still need to switch over to blog format on Wordresss. I’ve been stalling for quite some time. That should help, too.
Regards
Buck
I’m one of those earning next to nothing or rather $1 a day. Getting traffic is a challenge.
Chris, your right. How stupid I was to blast users with affiliate ads! Stupid! Well, is there a way to mess with the code to get the setup of my sidebar on the left instead of the right using Cutline?
Thanks so much,
Lawton
great tutorial, question though: is shoemoneys cheque you’ve shown actually one of his Adsense cheques or from another program? If it is his Adsense cheque (and I’m not questioning that he makes that sort of money, he does) then they must have a different colour and layout to the ones they send out to non-US adsense users…least from the last time I received a cheque anyway, I’ve been on EFT now for what seems like for ever.
Also one last tip to share: add a subscribe to comments on your site here…it’s a great way to bring visitors back + I’d like to know when or if you guys respond, indeed I’m really surprised you’ve not already got the option.
Duncan,
Based on what Shoemoney says at his site, that’s the last check he received from Google before converting his payments over to EFT.
And you’re spot-on regarding the Subscribe to Comments plugin. I pimped it on this site, and then never implemented it.
I’m a great role model. 🙂
Chris, I tried to implement the google text ad that spans horizontal and looks like a navigational element, but I’m having weird results. Sometimes it shows up in Firefox, then sometimes my external style sheet doesn’t work BUT then I can see the ad. In Explorer I don’t see anything, but if I move my cursor to the top left of the content area it turns to the highlight curser as if it recognizes it’s there (you can’t highlight anything though)
It’s truly odd. Have you ever heard of external stylesheets or some CSS issue interferring with Google Ads? I thought it could be a script conflict with other scripts, but after clearing all scripts except the text ad script, it still didn’t appear.
I’ve debugged in Dreamweaver, but can’t find anything.
Regards
Buck
page at http://www.fromthepen.com
Buck,
Although I haven’t done any in-depth investigation here, it would seem as though you’ve got some absolutely positioned elements. Sometimes IE responds VERY strangely to them, and you have to get pretty creative with z-indices in order to get things to display as you would like.
If that is the case, my recommendation is to not work with the absolutely positioned elements. Instead, figure out a way to use more straightforward markup to achieve your desired look.
I’ll look over my coding more closely later tonight. My site is around 5 years old, so it still has the standard table structured old method of layout – no CSS positioning yet, as it should be, so I’m a bit baffled. I’ll do some more testing and let you know the outcome. My results could prove very interesting fodder to the folks at Google Adsense.
Thanks
Buck
Great thnks
Well after seeing your tutorial, it looks like I have a lot of work to do. My blog is on the wrong site to accomplish some of the things that your suggesting, so I am going to have to move to wordpress first off. Then I will have to move all my articles over using all your tips. Might help me generate more than the 8 bucks I have made so far.
Thanks again
Don
http://sixtyseven-days.blogspot.com/
Would it be a bad thing to put ads on a professional website or is this just not common practice?
cfish, most “professional” websites have ads actually, most likely Google adsense. Well, for in my opinion, ads can be quite too annoying sometimes, but it differs from person to person.
Great information, I moved my google ads from the footer to the header and changed them to a link list from an image also and it’s working.
I’m curious too – (great site and theme by the way) – how are people getting the link ad in the header picture itself? The way I have it setup now, the links add appear below the picture.
What’s the code, or method, to get those ads to run along the bottom of the picture itself?
Thanks again for a great site.
Jim,
I’d like to see a specific example of what you’re talking about, because there are two options possible here.
divoverlay, in which the ads really do appear on top of an image.I’m sure it was #1, but of course, I can’t find the site (which I had found through yours) – I think the pictures were even random as well.
You know what? It was #2, they just a similar looking backgroud (or just blended it well).
Still, if you have a chance, I’d love to learn how to do the overlay thing.
Thanks again for such a great site.
Hi
I was curious as to how you display ads in the sidebar of only certain pages? As can be seen in the video where sidebar ads only appear on the front page and not on the archive page
Cheers
when I tried to put the link ad… it does not show up properly… cut off .
IMHO, that ‘Helpful e-Bay Resources’ line above the left sidebar ad unit is against the TOS. You can get banned for that.
I luv you lol. You have no idea how helpful that was, this site rocks man, ROCKS! WOOO.
Good tutorial, Thanks a lot
Nicely put tutorial thanks for the advice much appreciated
Good ideas.. I just started using Adsense, wasn’t too happy with the results.. I’ll need to try different formats as you have suggested. Can you ever place too much Adsense ads, meaning placing at the top, the left, right, and bottom?
Thank you for your awesome tubetorial, I have gone from knowing nothing about blogging, to setting my own up in less than 2 monts because of sites like this.
Great Tutorial…. I really needed this….. Post more of this info…. Thanq…..
Thanks for this informative blog post! I love reading on this topic and this is one of the best blogs i’ve found to date!
I’ve been looking into information on this very topic for quite a while and this really covers it! this is a great blog!
You might want to think of how many computers are at an internet cafe, how many times users open the browzers, why not make your site a home page??? Do you get the point?
There are many ways to use AdSense to achieve your goals.Some people are using AdSense to earn a great deal of money in amounts that you would not have thought was possible unless you robbed a bank.