How To Create A Custom Channel

How To Create A Custom Channel

The URL Channels are especially useful if you have several websites, and have a general idea of the formats, colors, alignment etc. that works best for you. Remember though, you still need the original, Custom Channels if you want to track ads across different domain names, based on ad sizes, formats, colors etc. For instance, if I want to track left-aligned ads across all my websites (sites with different domain names), I need to group them together into a single channel and manually change the channel code for each page. First, I name the new channel:


Then I choose the Ad Type, Layout and Color of the ads I want to track: Finally, it’s simply a matter of allocating an alternate URL if I don’t want public service ads, selecting the channel and copying and pasting the code onto each of the pages that contain these kinds of ad.


Of course, I would then have to repeat the process if I wanted to track ads of a particular color or size. That’s very different to the process you use to create a URL Channel. URL Channels are tracked automatically without the need for you to paste code. With Custom Channels, you’re going to have to go back to your own site, add the code in the appropriate pages and upload the changes to your server. While that’s a bit of a headache, it’s a headache worth having.



Custom channels provide such a broad range of information — from how different locations are doing to how particular types of ad units affect your revenues — that without them, you’re working in the dark.

FOLLOWING THE FIGURES

Response Tracking: Your Hidden Pot Of AdSense Gold!
In the last chapter, we talked about content. Google won't let you ask visitors to click on your ads, or use other deceptive ways to make them click. But good content is an endorsement in itself. Some of its charm rubs off on the ads, making the ads more believable — and interesting! If you have a website with impartial product reviews, for instance, visitors are more likely to click the ads to learn more about a product, check out the latest prices or order online.
It’s crucial to create content that’s genuinely interesting. But your work doesn’t stop there. After setting up your AdSense Account, the first thing you want to do is play with your ad formats and placement to make the ads blend in. That's where the bulk of the "easy-money" is hiding. But once you've got that right, what next? You start tweaking the text and making all sorts of other changes to improve your CTR. But every time you make any sort of change to your ads, you must track the results. Consider this example: Joe Drinker has a great website about "How to make Beer at Home". It's doing well on AdSense, but not well enough. His week’s stats look something like this Joe is pretty happy with his CTR but wonders if he can raise his CPM and in the process, lift his earnings. So he looks up high-priced keywords related to his subject, and works the term "beer cans" into his content. A few days later he logs into the stats on his AdSense account and finds that that change has actually HURT his income Joe has not only disappointed a lot of collectors who come looking for beer cans — his site contains lots of keywords but little in the way of good content — he has also discouraged visits from people who want to make beer at home. His search ranking has gone down, making his website harder for people to find him and lowering his impressions. It's also hurt his earnings per click as the people who visit the site leave faster. What's worse is that he's also risked his AdSense standing! Now, does that make it a bad idea to optimize your website for AdSense? Not at all. It is actually a good idea, if you do it right. And by that I mean… No Shortcuts! There is a simple, step-by-step process to optimize your website for high-paying search terms. And this method is almost fool-proof! So why isn't everybody doing this? Simply because very few web publishers know how to use Tracking to their advantage. Tracking will not only help you minimize your mistakes, it will also reveal hidden pockets of money that you would have never found otherwise. Read on to find out how YOU can use Tracking to sky-rocket your CTRs and increase revenues per-click.

How To Track With Channels
AdSense now hands you 200 such chips. Use them to track ads on specific domain names or to group ads according to specific ad formats, keywords, their location on the page etc. You can use any other factor that might impact their effectiveness, based on the type of website you have.

How To Create A URL Channel
Google lets you create two kind of channels: URL channels and custom channels. With URL channels you can track clicks across your site’s pages. You can do this by entering four different kinds of URL in the “create new channel” box. Each type of channel gives you information of different accuracy: example.com tracks all the pages in your site and gives a general picture of what your site is doing; subdomain.example.com tracks all the pages in one particular subdomain; subdomain.example.com/widgets tracks all the pages in a specific directory; and subdomain.example.com/page.html tracks the clicks on one specific page. That’s a huge range of choices, from an overview of a site that might have hundreds of pages through groups of pages that concern particular subjects to the clicks you’re getting on just one page. So if you had three sites, one about custom cars, one about custom bikes and one about speedboats, the first thing you’d do is create a general channel for each site. You should always create a channel for each one of your sites. That will let you see not just how much money you’re making overall, but how much money each site is making. You’re not going to get too far without that sort of information! Now, let’s say that the custom car site had tabs for American cars, European cars, Japanese cars and classic cars. Each tab is a subdomain and you could create a channel for each subdomain too. Now you could see which topic is making the most money. And if you discussed one car on each page, you could also create channels for the individual pages and see which cars are the most popular and deliver the highest earning clicks. Sounds good, right? And it’s now very easy to do. Back in the bad old days, Google required you to manually change AdSense tags for each ad block you wanted to track. Many AdSense partners complained about these pesky old channels until Google launched the URL Channels to make life easier. Now all you have to do is sign in and click the tab marked “AdSense Setup” followed by the “Channels” link.


And the next step is to use the link marked “URL Channels” and enter the URLs you want to track. That’s it! You don’t have to do anything else. Google will start tracking the URLs you’ve added automatically.
So apart from creating URL Channels for each of your sites, which of the other URL Channels should you create? As far as I’m concerned, you can’t have too much information. Major areas should certainly be covered and if you can go as far as tracking each page without going over the 200 channel limit, so much the better. It’s certainly worth tracking a few individual pages to make sure that the revenues are spread out across different parts of the site. If you find that one page is making lots of money and another is making none, you’ll want to know the reason why.

Buying Content/ Hiring Writers

Buying Content/ Hiring Writers

One of the problems with free content is that you can get what you pay for. And if your site doesn’t have valuable content, it’s going to have an effect on your click-throughs.
The alternative of course is to pay professional writers to write for you. I’ve already mentioned www.elance.com as a good place to find designers but it’s a good place to find writers too. You can also ask ConstantConversions.com to write articles and blog posts for you. The advantage of hiring writers of course, is that you can be sure you’re getting good content with little effort. On the other hand, you have to make that money back. Try testing a writer to see how much profit a series of articles generates. If you pay $200 for five articles but find that your new pages don’t give you a $200 increase in revenues, you either need a new idea — or a new writer.

Automated Content

Finally, another option you can use to build a website is automated content. This will let you cut through the hassle of creating a website from scratch, dreaming up content and driving traffic. For a fee, you’ll be able to launch without delay a website filled with information and already optimized for search engines. As long as your ads are bringing in more money than you’re spending for the program, you’re making a profit.
There are a number of programs you can use to do this. ArticleBot at www.articlebot.com automatically rewrites existing articles to create brand new versions that you can post on your site. While you can’t take copyrighted articles as your originals, you can certainly use the tool to rewrite your own material and earn more cash by broadening your marketing, or by revamping public domain content.
While ArticleBot provides content, MetaWebs (www.metawebs.com) gives you the whole caboodle. You get a pre-built website already packed with content and SEO-optimized. In my opinion though, it’s a good idea to swap the content that you get with the site for your own. It will bring you more dedicated users — and that’s more likely to give you a higher income. It’s not a bad idea though to use a MetaWeb site to bring in money while you’re creating your own material. While MetaWeb and ArticleBot can certainly be used to generate AdSense revenue, CashPageBuilder was built specifically for AdSense. This is a very simple program to use. You can simply toss in a keyword phrase, choose the keywords and before you can say “How much is that worth?” you’ve got a site ready to roll. And even if you choose a high-earning keyword that other people have chosen, you’ll still get original content. But there’s a difference between original content and top-quality content. The folks at Google aren’t crazy about pre-fabricated, useless content and it’s unlikely your users will be either. If all you’re doing is building a site to earn money — and not because you’re genuinely interested in the subject of your site — then maybe it doesn’t matter. You can still launch your pre-fabricated site, post your ads in good places and send traffic to your advertisers.
It’s worth remembering though that Smart Pricing was introduced precisely because of sites like these: sites with low-quality content get low advertising price. It’s quite possible that having built your site, you’ll find that the prices you receive will drop because you’re not sending the advertisers users who are genuinely interested in their products.
The best way to ensure a high result from Smart Pricing is to give advertisers traffic that wants their product. Good content is the best way to do that. If you are going to use pre-fabricated content though, then you can still try to keep the cost of your advertising space high by attracting good quality traffic. The users might not stay on your site for very long — and you don’t really want them to — but if you can lay out your ads in such a way that when those users click off the site, they end up at an advertiser who does have the content they want to buy, you should still make money. One thing you do have to be concerned about though is combining sites with pre-fabricated content in the same AdSense account as sites with high-quality content. If your Smart Pricing value does fall, then your income could fall across the board. The best strategy if you’re going to use these programs, I think, is to try to keep the sites you create with them in a separate account, when possible, and just make sure that your income is always higher than any monthly fee. On the whole though, you’ll probably find that it’s more enjoyable and more lucrative to create websites that you enjoy maintaining and that users like visiting. Those are the sort of sites that make the most money.

Building Content

Writing Content

AdSense works better than just about every other type of online advertising for one simple reason: the ads are relevant to the content on your page. Users click on the ads because they find them interesting. And they come back and click on them again because they find your content interesting. If your site doesn’t have good content, you’re going to struggle to attract users and links, and you won’t be able to persuade anyone to come back to your site. Having the right content then is crucial to having good revenues with AdSense. It’s also crucial to the relationship you have with Google’s indexing mechanism. Remember, Google is a search engine first and foremost. Their purpose is to provide the web user with the best search results for the terms they are seeking. If you are providing quality content, you have a greater chance of seeing your search results come up higher on the page. Fortunately, it’s also easier than ever to fill your site with page after page of sticky content, each of which contains ad units and opportunities to earn revenue. The most obvious way to create content is of course to write it yourself. Pick a subject you like and pour your heart out. If you know everything there is to know about video games, you could set up a site stuffed with reviews, news and walkthroughs, and write all the articles yourself. Your AdSense units will give you ads related to gaming and as long as they’re positioned properly and look right they should give you more than enough revenue to fund your video gaming habit and then some. You can do the same thing for any topic you wanted.

But remember, if you’ve created your site to make money, then writing the content yourself means that you’re working for that money. When you count your revenues, you have to factor in the time and effort it took you to make those revenues. That’s one of the reasons that many people look for other, easier ways to get content around their ads. (The fact that they just don’t like writing is another good reason.) Fortunately, there are plenty of ways of creating effortless content and some of them are even free.

Making Bucks With Blogs
Writing blogs isn’t exactly effortless, but it is something a lot of people do for fun and because they’re updated regularly, Google loves them. If you’re going to write a blog anyway, then you should certainly be making money out of it. The biggest challenge when writing a blog is getting ads that give you good revenues. Because your entries are going to be talking about all sorts of different things, there’s a chance that you’re going to get ads on all sorts of random topics. That’s fine, unless your ads are barely giving you enough revenue to pay for the blog. If you find that you’re getting lots of ads related to “blogs” for example, instead of what you’re blogging about, you can try changing the meta name in your template. Delete the <$Metainfodata$> tag and replace it with your own keywords and description: Make sure that your blog has plenty of keywords and use lots of headlines containing key phrases, repeating them throughout the blog. Above all though, make sure that your blog has plenty of text. It might be fun to stuff your pages with pictures of friends, family and pets but Google can’t read them and you’ll end up with public service ads instead of revenue.

Old Content
Blogs have to be written all the time, but if you’ve ever written anything in the past, don’t just let it gather dust on your shelf. Give your old work a new lease of life by throwing it onto the Web!
For example, “Low Fat Linux” by Bob Rankin was written years ago. You may be able to find it on Amazon.com, but it’s not likely that many people are buying it because you can read the entire book for free at www.lowfatlinux.com. Bob’s content has done its job of selling copies. Now it’s doing a second job, selling clicks to ads. What have you got lying around that could be earning you money?
You might have an ebook of your own that isn’t selling very well. Instead of attempting to sell your ebook for $19.95, why not turn it into web pages and make it available for free for all to enjoy? Paste your AdSense code on the pages and you may make more from the ads than from sales of your ebook. Repurposing old content is a fantastic way to draw water from your own well. I did this with a book that I’d written about online dating. The home page contains a list of chapter headings with a skyscraper ad on the left and a Google search box beneath it. There’s also a banner on the top, which I expect people largely to ignore. That ad does however make the ad unit look less commercial and the text ads match the list of chapter headings (although I used red for the links to match the color scheme of the page).
Note that this is a professional-looking website. That’s important. The fact that you’re using old content is no excuse for using an old design. You still have to make the page look good and pick up high-quality traffic if you want to get the clicks and the revenues. On the internal pages, I’ve pushed the ads a little harder. Above the fold, there’s no real content except for ads. To stop people from scrolling away immediately though, I’ve used a nice big picture. I know that users will stop to look at that image. They’ll then look at the ads and only after they’ve done that will they scroll down to read the page. I’ve also put a long list of links on the left under the skyscraper to help the ads blend in and placed a third unit at the bottom of the page next to the free download.
And the best thing about this strategy is that I’ve got so many pages of content to use. Each page is a separate chance to capture more clicks. I could even spin off the content on those pages and market them as individual articles or websites.

Volunteer Writers
To use old content, you have to have content in the first place. If you don’t happen to have any out-of-print books that you’ve written lying around — and you don’t feel like writing something new — another option is to ask people to write for your site for free. Lots of people like writing. Just look at Amazon. They didn’t pay a penny for all those book reviews. Their users write them for free and Amazon benefits.
When I started www.WorldVillage.com, I didn’t have money to pay the people who reviewed software for me. Instead, I contacted the game companies and received complimentary copies of their computer games, which I then forwarded to a staff of volunteer writers. The agreement was that they would provide me with a written review of the game and they would keep the game as payment. I’ve got dozens of game reviews that bring users to my site and get them clicking on my ads. I didn’t pay a penny for them but years later they continue to generate revenue for me.
You don’t have to use reviews though. Whatever the subject of your website, you can add a line asking people to send in their thoughts and comments.
You can just say something like: “We want YOU! We want your thoughts, articles and comments. Send your submissions to editor@yoursite.com and we’ll post them here.” You can then create a whole new set of pages for your users’ submissions and put AdSense on each one of them.

Build Thousands of Pages with Other People’s Content
What is the focus of your web site? Is it all about parenting? Do you help people with their finances? Does your newsletter introduce people to new web sites? Or is your focus on the legal field? Regardless of your niche, you can benefit from taking advantage of one of the little-known secrets of AdSense experts… FREE syndicated articles. Many writers want nothing more than to have their work published and read. Syndicated content is a dream-come-true for writers AND publishers. For the writer, it exposes their work to a larger audience. And for the publisher (that’s you!), it means more quality content for your site. You might not be aware that there are literally THOUSANDS of articles available online which you can easily add to your web site! Of course, the trick is knowing where to find these articles. Below is a list that can get you started by showing you where you can find over 30,000 articles that are ready to be placed on your own web site.
Please note that each site has its own restrictions and rules for using its content. In all cases, you must leave the author’s name and web site link intact. Some sites require that you also link back to the site where you found the article. This is critical! Remember that while you are allowed to use the articles on your pages, the content is still property of the author. Please give credit where credit is due! You may wish to publish articles only relevant to your topic, or you may wish to become a publishing powerhouse, adding thousands of new pages to your site. Regardless of how you wish to approach it, here are a few sites that provide you with thousands of FREE articles that you can republish on your web sites. EzineArticles.com
http://www.ezinearticles.com A fantastic resources featuring over 21,000 articles covering a huge range of topics. However, they do have a limit of 25 articles/year for each site. Look through the categories and you can select some gems. DotComWomen.com
http://www.dotcomwomen.com/free-content.shtml Nice selection of articles targeting women. John Watson
http://members.tripod.com/buckcreek John offers his stories for site owners to enjoy and place on their sites. ValuableContent.com
http://www.valuablecontent.com/ The site name delivers as promises. Dozens of categories with hundreds of articles for you to publish. Marketing, business, humor, internet, legal, computing, sports, travel and many more. Patricia Fripp
http://www.fripp.com/articleslist.html Patricia Fripp is a businesswoman, marketer and motivational speaker. Her site offers over one hundred articles perfect for any business-oriented site. ArticleCity.com
http://www.articlecity.com This one is a source of articles that will keep you busy for weeks on end. ArticleCity offers over 12,000 articles that you can place on your site. If the topic exists, you can bet that this site will have an article on that topic. I recommend spending a great deal of time selecting articles for your site
here.

Want to find more? Simply do a Google search for "free articles" and see what turns up. Fine tune your search for your topic to find articles relevant to your site, such as “free parenting articles” or “free financial articles”. Now that you know where to find free content, you can build hundreds or thousands of keyword relevant pages and place your AdSense code on them to generate more revenue.

Add Public Domain Works To Your Site

One of the best kept secrets of free content comes in the form of Public Domain works. Basically, these are books, articles, recordings and pictures whose copyrights have expired. Since they have not been re-registered with a copyright, they enter the public domain. What does that mean? It means ANYONE (including you) can publish, re-publish and/or sell the works without paying a commission to anyone! Think about this. You can build a site with HUNDREDS of pages just by publishing one public domain book on your site! Think of all the AdSense impressions you can deliver. The possibilities are endless. I have two sources that you will want to investigate to find Public Domain works that you can begin using immediately
Idea #1 — Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg is the oldest producer of free electronic books on the Internet. Their collection of more than 15,000 eBooks was produced by hundreds of volunteers. As of this writing, the top 10 most popular works on Project Gutenberg are:
● Manual of Surgery by Alexander Miles and Alexis Thomson
● Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life by E. A. Wallis Budge
● Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period by Paul Lacroix
● Kamasutra by Vatsyayana
● Searchlights on Health by B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
● Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 01 by Elbert Hubbard
● Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases by Grenville Kleiser
● Great Britain and Her Queen by Annie E. Keeling
● Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
● The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci — Complete by Leonardo da Vinci
Check out their entire library at www.gutenberg.org/ Please note that while you may republish these works on your site, you are not allowed to resell the works themselves. The downside of using works from Project Gutenberg is that hundreds of other people may already be using them. You might opt for less popular works in order to get better search engine placement.
Idea #2 – Public Domain Riches Very few people have mastered the art of turning public domain works to cash like Yanik Silver. Yanik has made a ton of money with public domain and his course shows you how you can do the same. From Yanik’s web page, here is what you will learn in Public Domain Riches… * The best places online (and off) to actually find public domain works. (I'll hand you over my best resources on a silver platter.) * How to find a slew of public domain works in 3 minutes or less on just about any subject you want with just one click! * How to determine exactly if a work is in the public domain. (Especially where to research if a work from 1923-1963 is really in the public domain. Remember, this is where the real bonanza of recent material can be found - but this can also be a dangerous "gray area" for many works if you're not careful). * How to tap into the vast repositories of government publications. Yes, Uncle Sam publishes more content than anyone else and much of it is - can I hear the magic word again? - FREE! * What to do if someone challenges your public domain claim.
* How to wade through the deliberately misleading copyright notices on many works that should really be public domain. (But on the flipside - you'll want to know how to look threatening so any "Two-bit Johnny" won't rip off the material you found in the public domain.) * The 7 different ways to profitably use public domain info. * How to quickly and easily put public domain works into a "saleable" format. * The secret to modifying public domain works so they are exclusively yours alone and then selling them for hundreds of dollars!
Yanik knows public domain, so you might want to check out Public Domain Riches.

AdSense In RSS Feeds
One of the biggest changes to take place on the Internet recently has been the growth of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds. These let subscribers see when a site has been updated and sends them information instead of waiting for them to come to the site to see it for themselves. The good news is that Google is starting to put AdSense ads in RSS feeds. The system is new and Google is still testing it as I’m writing this book but if you’ve got an RSS feed on your site (or want to set one up) and you’ve got more than a hundred subscribers, your site can join their team of Beta testers.
There seems to be little room for tweaking the ads, although it’s a safe bet that the same principle of blending the ads into the page would apply as much here as on a Web page. At the moment though, the ads only appear after the content, at the bottom of the URL. You can apply for the program at http://services.google.com/ads_inquiry/aff
Alternatively, if you don’t want to be a Google guinea pig, Kanoodle is ahead of them. You can use their program at www.kanoodle.com/about/brightads.cool.

AdSense On Mobile Phones

RSS could prove to be a powerful revenue source for AdSense publishers. It can certainly be a good way to inform users that you’ve got new content and bring them back in to view it.
I’m not sure about AdSense on mobile phones.
AdSense started allowing publishers to place one ad unit on mobile Web pages in September 2007. You can select the colors, specify the kind of code your mobile page uses (“wml (WAP 1.x)”, “xhtml (WAP 2.0)”, or “chtml”), and choose ad units with one or two text-link ads (although the double unit can only appear at the bottom of the page.)
It’s currently available in thirteen countries, including US, England, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Ireland, Russia, Netherlands, Australia, India, China, and Japan. It sounds like a good idea, but AdSense for mobile has its challenges. Phones have not shown themselves to be good ways to surf the Web. The screens are tiny, the downloads are slow and it’s very expensive. Most people are prepared to wait until they get home or to the office to look at a website, rather than do it on their mobiles. There are exceptions though. Surfing on phones is fairly popular outside America (especially in Japan). In the United States, it might be used for information that changes quickly such as sports news or finance. If you have a site on either of those topics or which is popular in Asia, you might want to create a page that will work on a mobile, offer breaking news and place an ad on it to see how much it earns. My feeling is that it won’t be worth the effort but it’s still early to say for sure. Much depends on what happens in the mobile phone market. If phone companies copy the iPhone and offer built-in wi-fi, then publishers won’t need to build special pages for mobiles. Doing so would be a waste of time — and if you have to pay programmers, a waste of money too.
On the other hand, if Google’s phone software makes mobile browsing more popular then the market could become large enough to make building special mobile sites worthwhile. Although you’d still want to be sure that Google’s mobile ads do better than AdMob’s, a rival service. At the moment, reports are mixed, suggesting that results depend on the content. In general then, my feeling is that if you currently have a mobile website, AdSense for mobiles might a pretty useful addition although you’d want to test it against AdMob. Optimize the ads as much as you can and put them on the sort of content people on the move are likely to need. If you don’t have a mobile site though — or a Japanese audience or breaking news — you might want to wait before looking for a programmer to help you with the coding.

Google’s Video Content
The future of the Internet on mobile phones might be a little unclear. The future of video on the Internet seems to have been settled. Users love it. They watch television on YouTube and they’ve become used to seeing videos on blogs and websites. Even Oprah has now launched her own YouTube channel. That’s both a challenge and an opportunity for publishers. It’s a challenge because creating original video content can appear difficult and look expensive. Actually, it doesn’t have to be either, although at the very least, you will need a digital camera. And after putting together “The Next Internet Millionaire,” I can tell you it’s also a lot of fun! But video is also an opportunity because you don’t need original content. There are tons of clips available on the Web that you can place on your own site and earn from the ads on your page and embedded ads in the video itself. Two of the best places to find videos like these are Revver and Google itself. Revver doesn’t have as big an inventory as YouTube, but it does share ad revenue. The site embeds an ad into the video, lets publishers place the clip on their own site and gives them 20 percent of the income. That might not sound like much, but don’t forget, you’re getting the content for free and you can still put AdSense units around it. The alternative is to use Google’s video content... which is drawn from YouTube. The videos come with companion ads placed above the screen, which can be either text or image-based, and overlay ads which appear at the bottom of the screen. Both can pay by impression or by click. Interestingly, the overlay ad changes as the film progresses and users can even choose to move back and forward through the ads. They can also choose to close the overlay, which might not be so good. You can only place one video unit on a page but you can change the surrounding color to blend the unit into your site, choose from three different sizes and select content by category, creator or receive it automatically targeted to keywords you supply.
Have you noticed what’s missing? That’s right, at the moment, you can’t choose individual clips yourself. That’s a huge hole in the plan and there have been complaints that Google has been serving automated video that isn’t very relevant. If you’d like to give it a try, click the AdSense Setup tab and choose the video units link. You’ll have to link your AdSense account with a YouTube account — you’ll only have to do that once — and you’ll then be free to create your AdSense player, choose content and paste the code onto your page. You won’t even need to host the video on your own site. I think these video units can be a great way to enhance the content on any website. They’re very simple to use, offer additional revenue streams — and give you one less content post that you have to create yourself. Much though will depend on the sort of creators available in your content field or the clips that Google decides to give you. Test to see whether Revver or Google gives you the most revenue — I suspect that it will depend on the content of the video, so make a point of searching both for good clips — then get into the habit of offering films about once a week.

Use Your Newsletter To Drive Traffic!
Newsletters are fantastic tools to drive repeat visitors to your pages! Here's one way to use them: Instead of mailing the entire newsletter, save a few juicy tid-bits for your website and provide a link for your visitors to click.
When subscribers click-through to get the full story, they're likely to click your ads. And send you another AdSense bonanza! For example, Prizepot (www.prizepot.com) is a contest and sweepstakes site with a new item each day. Their free weekly newsletter is sent with a teaser for all the new items posted that week. In order to find the entry form, you must click the link in the newsletter. Of course, when you arrive at the destination page, not only do you receive information about the contest, but you are greeted by AdSense ads. For a sample newsletter, send an email to join-prizepot@lists.worldvillage.com.
And if that isn’t a good enough reason to start producing a newsletter, it looks as though Google are also testing AdSense in the newsletters themselves. They’ve already been doing it for iVillage.com and there’s a good chance they’ll be extending it to other users soon.
You can either create a newsletter yourself — and mail it using a mass mailing system like Intellicontact.com — or you can ask someone to write it for you. ConstantConversions.com (www.constantconversions.com) is a copywriting service that specializes in newsletter writing. You can tell them about your site and they’ll do it all for you, from concept to inbox. You can even tell them you want it optimized for AdSense. They’ll know what to do.
To start your own email newsletter and auto-responder for your site, I highly recommend Aweber.com. With Aweber, you can build unlimited lists with unlimited autoresponders. That means you can have your list set up to automatically send email to certain groups at predetermined times. Along with their email broadcast services, Aweber is my first choice for many of my lists.

Using Multiple Ad Blocks

Using Multiple Ad Blocks


Google lets you place more than one ad unit on each page of your Web site. In fact, you can place: 3 ad units 3 link units 3 referral units 2 AdSense for search boxes What does this mean for web publishers? A real bonanza: you now have many more chances to hook readers with new ads as Google will show unique ads in each ad unit! With multiple ad blocks, you can also decide which ads are served in the best places for your site.
10.1 How Many Ads Is Too Many?
In general, I recommend that you put as many AdSense units on your page as possible. The more choices you give your users, the more likely they are to click. The only caveat to this is ad-blindness. Put lots of ads on your site and users are just going to ignore them. And when they ignore one unit, they’re likely to ignore them all.

This can be more of a problem for small Web pages than for larger pages such as those on blogs. On a short page, all those different ads can quickly outweigh the content; on a long page, you can scatter them about so that they’re less likely to get in the way of a user’s reading. One great solution is to have a long home page with lots of ads but which contains only the headlines and the first paragraph or so from each article. To read more, the user has to click to a page with just that one article. That page would have fewer units. But because those units would be influenced by just one article, the ads would be better targeted.

What To Do With Three Ad Units
The actual number of ads that you’ll choose will depend on the design of your site. But considering the range of different formats, you should find it pretty easy to squeeze in at least two ad units and usually three. Most sites for example, have room for a leaderboard (although you should also experiment with a link unit to see which of the two in that position gives you the best results). It’s also not too difficult to insert a rectangular unit into an article. You can do that with just about any article. That’s two units already. The final unit, a button or vertical banner, could do very well in a sidebar. Most people choose to keep the ads far apart, but you can also have some pretty dramatic effects by putting your ad units together. This isn’t a strategy that’s going to work for everyone, but creating a zone — at the top of your page maybe or between blog entries — can really make those ads look like content. After all, users are used to seeing ads in single blocks. When they see a whole section of the page given over to ads, there’s a good chance they’ll assume it’s content and give it some extra attention.

Where To Put The Search Boxes
The search boxes are usually easier. Probably the most popular place for these is one of the top corners or in the side bar. You could try putting the second one at the bottom of the page if you want to give users somewhere to go when they’ve finished reading, but to be frank, I doubt if you’ll make any more money with a search box down there than you would from the one at the top. They’re a good way to capture revenue from users who don’t click on the ads and are about to leave, but I don’t think that putting two search boxes on a page is going to give you more income than one. It’s possible and you can try it. But I wouldn’t expect any massive results.

Google Is Generous With The Link Units

Two search boxes might not make much of a difference, but I think that three link units might. They’re small enough to squeeze into all sorts of spots and they look so good at the top and bottom of a list of links that you could probably have fun with three of them. You do want to be careful about not overloading your page with so many ads that users stop seeing them, so if you don’t have space for all three use just one or two. And because link units look very different to ad units, I don’t think you have to worry too much about them competing for clicks — and ending up with nothing. They go very well with other ad units.

Put Referral Ads Near The Recommendation
Referrals work will in all sorts of places. The old Google product referral buttons were most eye-catching when kept together. The new product referrals can work in sidebars but you’ll probably get the best result when you put them close to a recommendation in the text.
Putting It All Together
Experimentation and close tracking is the only real way to know for your site but you have to start somewhere. I’ve put three suggested starting points below. These aren’t meant to be final versions that will yield you the greatest income. They’re just meant to get you started quickly. You can then try swapping the locations of different units and see how those changes affect your CTR.

Putting Multiple Ads In Articles





On a Web page that features just one article, you could place a leaderboard beneath the navigation bar, a rectangular ad unit embedded at the beginning of the article and a link unit in a list of links in the left-hand sidebar. On the right, you could place a search box, another link list (perhaps to archives, RSS content or news) followed by a link unit, and you could put a referral ad inside the text either as an image ad or a text link. You could also try a second search box at the bottom of the page. Possible alternatives to try:
• Swapping the leaderboard or the second search box for a link unit;
• Replacing the link unit on the left with a vertical banner;
• Placing a half-banner at the end of the article instead of the second search box;
• Moving the link unit on the left to the top of the sidebar;
• Using a skyscraper on the right instead of a link unit;
• Or just taking out some of the ads to see if that brings in more clicks.

Putting Multiple Ads In Blogs


The best places to put ads on a blog is between the blog entries. Link units would probably be ideal here... but you’ve only got one of them. Instead, you could start with a half-banner or even a full banner and use a link unit in between two of the blog entries. A search button can be placed at the top of a sidebar on the right with a skyscraper blended into the second of two lists of links, and a second link unit between them. Again the referral unit can be placed inside one of the blog posts if the teaser is long enough. Possible alternatives to try:
• Swapping the link unit for another ad unit and using a link unit in place of the skyscraper;
• Using banners instead of half-banners;
• Embedding a rectangular ad unit into the text of the blog;
• Placing ad units next to photos in the blogs;
• Putting a referral ad in the sidebar;
• Adding an extra search box to the bottom of the right-hand sidebar.

Putting Multiple Ads In Merchant Sites

There are really two approaches you can take to using AdSense on merchant sites. The first is simply to treat them in the same way as blogs: put a link at the end of each section of advertising copy and place a banner or half banner beneath it. That ad unit should blend into the text above and below. You can use a skyscraper on the edge of the screen, a link unit beneath a list of navigation links, a search box at the top of the page and referral ads on the side. Alternatively, you could use graphic referral ads as images and write text about the products. That would give you an instant online store!
In the sample layout above, I’ve placed a large rectangular ad unit directly beneath a featured product. The feature would create the most attention and users would have read past it to reach the rest of the page. Whenever you’re using AdSense on merchant sites though do keep a close eye on the ads you’re serving; you don’t want to advertise your competitors! Possible alternatives to try:
• Using a text link instead one of the ad units between the marketing copy;
• Placing a large picture of a product on a page... and an ad unit right next to it;
• Using banners instead of half-banners;
• Placing a leaderboard either at the top of the page or at the bottom;
• Separating each piece of marketing copy with a large square unit.
And if you’re worried you’ve put in too many ad units... just take one out and see if your CTR changes.

Ordering Your Ads
These strategies make for useful default placements. But there’s one more factor that you should consider when you’re planning your ads: the way that Google distributes ads to multiple units on a page. The first ad unit to appear on a Web page always shows the ads that placed the highest bids. In other words, the higher an ad appears on a page, the more that ad is worth. Because ads that are above the fold tend to get more clicks than those lower down the page, you won’t usually have to do a thing to make sure that the ads that receive the most clicks are those that pay the most. If your Channels do show you that an ad unit at the bottom of the page is picking up more clicks than ad unit at the top of the page though, you might want try moving that unit to a higher position. Frankly, I doubt that’s going to happen very often. A bigger problem is if you’ve placed your ad units inside DIV tags, tables or other positioning codes. As far as AdSense is concerned, the first ad unit is the first one the robot comes across in the HTML code, even if that HTML code places the unit at the bottom of the page.
When you place multiple ad units on a Web page then, it’s important to make sure that the AdSense codes appear in your HTML in the same order that they appear on your Web page. That should ensure that the ad units with the highest clickthrough rates are always the ones with the highest value ads.

Google’s Referral Programs

Google’s Referral Programs

Fig. 9.1 Google’s Referrals let you add another revenue stream to your Web page. One of the biggest changes that Google has made to the AdSense program since the last edition of this book came out is in its referral programs. Initially, these were pretty poor. The products were Firefox, Picasa, Google Pack — a collection of different programs — and the AdSense program itself. If you had users that included publishers interested in signing up for AdSense then you might be able to make some money. (The AdSense referral pays $5 for a publisher who makes the same amount within 180 days, another $250 if the publisher makes $100 and a very nice $2,000 bonus if you refer 25 of these kinds of users). Most publishers though, don’t write content for other publishers. They were left hoping to earn a dollar a download for Firefox. Most found it more cost-effective to use that spot on their page for something else. It turned out that those early referral products were just filling space.
Today, Google offers referral products in more than 26 categories, from animals to travel. Those products come in every format you can imagine and pay different amounts for different actions. It’s a whole other way of making money on your website

What Are Referrals And How Do They Differ From AdSense?
The biggest difference between AdSense units and referral ads is why you’re being paid. Most AdSense ads pay for each click they receive. Some pay each thousand times they’re shown. Referral ads pay on a cost-per-action basis, or CPA for short. It’s not enough to get a click on an ad to earn income. The user has to do something when he reaches the advertiser’s site. That might be downloading a program, leaving an email address or even making a purchase. It’s very similar to an affiliate system in which you’re paid a percentage of a sales price for a product. The only difference is that payable actions aren’t limited to buying. Clearly, whatever the action the advertiser demands, it’s going to lower your success rate in comparison to your AdSense units. If 5 percent of your users click a referral ad and only 5 percent of those users take the action the advertiser wants, then you might generate only a few of these actions each month. Higher payment rates should make up for the lower conversions. We’ve already seen that the AdSense referral program can pay out $5 quite easily once you get the referral, but the payouts available on other referral products can be much, much higher than that. Although most seem to fall between $10-$15, it’s not hard to find referral products that pay more than $50 for each user that takes action.

Fig. 9.2 J.G. Wentworth pays almost $77 for users who complete a form. That already makes them attractive. But referral ads are attractive for another reason...
You should be building multiple revenue streams by placing different kinds of ads on the same page.
Ideally, each Web page should use at least three different types of payment system. Those could be cost-per-click ads, cost-per-mille ads and cost-per-action ads. That would help to ensure that you get something out of all your users. A few users will take action on the referral ads and generate the most money per click for you. Some will click your AdSense ads and generate larger numbers of small payments for you. And your CPM ads will make sure that you get paid even if your users do nothing but look at your content and leave.

Signing Up For Google’s Referral Program
Putting referral ads on your site is very simple. Just click the Referrals link on the AdSense Setup tab and search for an ad by product, keyword or by category. Search by product and you’ll be able to pick exactly the ad you want. Search by keyword and Google will choose the ad for you, giving you what it thinks is the best performing ad to match the keywords you choose. You can enter up to ten keywords.
Search by category and Google will choose the best-performing ads within that category. You’ll also need to select your ad format — the formats available vary from product to product — and create a channel so that you can track the ad’s performance. Finally, place the ad (the category or the keyword) in your “Shopping Cart” and past the code. Start the process by deciding where you want the ad to go. It might take a bit of experimentation to find out which really is the best spot on the page — you’ll have learn whether that location will perform better with a referral ad or an AdSense unit — but you’ll have to put it somewhere. In general, you’ll probably find that it pays to keep the ad as close to the text as possible but the only way to find out which is actually the best setup for your Web page is to try different combinations and follow the results. If you find that over a week, an AdSense unit earns more income embedded in your text than a referral unit, try using a different referral unit to see if the problem is the product rather than the placement. And if the AdSense unit still performs best, move the referral unit somewhere else. One good option is to use a square or rectangular AdSense unit at the start of an article and place a smaller referral unit lower down as though it were illustrating the text. You can put up to three referral units on a single page but if your page isn’t very long, you might be better off sticking with one unit and optimizing it properly (I’ll explain how to do that below). You want your referral ads to be closely tied to your content and you don’t want them to compete with each other.

Choosing Your Referral Adsense

Fig. 9.3 So many choices, so many ways to make money... Obviously where you put your ads will be important. But choosing what you advertise will be even more important. One option is to go for the highest paying ads, put them on your site and hope. You’ll probably be hoping a lot and earning little. Unless your referral ads are closely linked to the content on your page, you’re not likely to get many clicks, let alone many conversions. It might be tempting to put J.G. Wentworth’s $76.92 ad on your site, for example, but unless you have the sort of users who are likely to want structured settlements, you’ll just be wasting valuable space on your page. It might also be tempting to choose keywords or categories and let Google do the thinking for you. It does a pretty good job with the ads in AdSense units, so why shouldn’t it do a good job with the ads in Referral units too? Google even gives you a checkbox marked “Pick Best Performing Ads” that overrules your choice and places what it thinks is the best ad for your site.
(Actually, that box does something else too: it automatically serves up a different ad if your chosen advertiser ends his campaign. Leave the box unchecked and you’ll be left with a empty space. The best solution is to pick a big company with a big budget and keep a close eye on your referral ads.) There are a couple of reasons why you should be choosing Referral ads yourself, by product, and not leaving it to Google.
The first is that the referral inventory is smaller than the AdSense inventory. That means there’s a much better chance that Google will get it wrong and give you something that’s close but not close enough. It also means that there aren’t so many ads available that you can’t browse them yourself and make your own decision. The choice you make should be a compromise between the price you can earn for the action and the closeness of the ad to your own content. That’s going to be a calculated risk at first, followed by experimentation to make sure you’ve made the right decision. The other reason you should be picking your own individual ads yourself is that you can recommend the products in your referral units. That’s an important difference in comparison to AdSense units and it’s a crucial element in optimizing your ads to get maximum conversions.

Getting The Most Out Of Your Referral Ads
Like AdSense units, referral units need to be optimized. The same principles don’t necessarily apply. The fact that you can recommend the products in your referral ads changes everything. You can recommend them because advertisers aren’t paying for the click. They’re only paying for the action. If a user reaches their site and does nothing, it’s cost them nothing. They don’t risk anything then, by having you send them users if those users turn out not to be interested. Recommending products that you advertise is the number one most effective way of rocketing any ad clickthroughs. You’re only allowed to do it for CPA ads such as referral ads and affiliate ads. Once you’ve chosen your ad then, try to mention the product in your text. Ideally, you’ll choose a product that you’ve actually used and enjoyed. That will make the recommendation personal — and that’s the best kind. Your readers trust you, so they’ll trust your judgment.
If you haven’t used the product though, try to find a website or a blog that gives it a good review and mention that someone else has said these people have done a great job. That’ s not as powerful as saying that you’ve tried it and loved it yourself but it’s better than nothing. It’s certainly better than abusing your readers’ trust by talking up something that you haven’t used and which might be poor. But here’s the thing... Once you’ve mentioned a product, people are going to look for it. Even if they see a banner and know it’s an ad, there’s still a good chance that they’ll click because you’ll have made them curious. That affects the format you choose. The range of formats available for each ad varies. But try to choose either a text link that you can slip right into your article, or a graphic ad that will attract ads. Usually, I don’t recommend graphic ads. But if you’re recommending a product — and if you keep the image close to the recommendation — it will more look like an illustration than an ad.

Creating Content For Referral Adsense
I’ve said that you should choose ads that match your content as closely as possible. I’ve also said that you should be recommending the ads in your referral units. The easiest way to do both those things is to write a post, choose a referral ad that’s related to the post and add a sentence or two mentioning the product. That’s very simple.An alternative approach is to choose an ad that matches the content of your site, then write a post that matches the product. The page can’t read like an ad. It has to be the same quality as all your other content otherwise users won’t read it and they won’t click the ads. The post would just find a reason to say something positive about the referral product. It’s a very easy way to create a revenue-generating Web page. In practice, you’re not going to be able to do this too often. You’ll probably find that there’s a limited number of ads that match your site. But even two or three pages like this on, easily reached and well-marketed, could give you some very nice extra income.

BEYOND BASIC ADSENSE

Catch Fickle Visitors With The Google Search Box

Finding Money With Search

What happens when your visitors can't find what they want on your website? They might be bored, probably they're hungry for more or they might want to refine their search. If you have a Google Search Box, you can now retain these 'quitters' — and make money from ads they click from their search results! The Google Search Box isn't just an added convenience for your visitors — it can actually make you money! When your users enter a search term, you’ll receive a commission for any ad they click on the results page. If your AdSense ads are being ignored then, add a link at the bottom of the AdSense ads, inviting visitors to try Google search. A simple note should do the trick. Try something like: "Can't find what you're looking for? Try Google Search!" A Google Search box allows your visitors to specify their exact search terms, thereby "pulling" more relevant ads to your page. Using the Search feature, you can pull up on-demand AdSense ads at the top of the search results.
At the bottom of the Google text ads, place a link to the Google Search bar, inviting readers to Search for better-targeted content and offers. When visitors click an ad, YOU get paid! You can invite users to search within the website or the entire web. As far as possible, use a staid gray button for the Google search feature. It looks more believable — and legitimate! Note that Google has not played around with its own search buttons, although the logo itself has undergone many theme-based transformations.

Fig 8.1 The "Search" feature is an important part of content-rich websites. On my website above, users are invited to search different threads within the website 'by keyword' and 'by username' creating a good potential to merge in a Google search box. Google Search Boxes are getting increasingly popular with Internet Forums, enabling users to pull up relevant text ads "on demand"!
Learn How To Add Google Search To Your Web Page
Adding Google Search to your Web page is very easy. This Step-by-Step Tutorial shows you how: How to… Add Google "AdSense for Search" to your Web Page!

Showing Your Results On Your Site
One of the decisions you’ll have to make when you put an AdSense search box on your site is where to bring up the results page. You have three choices:
● On a Google page in the same window;
● On a Google page in a new window;
● On a page on your website.
Clearly, the last option is the best. You’ll be given two codes: one for the search box and one for the results. You’ll need to paste the search box code in the appropriate location on your Web page. The search results code goes on a page that you’ll have to create specially to hold the results. Not only will you be able to offer your users a search option and earn from the ads that appear on that page, you’ll also be able to show your own internal links and AdSense ads to keep them on your site.
Flavoring Your Search Results
Another easy decision is whether or not to “site-flavor” your search. This is a real no-brainer. Site-flavoring lets Google figure out what your site is about so that searches made from it are better targeted. So if you have a site about music, someone tossing “bass” into your search box is more likely to get results about guitars than singing fish. That’s an option you’ll definitely want to switch on!

To Search Or Not To Search
Putting a Google search box on your site brings advantages and disadvantages. The big plus is that all the ads the user sees are going to be relevant. The user chooses the keyword so the results are going to be right in line with what the user wants. On the other hand, that means you’ve got no control over the keywords they choose so you can’t try to promote high-paying keywords. You have to take what you’re given. You could have a high click-through rate but low revenues (although there’s still no guarantee that the user will click on an ad rather than an unpaid listing on the search results page.) But your users will leave your site at some point anyway. Why shouldn’t you try to make money when they do click away? Even if Search doesn’t bring you huge amounts of money, you should still use it as an added revenue source and to bring extra functionality to your users. I look at it this way. If a visitor doesn’t find what they want on my site, I’d prefer that they leave some change in the “tip jar” on the way out the door!
Home Page Searching
One way to increase your revenues from searching is to encourage your users to use your site as their home page. Many users have Google as their home page. If you’re offering the same service as Google, using their search box and delivering their results, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be searching from your page — and giving you revenue from the ads.
Just encourage your users, especially users with Google as their home page, to switch to you, and you’ll be able to make the most of your search function and your ads.
Customizing Your Search
Google lets you customize the search box to match your site in the same way that you can customize your ad units. But a different principle applies here that applies to your ads: you want your search box to look like a search box. You can certainly make the box look like part of your site so that it looks attractive but as I said, keep the button grey. People trust Google to deliver results that they want. If the search box reminds them of Google, they’re more likely to use it than go to Google.com and search from there.
Google’s Custom Search Engine
One of the things I love most about Google is that they’re always improving their services and coming up with new ways of earning money through websites. I’ve never been very enthusiastic about Google’s Search boxes. I’ve always seen them more of an added functionality for my users than a way of earning extra revenue. Google’s Custom Search Engines though change all that. These let you limit the scope of a user’s search to sites that you’ve selected. What’s the advantage of that? Enter any keyword into a Google and only a fraction of the results are going to be relevant. Google might be a very powerful search engine, but to get the information you need, you’ll still have to filter out the sites with poor content, little information and ads instead of text. A custom search engine lets you do that for your users so that they don’t have to do it themselves. Not only will they then be more likely to leave your site through your search box, they might even come back to your site every time they want to search for information on your topic.
Building your own search engine is very simple. You can start here: http://google.com/coop/cse/. You can even format your search results page
to match the look of your website and invite your readers to submit the sites that they like to make your own filtering easier. Finally, place the line: “Didn’t find what you’re looking for? Search the [your subject] sites that we recommend” next to your search box, and guide your users to the tip box at your site’s exit.