How To Make AdSense Work With Internet Communities And Commercial Sites

Maximize your AdSense Revenue from Internet Forums, Message Boards and Discussion Groups! Earlier in this book, I mentioned making revenue from blogs. But blogs certainly aren’t the only types of content online or the only types that can use AdSense. In an active Internet Community, users generate most of the content.
You cannot completely control the keywords or the topics, which means AdSense might spring some surprises with the ads that show up. (Just have some Alternate Ads handy, in case AdSense pulls up a series of non-paying public service ads.) Unlike passive surfers who like to explore your website for relevant information, forum members are very focused on their messages and the responses they attract.
Many publishers that play host to Internet Communities complain of negligible CTRs, scattered keywords (low content relevance) and low cost per click. What they don't realize is that Internet Communities are a hidden gold-mine which inspire fanatical loyalty, repeat visits, unique content and a high level of user involvement with the content. Mega-brands such as Apple and Harley Davidson were built on the same foundation — a deep sense of personal bonding, high involvement with the product and strong referrals. You can achieve the same result with your website! While all Internet Communities are not the same, they do have the same key strengths. You just need to recognize them and find new ways to cash in on them — as some savvy web publishers are doing already!

Google’s Forum Heat Map
Just as Google produced a heat map for standard websites, they’ve done the exact same thing for forums. You can find that map, together with their suggestions at http://adsense.blogspot.com/2005/10/six-adsense-optimization-tips-for.html. On the whole, Google’s tips are quite sensible. They recommend that a skyscraper on the left is a good idea and that horizontal ads should be placed beneath each forum entry. They also suggest putting a leaderboard at the bottom of the page, but before the footer, and opting in to take image ads.



I’m not sure about all of those suggestions though. Here’s why:
• Forum Members are very focused on their topic of discussion. Ads that appear on the top, bottom or side margins of the page may not distract them from their main objective — which is to read and write the posts!
• The best way to capture their attention is to put your ads at the end of the top posting on each page. Posts that appear on top are read more often, and usually set the tone for the rest of the discussion. Many web publishers swear by Google's 728x90 leaderboard ad with two ads trailing top-of-the-page posts.
• What gets the most clicks in any forum? The forum buttons of course! Put your ads close to these useful buttons, sought out by users to search threads, create a new thread or post a reply. Check out this example:

There are two kinds of ad units on this forum page at DealofDay.com. First, I’ve placed a leaderboard immediately beneath the navigation bar. It’s impossible to miss there. Users have to look at the navigation bar and when they do, they’ll see the ads. But just look at the second ad unit. Can you see it? It’s a horizontal link unit embedded in a space usually used to describe the thread.
I’ve even managed to make the “Ads by Google” line — which is usually a click-killer — match my thread titles. And because the ads are so relevant, there’s a great chance they’ll generate clicks. Even better, users on forums are used to clicking several time to get the content they need. They’ll click on the general title of the forum thread, then the entries and the user profiles and so on. That means that when they click on a link unit, there’s a very good chance that they’ll also click on the ads that turn up. So that’s two great ways to use ads on a forum: by placing them beneath the navigation bar; and by embedding them in the thread table. There’s another method though and it’s so easy you’ll be amazed that everyone isn’t doing it...
Without ever asking users to click, the heading "Deal of Day" turns the Google Ads into a recommended resource for finding the day's top deals. Impressive forum stats, such as the number of members, threads and posts appear alongside the ads, making them look more legitimate. The sheer number of users creates a sense of urgency to check them out before other members get their hands on the coveted deals!
• Make sure you apply the same text formatting as the user-generated content. It's important to gain your users' attention first — then pitch your message when they're all ears!
• Try putting the ads at the bottom of each post. If users spot the pattern and your click-throughs start to drop, try putting the ads at the bottom of every alternate post. The key is to keep them guessing!
• Don't break up a post by putting ads in the middle. Since forums have user-generated content, people are more sensitive to these intrusions and might be offended if you make it seem as if the ads are their personal recommendations.
• Don't lump a bunch of ads together in the middle of the page. It works well with 'passive' visitors, but your forum members will read right around them!
• Allow users to pull up targeted ads with a Google Search Box! How often has a forum posting piqued your interest enough to launch a Google search? Once? Twice? All the time? If you're anything like me, the Google Search Box is an added convenience, welcomed by most users. It makes your visitors stay! And if they click an ad from the results page, you make money!
Which of these strategies will work for your Forums? Only time can tell — but don't forget to track your results with Google's FREE AdSense Channels. There are publishers who have made a fortune with their community pages. It doesn't take rocket science. But a little persistence goes a long way!

Strategies To Benefit From Smart Pricing

Strategies To Benefit From Smart Pricing

The challenge for publishers trying to keep their ad rates high is that there’s no way to know exactly how many of your clicks are converting into sales for your advertisers. You can’t even tell what would count as a sale for the different advertisers you’re promoting. The best you can do is keep track of your clicks and your revenues, and make sure that they rise and fall at the same rates. If following your stats was always important, Smart Pricing has made it absolutely vital. There’s little point in spending hours trying to increase your CTR if the value of your clicks is dropping like a rock. So what should you do if you notice that your income is dropping but your CTR rate remains the same? The first thing you should do is protect yourself. Because one site with a low ROI can affect all the sites in your account, dividing your sites between different accounts would prevent all of your revenues falling if one site underperforms. Officially, that’s a breach of TOS, so you can’t really do it But I don’t see why two different sites can’t be owned by two spouses. If you own more than two sites though... well, I guess you’re stuck. Next, if you suspect that one page has a low ROI, try removing the AdSense code from that page, wait a week and see if you can spot an improvement in your ad prices. If there’s no improvement, replace the code and try taking the code from a different page. You want to find the page that’s poisoning your earnings and keep AdSense ads off it until you can bring in the kind of traffic that suits your advertisers. And that’s where you’re most likely to find the underperforming pages. The pages that are most likely to have the greatest conversion rates for advertisers are those that have the most loyal following. The closer the connection between your site and the interests of your visitors the more likely they are to click on your ads — and buy when they click. So it’s also a good idea to create niche sites that appeal to niche audiences, rather than general sites that bring in audiences interested in a bunch of different things. Those sorts of users will also only have a vague interest in some of the things on your site and could lower your conversion rate.
You might have a blog, for example, in which you discussed your interests in... oh, dogs, computer games and the movies of Mel Gibson. That would bring in users with three different kinds of interests... and three different kinds of ads. But a dog-loving user who clicks on an ad for Mel Gibson DVDs is less likely to actually buy than a Mel Gibson fan. Your conversion rate would drop and the value of every ad you promote would fall too. But if you created three separate blogs, one for each of your interests, you would receive fewer false clicks, and a higher rate of conversion. Ultimately then, the ideal strategy is, as always, to create good content that attracts genuinely interested users.

Smart Pricing... And What It Means For Your Income

One of the more difficult aspects of using AdSense is keeping up to date with changes that Google likes to introduce from time to time. Most of these changes are pretty minor. That doesn’t mean that you can ignore them — you will need to be aware of them. But you won’t usually have to make massive changes to your site and the way you’ve optimized your ads when Google adjusts its policy. One change that did have a dramatic effect on publishers took place in April, 2004: Google introduced Smart Pricing. We’ve already felt some of its effects in this book. Now we’re going to explain exactly what it means... First, let me just say that Smart Pricing was a pretty smart move, especially for advertisers. The principle is simple: before Smart Pricing, advertisers paid the price they had bid for each click their ad received on a website... regardless of whether that click resulted in a sale. The result was that some advertisers were receiving large numbers of clicks — for which they were paying large sums of money — but were seeing only a low return on that investment (ROI). Not surprisingly, they were drifting away to other ad distributors, particularly Yahoo!, in the search for visitors who wouldn’t just click but buy too. To improve advertisers’ ROI (and win them back from Yahoo!), Google lowered the price of ads on sites that tend to give advertisers few sales, even if they give them large numbers of clicks.
To put it another way, the same ad can now cost different amounts when it appears on different sites. And of course, that same ad will pay publishers different amounts too. Before Smart Pricing, publishers had focused solely on attracting as many clicks as possible. With Smart Pricing, a site with a high CTR can still earn less than a site with a low CTR. So how does Google measure an advertiser’s conversion rate and what can publishers do to increase their conversion rates to ensure their ad rates remain high? This is where things get tricky. Google is playing its cards pretty close to its chest when it comes to the methods it uses to calculate Smart Pricing and even measure ROI.
What Google Has Said About Smart Pricing
This is what Google has officially told us about Smart Pricing:
• The price of an ad is influenced by a number of different factors.
Those factors can include: the bid price; the quality of the ad; competition from other ads in the same field; the location of the ad as part of a marketing campaign; “and other advertiser fluctuations.”
• The ad price is not affected by the clickthrough rate.
Sending advertisers large numbers of clicks will not increase the bid price. (That doesn’t mean that CTR isn’t important at all for your revenues; it’s just not important in determining the amount you receive for the click.)
• “Content Is King.”
Google makes it pretty clear that sites that will benefit most from AdSense are those that “create compelling content for interested users.” They also emphasize the importance of bringing targeted traffic to look at that content. Those are two different factors which together create a site with loyal, appreciative users. Just the sort of thing that every serious webmaster wants.

What Else Do We Know About Smart Pricing?
What Google has told us about Smart Pricing isn’t much. It also raises at least as many questions as it answers: How does Google judge the quality of an ad? How can they tell the role an ad plays in a marketing campaign? What are the other “advertiser fluctuations”? And perhaps most importantly, how do they track the results of the clicks? All of those pieces of information would be very useful to a publisher. But Google wasn’t letting on.
Fortunately, publishers caught a break. Jennifer Sleg, the author of an excellent contextual advertising blog at www.Jensense.com, (you should definitely make this site a part of your regular reading) was contacted by an advertiser who was being tempted back from Yahoo! to Google. He told Jen what the AdSense salesman had told him about Smart Pricing. She told us. This is what it boiled down to:
• Smart Pricing is calculated across an AdSense account.
So if you have a number of different sites covering a range of different topics and one of them delivers a low ROI, all of your ad prices may be lowered.
• Smart Pricing is evaluated weekly.
If you believe that an ad is delivering a low ROI, you can remove it from your site and you should see higher ad prices within a week.
• Smart pricing is tracked with a 30-day cookie.
Users don’t have to convert immediately into a sale (or whatever will count as a conversion) for you to benefit. They can think about it for a month and you’ll still get the benefit.
• Image ads are affected by smart pricing.
Few serious publishers use image ads except when they’re receiving CPM campaigns. Was this a reference to ads in low locations receiving lower rates?
• Prices may be reduced even below an advertiser’s minimum bid.
So looking up the bid prices for targeted keywords won’t help you very much; if your ROI is low, your rates could be lower than the minimum quoted.
• Conversions accounts are tracked by advertisers opting into AdWords Conversion Tracking.
But we still don’t know what Google is tracking or how it’s making calculations with its results.

Fast Decision-Making With A/B Testing

Fast Decision-Making With A/B Testing
One of the problems with tracking Channels is that collecting all the data you need can take time. If you wanted to know whether you should put a skyscraper or a small square in your sidebar, you’d have to start with one type of ad unit, collect results for at least a week to make sure that they’re representative, replace that unit with the second type, follow those results for a week and compare.

Tracking Tools
There’s a whole range of different tracking tools available to fill the gaps left by Google’s Channels. Here is a quick run-down of the main ones: AdSense Log
http://www.metalgrass.com/adsenselog/index.html
Created by MetalGrass, this stats analyzer has easy-to-read graphs and charts. They also use Google’s own stats rather than tapping into your server’s MySQL.
You can check your account as frequently as you want and the log will even you give you a sound, an email or a pop-up window when new data is available. Price $50. Free 30-day trial. AsRep
http://www.asrep.com
AsRep lets you track all of your stats in real time. That includes each of your three regular ad units, an AdLink unit and up to two search boxes on each page.
The program also captures colors, format and channels, and whether the units are showing ads or alternates.
Price $50. Unlimited evaluation version available. CSV AdStats
http://www.nix.fr/en/csvadstats.aspx
CSV AdStats is less of a tracker and more of a number-cruncher. You can download Google’s CSV data file and conduct a full stats analysis to check averages and create charts.
A useful way to squeeze more sense out of your stats.
FREE Google AdSense Tracking Script
http://www.biz-directory.org/adsense/ The Google AdSense Tracking Script lets you see the domains and files where clicks occurred, hourly and daily stats and who clicked what, where and when. Price $100.

TWO TOOLS YOU CAN’T DO WITHOUT!
If you are serious about making money with Google AdSense, there are two tools that you really need to download. I was closely involved in the production of both of them. I’d like to say that I didn’t create these tools to make a profit, but that’s not really true. I did create them to make a profit... but a profit as an AdSense publisher not as a software developer. The fact is, none of the tracking software that I saw on the market was giving me all the information I wanted. And I want to know everything! I want to know where my users are coming from, what they’re looking for, which ads they’re clicking, how many unique visitors I’m receiving, which colors work best etc. etc. With AdSense, I don’t think it’s possible to have too much information. No one was really willing to supply me the tools to gather and analyze that information. So I built them myself. AdSense Detective
The first of these tools is AdSense Detective. You can signup for a free trial at http://www.adsensedetective.com/members/register.php I developed AdSense Detective together with my good friend, Robert Puddy, who’s really another AdSense giant. We wanted that program to fill in all the knowledge and data gaps that we possibly could. That’s why in AdSense Detective, you’ll be able to discover: Which domains, directories and pages of your websites users clicked; The referring domains, pages and search terms that sent you visitors; Which ad units, colors and formats were bringing you the most clicks; The precise copy of the AdWords that you can check against page relevance; The search terms used by visitors to find your page; and... The exact AdSense channels of every ad clicked so that you can see which position on your page is bringing you the most money! If you’ve got all that information, then frankly you’ve got everything you need to bring home the bacon.



AdSense Buddy Of course, you still have to analyze and process all that data. That’s what my next tool does, and you can download it for no charge at all.
At time of writing, it’s in beta. By the time of reading though, it should be available for download at www.AdSenseBuddy.com.
The idea of the program is to make it as simple as possible for you to make sense of your stats. And because the program has been created by someone who not only knows AdSense, but uses it every day, you can be sure that it was made with the end user in mind so it should give you everything you could ask for. If there’s something I’ve left out, you probably don’t need it. You’ll be able to follow your CTR and note your impressions. You’ll be able to see your results by just rolling over the task bar. And I’ve even included an AdSense journal so that you can keep track of what’s working and what isn’t. That alone makes it worth downloading.

And it’s really simple to use. Once you’ve received your registration key, you simply enter your AdSense email address and password. Immediately, you’ll see a pop-up summarizing your latest stats. (Want to see them again? Just mouse over the icon in the system tray.) Below those stats, you’ll also get links to the latest discussions at AdSenseChat.com. That will make sure you’re always up to date and that you’ve always got something to read! You can also download data to cover any time period you want and view the information as graphs to make your analysis a breeze. But it’s really the journal that I’m most proud of. The fact that you can keep a record of your changes together with the results of your changes makes following your stats very, very easy. I don’t know how I managed for so long without it.
And like I said, it’s absolutely free, so enjoy! Click here to download AdSense Buddy.

How To Read Your Server Logs

How To Read Your Server Logs
Various AdSense Tracking programs are currently sold on the Internet. This type of software runs on your own server which means it has access to vital visitor information. These packages are not affiliated with Google, but you can use most of them without violating the AdSense TOS. External tracking software can tell you many things that the Channels don't reveal, such as:
- Where your visitors are coming from;
- Where the ad-clickers are coming from;
- What search keywords led them to your web page.
Your stats package should compile and interpret your log files. It will tell you how many people visited your pages, how long they stayed, which are the most popular pages, what countries/domains they visit from, and how many bookmarked your site. Just about all the information you need. One thing that external Tracking software cannot do for you, is to tell you exactly how much MONEY a specific ad (or a group of ads) is making for you. Only Google's Channels can tell you that. External tracking software can tell you an ad's CTR, but your AdSense income also depends on factors such as the earnings per click, content relevance, your ranking on Google Search Results and many other factors besides.
Why? Because Channels can be quite confusing if you use them by themselves. Consider this example: In this hypothetical case, Jim has a website about fast cars, where he discusses his passion with thousands of like-minded visitors. He decides to find out which ads are doing better than the others.
What is that hidden ingredient that's jacking up those click-through ratios? The Channels won't tell. Jim now decides to install an external tracking software on his website.
After looking through his server logs, he finds that ads with the term "Car Accessories" are getting the maximum click-throughs. How does Jim know that? Simple. His tracking software tells him which ads his visitors are clicking. He also knows which sites his visitors are going to.
Jim found that of all his visitors, those who searched for the term "Car Accessories" were generating the maximum click-throughs on his web pages. Naturally, ads with the term "Car Accessories" were doing better than the others. Should Jim now optimize his website for the search term "Car Accessories"? For most web publishers, that's good enough to get down to work. But Jim is skeptical. Jim wants to know if his "Car Accessories" ads are also his top income generators. To find out, he creates a Channel to track the earnings of all ads with the term "Car Accessories" in it. He calls the new channel "Car_Accessories".
He looks through his tracking reports once again and finds that ads with the term "Car Parts" are also doing well. He found that while "Car Accessories" took the lead with 5% CTR, the "Car Parts" ads were generating a healthy 3% CTR. Jim is excited. He knows he's on to something big! Jim's tracking software has helped him uncover two great "leads". Which of these will lead him to his top income generator? The plot thickens…
Google won't tell you all reasons why the "Car_Parts" ads are making Jim more money. But Jim knows that the keyword "Car Parts" is probably more expensive, and that his website ranks better for that term. FINALLY-- Jim is ready to act on this information. Let's take a look at his various options:
1. He can use it to optimize his page for the search term "Car Parts", so that his content is more relevant. Jim knows from experience that when his ranking for the search term "Car Parts" goes up, so will his earnings per click. But it does have a downside. It might LOSE him his "Car Accessories" traffic! Jim knows that the price of keywords keeps fluctuating with the bids placed by AdSense advertisers. A keyword that's not so hot today can trigger a frenzied bidding war tomorrow! Jim doesn't want to lose his most responsive visitors, earning him a decent $500 per week.
2. Jim can optimize his page for "Car Accessories". But that comes with the huge risk of losing a whopping 60% of his earnings.
3. Jim can launch dedicated web pages for "Car Parts" and "Car Accessories".
4. Jim can optimize his page for BOTH search terms.
Jim decides to go with option 4 — optimize for BOTH search terms! Jim knows the old saying that if you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one at all. That's why he decides to play his cards carefully. Jim understands visitor behavior. He knows that his visitors like to read in "bite sized" portions. They take a bite here and a nibble there. But they never read a web page like a book, starting from the top and reading right through to the bottom. He tweaks his layout to make the "Car Parts" articles more visible. He smartly uses the hot car photos on his website to create several points of interest in his neatly laid out website. Jim knows that people will instinctively look at the car photos, then be drawn in by detailed information about car parts — followed by the strategically placed Google ads. To leverage this opportunity, Jim creates new space for content by tweaking the framework of his web page. Now Jim can capitalize his page layout by drawing people in with short, interesting 'content hooks' that build interest in the Google ads. He adds new side-bars with juicy tid-bits about hot new car accessories. These will act like instant magnets to visitors looking for car accessories. More importantly, they run right alongside the AdSense ads, which tempt people with hot new offers on Car Accessories. A specially designed "Accessories I love" section invites visitors to scroll down for more. Here Jim provides news, updates and impartial reviews about the Car Accessories Market. He entices visitors to check out new product launches with an integrated Google Search Box, which enables them to search within his website or search the entire web for relevant content. These changes not only make Jim's web pages more relevant; it makes his visitors more receptive to the ads. And there's more. Jim can now create new income streams for himself by plugging in new links to pages dedicated to car accessories, car parts and other keywords that are already attracting highly responsive visitors to his existing pages. Jim used his channels and server logs to drill deep and come up with a real gold-mine of information. You too can use these secrets to zero in on ads that make you the most money — and to find hidden sources of AdSense income.

Creating Multiple Channels

Creating Multiple Channels

In the past, one of the biggest challenges for publishers was to decide which characteristic they should track on each of their ad units. Should they follow an ad unit’s color? Its position? Its size? Now those decisions are much easier. It’s possible to paste up to five Channel codes into one ad unit, allowing publishers to collect different information about the same ad. When you check your Channels, you’ll be able to how all your leaderboards or doing, as well as all your ads related by topic or color. That’s a huge help when it comes to understanding what your site is doing.
Your Channel Names — How To Keep Your Channels Secret And Win Channel Targeted Ads
Channels are extremely useful tools. You won’t be able to make the most of your site unless you’re using Channels to track the performance of your ad units — and acting on what you find. But there is one small problem with using Channels: the Channel name appears in your source code. That’s unlikely to cause you any serious problems but it is something you need to know. There are two reasons for that. First, you always want to maintain your privacy and create a professional impression. If you’re making your site available to the public — which is the only way it’s going to make money — you don’t want anything on there that you wouldn’t want the world to know. That includes the terms you’ve used for your Custom Channels. But the second reason is that when you create your channels, you’ll also be asked to mark a checkbox that says: “Show this channel to advertisers as an ad placement.” If you mark that box — and you should — advertisers will be able to try to place their ads across that channel. (They’ll still have to bid in the usual way but if the advertisers are keen enough to choose your site by Channel, there’s a good chance that they’ll also be keen enough to bid high enough to win.) So if you’ve created a Channel for all of the ad units placed at the top of your Web pages, then an advertiser who chose to advertise across that Channel could be sure that his ads would get prime placement. That mean your Channel names should be clear not just to yourself but to anyone else looking in too. If a Channel that tracks the ad units embedded in articles about Toyota cars for example, is called “Toy_art,” an advertiser could get the wrong idea... if he has any idea at all. If the Channel were called “Toyota_articles” though, he’d know exactly where his ads would appear. But getting the name right isn’t the only thing you should do to tempt advertisers to bid on Channel-targeted ad placements. You should also add a description that makes it both clear to advertisers what exactly they’ll be getting when they bid and attractive for them to do so. Something like: “Ads will appear in our top-performing units: above the fold and embedded in our main article.” That should help to encourage users to place your ads.
Of course, you also want to make your approach as attractive as possible. Advertisers aren’t going to be too interested in trying to get their ads into a leaderboard that you’ve put at the bottom of the page. Let them try to get into the best positions on your page — and raise the overall price of your clicks too. You do that by targeting your highest-performing ad units for Channel-based advertising. And finally, you should use ad placement invitations on Channels you’ve created for different topics. That will make it clear to advertisers that their ads will only appear on relevant pages.

What Custom Channels Should You Create?

What Custom Channels Should You Create?

With the range of Custom Channels limited only by your imagination, it’s not always easy to figure out which channels you need to create. I’d recommend that you build channels based on the following: Location Do ads do better at the top of your blog pages or on the side? Do you get more clicks from ads that you’ve slipped into the article or from the ads at the bottom of the page. Try creating different channels for each sort of location so that you can track how different locations are doing.

Ad Unit Different ad units can deliver different results. You might be using four or five different types of ad units across your sites. Make a channel for each type of unit so that you can get an idea about which units are the most attractive. Of course, location and ad unit are related but you won’t be untangle the data unless you have it! Color I keep saying that the color of your ads should match the color of your site. But not all your sites are the same color! You might well find that some color schemes win you more clicks than others — a fact which could influence your overall site design. Create different Custom Channels for different colors and you’ll have a better idea of how your designs affect your income. Link Units It’s certainly worth creating a channel to track the performance of your link units. These are special in their own right and you should know how they perform in comparison to your other ad units. While Google can now track ad performance for your specified domain name, please don't expect URL or Custom Channels to give you data about your visitors, such as who referred them to your website or which web browser they use. These are details only your server logs can tell you.