Those pesky Public Service Announcements (PSA) from AdSense have taken over my dog blog, DoggieNews.

They only seem to show up on the homepage, and on the archive pages. On the permalink pages, AdSense displays paid ads.

Since the homepage generates a big percentage of page views, I'm losing a lot of money by having the PSAs show up. And it was only recently that they began displaying, probably only a week ago. For the longest time, PSAs never showed up there.

You won't actually see PSA ads on my dog blog right now because I've replaced them with a back-up set of ads, which is actually Yahoo Publisher ads. But my experience with Yahoo Publisher shows that it pays less than AdSense. So, I'd rather figure out why PSAs are suddenly showing when they didn't used to.

I think the reason why is because there's been recently a reduction in ads for the words, "dog" and "dogs". It used to be these keywords generated a bunch of ads on Google's SERPs. The PSAs are showing up simply because what few advertisers are remaining for these keywords have may have blocked their ads from AdSense.

I'm going to try to replacing the META keywords with more lucrative ads like "dog training", or "puppy training". I'll let you know if that fixes it.

Labels: Public Service Ads

If you're running AdSense on Blogger, there's a little trick you can do to minimize the number of PSA's on your archive pages.

On the Archive Settings, there is a field for the "Archive Filename", as follows...


Enter a filename representing your biggest money keyword. In my case, I used "adsense.htm".

Blogger uses this filename when creating archive pages, such as follows...


By having the word "adsense.html" as my archive filename, AdSense will use this to determine ad relevancy.

By default, Blogger will use the filename, "archive.html", and this will often cause AdSense to show PSA's.

Of course, this "trick" can apply to any blogging platform, not just Blogger.

Labels: Blogging, Public Service Ads

Earlier on my website publishing blog, I mentioned that my hyperlocal news blog, Menifee 24/7 is doing particular well with AdSense. I wanted to touch on this subject some more.

What's suprising about it is that it earns quite a bit more money than some of my other blogs, even if with far fewer visitors.

Junk Food Blog, one of my more popular blogs, earns far less than Menifee 24/7 on AdSense. JFB actually gets about 2,000 visitors per day, while Menifee 24/7 gets about 300 visitors per day. Yet, Menifee 24/7 earns about twice as much money from AdSense as JFB.

Here's the reasons why...

• Audience Focus - The more an audience is focused down to a specific subject, the more likely they'll click on AdSense ads. The problem with JFB is that the audience is too broad. JFB is largely an entertainment site; it's audience comes from all walks of life, from all over the world, and have varied interests. On the other hand, Menifee 24/7 has a highly focused audience. The only people who visit it are people who live in this town, or want to relocate here.



• The Real Estate Factor - Real estate ads on AdSense are very lucrative to publishers like myself. And they tend to appear often on websites that focus themselves on a specific geographic locale. Menifee 24/7 being focused on happenings in my town, gets plenty of them. So, once in awhile I publish articles about property values, selling a home, or relocation, just to maintain a demographic of visitors who want Menifee real estate info.



• Ad Recognition - The audience on Menifee 24/7 tend to click on AdSense ads more often than JFB's audience because they don't realize its an ad. They're just not savvy enough to know what AdSense is. To them, the AdSense unit are just links, especially if you blend the AdSense unit into the background colors. On JFB, the audience tends to be more Internet savvy, and younger.

Labels: Hyperlocal Blogging

Blogs are a great way to build audiences for monetization purposes.

I created the blog you're reading, "Money With AdSense", on August 24, 2007, which is just 30 days ago from today. Already it's starting to pick up some steady traffic.

This steady traffic started occurring about one week after the launch, when Google added pages from this website into its search index. Albeit, the traffic was very small, only 1-2 visitors per day. As of today, Google is now referring about 2-3 visitors per day. Woo Hoo! Big difference!

But before you toss your hand at that, also consider that just three days ago, Yahoo began referring visitors as well. I'm now seeing about 2-3 visitors a day from Yahoo.

So overall, I'm getting about 4-6 visitors a day to this blog from Yahoo and Google combined.

That's pretty good if you consider the following...

• It's only been 30 days since the launch of this blog


• I spent zero on traffic building.


• I spent zero building the website


• I spent zero on content (it's all my content)


• I spent zero on hosting (it's running on my dedicated server)


• The only area I paid money was for domain name registration

Labels: Blogging

My home-based website publishing blog, "In Your Web", has a nagging problem of getting a lot of public service ads (PSA) from Google AdSense.

This only happens on the homepage.

The reason is the domain name "inyourweb.com". Considering that keywords in the domain name, directory name, and filename, is a key factor towards determining relevant ads on AdSense, now you see why I get so many public service ads on the homepage. The other pages are ok, because those have more keywords in the filenames.


So the million dollar question is, "Why did I choose such a stupid domain name?"

Well, it wasn't that stupid at the time.

In Your Web was first launched in October 2003. That was only 7 months after Google AdSense was launched (March 2003). At that time, no one understood how AdSense determined relevancy, we were all still trying to figure it out.

I chose the name "In Your Web" because I wanted something that was easily recognizable. I was going after a domain that could be easily branded. Knowing what I know now, I would picked out a domain that had a keyword in it.

Blocking Public Service Ads

You can't force AdSense to display paid ads instead of the public service ad. Remember that the public service ads are displaying because Google can't figure out what else to display.

AdSense does provide some options on how it should handle this situation...


The second option, "Show Non-Google ads from another URL" is perhaps the best choice. It allows you to enter a URL to display ads from another source...


Here's what you do.

First create a new webpage on your server. This webpage should NOT have any of your website's template on it. It should be pure blank. Except, between the BODY tags, paste the advertising code from another advertising network. Make sure that the advertising code will display an ad with the same dimensions you're using with Google Adsense. NOTE: don't center the ad on the page, let it top-left-justify naturally.

Upload this page to your webserver.

Now, enter the URL for this page into the box above.

That's it. When Google decides that it can't find any relevant ads, it will display this instead.

You can also get creative, and instead of pasting code from another advertising service, you can use links for some affiliate programs, or links to some of your other websites.

Labels: Public Service Ads

One of the most intriguing statistics for me is that my effective AdSense CPM drops as the number of impressions rise.

It's frustrating, actually, because you want some predictability with your earnings. You'd like to know that if you earn "x dollars" with 1,000 impressions, you can earn "xx dollars" with 10,000 impressions.

I'd love to provide a graph from my own statistics to illustrate it for you, but AdSense's terms of service prevent me from disclosing that information.

It's not just AdSense, actually. It works this way for me with any advertising network or affiliate marketing program.

My explanation for this is that as your traffic increases, it becomes more diverse.

For starters, one of the primary causes of traffic increase is having published more pages. The more pages you publish, the more search engine food you create. Effectively, it's a like fisherman casting a wider net, catching more of the fish he wants, but also getting more fish he doesn't want.

The best way to guard against that, is to keep your focus on your primary audience, by writing articles whose keywords and filenames are optimized for that audience. That can be hard to do, because when you've written your 100th article, it's harder to find more stuff to write about.

Another reason for the increasing diversity of your audience, is that they're coming in from more places. When you write a compelling article, people tend to e-mail it to their friends, or post a link to it from a message board, or even blog about it on their own blogs. And when they do this, it's often for slightly different reasons than what you intended.

For example, if you write an article about how a blogger made a thousand bucks in one day using AdSense, one guy might e-mail it to his buddies because the photograph of the blogger shows she has big boobies.

Another nagging problem is Google's Image Search. Assuming you're putting images in your blog posts, people will eventually find those images through Google Image Search, and that will produce page views.

What can you do to help monetize this diverse traffic?

1. For all those page views created by Google Image Search, find an ad network that will pay "per impression" intead of "per click", and place one of their banners somewhere.



2. Place some promotional links in a highly visible place on your website, that link to some of your most popular content. Use heading text like, "Top 5 Most Popular Articles", or, "Top 5 Must Have Tools for Webmasters". If you don't have that stuff, try "Get Laid" and link it to a dating affiliate program.

Labels: AdSense CPM

I was just reading a post from a guy blogging as "Kirbitz", who said that he switched to using AdSense after some disappointing months with Bidvertiser. The irony is that after viewing five of his webpages, all such AdSense units are displaying public service ads.

Hopefully that will change for him soon.

A "public service ad" (PSA) is what AdSense displays when it can't identify any relevant ads for your website.

These don't generate any income for you.

So the trick is, obviously, to not get any PSAs.

One of the biggest factors I've noticed with determining relevancy, are the filenames, directory names, and domain names. Sometimes, this seems to have such a strong influence, that it even overcomes on-page keyword frequency. Perhaps the best "one-two" combination I can think of towards ensuring relevant ads, is to match your most frequently used on-page keyword with the filename of your webpage.

But that's just my observation, and not gospel from the AdSense team.

There's also in-HTML optimization that you can do. The Meta Keywords tag, and the Title tag also seem to help. It would be best to make sure these also match the on-page keyword and the filename.

Going back to this guy, "Kirbitz", and his blog. His blog is about making money online, which is a subject frought with AdWords. He shouldn't have any trouble attracting relevant ads.

Since AdSense doesn't explain their relevancy algorithm, we can never know exactly what causes a PSA to display. But since my blog is pretty much on a similar topic as his, and AdSense never seems to display PSAs here, it obviously has something to do with the blog itself.

If you happen to see too many PSAs displaying on your site, my best advice is to remove all "template content" until you have nothing left but the unique content itself (the article), and see what displays then. To do this, usually you can create a "test" page. Then, add pieces of the template back one by one and observe how that affects things.

You might just try a new (and simpler) template altogether.

Labels: Public Service Ads

Getting your account suspended or shut down on Google AdSense is pretty much "end of story" if it happens to you.

Read the webmaster forums and blogs and you'll get the understanding that AdSense will shut your account down even if you did nothing wrong. Once it's shut down, its rare that they'll reopen it on appeal.

Janet, who goes by the name "Newspapergrl" claims to be one of the few to ever had their account reopened, after a very influential person stepped in on her behalf and convinced AdSense to do so.

Why will AdSense shut your account down?

Click fraud.

It's the biggest problem on their minds. Click fraud is what can potentially ruin the AdWords system. If advertisers get the feeling that the clicks they're buying are not converting into sales and leads, then they'll stop buying from AdWords. Hence, Google is doing everything in its power to convince advertisers that the clicks they're buying are valuable.

One publisher got kicked off of AdSense because his visitors were repeatedly clicking his AdSense units, thinking they were helping him out....

I was recently unfortunate enough to have been kicked off the adsense program. Some members got the idea that clicking it repetatively none-stop would help the site... but it didn't and only lead to the cease of adsense.

Labels: AdSense Account Terminated

AdSense for Search can yield high earnings for very specific types of search.

If you implement this on your website, it helps to guide your users into what types of searches they should use it for.

For example, one of my most popular websites caters to genealogists. And genealogists tend to run searches on surnames or names of their relatives. If they were to run a search on my website, using the AdSense for Search box, they'd mostly likely enter a query like, "william robertson" or "robertsons of texas".

Unfortunately for me, those keyphrases don't produce many ads on AdSense, often none at all. Hence, AdSense for Search would not yield much money.

On the other hand, if I were to place some instructional text right above the AdSense search box, something like, "Enter a surname plus the word 'genealogy'". They'll most likely follow the instruction and the query will produce more AdSense ads, and higher paying ones too.

You might want to run some searches on Google to find out which ones produce the most AdSense ads, and then come up with a short simple instruction to place above the AdSense for Search box.

Labels: AdSense for Search

So with this blog entitled, "Money with AdSense", you'd expect some discussion on AdSense Arbitrage.

And here it is.

AdSense Arbitrage is a simple concept, of buying a keyword on AdWords, and then directing it to one of your websites with an AdSense unit. For example, if you bought an AdWords ad for $1.00 per click, and you were able to direct it to your website, and earn $3.00 per click on AdSense, then you've made $2.00.

But as simple as the concept is, it's a rather complicated business model.

For one, the concept I described assumes you can get a 100% click through rate on your AdSense unit, which we all know, is impossible. If you can design a landing page that can get about a 50% click through rate, then you're in business. But to be profitable, you have to exploit a keyword where there is a large dropoff in bid prices.

That is, maybe the top 3 bids for a given keyword is $5.25, $5.20, and $5.17. But the fourth bid drops off to $2.25. There you go. You place a bid for $2.26, to get youself into that fourth position.

To ensure that AdSense displays the highest bidding keywords, you need to utilize a creative size that shows only two or three ads.

So first of all, is it possible to design a landing page that gets a 50% click through rate? Yes! I've done it. I described the technique I used in an article I wrote entitled, "Psychology of the Eye". The affiliate link is a simple web form that gets a 60% CTR.

Is AdSense arbitrage a violation of AdSense or AdWords?

Yes. It's stated here...
https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=66238

But it's up to the folks at AdWords and AdSense to figure out if you're engaging in arbitrage. Many publishers advertise through AdWords to drive traffic to their sites, but they publish sites with lots of content. Arbitrage sites, on the other hand, need extremely high CTR (such as 50%), in order to be profitable, and hence, publish very little content.

Steve's Opinion on AdSense Arbitrage

It's not worth it.

First of all, if takes a lot of dedication to find keywords with a large bid disparity. When you bid on one, you have to keep monitoring it to see if those higher bids come down on you. For the amount of time you're spending, and the amount of profit you're earning, are you any better off than just working at McDonalds?

You're also at risk of Google shutting your AdWords account down, or lowering your landing page score.

Lastly, it's a business model centered on gambling. That is, it requires a sizeable amount of capital, with no real guarantee of profit. You're basically gambling on the chance that the higher bids won't come down on you.

I don't do any Arbitrage at all. I haven't purchased keywords in the last several years. I've relied on my SEO and traffic building skills to get free traffic. If you build a site with lots of high quality content, that people actually want, that content will keep people coming in. In the end, you have a website that cranks out money like a machine with little effort or cost. That's the way to go.

But if you really have to know more about AdSense Arbitrage, read Grey Wolf's three-part series...
http://www.wolf-howl.com/sem/adsense-arbitrage-tips-tricks-secrets/

Labels: AdSense Arbitrage

Should you purchase Joel Comm's Adsense templates?

Who's Joel Comm?

Joel Comm is a guy who has made a name for himself as one of the many "make money online gurus", with a specialty on Google AdSense. In fact, here's how he describes himself on one of his own websites...

Joel is considered to be the world's foremost expert on the subject of making money with Google AdSense. He's written the all-time best selling ebook on the topic, and his recent book The AdSense Code topped at #1 on the Amazon marketplace, and became a New York Times best seller.

Labels: AdSense Templates, Joel Comm

In my experience with using AdSense, it seems the best AdSense sizes are the skyscrapers, 120x600 and 160x600.

I haven't yet figured out which of the two is better.

Keep in mind however, that the best sizes will vary depending on the design of your website, and the placement of the AdSense unit. In reality, other sizes such as the 728x90 or the 300x250 may outperform the skyscrapers based on site design and ad placement.

It's also well accepted that AdSense units placed within the content, particularly inside the body of an article, outperforms skyscrapers placed on a side column. In that sense, the square-shaped sizes such as the 300x250 will outperform skyscrapers when used in this way.

If you publish a blog, you'll know that placing a 300x250 unit will sometimes interfere with images appearing inside the article. For this reason, bloggers tend to shy away from using in-content placements.

Take a look at the permanent URL for this article (click here) and notice that the upper-right of the article has a 200x200 AdSense unit, and that I never place an image at the top of the article. What images I may use, always appear well into the middle of the article so as not to interfere with the AdSense unit.

Still, I'd give the skyscrapers the title of the "best AdSense sizes" because they do perform well in side columns, and because they're in side-columns, you never have to worry about them interfering with content. It provides for greater artistic flexibility that way.

Keep in mind another general rule of thumb for identifying the best AdSense sizes are those sizes that display 4 to 5 ads per size.

Labels: AdSense Sizes

Many blogs focusing on "how to make money online" seem to put too much credit into traffic volume. That is, when they address the question of, "How come I haven't made any money yet?", they seem to point to low traffic as a primary cause.

I found this passage while reading an AdSense blog today...

First of all, try to figure out why you aren't making any money. Of course we all know by now that making money blogging is all about traffic. So, are you getting any traffic? If not, that is the first place to start. You need to concentrate on getting traffic to your blog, first and foremost.

Labels: Traffic Volume

Shawn Collins, the famed affiliate-manager of Club Mom, writes about a new type of AdSense creative that blends together link units with content ads...

http://affiliatetip.com/news/article001408.php

He discovered this new type of creative after perusing the ads on his blog one day.

They're essentially Content Ads, but with Link Units appearing at the bottom.

Here's one of them...


Google doesn't provide these creatives as an option on its AdSense setup, they're probably just being tested for now.

I've never had much luck with using Link Units. I've tried them in various places on my sites and blogs, even redesigning my navigation links to look just like them.

But these new "blended ads" has me a bit worried. The more ads crammed into one creative, the more cluttered it becomes, and the more it competes against the highest bidding ads. That can have the effect of reducing our overall earnings.

Labels: Link Units, Strange AdSense

If you're racking your brain trying to figure out why your AdSense creative is showing unrelated ads, check the words in your filename, directory, or even your domain name.

Yes, even those words are counted into the AdSense optimization algorithm.

That means you want to come up with directory names and filenames that are contextually relevant to your content. And use whole words! For example, do not abbreviate "dachshund" as "dach". Spell it out!

And be mindful of words that have double meanings. For example, "biker" can mean a motorcycle rider or a bicycle rider. You wouldn't want motorcycle ads showing up on your bicycle blog. In that case, avoid using "biker" as a filename, directory, or even domain name.

If you can't figure out what words will produce optimum AdSense ads, then just run a Google search for some words and see what AdWords display. Perhaps keep a list of words that work best, and use those for your directory names and filenames.

Also avoid using foreign words. If you use "escuela" instead of "school", you might run the risk of having spanish language AdSense on your site.

You can also utilize a coding system of numbers and letters as directory names and filenames if you want to totally remove this element from the AdSense optimization algorithm. Try something like, "HT983KD3445" as a filename. Though I'd recommend using your best keywords instead, you can still resort to this if you somehow need control.

Labels: Filenames