Selling advertising on your blog or Web site is a great way to make money online. Google's AdSense program is a popular advertising program because it pays customers based on the click-through ratio (CTR) of the ads -- or the number of times that an ad is clicked on that particular site. Therefore, if a site is very popular and attracts a lot of traffic, the earnings potential of that site increases dramatically. There are many ways to optimize your blog or Web site to maximize the amount of money you can make from AdSense. Here are a few ideas:
Make the Right Selections
When you sign up for AdSense, you can choose the display options for the ads on your site, then you will be matched with advertisers. Selecting the right options will ensure that you are matched with the best advertisers. Typically, sizes that do well are the 160x600 wide skyscraper, the 300x250 medium rectangle, and the 728x90 leaderboard. Ads that allow for images and flash animation are also very popular. Choosing these options for your site will make you more competitive for being matched with advertisers.
Choose the Best Placement
Where you place the ads on your site will greatly impact the amount of clicks you generate. Typically, ads that are placed at the top of your page do very well, as they are the first things that your reader will notice. However, ads that are placed directly after an article or blog post perform the best, not only for their placement but also for their relevancy. For example, if you write an article about the benefits of coconut oil and then place an ad for coconut oil or coconut butter immediately after the ad, your reader is likely to feel motivated by you wrote and will want to click on the ad. Click-throughs are even more likely when you place ads after articles and do not include links to other blog posts or relevant content on your site.
Keep Your Design Simple
Filling your page with lots of photos, videos, and other graphic elements will make it hard for readers to distinguish between your content and advertising. Your ads will basically get lost in a sea of photos. Keep your design clean and simple in order to highlight your ads. Of course, you should include photos on your blog, just be wary of overloading the graphic elements on the page. Likewise, do not overload your page with ads. Choose targeted content and targeted ads for the most effective performance.
Create Evergreen Content
If you have a lot of articles on your site that are linked to current events, these articles will quickly become dated, and any advertising that is listed on these pages will be overlooked. Few people visiting your page now are going to read about the announcement that "John and Kate Plus 8" is being cancelled or that "new reports" suggest risks of taking Fen Fen. Fill your site with a lot of evergreen content so that ads can stay current and will be more visible.
Optimize Your Site
Of course, the best way to get people to click on the ads on your site is to get people to your site. And the best way to get more people to your site is to make it prominent in search-engine rankings. Make effective use of search-engine optimization techniques to drive traffic to your site. Choose the best keywords, and use them effectively in your content, titles, tags, and other page elements. Create quality backlinks to your site by guest posting and building community with other bloggers. Ensure that all of your content is able to be quickly indexed and catalogued. These and other strategies will help you to get noticed by search engines and to feature more prominently in search results, helping more customers to learn about your site. The more people visit your site, the more people will potentially click on your ads, and the more money you will make.
Finding success with Google AdSense will not happen overnight. Driving up revenue takes a lot of hard work and research -- the same hard work and research required to build a successful blog. Follow these tips and focus on creating a quality blog, and you will see your revenue slowly climb from cents to dollars -- potentially thousands per month.
Make the Right Selections
When you sign up for AdSense, you can choose the display options for the ads on your site, then you will be matched with advertisers. Selecting the right options will ensure that you are matched with the best advertisers. Typically, sizes that do well are the 160x600 wide skyscraper, the 300x250 medium rectangle, and the 728x90 leaderboard. Ads that allow for images and flash animation are also very popular. Choosing these options for your site will make you more competitive for being matched with advertisers.
Choose the Best Placement
Where you place the ads on your site will greatly impact the amount of clicks you generate. Typically, ads that are placed at the top of your page do very well, as they are the first things that your reader will notice. However, ads that are placed directly after an article or blog post perform the best, not only for their placement but also for their relevancy. For example, if you write an article about the benefits of coconut oil and then place an ad for coconut oil or coconut butter immediately after the ad, your reader is likely to feel motivated by you wrote and will want to click on the ad. Click-throughs are even more likely when you place ads after articles and do not include links to other blog posts or relevant content on your site.
Keep Your Design Simple
Filling your page with lots of photos, videos, and other graphic elements will make it hard for readers to distinguish between your content and advertising. Your ads will basically get lost in a sea of photos. Keep your design clean and simple in order to highlight your ads. Of course, you should include photos on your blog, just be wary of overloading the graphic elements on the page. Likewise, do not overload your page with ads. Choose targeted content and targeted ads for the most effective performance.
Create Evergreen Content
If you have a lot of articles on your site that are linked to current events, these articles will quickly become dated, and any advertising that is listed on these pages will be overlooked. Few people visiting your page now are going to read about the announcement that "John and Kate Plus 8" is being cancelled or that "new reports" suggest risks of taking Fen Fen. Fill your site with a lot of evergreen content so that ads can stay current and will be more visible.
Optimize Your Site
Of course, the best way to get people to click on the ads on your site is to get people to your site. And the best way to get more people to your site is to make it prominent in search-engine rankings. Make effective use of search-engine optimization techniques to drive traffic to your site. Choose the best keywords, and use them effectively in your content, titles, tags, and other page elements. Create quality backlinks to your site by guest posting and building community with other bloggers. Ensure that all of your content is able to be quickly indexed and catalogued. These and other strategies will help you to get noticed by search engines and to feature more prominently in search results, helping more customers to learn about your site. The more people visit your site, the more people will potentially click on your ads, and the more money you will make.
Finding success with Google AdSense will not happen overnight. Driving up revenue takes a lot of hard work and research -- the same hard work and research required to build a successful blog. Follow these tips and focus on creating a quality blog, and you will see your revenue slowly climb from cents to dollars -- potentially thousands per month.
About the Author:
Heather Green is a freelance writer for several regional magazines in North Carolina as well as a resident blogger for onlinenursingdegrees.org. Her writing experience includes fashion, business, health, agriculture and a wide range of other topics. Heather has just completed research onassociate degree in nursing and north carolina nursing schools.