Google Adsense Might Have Broken the Camel’s Back

Google Adsense Terms of Service have just changed. Jensense has this great post about the ramifications of the change. Jensense should be in every Adsense advertiser’s list of feeds. She has always given great updates on the TOS for Google. At first she did it via posts on webmasterworld, but now she does it from her blog.

Anyway, Jennifer does a great job of making sense of the Adsense TOS changes and I highly recommend you check out her post.

It looks like none of the changes will affect my sites and blogs, but with all the restrictions I can see why Darren Rowse (who I first found this story from) says: Make Money with AdSense

I’ve already heard from a number of publishers that if given the choice between AdSense and YPN that they’ll jump to YPN because of the less stringent requirements – this change has put one too many hoops to jump through in front of some publishers.

Google might have just added the straw that broke the camel’s back. Personally, I really like Adsense and I don’t plan on switching to YPN. However, the constant changes to the Adsense TOS are getting to be annoying. I do plan on experimenting with YPN at some point. It certainly has the advantage of being less restrictive and there is something to be said for that.

I didn’t plan on doing this but…

I decided to go through some of my email this evening, even though I am still on vacation and I came across something that looked real interesting.

Scott Boulch the author of “The Death of Adsense” came out with a new free ebook “The Autopsy” that looks like it will be a good read. I am going to download it when I get back to Texas and take a look at it. You can click here and go check it out for yourself and let me know if it’s any good. I think you also get some sort of bonus mp3 for referring 3 or more people to it, but I haven’t really looked closely at the details yet.

My friend Austin is friends with someone who was heavily involved in the original “Death of Adsense” book. I may talk more about that some other time, but… now back to vacationing!

While I am Out There Will be Tons of Product Launches

I will be going on vacation this Thursday, so after Thursday it will be quite difficult to get in touch with me. I will be spending very little time blogging while on my vacation. We are heading over to visit my parents in Tampa and we are going to spend a few days in Disney World. We will actually be spending my birthday and Jill’s birthday in Disney World.

If you own The Product Launch Formula you know that there are going to be a lot of product launches while I am in Florida. This is both good and bad…

Good – because I won’t be tempted to buy proucts I don’t need.

Bad – because there are products I am seriously interested in buying and won’t be available to buy them on the days they launch, which means I will have to pay more for them. Make Money with AdSense

The one product I am most interested in buying is launching on January 10th – Joel Comm’s Instant Adsense Templates membership site. I will be in Disney World when it launches, which means there isn’t much of a chance I will be able to sign up the first two days it is offered.

In the world of blogging, the biggest blogging product being launched has already been launched. It is the half price deal that Andy Wibbels is giving on all of his blogging products combined. He is calling it the Season Pass. For those interested in becoming professional bloggers, I recommed you click here and check out Andy’s offer.

Anyway, you can expect one or two more posts from me, before I head off to Florida. Then I won’t be posting much (if at all) until I get back.

AdSense application

Applying for an AdSense publisher account is easy. Just click the following link to get started.

Sign up for AdSense.

You will see the following page and you will need to click on the "Sign up now " button as shown bellow.

Next, fill in the form you will be shown and click the "Submit information" button at the bottom of the page. Keep in mind that some of the information you will provide here won't be editable so be carreful not to make the slightest mistake (read and read your application form again before submitting).

Here are two things you should pay attention to when applying for your adsense publisher account:

- Contact information is crucial because all your payments will be blocked untill you enter a secret code you will be mailled to the address you provide. Wrong address means NO payment ! In this section, payee name (generally your name) and country won't be editable.

- Product selection : check both options (I don't know why they give this choice)

The next page confirms the information you entered and asks if you already have a Google account. If you use another Google service like Blogger, Adwords... then check the first option. If not, check the second one and go on by creating a new Google account. Make Money with AdSense

Google will then confirm that your application has been successful.

Wait for 1 or 2 days and you will receive the follow up message in your mailbox. If you are accepted, you will be able to log in to your AdSense account and start showing ads on your website / blog.

The adSense basic formula

Making little money with AdSense is easy : Set up the ads and leave them. Making real money with AdSense is much harder. This article will help you understand the adsense revenue generation mecanism (Business Model).

AdSense revenue is based on a very simple formula you aught to know by heart :

Revenue = Traffic x click Through Rate x Average Revenue per click

This is also called The AdSense Business Model.

Revenue

This is the result of the formula, the amount of money you earn.

Traffic

In this context, traffic is the number of times a google ad is displayed on your website for the considered period of time. If your pages are seen 10.000 times during a month, your traffic is then 10.000 provided you place adsense ads on all your pages. To get 10.000 page impressions a month you can, for example, have 5.000 visitors viewing an average 2 pages per visitor or 8.000 visitors viewing 1,25 pages per visitor...

Please note that google can also show "public service" ads that are not taken into account which will reduce you traffic.

click through rate (CTR)

CTR is how many clicks you get out of 1 (one) page impression. It is generally close to 1% or 2%. A CTR of 3% means that a traffic of 10.000 resulted in 300 clicks. Make Money with AdSense
CTR indicates how well the ads are doing, of course the higher the better but do not dream of a 30% CTR!

Average Revenue per click

As the phrase indicates, this is the amount of money Google pays you (in average) for every click. It can be 5 cents, 20 cents or many dollars.
The process that determines the revenue per click is complexe and will be discussed in upcoming articles.

How do I create and customize my ads ?

To start creating an AdSense ad unit, you need to be logged into your AdSense account. If you do not already have an AdSense account, you can apply from this page.

Once you are logged in, click on the "AdSense setup" tab and choose a product as shown below:

You will probably want to start by AdSense for content. On the next screen you will be asked to choose between ad units and link units. We will use the default options. (for more details on how to choose suitable AdSense products, please reffer to our advertising strategy guide).

On the next screen you will be able to customize your ads, by choosing the ad format and the colors as shown below:



Make Money with AdSense

When you are done, click the "continue" button and you will be able to get your Javascript code. This code has to be insered (copy and paste) in every page's HTML you want AdSense ads to be displayed on.

HOW TO CREATE CHANNELS

Once you will have created and customized your ads, you will be offered the possibility to create channels. Channels are used to track the performance of a specific ad / link unit.

Here is the screen you will see:

As you can see, you can either assign an existing channel to the unit you are about to create or create a new channel.

To assign an existing channel, just click the "Add" link beside it. Make Money with AdSense

If none of the existing channels suits you, click on the link called "Add new channel" (just below the box). An input box will pop up and you will be able to type in the name you want to give to the channel. Click OK so the channel is automatically added to you channel list. It will also be assigned to the unit you are creating.

If you want to remove a channel you have assigned to the ad, just click the link called "Remove" shown beside it.

Once you have added the channels you want, just click the "continue" button to get your code.

For a comprehensive case study on how channel can be used to track performance and make decisions that will improve your earning, read this article.

DISPLAY YOUR FIRST ADSENSE AD

Now that you have got your Google AdSense account and that you have learned to create and customize ads, let's see how you can start showing them on your website / blog.

The adsense code is a javascript code you copy and paste into your pages. Javascript is easier to implement than PHP code or any server side code because any page, be it dynamic or static (in plain HTML), can execute it on the client's browser.

Once you have logged into your account and created your ads, the last step of the creation process automatically generates the javascript code for you. When you click the frame displaying the code, it is automatically selected and you can copy it. Make Money with AdSense

Insertion the code

Now that you have the code, the next step is to open you webeditor or log into your blog / CMS... administration interface to insert the javascript code in the page's code. Please be very carefull not to paste it in your editor because it will be interpreted as plain text and won't execute on browsers.

This means you need to access the HTML code of your page. To do so using a popular webeditor like Dreamweaver, you just open the page you want and click the "Code" button to see the HTML code. Scroll to the desired line and paste your code there. To make sur your implementation is good, the code entred will be invisble when you get back to the WYSIWYG editor.

What is a MFA?

Make Money with AdSense

“MFA” is a new term you may have come across lately on discussion boards or blog posts. MFA is the short version of “Made For AdSense”. It is always associated with the term “site” (or “website”) or “blog” as it is a new phenomenon touching all imaginable web contents.

An MFA Site is a site that has been designed, created, published… in the unique goal of generation income using the Google AdSense program. Here is a good example of a MFA website Acne treatment

Accordingly, content, design and general website quality are generally poor when it comes to MFA websites and cause a bad visitor experience. Moreover, MFA site creation has been made easier and easier over time as the process has been highly automated through some cheap software offering to create such sites in minutes.

Although some MFA websites use traditional traffic generation and marketing techniques, most of them are based on what is known as “AdSense arbitrage”.

Optimizing your advertising strategy

In its AdSense program, google offers an array of products :

• Adsense for content
• Adsense for search
• Refferals

The first critical task (after understanding each product), is to come up with the best possible combination of these products.

Of course, each website is unique and so requires a unique " Advertising strategy " combining AdSense and other advertising techniques. To help define the best AdSense strategy for your website we suggest you try and answer these simple questions :

Do you have many returning visitors ?

This is tipycally the case for a blog or a portal with constantly updated content (news, forums...). If this applies to you, we think you should not rely on refferals to yield much income as they only pay for "a first time install". Once the majority of your readers will have installed the reffered product (firefox, picasa, adwords, adsense subscription...) you won't be getting any more money from these ads.
On the contrary, if you have mostly first time visitors, then refferals can be a good choice.

Where do your visitors come from ?

Again, if you are considering refferals, you should keep in mind that these can be restricted to some regions of the globe. For example, the google pack installation won't pay you any cent unless the person installing it is from the USA. Thus, if the majority of your visitors comes from England it is useless to put this product on your website.

Is your design flexible

In some cases, and particularly with some blogging services, you do not have total control over the lay out of your website. Then you may have only one place to put your ads which is less than 20 pixels high. In this case for example, you cannot put any ad unit since there is no suitable format offered.
In some other situations, you may be using a CMS (Content Management System) to build your site and be confronted to the hard fact that the only region you can personalise is the menu (or sidebar). In that case we strongly recommend you use link units because they can be harmonously integrated into any menu.

Are you in a high paying market?

Refferals have fixed revenues wherase adsense for content varies according to the market. The health market for example, is known for high advertising investments and a single click can pay many dollars. In contrary, a refferal for firefox will never pay you more than 1 dollar as it is clearly stated in the terms of use.
Therefore, it is by far preferable to display ad units or link units when you know you are in a high paying market.
On the opposite, if your average revenue per click is less than 10 cents for a long period of time, then we strongly recommend that you opt for refferals.

Do you have deep knowledge of your visitors?

Some targets are known to click more easily than others. A good example are elderly people who are not used to the internet and the new technologies and will click on your ads because they think they are really part of the site then will lend on another page and be surprised, so they will come back to your site and try another link... they are also fond of the search feature, I heard of à 200% CTR for some sites targeting elederly people !
Now, if you are targeting advanced computer users, do you really think they haven't installed firefox or picasa yet ?

Do you have qualified traffic?

Qualified traffic is vital for Adsense revenues because what makes google ads effective is the fact that they are "highly targeted" and based on your content. If your visitors are really interested in your content (qualified) then they are more likely to click on your ads (actually ad units and link units) since these are related to it.
If your traffic isn't that qualified, then you should probably consider adsense for search or refferals. Adsense for search is recommended since your visitors won't find what they are looking for and will use the search feature more often. Refferals are also indicated in this case because you can display wide target ads like firefox or picasa downloads that will suit almost any visitor. Make Money with AdSense

Do you really recommend the product?

I must say that I am really happy to put adsense refferals on my websites because I know that I am recommeding quality products. This is very important when you are keen on gaining your visitors' trust and building a brand.
Adsense for content isn't as secure, and you may end up displaying ads that will disapoint your visitors (Made for AdSense websites or MFA).

I remembre clicking on an ad about "cheap high quality hosting" that took me to a page with just one written sentence and three adsense blocks!

Now that you have asked yourself all these questions, you are probably more clear about the best adsense strategy for your website - at least for the product mix.
Unfortunately, things do not always go the way they should and the internautes are known to be umpredictable. Experimentation and data feedback is therefore a necessary step we discuss in the following pages.

Prepare data for analysis

After a period of time using adsense products, you have enough data to start learning from experience.
Adsense offers some good reporting tools to help you manage your ads and adapt your advertising strategy to the unique reality of your website.

To summerise my approach I would say that it is all about "identifying what works and what doesn't to take appropriate actions" .

Setting up a framework for analysis

By default, your adsense account will only give basic data about how well your ads are performing. In fact, the data is only grouped by product type and no difference is made between ad units and link units.
This is really not enough if you are serious about developping your adsense business.

Using channels

To figure out what channels to use, you need to ask yourself what data you would like to have. Would you like to know what ad format has the best performance? Would it be better to have an idea about the performance of each section of your site? Are you concerned about where to put your ads (top of the page, bottom, left...)?
According to your answers you need to use different types of channels.

- URL related data:

If you have more than one domain (or website) that displays your ads, I highly recommend that you add all of your domains as URL channels to track each one's global performance individually.
For an indepth analysis of a particular domain, use URL channels to track directories or even pages if these are not too numerous. This will provide an idea about how well every section or page of the website is doing.

- Ad format related data:

Some ad formats are known to be more profitable than others. To make sure this is true for your website too, I recommand that you define a custom channel for each format that you use. For example, use "300-250" for small rectangles or simply name the channel "Small rectangle"... Make Money with AdSense

- Positionning related data:

Where you place ads on a page is sometimes crutial to their performance level. To track this influence (if there is any) use words like "left", "top", "middle", "text embeded", "in menu"... to define custom channels.

- Colours related data:

Colors can also be intersting to track as they can impact the CTR of an ad unit for example. The best choice here is to define custom channels based on the palette you use ("open air", "ink"...).

Of course, these are just suggestions and you are free to come up with other criteria you find relevant to track.

How do I create advanced reports ?

The first thing you are asked to set to your needs is the product data you want to analyse. Below the "choose product" heading, you will find a drop down menu covering all three AdSense products: Make Money with AdSense

• adsense for content
• adsense for search
• refferals

Once you have choosen the product, you will need to define a date range. You can either use the drop down menu to define a period of time like today, yesterday, las 7 days... or define your own customised date range like from Sept 5 2006 to Oct 31 2006 to see how the Septembre update affected your performances.

Next you will need to tackle the "Show data by" section. I understand this is quite confusion so I advise you to choose the default criterion which is "Page". However, advanced adsense users must be able to use any additional data provided by google so let's take a look at how the adsense team explains it. I have modified the text to make it a bit clearer.

Advanced reports provide the option to view your performance by page, ad unit, or individual ad. We've highlighted the differences between each report below.

• Page reports will show an impression every time a user views a page displaying Google ads. We'll only report one page impression no matter how many Google ads are displayed on a page.
• Ad unit reports will show an impression every time a user views a Google ad unit on your page. For example, if a page with one half banner and one vertical banner is viewed once, we'll display two ad unit impressions.
• Individual ad reports will show an impression for each individual ad that's shown in any ad unit (remembre that a single ad unit can contain more than one idividual ad). For example, if a page with one half banner and one vertical banner is viewed once, it will generate three ad impressions.

The last decision you need to make is choosing between displaying "aggregate data" and "channel data".
Unless you want a summary of your overall performance on a daily basis or that you have not defined any channels, I think you should opt for "channel data" option that will give you valuable data on the performance of every channel you set up earlier.
Once you choose "channel data", more options are displayed. This is a little confusing at first but if you are familiar with SQL queries and databases you shouldn't have any difficulty using these options. For others I have tried to list some guidelines:

• select at least one channel you want to analyse
• set grouping to "date" or "channel", avoid using both
• try many combinations till you get what you want
• try to understand the data and you will see what other data you need

Improve your click Through Rate

click Through Rate (CTR) is one of the three parameters that make up the AdSense basic revenue formula. Thus increasing it can have a dramatic impact on your AdSense income

Over time, CTR diminishes naturally as Internet users get more and more used to the ads and less attracted by them. This is exactly what happened to Image banners that used to have something like 5% CTR and that are nowadays performing less than 0.5% ! Make Money with AdSense

AdSense sponsored links are successful today because they managed to come up with an innovative way of advertising through link like ads. This success is mainly measured, though not exclusively, by a high CTR ranging from 0.5% to 20% in some cases, the average being around 3 %. Now it is up to you to take advantage of this high optimisation potential.

We have listed three main ways to improve a website's AdSense click Through Rate:

• Improve CTR using Ad Format
• Improve CTR using Ad Colours
• Improve CTR using Ad Placement

AdSense - AdWords pricing explained

Understanding how Google determines the value of a click through AdWords / AdSense is a key issue because the pricing model is complex while being crucial for your business ROI. We'll first expose the general process and then get look at realistic case study.

Identifying keywords

The first thing the AdSense bot does is to set a list of keywords that seem relevant to your page's content (contextual targetting). This is done through a complex algorithm nobody really knows except Google !

listing Competing Advertisers

For each keyword, a list of competing advertisers is established. Doing so for all the keywords results in an extended list of advertisers competing to show there ads on your page.

Pricing every ad

Then based on the maximum amount of money (max bid) every advertiser is ready to pay, an ordered list is established from the highest bid to the lowest one. Then the Vickrey pricing model is applied as shown in the following example :

a pricing case study

In our page, let's say that the AdSense bot has detected the 4 following keywords as relevant :

• Advertising
• Cost per Click
• AdSense
• Pay out

Then for each keyword, AdSense lists interested advertisers as follow :

KEYWORD	ADVERTISER	MAX BID ($)
Advertising	Pordgast inc	2,25
	John immo	0,25
Cost per click	Pay-it-less.com	6,50
	Ultimate aBooks inc	1,02
	more4less.com	2,52
	Ariel Blown	0,75
AdSense	Google inc	4,00
	James LeGrand	2,00
	adsense4money.com	1,50
	millionsinminutes.com	0,50
Pay Out	Google inc	2,00
	neevie ltd	1,85

The next step is to list those advertisers from the highest bidder to the lowest one. This gives the following list :

ADVERTISER	MAX BID ($)
Pay-it-less.com	6,50
Google inc	4,00
more4less.com	2,52
Pordgast inc	2,25
James LeGrand	2,00
Google inc	2,00
neevie ltd	1,85
adsense4money.com	1,50
Ultimate aBooks inc	1,02
Ariel Blown	0,75
millionsinminutes.com	0,50
John immo	0,25

Unfortunately for some advertisers, all ads won't be shown as ad space on the page is limited to a single large rectangle ad unit which can hold no more than 4 ads. This means only the first four will be displayed.

But how much will every advertiser be charged for a click ? The answer is : 1 cent more than the advertiser following him. The next chart gives the CPC for every advertiser :

POSITION	ADVERTISER	MAX BID ($)	CPC
1	Pay-it-less.com	6,50	4,01
2	Google inc	4,00	2,53
3	more4less.com	2,52	2,26
4	Pordgast inc	2,25	2,01
Invisible	James LeGrand	2,00

As you can see, the most agressive advertiser "Pay-it-less.com" won't pay $ 6.50 but just 1 cent more than "Google inc" max bid to deserve his first position ! The process goes on until we reach the last advertiser (James LeGrand) who is only useful to determine what the fourth one (Pordgast inc) will pay.

AdSense Pay Out

Now that we know how much every advertiser will be charged for a click, how much of the money will an AdSense publisher get ? This is called "pay out". Make Money with AdSense

Pay out ratio can never be close to 100% because Google has costs to run its AdWords / AdSense programs and needs to make some profit! Today, nobody really knows for certain what the ratio is for AdSense, however we assume it is between 50 % and 60 % !

So if someone clicks on the second ad, you will earn something close to $ 1.30

Lately, Google introduced CTR as a new criterion to define an advertiser's position in the list. Now the AdWords / AdSense algorithm uses CTR * Max Bid to order publishers using the same general logic as shown in this example.

Double your adsense earnings showing fewer ads

YES it is actually possible to dramatically increase your revenue from Adsense simply by reducing the number of ad units you show in every page. In fact, most AdSense publishers think (and the AdSense team also tells them) that showing more ads will increase their adsense monthly income. This is unfortunately hardly ever true!

Before you read on, we strongly recommend that you carefully read our article about the adsense pricing model since the strategy we will be discussing is mainly based on taking advantage of the adsense pricing model.

As you probably know, there are three main ways to increase adsense income on a website:

• more traffic

• higher CTR

• higher CPC

The strategy we are to reveal aims at getting a consistently higher CPC.

Double adsense earnings showing fewer ads: A case study

Let's consider the following case: you run a website with some traffic and three ad units (Top banner, Right Hand Skyscraper and a half banner at the bottom) and you make $ 130 a month.

Let's see how you could double your income by showing fewer ad units. Here are some details about your website:

• Traffic: 9.000 visits and 25.000 pages viewed in average every month.

• AdSense Stats:

Ad unit	CTR	CPC ($)	Revenue ($)
Top banner	1,00%	0.23	57,5
Skyscraper	1,20%	0.11	33
Half banner	4,00%	0.04	40

Unless you have understood the adsense pricing model, you may be wondering why CPC is so different from one ad unit to another. Anyway, this is normal since the ad that gets the higher paying ads is the one that first appears on the HTML code (the Top banner) and is followed by the second one (Skyscraper) then comes the third (Half banner).

Let's now cut down the number of our ad units keeping only the Bottom Half banner. This means the half banner shows first on the HTML and so gets the two best paying ads. Since it is the first ad unit, it should have the same CPC the top banner used to have. Moreover, a banner shows 4 ads where a half banner shows only 2. This will result in a considerably higher average CPC for the half banner (due to more competition). CTR will at least stay at 4% since we kept the same placement, same colours. but could also increase to something like 5% because your advertising will be less intrusive.

Let's now see how much money you will be making with no change in your traffic stats:

Scenario	CTR	CPC	Revenue
1	4,00%	0.23	230
2	4,00%	0.30	300
3	4,50%	0.23	259
4	4,50%	0.30	338

As you can read on the chart you could easily make $ 230 in the most pessimistic scenario while an optimistic scenario could yield more than $ 300!!! with no change to your traffic and a better reader experience.

Can I use it on my website?

Yes most adsense publishers can use it. However, there are some preliminary conditions to getting the most out of it:

• If you are in a low paying market (like arcad and games related websites) where CPC is around 5 cents no matter how high your ad is in the HTML code, don't use this strategy as it won't do much for you. On the opposite, if you are in a high paying niche this strategy could work great for you.

• You also need an ad unit with high CTR, compared to the other units on the same page, while having a lower CPC. The bigger the differences are, the more you could increase your revenue.

If you can fulfil the two above conditions, then hurry up and remove those ads that keep you from making real money.

Want more money?

OK! Now that you have reduced the advertising pressure on your visitors, you can choose to sit down and watch increased loyalty from your readers, more links... (long term results) or choose to get even more money now (short term) by adding ads to the space you have saved.

As you know, link units and referral products are perfect for that since they do not compete with ad units (so you can add them with no risk to the above strategy). Make Money with AdSense

Of course you can use other advertising programs instead of adsense but we won't discuss that as this is a "make money with adsense" website!!

Understanding AdSense arbitrage

AdSense arbitrage is a simple technique that has been imagined by some internet "pirates" to automate the process of making money online. They use pay per click programs like adwords to generate traffic on a given website, then they convert the traffic into money using advertising programs like AdSense. This is of course against google TOS.

As you can imagine, the cheaper the traffic is, the better. That is why those unusual advertisers try to target the least competitive keywords even with low traffic.

The traffic is then directed towards an MFA (Made For AdSense) website. Of course, the website should be optimized to generate a high CTR and a high RPC making the eCPM really good and the whole business profitable.

Let's see it in action!

Traffic:

We have chosen to build a website on web hosting so we have to find keywords related to hosting (a competitive area) that are cheap to generate decent targetted traffic. We have chosen the following words (some typos and some other rare keywords):

Keyword	Average CPC	Traffic	Monthly Budget
cheep hosting	0,41	2810	1152,1
perl hosting	0,19	1100	209
webb hosting	0,22	3351	737,22
celeron server	0,33	590	194,7
AMD server	0,24	102	24,48
secure web hosting	0,28	3215	900,2
TOTALS		11168	3217,7

However, some arbitragers don't mind using irrelevant cheap keywords or other PPC advertising networks like Yahoo Publisher Network, Miva... to get cheap traffic even if it is not targetted.

The website:

We have built a one page website with no outgoing links. We have placed a paragraph about web hosting stuffed with high value keywords related to hosting (affordable web hosting, cheap web hosting, free web hosting.) followed by two large rectangles of adsense ad units.

An additional link unit is placed on the right hand side of the page instead of a menu.

Revenue:

To be profitable the website should generate a 30% CTR (possible given how we build it) and an average Revenue Per Click (RPC) around $1. Our profit will be as follows:

Profit = Revenue - Expanses

Profit = (11168 * 0.3 * 1) - 3218

Profit = 3350 - 3218 = $132 Make Money with AdSense

So we have managed to make $132 dollars doing almost nothing!

A shaky business model

As you can infer, this business model is really shaky and not sustainable as the least change in the business model parameters (CPC, CTR and RPC) can lead to some serious losses. In addition, such practices are actively fought by Google and all AdSense publishers using them are banned.

What is AdSense Revenue Sharing?

Revenue sharing is typically used in "community websites". A community website is a website that has a loyal readership regularly updating and renewing the website's content. Discussion boards or Forums are the best example to explain how revenue sharing works, as they are the most common form of community websites.

As a registered member of a forum, you get the right to access all the services it offers (ask for help, help others, send private messages, search the forum.).

To motivate their members, forum owners used to thank them by different flattering techniques (become a moderator, have your name on the best members' list, become known as an authority in a given area.) but when AdSense became a popular monetisation system used by almost every Internet advanced user (typically the people participating in forums), some clever forum owners thought the motivation would be even greater if the best members could benefit financially from their participation in the forum. Revenue Sharing was born.

Even though the terms may vary from a revenue sharing forum to another, the principle is the same: Every forum member is asked to give his AdSense publisher ID then, after fulfilling some "active member conditions", a percentage of the ads displayed on the forum would be for him i.e. displayed with his AdSense Publisher ID. If the advertising gets clicked, the member earns money directly in his AdSense account. This is called Revenue Sharing because the forum owner shares his website's earnings by sharing his advertising space.

To have your ads shown, you may be asked to reach a certain number of posts, start popular threads, be a member for a defined period of time.

As you can see, this a "performance based" strategy that ultimately benefits both the forum owner and his community: the forum owner gets loyal and active members making his content richer and up to date which will end up increasing his website's earnings and the forum members get a share of the money they helped make in addition to the help and services they get from the forum. This is a great win-win situation.

Some revenue sharing websites: Make Money with AdSense

The fact that Revenue Sharing is a win-win strategy helped make it very popular among internet users and many websites are now using it. We have listed below - and commented on - some popular revenue sharing websites to help you make your choice if you want to get started making money from revenue sharing. We will keep updating the list as we discover new interesting websites.

However, we would like you to know you shouldn't expect to make much money out of revenue sharing as it will hardly ever earn you more than a few dollars a month (we have tried it!).

digitalPoint forums

DP Forums are among the most popular and usefull webmaster forums I know on the net. After registering and posting at least 50 times, you are allowed to enter you AdSense ID and get started sharing revenue.

• For threads you start, your AdSense client ID will be used 50% of the time when the thread is viewed as a thread.
• Your AdSense client ID will be used 50% of the time when the thread is viewed by post and you made the post of course.

As you can see, the only way you can have your ads shown is by starting threads. In about two weeks, I participated normally (two or three post a day) and two or three threads started. Here are the results : 322 impressions and 2 clicks earning a huge 25 cents! I also got some CPM impressions which got me 2 additional cents.

Tips for Avoiding Your AdSense Account Getting Banned by Google

I have seen quite a lot of AdSense publishers posted in different forums stating that their AdSense accounts were banned by Google due to fraudulent clicks. Most of these people claim that they are innocent and have never clicked on their on AdSense ads. So they have no idea why click fraud can occur on their AdSense accounts. The truth is click fraud can happen in several ways and not necessarily caused by the AdSense publisher himself/herself who accidentally clicked on his/her own AdSense.

Below are some of the tips to protect your AdSense account:

1) Do not use autosurf programs to promote your websites that contain AdSense. Autosurf programs can substantially increase your website traffic or hits, AdSense page view and ecpm but people who surf your site only to earn advertising credit or other type of incentives. So the traffic generated from autosurf programs aren't counted as real and thus against AdSense policies.

2) If possible, do not involve in any traffic exchange networks and programs. If you have join one or more programs or networks that can make you a steady AdSense commission, you should start worry about your AdSense account as this could mean that members of the program(s) were clicking each other AdSense ads all the while whether intentionally or unintentionally. As soon as Google detected a group of people were clicking each other AdSense, many of the members AdSense account in the program will be suspended. Also traffic exchange can be another mean to artificially generate tons of unreal website traffic or hits and boost up AdSense page view & ecpm and it is strictly prohibited by Google .

3) Do not join AdSense exchange networks. They are similar to traffic exchange programs except members are participate just for clicking each other AdSense. This should be a guaranteed way to be banned by Google.

4) Read all the Google AdSense policies at http://www.google.com/adsense to see whether you have against any policies and make the necessary modification.

Effective AdSense Tips from Google

I just went over to AdSense official blog and found that Google have created an Optimization Demo where you can view and learn Google suggested Adsense optimization techniques to maximize your AdSense performance. The demo will show you the ad positions that are proven to be generating high CTR with screen shots of AdSense websites and other useful AdSense tips like what ad formats and color you should use......

If you are a beginner or an experienced webmaster not satisfied with your current AdSense CTR and earning, I suggest you take a look at Optimization Demo to learn some techniques that you can apply instantly to your site and blog.

5 Tips to Boost Your Adsense Revenue

Google AdSense program has made it easier for webmasters to make money through a website. Webmasters who run an AdSense campaign will display Google's contextual Ads relevant to the content of their sites and thus encouraging visitors to click the ads and earn money for each ad click.

However you will earn very little AdSense revenue if you don't know how to optimize your AdSense ads on your website. Here are some tips to increase your AdSense earning:

1. Focus on one Adsense ad format. The Large Rectangle (336X280) ad format seems to work better than other ad formats because this format tends to result in higher click through rates (CTR). Another reason is that the ads will look like normal web links that visitors use to click on them. It doesn't matter whether the visitors know that they are clicking AdSense ads or not, as long as there are clicking, you earn AdSense commission.

2. Create a custom palette for your ads. Select a color that matches your website's background. If your site's background is white both, the color of ad border and background should set to be white too. Also the color of the ad title should be similar to coloe of the links in your website. This is to make your AdSense ads look like it is part of the web pages. Again, this will boost AdSense CTR.

3. Don't place your AdSense ads at the bottom of your webpages because it is proven to be less effective. Displaying your AdSense ads at the bottom is like hiding your AdSense and thus leads to low CTR and AdSense revenue. Try to put them in the place where people can see them quickly. You will be amazed how the difference between AdSense locations can make when you see your earnings.

4. Try to place your AdSense ads near rich content as visitors main focus usually are your content. There are several ways to insert AdSense ads into your content and one of the ways is place your AdSense just after the end of your content.

5. Try to automate the insertion of your AdSense code into the webpages using SSI (or server side included). Ask your web administrator if your server supports SSI or not. How do you do it? Just save your AdSense code in a text file, name it as “AdSense text”, and upload it to the root directory of the web server. Then use SSI, call the code on other pages. This tip is a time saver especially for those who are using automatic page generators to generate pages on their website.

These are some of the tips that have worked well for some who want to generate hundreds and even thousands on their websites. There are other ways to optimize your AdSense that produce high CTR also. You can learn more tricks by reading in AdSense and webmaster forums.v