Choose the best AdSense format for CTR - AdSense Tutorial Part 2

If you don't know what is AdSense or just want to know the basics, please read my Part I of this tutorial. Also do not use too many AdSense ads, read about my AdSense warning for bloggers.

Google AdSense has many flavors of ad formats in various size and shapes, and by placing them effectively in your blog you can maximize the CTR. (CTR - Click Through Rate is the number of times an ad is displayed vs the number times it is clicked, so higher CTR is better). You can see the sample AdSense formats at http://www.google.com/adsense/adformats.

AdSense has three ad formats, Text-Ads, Image-Ads and Video-Ads. Out of these three Text-Ads always perform better for most sites. If you are just getting started with AdSense or did not have any success with AdSense so far, then you can ignore Image-Ads and Video-Ads until you make a decent income from AdSense.

There are 12 types of Text-Ads with varying size and shape.

Leaderboard

This ad pretty much cover your entire site (728 x 90) width. So they can be placed at the top of your page content just below the site banner or in site footer.

Banner

You can use these Banner Ads either at the beginning or end of your post. The problem with banner ads are they may not take the whole width of article body and may leave some space on one side. So try place them above post and below post and see which one look better.

Square and Rectangle Ads


The Square and Rectangle Ads can be best used with in your content. One trick is to wrap your content around these ads so they blend well with your content, but choose the ad unit which takes less than 60% of your article body width.

Link Units

AdSense also has horizontal and vertical Text Link Units. The horizontal link units can be placed above or below your menu/tool bar and the Vertical link units can be used next to your own links such as Categories, Archive list, Blog rolls etc.

Sky Scrapers and Buttons

Sky Scrapers are long vertical units, and they fill the sidebar very well and very effective when used on the right column next your article body. Button are small sized square and rectangle ad units and they fill the 'holes' in the layout very well.

Ad Placement for 2 column and 3 column blogs

Here are my recommendation for ad placements for better CTR, but you can always experiment with various ad types to see which one pay you better. Remember you need good content with keywords to get relevant ads from Google.

Leaderboard - Below blog title or in footer

Square and Rectangle Ad Units - Above blog post or embedded within blog post.

Sky Scrapers - Side bars

Horizontal Text Links - i) Below or Above Menu/Tool bar ii) Below or Above blog post

Vertical Text Links - Above or Below your own links in the side bar.

Buttons and other Smaller size Ad units - Use as fillers

Make the most out of AdSense - AdSense Tutorial Part I

If you already know what is Google AdSense then skip to Part II of this tutorial.

Google AdSense is a service from Google through which advertisers place their advertisements in Google's search results and in Ad publishers web site. AdSense is smart enough to decide when to publish a particular Ad and thus maximize the Advertiser's chance to get some revenue. In search results, AdSense displays only the Ads that are related to keywords being searched and in publisher's site it scans the content and shows only Ads that are relevant to the site.

Advertisers purchase the Ad spots thru Google AdWords service and publishers publish those ads thru Google AdSense service. Advertisers work with AdWords and decide how much they want to pay for each click (CPC) and when these ads get clicked in a publisher's web site then the publisher share CPC paid by advertisers with Google. This makes everyone involved happy because publisher and Google get the money per click and the advertiser got a potential customer in their site.

Now to get started with AdSense, first you need a web site or Blog; if you don't have one create a Blog with Blogger.com, it is very easy. After you have a web site or Blog ready, sign up with Google AdSense. Usually you get approved quickly, but some times it takes couple of days. After you are approved follow these step by step process to place an Ad in your site or blog. If you are using Blogger.com then you don't need to go through that process. In your Blogger.com account page go to the 'Layout' section and add an AdSense widget, and everything else is taken care by Blogger.

Before or after placing the Ads, you can customize it by choosing the color, font and format of Ads. But for most of the Ads Google won't let you change the font size. Google has this restriction to make sure that people don't make their Ads stand out in a way that suggest the visitors to click on them. Google says they want the visitors to click on an Ad only when they are really interested in what the Advertiser has to offer.

When you add AdSense Ads in your site, please make sure that you don't over do it. Google don't like sites with too many Ads and less content, read about my personal experience in AdSense warning for Bloggers post. Some times there is a chance that you get permanently banned from AdSense for repeated offense.

Now let us see how we can make money from AdSense. To make a decent income from AdSense you need lot of visitors to your site, and to attract visitors you need to produce good content and post often. According to online statistics less than 1% of your visitors click on an Ad and thus bring you an income. But when you place the Ads in key locations in your web page and blend them well with your content, you may be able to increase that click rate to 3%.

In the on coming days I'll talk about how to optimize your Ad to get better click rate.

Adsense warning for Bloggers

I have a test blog which I use to test my blog layouts, gadgets and AdSense ad placement. Yesterday while I was testing with AdSense ad placement I posted couple of posts and placed maximum number of ads allowed in every page. Since AdSense did not show ads relevant to the contents I 'unhide' the blog (Usually I hide this blog because it does not contain anything worth reading of). Today when I checked the my blogger account there was a warning message next to the blog saying the blog was locked due to TOS violations. So next time when you play with AdSense ads be very careful otherwise your months/years of hard work may be blocked.

I removed all the AdSense gadgets from the blog and sent a request to Blogger to review the decision. Hope they will unlock it.

How to find the best and highest paying keywords

If you writing your blog to make some money then you must make sure proper and high paying google Adsense ads are displayed. Adsense usually display the ads based on the blog content. It looks for keywords and display ads that uses the same or similar keywords. So to make the most of Google Adsense ads you need Google to display the ads that pay more per click.


To find the best keyword for your blog based on current contents, go to Google Keyword Tool, click on 'Webiste content' and enter your site or blog name. Click on 'Get keyword Ideas'.





After the result are displayed, select 'Show All' in 'Choose columns to display' box. Now you can sort the display by clicking on the desired header. Below is the result for this blog. According to the results if I use keyword like 'stay at home mom' or similar (use it in blog title, inside the post a few times), the ads that displayed in my page will have more CPC.




You can also use the same tool for new keyword ideas too. Select 'Descriptive keywords or phrase' and go on from there.

Increase Traffic to Your Site - Search Traffic vs Social Traffic

Even if you have good content in your blog, increasing the traffic to your site may not happen overnight. It takes time, week or sometimes month. You can speed up the process by submitting your site or blog to popular online directories, search engines etc. You can also promote your blog by publishing your article in well known sites such as technorati.com, digg.com, del.icio.us etc. You can also post comments with link to your own blog, in popular blogs in your niche.

If you are monetizing or planning to monetize your blog, then the increased traffic (called social traffic) from the above methods may not help. The people who visit from these social sites are mostly interested in what you got to say and most likely not click on any advertisements. So even though you get very high traffic you are not going to make good money from the google ads. Also unless you post regularly to those social sites you may lose your traffic over a period of time.

The people who usually click on google ads are mostly who come from the search engine such as google, yahoo or MSN. They read your contents if they find it interesting then they either go back to search results or click on an interesting ad and exit your page. So if you are interested in monetizing your blog most of your traffic should come from search engines.

So how would you increase the search engine traffic to your blog?, you need to do lot of search engine optimizations (SEO) to get your blog listed near the top for your niche related search. SEO is a huge topic which I will write about later.

Exclude your own Page Views from Google Analytics

If you have recently created a Blog and integrated with Adsense, you may be wondering why the PageViews or traffic are up on certain days and none on other days. The reason could be that those spike in traffic are coming from your own PC. Yes when you are adding new a post or verifying the layout etc all your page views are counted.

To exclude your own traffic from affecting the statistics, you need to create a filter and add it to Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a free service available from Google that you can use to analyze the traffic to your site. If you don't have a Google Analytics account it is very easy to signup. Go to your Blogger account, click on 'My Account' on the top and then click on 'Google Analytics' and follow the instructions to sign up.

After you signed up go to the 'Analytics Settings' and click on the 'Filter Manager' at the bottom. Once inside the Filter Manager page, click on 'Add Filter'. In the Add Filter you can add a filter to exclude an entire domain, an individual IP address, a range of IP address or a dynamic IP address.

Exclude an entire domain

Don't use this method to exclude your ISP domain (for e.g. comcast.com, att.net), as it excludes all the traffic from this domain (hundreds of thousands of users). For e.g. comcast.com domain may be used by all its customers.

Exclude a specific IP Address

This method only works if your IP address is static, i.e. the IP address do not change after you reboot your computer. If you are not sure check with your ISP. You can find your external IP Address by going to http://www.whatismyip.com/. The IP address like 192.168.xxx.xxx are internal IP address, given by your home/internal router, such IP address can not be used in this filter.

After you found your IP add it in the IP address field, but you need to add backward Slash(\) before all '.' in the IP address.

You can also use the above filter to exclude a range of IP address by setting the IP address field to '23\.12\.171\.57-60'. This range excludes all IP address from 23.12.171.57 to 23.12.171.60.

Exclude by Cookie

This is an advanced method, so if any of the above methods does not apply to you try this one. You can use this method to exclude all the computers in your home. First you need to create a new empty post in your Blog. Edit the post in HTML view (for Blogger go to Layout and click on Edit HTML), remove everything from <body> to </body> (also remove <body> and </body>) and add the following code in its place,

<body onLoad="javascript:pageTracker._setVar('exclude_by_cookie');">

Save the blog. From every computer that you want to exclude visit this new post. A cookie will be set in all the computers that visited this post (make sure your browser allow cookies to be set). Now create a new filter as follows.

Blog Mastermind by Yaro Starak

If you are new to blogging and want to make money, then you have two options either try discover everything on your own and overcome all hurdles (most of the bloggers never get there, give up in the middle) or just follow the steps of a proven mentor or Guru. If you like the second option and think you work well when someone guide you at every point, then there is none better than Yaro Starak.

Yaro Starak is a proven blogger who makes well over six figure income from blogging. He launched the Blog Mastermind program about two years ago to guide new bloggers to monetize their work. This is a six month long program, and during this period Yaro will show you how to get started, choose a niche, attract traffic and monetize your work. You will be working hard under his supervision and gain all the skills that other successful bloggers spent years to master.

The Blog Mastermind program is on the expensive side, a little less than $500 or around $97 per month. But don't decide against it right away, try read his free e-book and/or listen to his audio version of the e-book and decide for yourself.

You can download his Blog Profits Blueprint pdf or audio file here, or join his mentoring program by clicking here.

Setting up Windows Liver Writer for Blogger Blog

Windows Live Writer is a desktop application from Microsoft that can be used to download and update multiple blogs. Once you enter your username and password this application remembers it and you don't need to login into your blog every time. You can type your blog, preview it and publish it without opening up your browser and going to blogger.com.

First you need to download Windows Live Writer, and install it. After Installed run the application by navigating to 'Start -> Windows Live ->Windows Live Writer'. Now to setup the Live Writer to access your existing blogger account, select 'Another weblog service'

and in the next screen enter your blog address, user name, and password.

Leave the 'Save my password' selected, so you don't need to login every time. Click Next and accept all default setting in the next screen and Finish.

Now you are ready to post a blog, in the toolbar click on 'New', type in your contents. Until you are ready to publish it you can save it by clicking 'Save Draft'. You can either save it in you computer or in your Web Blog itself. When you are done and ready to publish it click on 'Publish' button. At any time you can check how your new post will look like in your Blog, by selecting 'Web Layout' from View menu.

If you want to add another Blog click on 'Weblog' button and select 'Add weblog account' and repeat the above process.

After creating the Blog if you change the style by picking a new template, you can update the Live Writer by selecting Weblog menu -> Edit Weblog setting. In the Weblog Setting dialog, go to Editing tab and click on 'Update Style'.

Happy Blogging.

5 tips for new blogger

I have started couple of blogs and blogging for a week or so. I did not have much content there, so I did not include the links here. I am still trying to figure out what niche should I market and pay attention to. It is not easy to choose a niche as you need in depth knowledge to write about it day after day. If you choose a broad subject/topic such as Gaming or Poker etc, you need to update your blog many times everyday to cover the thing happening in that field which is impossible for a part-time blogger.

I just started the blogs to practice few things; improve my writing style (which I know really sucks), convert my thoughts into writing and try to complete a blog within a fixed amount of time.

If you are also just started blogging or thinking about starting a blog here are few tips:

• Don't start a blog on how to make money online, as there are numerous blogs, sites covering that topic. In this blog I am not telling you how to make money, I am just sharing my experience with you.
• Spend a week or so to decide on what you want to write about, you should be able to write at least twice about that niche/subject. Make sure that niche/subject market is not too crowded.
• When you are writing make sure there is no spelling mistakes or obvious grammatical errors. Use blogging tools to check your spelling before you post. Read about how to use Windows Live Writer to update your blog.
• You need to develop a writing style to attract larger followers. The style should encourage the users to stick to your blog and read more instead of browsing for a minute and move on to another site.
• If you are not done so already, start a blog to practice your skills (just like I did) and start posting. Without writing you can not improve your skills.

If you think you need someone to walk you through blogging and lead you step by step to prosperity checkout Blog Mastermind by Yaro Starak.

I will update this blog with every steps I take towards prosperity. Wish me luck.

Earn Extra Income Online Marketing your Affiliate

I signed up for Affiliate marketing last week and I also created few blogs. I added couple of posts to the blogs and added Adsense and Amazon Ad blocks. I earned $0.01 in the last couple of days thru Adsense. I hope that income grows in next few weeks. Since I have a full-time job I could not spend more than 30 minutes every day, but I am planning to add at least one post a day.

Last weekend I was also reading about site optimization, picking the right keyword, SEO etc, but I am thinking of not doing anything until I get 100 hits every day. My Adsense report shows I am getting anywhere from 10-40 hits per day.

I read that if some good blogs have link to my site, that will increase my site ranking in Search Engine. I haven't figured how to do that yet.

In the coming days I'll update my progress.

Earn Extra Income Online thru Affiliate Marketing

For the last one month I was taking paid surveys and so far the payout was not much. So I took the next step in making extra income online last week by singing up with Amazon and Commission Junction and others for Affiliate Marketing. So far I haven't had any luck, I think I need to blog more to attract traffic to my site.

I have signed up with the following companies:

• Amazon
• Commission Junction
• AT&T
• EBay

Let me know if you know any other companies that pays well and have lenient binding contract.

Earn Extra Income Online by taking surveys

You can earn extra income by taking online surveys. They payout from $0.50 to $50. I have been doing some research on this for past few months and started to tryout couple of them since March. So far I haven't received survey offers bigger than $10, but I hope soon I'll get those offers. I think the more surveys you do with the same site the better the offer (bigger payout) get.

So far I had success with Cashcrate and able to cash out $20 twice. The other sites I have tried are American Consumer Opinion, A W Surveys and Survey Spot. I have accumulated some cash in those sites but did not reach the payout limit yet.

As I said in my previous post making money online is easy, but making lot of extra income online needs lot of work, determination and patience.

Get Started

Anyone can make money online but it requires patience. If you have lost your job recently and looking to make some money online then you better stop now and start looking for a real job or ways to better your skills, because making money online is not as easy as some sites suggest. It needs work and more importantly lot of patience.

More to come...