5 Steps To More Adsense Revenue

About a year or so ago I started sloshing around on the Internet using blogger from Google. As a beginner, making money with adsense sounded like a pretty cool way to start an Internet business. The blogger templates looked OK, adding a few articles seemed pretty easy and off we go.

I haven't visited blogger in a year or so until recently. I built a site for someone using blogger and what a surprise. The improvement in their stock templates and flexibility of other template features, made me take notice. In fact, I took a few days to go back and update all the blogs I had made a year before just because of the drastic improvement Google made with blogger.

I have already seen improvement in my CTR's because of the sleek improvements. It almost seems like Google had the template design changes made especially for adsense.

I'm not sure when they made the improvements, if you use blogger this may not be new news to you, but it's worth a look.

If you want to use adsense to make money, you can build websites specifically for adsense. This doesn't mean you can't use adsense to supplement your existing income stream, but most people either sell a product or focus solely on adsense for income.

Before you build your website you must do preliminary research, here is where you start:

1. Choose The Right Subject - there are some topics that just don't work with adsense. Lets say penguins, you want to make a site about penguins. I don't see there would be a lot of ads, let alone a big demand for penguins or penguin stuff. You could make a fantastic website on this topic, but if you're goal is to make adsense income, you need to find a better topic.
   
2. Click Price - once you find a good topic look at click price. Using the adwords keyword tool check the average click price. I look for .75 cents and above. Just a quick mention of keywords. Keywords associated with your topic will dictate the click prices. These are very important to look at, each keyword generates a different click price.
   

Once you get pass this stage, you can begin to build your website. There are three things you will need to fine tune for optimum adsense income:

1. Placement - you want visitors to find ads that interest them and you want them to click them. So, make sure you place ads where they are exposed, make it easy for a visitor to see them.The best way to show you is to see it. Go and visit This Site. I tightened the template and placed big ad blocks at the beginning and end of the post. The side bar uses a 120X600 banner which fits perfect. This layout gives the visitor every opportunity to find the ads. They see an ad before they read the post, after they finish reading and while their reading (sidebar). Google does a good job of sending relevant ads to your site, this increases the odds of someone clicking an ad that interests them.
   
2. Colors - there's a nice feature in blogger for choosing colors. The grid offers you custom, blend, and a few other options. The blend feature does an amazing job of blending the ads in with the surroundings. Again, seeing an example can be worth a hundred words. If you visit This Site, you will see how the top leader ad group has a slight variation of colors compared to the side bar ad block. When I built this site a year ago I had to manually adjust some of the colors, what you see now is exactly the way the blend tab works. Fast and easy.
   
3. Font Size - we finish with font size. I have found success using a slightly larger font size compared to the post text font size. This way the advertiser stands out a little more than your post text. Your visitor cannot miss the ads and they will find ads that interest them and click. Unfortunately font size cannot be adjusted with the common widget for adsense. Fortunately the size fits the theme quite well. If you want to make changes to the font size and type, do the following:
   

You have an adsense account, go to the adsense set-up/manage ads tab at the top. Create an ad, just the way you want it, and save the ad. Go back to blogger, get the html/java widget and copy/paste the adsense code into the html widget. Place the widget where you want it and your custom ad will appear in about 10 minuets.

Make sure you label your custom ads, after you make a few more you will forget which ones went where. It can get quite confusing if you make 10 or 20, label them from the start to reduce future headaches.

FYI - You hear the word Click used a lot. That's because a person clicks the ad and you get paid.

Content and Structure

We need to touch on this subject for just a moment. You always want to give good informative content to your readers. If not, they have a million other websites to look at. On the other hand if you give all the answers away they have no reason to click the ads.

It can be a little awkward at first, but think of it this way. Soap box operas go for 20 years and people keep coming back for more, why? They always end the show with a hanging storyline. The pitch is "watch next week to see what happens" they left loose ends so you will tune in next week. This is the "Hook".

When you are writing a post or article for your adsense site you have to keep this concept in mind. Give good content, but leave the end open so a reader wants more. This is the way adsense works, your website is providing ads that are an extension of your article.

You are selling ad space, even thought this is the easiest type, you are still providing a service of getting advertisers ads out to the public. Your posts or articles are promoting those ads. You can't say "click my ads" your adsense account will be banned, but by giving readers good information your advertisers have a shot at selling the reader something they want.

Consider that you're pre-selling for your adsense advertisers. You're giving readers good information about a topic, your advertisers are the ones selling the product, all the reader has to do now is click the ad to find it, that's the way it works.

That's pretty much it. Don't get the wrong impression, adsense will not make you a fortune. In some cases, with a lot of traffic and the right topic, you can make good money, but I would treat it as a learning experience. A learning experience where you can make a few dollars while learning  

All in all the new templates offer a lot of flexibility. Changing background colors and font sizes is a breeze. I also see changing post configurations and page/sidebar sizes are easy to do too.This really ads to the customization one can do using blogger.

In the past I had to do some custom coding to get things just right, now Google has made it easier to do.

Keep your website clean and easy to read. The tendency is to have all sorts of colors and gadgets cluttering your site. Resist the temptation, if income from adsense is your goal give your reader text to read and ads to click, that's it.

Follow the 5 steps above, keep fine tuning your content and you will be quite pleased with the progress of your your adsense income.