What I did was so simple, I’m almost ashamed to dedicate a post to this. 🙂
I hope you forgive the simplicity of what I’m about to reveal, but sometimes the simplest changes make the greatest impact.
In early November I added a 728×90 unit to the header of my Site Build It! site, Flat Stomach Exercises. That unit began earning around $40 per day for the first few days and then leveled off to $30-ish per day.
I’ve also had decent success with the same unit on my forum, WebsiteBabble.com. The banner doesn’t convert nearly as well there, but it still does OK and is worth the placement.
Note: I attribute the lower performance to the fact that WebsiteBabble.com is targeted to Webmasters and Bloggers who often have ad blindness. So it’s no surprise that unit doesn’t perform quite as well there.
I had been reading about how well the 728 unit performs on many sites and thought of adding a unit to 2 Create a Website, but was afraid it would distract from my overall sales goals. However, I am less concerned about that on Flat Stomach Exercises (FSE).
FSE is primarily an Adsense site for me. As many of you know, I created that site to do a test run with Site Build It! so I could use it as a case study/example on 2CreateAWebSite.com.
To be honest, I’m not as passionate about fitness to work on the site frequently (not to mention I don’t have the time), so I just let it sit and earn passive income. I never dreamed that test/case study site would perform so well with limited content updates.
So I’m OK with being a little heavy on AdSense ads with that site. Not sure I would use that same strategy on 2 Create a Website because I have other goals, and I have to be careful AdSense doesn’t become a major competitor for the main products I promote.
Understand When AdSense Makes Sense for You
It’s tempting to read this post, dart over to your AdSense account and create a 728 unit for your site. That’s fine if the primary goal is to earn money with AdSense, but that may not be your best move.
AdSense may be the primary monetization option for some sites, yet more of a supplement for others. You have to decide which one it is for you. Adding more units to your pages may actually distract and compete with other products you are promoting.
For example, say you are earning $500/month in commissions by referring a product on a specific page. After adding the 728×90 unit, your AdSense earnings increase by $100/month, but commissions for the main product you promote drops to only $200 per month.
In this example, the AdSense banner probably hurt your net earnings. I say “probably” because it may be hard to prove that was the exact cause, but if you see drastic results after making a change like that, AdSense may be the culprit. That’s why you should test everything.
This is the very reason some people choose to only put AdSense ads on pages that have high bounce rates and pages that don’t promote their “important” products.
So you should always look at the big picture for your site. If your AdSense earnings are increasing rapidly, are sales for something else declining? These are statistics you should pay attention to, and it’s the reason some people don’t use AdSense on certain pages if at all.
Always know your individual site goals and make sure your monetization decisions support them. Believe it or not, a boost in your AdSense earnings may not always be a good thing for your bottom line.
Actually, testing different ad placements every month or so increases your CTR, because if you keep them in the same place people will tend to skip them after a while.
What I am trying to say is that there is no real good placement (well, there is, those near the action zone, where people will first look on the website) but there is a good banner rotation placement.
It seems that everything on the net today is about money. Imagine if there were no adwords, how would we make money? I used to be in that place i.e. before adwords and only did selling directly. BTW, this is still a good business. When adwords came along, it meant that I lost customers but it also meant that the customers I did have were willing to pay 10X or 20X more than I initially asked for. I wonder if adwords never came, would I be making more money? I think the answer is yes. I believe that people here should not only be thinking about PPC but also about doing something directly with their clients. If you have been able to pull in people to your interesting web pages to buy something through PPC sponsors then surely there is a way to sell something that you yourself provide.
I know I should follow these tips to boost my blog earnings. I am paying forward to my readers anyway. In fact, I am planning another BIG giveaway this year. If only I could double up my earnings a bit.
Like someone said, I also had better results with 336×280 than 728×90.
Hey,
Thanks for the post, I am following these. It’s really has valuable information. If these are gonna work for me i will let you know 🙂
thanks
I have try to optimized my blog as well and getting some little change, increase. But not much :(!
Amazing guide! Really really good!
Woww…Great Article:-)..Thanks for sharing Dude..keep Rocking..:-)
I have my ad leader board embedded below the header. I may try putting it higher up and see what happens since I don’t really sell anything specifically on the blog itself like I do on the website. I did already have some suspicions about adsense posssibly taking away from sales on my Mixtapes and Flyer Design Website pages so I moved the ads lower on those particular pages but I still have ads embedded in the template itself, so I may have to try removing those to find out how much of an impact they have on my overall sales. – DJ Emir Mixtapes
amazing….y envy you 🙂
Thanks for sharing this awesome post
Over the years I have found on my old sites that direct advertising for clients has pulled in 5X to 10X more money than Adsense but how to find these clients is not easy. Some companies are paying a small fortune for Adwords advertising but if they had paid even 1/10 of the amount to decent websites to place static ads in strategic positions they would get far more bang for the buck. These people are firm believers in adwords because Google has a done a great marketing/PR job . Well, how could you fail if you already have the most visited search page in the world?
I recently started looking at AdSense and how this could help monetize my blog and website. After
much research, I found AdSense would probably cause more of a hindrance than a help!
The reason for this is simple; my website audience just didn’t need it. This style of thinking brings us back to Lisa’s fundamentals; know your audience!
The style of my blog is not about selling a product, I aim to keep my readers on my site, not direct them elsewhere. This is not to say that AdSense will not work on your site, it just wasn’t right for mine. Do not get caught up in the buzz that AdSense will make you rich quick. It doesn’t always… but could!
thanks for sharing..really i tried leader board..it works cool…
I think you are right, Adsense does certainly hamper the sale of other products since it distracts the visitor by showing ads of some similar products. I think one should avoid putting adsense of sales pages.
you can increase ur revenue even more , by placing the
Nice tips. However, I’d say that your tips best suits sites which has great no. of visitors. Trial and error methods to improve adsense clicks and monetization just like you mentioned sometime makes no sense for websites which has relatively less data.
This post increased my income inHindi movies and in Birthday Messages
.
Thanks a ton.
I did not know that the increase in Adsense earning would effect comissions/sales of other products. I am a newbie to this field and this post has increased my knowledge about niche sites and adsense
This 728 X 90 ad also helped me to increase my adsense earnings. One of my Mobiles website is purely based on adsense revenue but only my ads are not as much blended into content as yours are.
I’ve tried that particular ad in the header of my blog but removed it as I felt it upset the whole look of the blog.
Still I understand the potential in loss revenue and so I added a Chango ad instead. This ad only pops up when people come to my site via a search engine and so my regular readers don’t see it. It has the added benefit of showing ads directly related to the search term they were using when they found my blog.
The only negative is that it only displays ads to people from America and Canada.
I was curious about your design, so I checked it out. I notice that your ad is embedded INSIDE your header. That leaves me with 3 questions:
1. Is that feasible for anyone, or do you have to be a pro developer to make that work?
2. Doesn’t it degrade the integrity-value of your site to have ads in the header? [People are often complaining about my site, that it has ads in the first place and seems to be “all about making money” — said with a sneer]
3. How much of the success of the ad is not because of the ad format, but because it’s placed inside the header, which makes it look non-Adsense-y?
Blessings,
erin
It’s really not that hard with some CSS. I have a video on positioning things inside your header. It’s for WordPress but it can apply to static sites if you have one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeSWGFOzjJc
Some do not like AdSense ads in the header, but as I said in the post, this is just my “adsense” / test site for Site Build It! so I’m not as concerned about it. Also, people don’t seem to care as much when there is so much free value on the site. I’ve never had any complaints.
I definitely think the blend works and helps it convert.
I agree Lisa if you provide lots of free valuable content on your site visitors are most likely not going to complain about the Adsense ads. You are a shining example for providing great content and lots of it. 🙂 Keep up the good work!
I was stunned when I did a little bit of testing and found that most of my money on my other sites came because of the 728 ad as well. I guess it’s true sometimes that bigger is better. I can’t use it on my main blog, but I am using it on other blogs and websites now.
Nice post good to see your earnings growing steadily over time. Perfect indication that your strategies are working thus far.
Also your post highlights the fact that focusing on AdSense niches works.
Carry on the good work
I absolutely agree. I’m strictly keeping my Adsense ads to Text Links only because of this. I will be promoting many products on my Reviews page so I won’t be placing ANY on that page what-so-ever.
Thanks for keepin’ it real Lisa!
My blog is just a little over a year old, and adsense is just starting to make a very little bit for me. I haven’t put up a google custom search textbox yet, but after seeing your video on youtube, I will definitely research that option!
Thanks for creating such great quality in your videos and blog posts on adsense info!!!
thank u lisa..it helps me a lot..
Thanks for sharing. I actually working that out with one of my blogs and was actually having a hard time driving clicks to it. I know it’s not easy as that even if I would put the 728×90 ad unit on my site. Well, I just realize that I should work on more the traffic before focusing myself on how to get clicks. Thanks.
Thanks for the tip Lisa, I might try it on one of my websites.
A question:
I just checked out your two sites you mentioned and at the moment both ad units are banner ads.
Did you set them up to display banner ads only or text-and-banner ads too?
Right now I’m only using images. I may experiment with text later.
great tips. for me it has always been about testing, as well as only displaying ads on pages where i do not promote affiliates or my own digital products. trading dollars for pennies simply isn’t wise
Hey Lisa, Awesome Tip.
It’s always a good idea to continue to keep testing new things. You never know what’s going to be a home run for you until you try.
Thanks for the good content.
As simple as you say the tip sounds, it is more than other remember to do. Especially that I believe many people neglect testing and once they think they are making a nice amount of money they say “this is it”. But you thought me that there is always room for improvement.
I can’t add much to this but I just want to say that I love the new look and feel of your ab site. I think it looks better than it did before.
Thanks Brankica!
Hi Lisa, great post again.
I’m tending to stay away from AdSense now as I do believe it hurts other Affiliate promotions and also the fact that I’m a little afraid of AdSense now with all the trouble a lot of people have had. I’ll let it all calm down with the google situation before I start playing about with AdSense.
I was kicked out of Adsense. They kicked me out in 2004 for a violation (my mate clicked on some ads thinking he was doing me a favour) and earlier this year they let me back in (same account) then a couple of months ago they went back on their word and kicked me out.
I wonder if your little tip will work with Adbrite?
i don’t let any of my friends and family know about my sites…have always thought something like that could happen. they’d start clicking ads to make me money and get me kicked out of adsense or another program. sorry to hear about that.
I have bad experience with that ad format. It is outperformed by other ad units.
I have mainly used the 160×600 sky scrapers with success, but I am planning on changing a couple of sites to use the 728 units.
Am hoping for an increase, don’t think it will be as good as Lisa’s.
Hello Lisa,
It’s now i noticed the banner on your FSE site. I also face the same problem as you with my websitetrafficbiz website; it is mostly targeted towards webmasters.
I definitely agree with WorGeneral!!! I think your AdSense banner blends so nicely with your content on that site… Even for someone who is very aware of an advertisement, I still want to click on it because it doesn’t appear like a typical AdSense ad or out of place!! Great job – you continue to inspire!!
Hi Lisa,
Very Interesting. However, i’m still in doubt about the right adsense strategy to use for my website. The thing is, I really like when visitors only see relevant content rather than ads; plus as you rightly say, webmasters and similar visitors are blind to these types of ads so they are not quite as effective. So I’m coming to the conclusion that this may not work for my site.
If you have any suggestions, I would really appreciate it.
Keep up the good work Lisa.
Hi Robyn
And it may be that AdSense is not right for your site. One way to test is to try displaying ads for a month or so. (Also, you can turn off “interest based ads” so the ads only match your content) In that month, see if it anything else declines. If you start to see sales for other products going down or your page bounce rates increases too much you may conclude AdSense is distracting.
Check your Analytics stats and look for those pages that have high bounce rates. Try only putting ads on those pages instead of your high-converting and popular pages.
Great insight. All I need now is traffic ugh!
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I have been asked why my humor blog doesn’t have AdSense ads. Two reasons: First, most of my readers are other bloggers, and I agree with your comment about “ad blindness”. Second, I don’t want to write about how much I love bugs and then have a Terminix or Orkin ad come up. Yes, it would be funny, but it wouldn’t make any money. Just look amateurish.
My other site is more specific and will have ads for the traffic I target.
That’s so funny you should mention bugs and having these pest control ads show up. On my Pixar movies site, that’s exactly what happened with “A Bug’s Life” pages showed. I didn’t know what to do…. but now Google seems to be reading those pages better now, understanding the theme of my site. But it drove me crazy for almost a year!
You make an excellent point about knowing what type of income you want to bring in, AdSense ads will send a user away from your site and if you are trying to sell affiliate products or even products/services you offer then this will drive traffic and conversions away.
I myself prefer the passive income of AdSense though don’t make 1/10th as much as you do per month.
Thanks for the great article, Lisa. Yes, it is important to set the monetization goals for your site, like you say. And I have been systematically adding adsense ads but I also am reviewing what my other products should be and making sure to have individual monetization goals for each page, or group of pages. I am not testing enough, though. Testing and analysis takes discipline, so that will be my business goal for 2011!
Hi Lisa,
I had basically given up on Adsense until I read a post you wrote a few months ago. After that I decided to add link ads after my posts on one of my blogs and one block in the sidebar – it’s been gradually increasing. I’m not sure this banner would be right for weblogbetter, but this is definitely something to consider for future sites that I’m thinking of creating.
Thanks again for your wonderful ideas.
Me too….I almost thought Adsense was completely useless till I received a well balanced short overview from you Lisa. It must take some real experience to be able to come up with these ideas for others and to also put them in an easy to understand fashion. Thank you again!
In my experience I have learned not to put adsense when I’m promoting affiliate products on my website. I did that once and my earnings went down hill.
I will really consider that box on this new niche site will working on this week, I’m not really looking to may money with products so this will fill in just perfect.
“Black Seo Guy “Signing Off”
728×90 is a powerful ad block but I have better results with 336×280 right after the blog post title.
This is an excellent advice and one that should be paid very careful attention to. AdSense is still a great monetization method but as you said, it can easily distarct and compete with other products you promote due to obvious reasons. The reason why many people use it a lot is because it is easy to setup and it just stays there with very little “maintenance” work if hardly any. setting up units that only appear on “high bounce rate” pages is very recommendable indeed. Great.
Very good post Lisa and nice to see your Flat Stomach site doing really well even without putting a lot of efforts. I would love to know hows your affiliate income compare to your Adsense income on that site.
Are you promoting affiliate products in auto responders as well? how is that strategy working for you?
AdSense outperforms affiliate income by a long shot on that site. I do pretty well with a few Clickbank fitness products but AdSense is the top earner by far. I do promote a few things in my tummy tips autoresponder mailings as well.
AdSense and Afflicates seem pretty equal money earners for me. For very specific sites, afflicates can be the way to go, simply because aswell as being specific, theirs no banner-blindness equivalent to text-size matching your own custom adverts, whereas with google ads you might get a white-background flashing advert on a black, grey, dark website – where its blindingly obvious. I too am a lover of clickbank, and I prefer it over most senarios rather then adsense, I just get a much higher performance from creating custom adverts. Google ads, even text-based ones, become very obvious ones you’ve been on the net for a while :/ Just my 2 cents, maybe you could experiment with this on more specific websites.
I came across your sites about a month ago and I remember checking FSE out and I thinking wow, it’s probably the best example I’ve come across where Adsense is blended well with the website.
It can’t be the location because that’s common so perhaps it’s the colour and the thick border that goes around it. You don’t (well, at least I don’t) come across Adsense displayed like that so I’m not as ad blind to it.
I had noticed a similar thing on that site. I appreciate being able to look at specific ad placement/style and comparing that with actual numbers. Thank you for including that info.
I’ve started testing adsense really carefully only recently –even though I’ve been using it for years and years. It’s been very interesting to see how much difference this makes, even on some sites that currently don’t generate a ton of traffic.