You may remember me mentioning how well the 728×90 AdSense unit has been performing on this blog. Since then, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about how I added it.
So I thought I’d create a video showing how to use the Thesis Feature Box function that is built right into the theme. (The code is located below the video.)
Even if you don’t use the Thesis WordPress theme, you can still apply some of the logic to your own blog (especially the CSS code).
You would still use the same CSS info on your stylesheet.css file. However, instead of using the code I provided for the custom_functions.php file below, you will add <div id=”feature_box”> INSERT BANNER CODE HERE </div> to the appropriate location of your header.php file, for example.
Here’s the CSS Code to Add to custom.css (Your Stylesheet)
This will add a 100 pixel gray box below your header. Feel free to adjust the color, height, add a background image, etc.
#feature_box {
display: block;
margin-top: 30px;
padding: 0px;
border: none;
background-color: #ddd;
height: 100px;
position: relative;
}
If you don’t use Thesis, you would add this code to the stylesheet.css file of your WordPress theme.
Here’s the Code for Your custom_functions.php File
add_action(‘thesis_hook_feature_box’, ‘leaderboard’);
function leaderboard() {
?>
INSERT BANNER CODE HERE
<?php
}
Non Thesis users would add <div id=”feature_box”> INSERT BANNER CODE HERE </div> to the appropriate file (header.php) since you don’t have a custom_functions.php file.
You may have to add a width or adjust other attributes in the CSS code to get it to work with your theme.
Happy AdSense Earnings!
keep inspiration coming Lisa. You’re doing a fantastic job in passing the torch of inspiration to everyone 🙂
I have never used Thesis, maybe it is time to take a look at it. Always done my designs by myself, but if Thesis is fast to learn and fast to bring up new sites with maybe I should take a closer look at it.
Hi Lisa,
I tried adding the code, but nothing happened. Can you please advise.
Hi, Lisa,
I just realized that I made a problem for myself by using Adsense code in Openhook which placed monetization on my “legal pages”, too. Can you please tell me the code I would use in my custom_functions.php to exclude openhook on pages named About, Privacy Policy, Contact and Disclosure? I need to fix this ASAP before I jeopardize my Adsense account.
Thank you so much!
Hi Christine,
I’m not sure what that code would be off the top of my head but I’m not sure what you mean by jeopardizing your AdSense account.
I was recently advised that having monetization on pages such as About, Privacy Policy, Contact and Disclosure would be a violation of the use of Adsense and that I needed to get any Adsense code off those pages right away.
This seems to be a little controversial, so I’m not sure that this is solid information. I think where this comes from is in the Adsense Program Policies where the language reads “non-content pages”. But, actually, these “legal” pages do have content.
I’d be very interested to know your opinion on this, Lisa. Thanks so much!
Christine
I honestly never put much stock into that. Now I don’t go out of my way to add extra ads to these pages, but since I use includes for all my pages, I just have the same amount of ads here that do on my other pages.
Thank you for your input, Lisa. Judging from what you just said and from what other successful marketers say about the issue, I’m going to leave the pages the way they are.
I really appreciate your help! You’re awesome!
Thank you,
Christine
Hi Liza, am so moved with your website, blog and your entire lifestyle. I can’t believe a woman like you can be an internet expert and web entrepreneur. Just look at this beautiful blog.
Well, well , my question is this. I don’t have money to purchase the thesis theme, but I really like the theme and I wish the could offer a tryout version. I have so many articles I have written about to be publish, am hoping to start a new blog with wordpress (paid hosting). Do you know of any “free wordpress theme” that you would recommend for me to use at least “for a starter”. Thanks and much love!
Thanks Oto, I haven’t used a free theme in so long, nothing comes to mind right away. But if you search through the themes under the “Appearance” tab, I’m sure you can find some winners. 🙂
I have installed thesis theme in my wordpress blog. But the probelsm is that adsense is not showing up. Why is it so?
Hi Lisa
Excellent article, love the Thesis theme but find it quite daunting to implement so have put it on the backburner until I can understand it better. Maybe I should get my head around that sooner rather than later so I can instal it and use adsense to monetize my sites. Thanks for the tips, will come back for a visit if I get stuck. : )
Hi Lisa. I’m from Colombia. I’m tryin to make money with adsense too, right now I’m makin about $100 a day. I see that you recommend the Thesis theme, I have not use that one much. I just want to recommend you a very useful theme for sites that want to make money with Adsense. The theme is called HeatMapTheme and you can find it at heatmaptheme.com – I’m not promoting an affiliate link, I just think that this one is a very good theme too. You can even add you adsense ads when you are writing a post.
Hi Lisa.I have viewed a lot article you writed.They are great.I will try to set up adsense.Thanks for sharing
Thesis is Best For Seo but customzaton of thesis is not easy.
Since I don’t use thesis I thought it would be good to give others who do not have thesis installed a quick explanation of how I was able to do the same thing on 1 of my blogs..
I simply made a table with desired width containg two cells, one with sharinh options and the other with the 728 adsense code. And I didnt have to touch the css or functiin files at all 😎
You can see the results on the post pages at wezeemall.info
I’ve always been a tad skeptical of which adsense units to use on a website — thinking that one would pay out more than others. Turns out that I am right XD
But anyways, thank you for posting the css script you used ^.^
Hi Lisa…You always impress us with your blogs and its content itself…You have also provided the CSS code to us…I am really thankful for your blog Lisa…
Hi Lisa,
Thank you so much for helping all of us ‘new starters’ to get around WordPress. I am a novice and I just bought Thesis (thorugh your site – thans for the tip by the way). I have managed to get the site like I want it, however I was wondering how do you get the layut of your Front page to display so many post teasers (you have about 20) and in 2 columns? I like that kind of design as it does allow for the readers to see many posts and pick and choose. I hope you can help on this. I am sure you are a busy girl and I do not expect an answer right away. I will check in every now an dthen to your blog. Thanks a lot again
Ella
Hello everyone: Lately I have noticed my google adsense ads disappearing from the locations which I placed them and then re-appearing at another time.
I have the ads to display sitewide but as I visit my home page some of the ads are not there, but as I click on one of my article title and go to the article land page, all the google ads appear. Has anyone experience this in there Google ads not appearing one moment and the next moment it re-appears? If so, can you provide what is happening.
Earning from ad sense need loads of experience and patience, you need to work on the project like anything and also it is important to select the appropriate niche that can give you good traffic and money as well.
Earning from Ad-sense sounds great but this ain’t so easy. You need to do a lot of research and keep working on new new idea and implement a lot of other stuffs. Also most important part is to be patient and keep waiting for your time to come. The experience from bloggers like you helps in leaps and bound to understand the strategy of Ad-sense.
Hi Lisa,
Great article. Thanks for the advice – its really helpful. I’m just starting out so posts like this are invaluable.
Best wishes
Richard.
I’m not used any adsense on my blog, it’s based on Genesis framework, not Thesis, but I’ll try your idea.
Hi Lisa, excellent article and lot of good information on increasing profit from google adsense using these theme. I am not using thesis in my blog and can you recommend it for a technology blog? Thanks
All i can say about thesis is that it is awesome. There are many features in thesis. You can do anything with that theme.
Iam trying to boost my adsence income from a long time…but did not get any source But today iam really happy after reading this article
thank to you buddy for putting such a good article
I’m a big fan of thesis and i’m very happy to know that thesis could help me a lot in my adsense revenue.. surely I switch to thesis as soon as possible.. Thanks for sharing 😀
Just wondering if I were to try this out on one of my sites I won’t have a problem with adsense and their tos or rules right? It doesn’t seem like any alterations to the actual google code, but I hear they can be kind of strange or weird about that sometimes.
All you’re doing is changing the placement of your ad. As long as you aren’t manipulating any of the Google code and telling people to click your ad, I don’t see how that would violate the TOS.
Lisa,
For your banner ads at the top of the page, do you click the adsense button to say it should only be graphic ads, or do you also allow text ads? Does this make a difference in your CTR?
I have it set to image only.
Thanks, that’s what I was wondering about.
Thanks, Lisa.
Didn’t believe it’s gonna work but I tried it out and yeah, it’s set up.
I can do that with my images, right?
Lisa…Thank you so much for this wonderful tutorial! It’s good to know that we can also apply this pattern to other themes, I can’t wait to give it a try. 🙂
I think these is really helpful even in adsense earnings…this is very inspirational…
Hi Lisa
Thanks for this wonderful information. I hope I can increase my adsense earning with it. WordPress Theme really works amazing and with this additional tips it would be awesome. I’ll try following the instruction in the video. And I’m hoping to get more client with it. Thanks again Lisa and I’ll be back for more.
Thesis theme has made my blogging experience Lisa. It is now easier to add banners and ads without knowing how to program. The pages are also SEO friendly which helps a lot in ranking my pages. The price of buying a thesis theme is worth it.
Lisa – Can you please tell us your image code?
Mine looked great on Firefox with images next to my leaderboard ad — but it didn’t render correctly on IE so I removed it.
I tried aligning it left, then no alignment and it still pushed the leaderboard ad down on my Thesis theme over the title content.
Thanks again!
Here’s my CSS for both my bio and AdSense banner.
#adsenseBanner {
position: absolute; left: 212px; top: 5px;
margin-top: 10px;
padding: 0;
display: block;
}
#bio {
margin-top: 10px;
padding: 0;
display: block;
position: absolute; left: 4px; top: 5px;
}
Then you just call them up by using < div id="bio" >insert image code here< /div > Don’t try to align, use absolute positioning.
Please Lisa, you can really help me out with this.
The adsense banner code is working but the code for the image by the right or left just like yours isn’t working.
Do I have to combine both CSS and HTML?
Can you post a link to the page so I can see your code?
Okay thanks.
Sorry, but do you mean my website URL or what link exactly?
Yes your website URL where your banner and image is located. I should be able to view the source.
I never have success with top banners but the tutorial is great. I think the banner works on some niches or to sites with great following like this.I just used your tips to change the header on my site (link below) and it worked well.I even put images on either side of the ad.
All this time I didn’t know how to get that feature box to show up well, and your tips helps — but it would only work for me using the Thesis Open Hook plugin.
I never have success with top banners but the tutorial is great. I think the banner works on some niches or to sites with great following like this.
This is a very inspirational post!!!Thanks a lot for sharing it…
I’m not 100% sure, but maybe this line would have to be modified:
“background-color”
Thank you so much, Lisa.
I just used your tips to change the header on my site (link below) and it worked well.
I even put images on either side of the ad.
All this time I didn’t know how to get that feature box to show up well, and your tips helps — but it would only work for me using the Thesis Open Hook plugin.
Either way, I’m glad it works. Now I can play around with a lot of ads and up Adsense income on a lot of site.
Hi Lisa,
What about if I wanted the feature box background to be an image. How would I work that in?
Thanks,
Scarlet
background-image: url(../images/image.jpg);
instead of color
Then you would use
background-image:url(‘paper.gif’); for example
Oops, didn’t see Brankica’s reply. Thanks!!!
Great video. I followed your advice, as I will here, last time on one of my sites as a test and so far so good, making some money, of course not a lot but it is a start, nice one Lisa.
I’ve stopped using Thesis these days, but when I used it and changed the functions.php I often had problems that were only fixed by uploading the original file via FTP. This didn’t put me off making changes, I just made sure I had a backup of the original file before doing anything!
It’s interesting to see the leaderboard AdSense unit is working for you – it’s often not a very popular choice and shows how important it is to experiment with the different units available.
I love the thesis wordpress theme. It’s helped me with more than just adsense, i get stumbleupon traffic and other social bookmarking.
waoool. Thanx buddy it helped me alot. Thankyou very much.
Great article. I finally learned what adsense channels are and how to set them up. I hoping that you do more videos on Adsense when you get the chance.
Thanks so much Lisa! I’ve been trying to figure out how to do this for a few days now but just can’t find anything to help me with Google searches, etc. I don’t want to go messing with my css and mess something up. lol
This looks pretty simple though and I’ll give it a shot. Thanks again! I think it will have a big impact on my earnings.
Hi Lisa. I haven’t installed the Open Hook plugin yet, so I’m off to do that now. Thanks for the video and the code. The first time I saw that on this blog I wondering when you were going to show us how it’s done.
Hey Lisa, I thought that is how you did it.
Is there a way that you know of on how to do it like that with exception of doing a different feature box on home page only?
Thanks for the tip, I love the codes that I can just copy/paste 🙂
Hey Brankica, You could create another ID called feature_box2 for example in your stylesheet, but you’d have to manually call it up somehow just on the homepage. I don’t know how to do that, but I’m sure it can be done.
Hi lisa,
I think it could be done by making a feature_box in an html file with all the css, save it as Home_Feature_box.html in your template folder, and then add this code in your template’s index page,
Please let me know if it worked or not.
Sorry the code is not showing up…
For some reason, I am scared it would included php. Those thingies like “if home” or something like that.
Thanks!
Lisa, thanks again for sharing such valuable information. Since I’m still quite new to the business, I find visiting your site on Mondays keep me focused on the “do’s and don’ts” about having a successful website. Giving people information they can use can always be found here. You are, by far, a great website teacher.
Forgot to add the following:
Has anyone been “banned” from the Adsense program and has successfully been able to appeal/reverse Google’s decision? Would love to hear more about your experiences.
Thank you
I have been banned and approved and banned again. I have no idea why. What is wrong with my website? or is something wrong with the Adsense people or is anyone clicking my ads? Please help me
Thanks for sharing. Another reason why using Thesis just streamlines the blogging process.
I have been generating thousands of dollars from Google Adsense for years now through niche websites and recently have contemplated experimenting with it on my blog.
QUESTION: I have read and experienced many more blogs who are banned from the Adsense program relative to static websites. Any guess why? Is there a bias toward one vs. the other? I can pin point particularly personal finance type blogs – which are rejected time after time.
I still feel the Adsense TOS / policy has “vagueness” in it – is there a way a publisher can get in touch with the Adsense team and confirm before proceeding at the risk of getting banned?
Well, here’s my question: Do you people really earn the most of your income from AdSense?
Sunil,
another stop by your blog now and check it out real quick. Hopefully, you have a commenting section on your blog, so I can share humble insight on your content. Please let me know how I may be of service to you, if you have any questions 🙂
Thanks for sharing this Lisa! I may tinker with my wordpress blog a bit (http://theoneminuteblogger.wordpress.com)