Thanks for the tips, Philipp!

It seems that the common theme throughout your article is, "Ads should enhance the User experience, not take away from it." In other words, the decisions that a webmaster makes about where to put ads, what format to use and which ads to exclude should be guided by the Users' expectations.

What I can't figure out about AdSense...

The affiliate links I post on my blog are of a much higher visual quality than AdSense and completely congruent with my niche. So why is it that viewers on my site think the opposite, largely ignoring the affiliate stuff and clicking quite frequently on the AdSense ads? Go figure.

I have been using AdSense on my JimsTips site (where I post tips about topics that interest me.) Though I certainly don't make a living from AdSense, it does pay for the site. I have found that what drives revenue is content that is useful. After all, people aren't visiting a site to click ads, they want to see content that's worth their visit. Add fresh content, and the revenue goes up. let it stagnate, and the revenue goes down.

I don't judge my tips that I post, I just approach things from the angle that I want to give to the community some information that I learned. Ads are there, and if they get clicked, I make a bit of money to keep things going. If not, then it means that I need to add some new content. Maybe that's why I'll never be a good business man, because I tend to think more about what I can provide the visitor than trying to make money....

Thank you Philipp. Some really good suggestions here.

For me, AdSense Section Targeting really helped in increasing the relevance of Google Ads and hence the overall CTR figures.

Text ads are less risky (you will never get blinking screensaver ads) but if some good brands are targeting your website with rich media ads, it may not be a bad idea to accept image ads.

You can easily find image ads targeted on your site with the AdSense Sandbox tool – http://www.labnol.org/google-adsense-sandbox/

philipp
<<Ads can work well in-between other stuff.>>

Does that work with videos too
Not talking about adsense in youtube videos, but if you have your own video hosting page with some home grown video, will it work there

My only adsense tip is.....

Yellow background, green text, and blue links.

Thanks for the tips, Philipp!

I suggest the background of the ads should match the blog background color.

Excellent article! Though that new has not learnt, but has recollected main principles of work with AdSense.

Some nice little tips there and good that they are "away from the normal" types of generic Adsense tips.

I make just enough to pay for my hosting fees at the moment (which is nice) from Adsense.

Lets hope 2008 gets me a little higher!

I have been heavily using channels to experiment for a few months with the AdSense at uclue.com and here's what I've found:

Very few logged-in users click ads (which is probably just as well, in case some algorithm thinks this is click fraud). Very few people participating in a discussion (as readers or contributors) click ads. Very few people coming from any high-traffic site (slashdot, digg, stumbleupon etc) click ads.

So now I only display ads on pages where the content has not changed for three or more days (dormant pages with no new posts for 3 days). This means the ads are displayed on about half of my page views, but I've lost less than 1% of the ad revenue. That's how incredibly strong the correlations are that I listed in the previous paragraph.

It also improves the user experience for people who aren't likely to click the ads anyway: the "regulars", and those who have been referred to the site content. Their pages load faster and are less cluttered.

The people who ARE clicking the ads are those who have come from search engines. They are looking for something, and the search engine has sent them to a Uclue page. Either they find what they want in the content of the page, or they don't find what they want (in which case they might click an ad).

Again by using AdSense channels, here's what I found: people don't read to the end of the page unless they have found what they want, and those people don't click ads. So, if I only display an ad after the content, it almost never gets clicked. Why should it, when people have already found what they want? But if I display an ad a short way into the page, it gets the most clicks. People come to the page, and if (after they glance at the first couple of paragraphs) the page doesn't meet their needs they might click an ad, if there is an ad in view at that point.

Because I'm not displaying ads to regulars, I can afford to experiment with image ads – without the risk of putting off the regulars. At the moment, I'm displaying "Text or Image" AdSense for half the page views, and "Text only" AdSense for the other half. It's too early to be sure, but the first indications are that "Text or Image" AdSense option is bringing in about 20% more income.

Even though no ads are being shown to the regulars, those visitors are still important to the AdSense business model. That's because they are the ones who are most likely to link to pages at Uclue, and therefore they will help the pages to rise in the search results, and that will bring in the people coming from search engines, who are the ones who do tend to click on the ads.

I was pleased to discover (by measuring) that there's no conflict between providing a good experience to regulars, and maximizing the AdSense income.

Very interesting insights Roger!

I was interested to see that Google's AdSense Newbie Central is publishing some figures for AdSense earnings expectations:
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=81567

The figures are incredibly broad and vague, but I think it's useful to know what Google considers to be "normal":

"For example, for every thousand page impressions you receive, you might earn anywhere from $0.05 to $5.00 ... most publishers will fall within this range"

"for a larger site, 1% might be considered a decent clickthrough rate"

Thanks for sharing this information! The biggest thing about AdSense is that the amount of traffic your site has really drives the possibilities you have of earning from it.

My experience with any advertising, including AdSense is to allow them to compliment your content. don't try to "trick" people into clicking on them. You may get a few cheap click-throughs at first but in the long run you'll piss off your audience and they may never come back. Stick with the out of the box design Google provides and concentrate on good relevant content.

I started using AdSense when I finally realized that so many people were bouncing onto our web and leaving after seeing content on start page, and getting 'ideas' but not buying, etc. that bandwidth usage was incommensurate with revenue gained.
At the early part of 2007 the high cost of bandwidth (large images and many pages) was partially offset by income from the ads.
I am an architect and the economics of late are affecting all related industries, and revenue from Adsense has dropped by about 25%. At the beginning there were a few $100 days. Now they are at about $45. This still helps in a down market but I am now suspecting that Adsense may be viewed as a poor man's way of getting income from web use. Most of my competitors do not use Adsense. Any comments would be helpful. Here is the web: www.DreamHomeDesignUSA.com.
Thank you,
JH

Quote: "On the other hand, reversely I would suggest to never do a site just to make ad money with it. That kind of motivation may lead to spammy sites that don't help anyone really. (If a project is great, it's great even if it doesn't make any money.)"

I know where you're coming from, but isn't this a bit like saying "Don't write a book just to sell it"?

For a few people, the process of writing a book, or writing a critically acclaimed book that didn't sell, would be rewarding. But for most people, if they were told ahead of time that no-one would buy their book, they probably wouldn't want to write it.

I think it's the same with websites. If I knew ahead of time that a website couldn't be monetized – either because of lack of traffic or because there was no way to make money from the traffic – I probably wouldn't build the website.

Start with the end in mind. Before you pour your heart, soul, free-time and excess cash into a website, make sure you know how to monetize it if this is important to you.

Phil, IMO selling the book should be an after thought. So you shouldn't ignore that part but it also shouldn't be why you write the book in the first place... the first motivation IMO should be that you think something is really fascinating, or that the world really would benefit by knowing about it, or that you see a lot of people interested in information you have to offer, or that you "must" write something because you're dying to as an artist/ novelist, etc. But then when the book sells more rather than less of course that's great and should make you feel happier, and once it's written marketing it can become the main focus, too!

Differently put, if I'd find out today that a book on the history of juggling would hit a really commercial niche, because there were a couple of highly popular juggling books last year and people are craving for more, would that motivate me to write a book on that subject? Nope, not really, and I think if you would try to write a book on a forced subject you don't love, it will show in the end. Even if you're lucky and the thing is a success you might not be proud about the end result. And then, you also wasted quite a lot of time on a project where you weren't 100% behind the idea.

But I'm not saying this is the only approach of course. For instance maybe doing some market analysis first before writing can help a book be quantitatively better, and give more benefit to the readers. It might also make sense to get in touch to partner with people who focus on the financial aspects of things.

By the way, I *do* on average spend more time on those sites I created that result in traffic vs those that don't. But you never really know in advance what results in traffic anyway so you might as well do the stuff you find fascinating yourself or you find is needed etc. And before something takes off there's always a long period of work where basically you work without traffic and so on, but the only thing that keeps you going is your belief in the idea.

Blending ads into the design will not always produce the best results!

Ive also wondered what the indirect benefits of adsense are.
For example, might Google use adsense statistics and use it as a factor to determine page quality/search ranking? Same for refer tags, does the adsense code make the referer tag visible to Google? In which case does it allow Google to discover unindexed back links to your site?

I "invested" a lot effort to make my AdSense tips site – it's on www.ad-sensing.com

I would appreciate if you saw it and told me your opinion.

Thanks.

[Removed HTML and linking – Tony]

Would advise that you show blog comments in full under your suggestions

Thank you for the tips! I've earned exactly 1 penny in Adsense so far.

:)

[URL removed – Tony]

The first AdSense penny is the hardest, Zippy.