TIPS and TRICKS
Google AdSense Tips
Updated May 1, 2008
Google AdSense has been one of the most misunderstood income tools on the web in recent memory. Every time you turn around there is someone peddling his or her "book" on how to make money with Google AdSense.
If you haven't learned this lesson already, here it is: Nothing is as easy as people claim it is.
What is Google AdSense?
Essentially you are "partnering" with Google to display their advertising on your website. Google has a highly intelligent media bot that scans your page and can understand the basis of the page in less than a second and then displays ads relevant to your content.
To see AdSense in "action" simply look to your right. Those are AdSense ads.
Every time a visitor clicks on one of the Google Ads, we share in the revenue Google earned for that click. Google will not disclose the percentage that is shared, but we do know the percentage "floats" depending upon your earnings. The more you earn, the higher your cut. This seems to be Google's way to reward their best partners.
You can also have Google's Search Box on your site; however, we have found through testing that this method of monetizing your site is very difficult as opposed to hosting ads directly.
One of the first things that you want to do after getting approval for your AdSense account is to add the following line to your robots.txt file:
User-agent: Mediapartners-Google
Disallow:
This will ensure that Google's Media Bot will be able to crawl your pages correctly and display the correct ads. Most people complain that when they first start out with Google AdSense the only ads that display are the Public Service ads which do not give a rev share if they are clicked on. Simply adding the line in the robots.txt corrects the issue for nearly all users.
Most people are also not thrilled at hosting ads for their competiton. They feel that by doing so it will take sales / customers away from them and instead give them to their competitors. The logic is sound, but the reality is, it doesn't happen. Here are test results from the hundreds of domains that we manage.
On average, the conversion ratio is 1.2%, meaning that for every 100 visitors, one person buys. It is pretty standard across the web. Now, after adding Google AdSense to these domains, the click through rate to the Google ads was 6.3%, meanings for every 100 visitors, 6 clicked on a competitor ad and left the site. Most site owners would see those figures and panic, however, the conversion ratio held steady at 1.2%.
What does this mean?
That visitors who are not going to buy are just not going to buy, and those that will buy do. Instead of monetizing just one visitor out of one hundred, you are monetizing seven (one sale and six AdSense clicks).
How Do You Get Started?
Getting started is easy, just click the link below and you will be directed right to Google's AdSense application.
google_protectAndRun("ads_core.google_render_ad", google_handleError, google_render_ad);
Make sure you review Google's terms for this program. Never click your own ads and don't ask others to do it either. That is fraud and Google will shut your account down if there is evidence you are frauding the system.
Google is a great partner to have and they have out performed Yahoo! Publisher in our testing.
