Monday, July 19, 2010

Make More From Adsense: Tips For Small-Time Bloggers



This topic has been covered by several big-time bloggers, teaching the world how to make $10,000 in one month from blogging. This article won't and can't claim such success. This is mainly written for the small-time blogger, just starting out and seeking to make a little more money on their adsense accounts while they learn the ropes in the world of blogging.



These tips I'm about to give you have been recommended directly by Google. They're taken from an hour-long Google video tutorial I watched. I've condensed the points down into the following basics.



1. Where To Place Your Ads





~Ads perform better when placed at the top of the page, above the fold. This basically means that anyone who arrives on your page can see the ad before they scroll down to read your article. I must admit that I don't like arriving on a page and not being able to see anything but ads above the fold. You know the ones where it looks like there is nothing else on the site but ads?

There is of course, a happy medium. There is an ad panel at the top of this page but when you arrived here you could read some of the article before scrolling down.



~Place your ads near to your articles. These have proven to work better because they're in plain view. If your blog allows it, you can even have wrap-around ads where they are placed on the top left, and the articles wrap around them on the right, then continue below. Unfortunately, Blogger does not allow this at this present time.



~Place your ads at the bottom of your articles. Only some Blogger templates allow this. However, many other templates are compatible with this placement. When readers finish your article, an ad at the bottom is asking for a response or action. Based on your topic, this is a great area for conversion.



~Place your ads near your scroll down button. Ads are less likely to be missed in this position.



2. How To Make Your Ads Perform Better





~Use a unit that's as big as possible. Of course don't take over your entire page with ads, but don't go for the tiny ones either. You may want to keep the ads out of the way so your blog looks neater, but this defeats the purpose. If this is important to you, you might as well remove them altogether. If you don't want people to notice them, then this is just what will happen. No one will notice them, so no one will click on them. This means no revenue for you.



~Enable text and image ads. Sometimes the ads will be just text and at other times they'll be changed to image ads. When you set up (or edit) your Adsense account, choose this option because it means more advertisers are able to compete for a space on your blog (those who have only text ads and others who mainly use image ones). More competition means more revenue for you.



~ Go lightly on filtering. When you set up your Adsense account you would've been asked if you wanted to filter (block) ads. If you are filtering, do this very sparingly.



~Describe and promote. A lot of us small-time bloggers sign up to Adsense because we hear it's a good thing to do. Then we chuck the ad units on our sites and wait for the advertisers to come to us, forgetting that there are lots we can do to make them work for us. Go back to your Adsense account and make sure you've described your blog. Promote yourself so that advertisers can see your site is actively inviting ads. Showing them what your site is about makes it easy for them to decide to pick yours instead of someone else's. If you've got a sub-section, describe that too. Put your blog out there!



3. Know What Works Well For Your Individual Site





All blogs are different. Not because the picture ad at the bottom of your article works well for you, it means it will work well for me. Track your successes so that you can stay with them or create them elsewhere.



~Check your channels. Go into your Adsense account. Adsense Setup. Channels. Set up and name your channels if you haven't already done so. This will enable you to track how each ad on your page is doing. Armed with this information, you can make it work better for your site, earning you more money.



4. Have You Done These

~Your link units are up and running

~They're in the hot spots where they can be seen by visitors

~You've done everything to enable the performance of your ad units

~You have set up Channels for your Google Adsense ads

~You have enabled Adsense for Search on your blog. (This link goes to my article which shows you step-by-step, how to put a working Adsense For Search on your blog and monetise it).





If you have any questions about this article let me know. If you liked this article and think it's useful, please share it on any of the following social networking sites. Thank you.



Friday, July 9, 2010

My Follow Friday - Self Sagacity









I haven't done a Follow Friday in a while because as many of you know, I've been ill and moved house recently.  The end of the week seems to flow by without warning, and before I know it, Friday has come and gone yet again. 



My Follow Fridays promote mainly writer/author based sites, but occasionally I feature more general-niche blogs which have caught my eye. Self Sagacity is one such blog. It's themes tend to be across-the-board, usually in the direction of personal development, inspirational and photographic. It also features novel recipes from time to time.



Self Sagacity caught my attention because being a relatively new blog, it's managed to push full-force forward in gaining not only recognition, but also a wide and loyal readership. I think that if all bloggers start off with the same intensity this blogger has, failures would be virtually unheard of.



Self Sagacity's success is admirable and is due to the hard work of it's manager, Amanda. However, praise also is due to to it's part-designer and adviser, Icy from Wandering Thought who's also helped me with design and posting problems on my own blogs.



For my writing readership, although this is not a writing site, Self Sagacity has a little something to satisfy all tastes, so hop over and see if there's anything there for you. The current post is a delicious dessert recipe. One cannot get more appetizing than that!