Can You Really Make Money With Adsense?

So your considering installing Google Adsense as a way of generating revenue for your website… Many have heard the over-hyped conversations about Adsense and what it’s capable of generating for your pocket book. I imagine some of us were even lured in by Shoe Money’s Google cheque or even maybe Markus Frind of Plenty Of Fish’s both of course from Adsense Revenues. But how did they make over $900,000 in one month from Google Adsense, and what does it take to do that?

Placement…

This is a super quick template that I drew up in photoimpact to demonstrate proper placement of Adsense Ads. A huge percentage of folks place their adsense on the right side where the opt-in and blog features go, or in the bottom or even the body of the article or information section… Some again place it in the navigation on the left hand side, but all of these areas are wrong and do not get maximum value & response. The goal of course is to get CLICKS.. Though there is some cash for impressions, clicks are where the real money comes from.

The highest value and most amount of clicks will come from that region above the article content section and below the headline section. This section should be visible to the user even BEFORE they scroll down the page. Your adsense Ads shouldn’t look like ads and their color scheme and placement should match your website’s color scheme, font and overall look and feel. If they appear out of place, they won’t seem like a natural part of your site and click thru rates will go down.

Guys like Markus use the section above the article and they do it for a reason, it works.

Trustability…

Google’s running the show and writing the Adsense checks and we all know they do TRY to have a high level of integrity in their work. So… Some of the other things that folks have eluded to that can actually affect your Adsense payouts are things like having real contact info and a physical address (even if it is a p.o. box), having an email address on the site, having a phone number… Having a sitemap and being easily indexed and crawled.. All those things can affect your ePC(roughly translating to the value each visitor provides you).

Topic Of Choice…

There’s no doubt that Google Adsense is tied directly into the Google Adwords program and as such, the advertisers are forced into a bidding system where it’s based on whom ever pays the most (and has the most effective click-thru’s) wins. Now, this bidding system forces a market value pricing scheme. For example, for years Mesothelioma was the highest paying Adsense keyword… Lawyers would pay a killing for that word because anyone who GETS Mesothelioma has a case. Mesothelioma is the cancer caused by asbestos exposure.

Choosing keywords that are industry popular, have search volume and have strong DEMAND within the business community will get you bidders that are willing to pay a descent amount per click and of course, being that Adsense is a revenue share program… It greatly increases your cut.

Traffic…

Yes,  It’s probably the harder uphill battle you’ll face of all the others I mentioned. Yep it’s easy to get good trustability, good keywords and good placement within your site & content… BUT… getting traffic to those pages is hard… Even if you have good content, EVEN if you know most of the proper SEO strategies and even if you write a press release, getting the right amount of traffic isn’t easy. Markus Frind did well because he had a tool (An online dating site) that folks really liked. Jeremy did well because his sites were easily found for good keywords…  It’s too much to post on here, but if you have a site that only gets a few hundred hits a day… Adsense may not be that profitable considering other strategies…

Is Adsense Really Worth It?!?!

That’s my final point I want to bring you to… Is Adsense something you should add to every website you own? ABSOLUTELY NOT!

Why not? Adsense is a distraction and it’s not pretty. It’s advertising and it’s a form of interruptive media. It’s getting in people’s faces with things they may not wanna hear. Because the ads are usually contextual (in context to the topic of the page) they’re not ALWAYS unrelated but they are a disruption none-the-less.

Adsense pays you pennies per customer in most cases… For many non-competitive niches, the bid prices are so low that you won’t get more than pennies per click, and for those pennies.

Adsense makes your customers leave your website, and go somewhere else… Somewhere away from your marketing, your material, your message and your social media campaigns… If your first goal is to educate and inform, and your second to sell those web visitors… does Adsense help you accomplish this? No.. Not at all.

In many cases, you’re better off to have either affiliate offers you’ve chosen with a high commission OR a strong opt-in box with at least a 10% opt-in rate that keeps visitors ON your website and keeps building up your funnel of leads to market and educate to for years to come. Collecting email addresses is a long term strategy that guarantees some form of insurance.

If your pay per click gets to high, if Google drops your web page from the search results, email addresses will still be there to mail to and market to and earn money from.

But Dan, you have some sites with Adsense!

Yes, yes I do. When I do not feel like chasing affiliate offers, and when I don’t have time to email market to a list or especially if I don’t care how much money I earn from a website (Because i may not be writing it for the money) I’ll put Adsense on there. However, If I want to actually build a successful and strong long term website, I place an opt-in box on the top-right corner and I spend litterally days crafting a killer opt-in bonus freebie and choose select ads for individual pages when an ad seems necessary.

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