Your Blog’s a money maker

This was the title for John Chow ‘s  Google Adwords Campaign. I was seeing this ad very often on my blog very often and now I see the same from Googlelady.

This is a screenshot from my blog,

Google Adsense Vs Private sales of Ads

Revenue generation from your blog will be your ultimate aim if you are running a blog for money. I have discussed about earning through blogging in my previous posts and different sources of revenue for your blog. How much can you earn from a blog is a question which had different answer for different bloggers depending upon the traffic of the blog and kind of traffic you have.

Google Adsense is the most widely source of advertising tool by most of blogger. But when they start getting sufficient revenue from private sales of ads, they avoid Google Adsense for many reasons. I have noticed that blogger like Darren Rowse, John Chow do not use Google Adsense these days. They started their earning from Google Adsense but now they get very high income from their private sales of Ads and almost all the ad slots are over booked.

Which one should you choose?

I got an invitation for Google Ad manager recently and was just trying to do the settings. I have not yet started using it as I really do not need it. It is has good features, but its not helping me much. I use Google Adsense more on this blog not because I earn more from Google Adsense, but I do not have any private advertiser yet who pays me more than Google Adsense.

Bloggers like Amit Agrawal earns more than US$ 1000 from Google Adsense, so why should we think that earning potential in Google Adsense is less, but Amit’s blog has millions of page views every month, so we cannot expect a big revenue from Google Adsense. Another problem that can happen to your advertising revenue is if your Google Adsense account is banned, what will be your source of revenue if you solely depend on Google Adsense.

My Strategy

I use Google Adsense, and I am trying to get some private advertisers, not looking into the rates much for now. I can offer good discounted price and I have good number or Feed readers now. As my blog statistics improves, I may get good advertisers and good revenue from private sales of Ads.

Other possible revenue is from Affiliate programs and other advertising sites like CJ, Amazon, etc, but all needs conversion and you may not earn anything in the beginning. I also offer paid reviews complying with the Google Webmaster guidelines

So to conclude, Google Adsense can play an important role in your blog’s revenue, stick to it and as your blog traffic grows, you can try for private sales of ads

How different bloggers earn money from their blog

You know what is a blog and there are many people earning good from their blog. How do they earn so much money and why can’t you earn as they earn. This may the question that might be moving around you. Well, we need to check how do they earn so much of money and can we adopt these techniques or tricks.

Let me give your some clear and common fact these bloggers follow

Time and Age of their blogs

This is something you need to think. How long have you been blogging sincerely? How much time do you spend for your blog. How much posts do you do everyday?

If you are blogging once in a while, forget about earning, If you are busy with your daily work or your full time job and you are not able to make blogging as a high priority task, then its difficult to earn. If you have just started blogging, then hold on and carry on, it takes some time to get good traffic, loyal visitors, improve your bounce rate, improve your search engine ranking, branding yourself, high Google pagerank, good number of subscribers, creating news letters, all these take its own time.

John Chow earns money tell people how much he earns, this is really interesting. He has good number of subscribers, had good pagerank, heavy back links, and he has good number of advertisers. Can you imagine, he charges US$ 500 to write a paid review. He made this happen after he was working hard for some time. His blog is now more than 2 year old.

Darren Rowse says he earned very less from Google Adsense, which was just US$ 400,000. Can you even imagine to earn this from your blog? Yes you can earn, but let me tell you Darren started blogging in 2002, its now about 6 years. So you need to wait to reach some heights. These are the people who made people realize that you can earn money through blogging and you do not need to sell anything.

Amit Agrawal the first Indian Professional blogger earns around US$ 1000 from Google Adsense and he knows how to maximize Google Adsense Revenue. He has a technology blog where he posts information which are really worth reading and you will find all his posts with great information. I read his blog every day. He has been blogging since 2004

All these bloggers generate revenue from different affiliate programs and advertising program. They get paid because they have loyal visitors, good traffic. Traffic is the power which really monetize your blog and for traffic you need good posts, and keep your blog fresh with new posts consistently

Ad Review Feature in your Google Adsense

Google adsense has a new feature called the Ad Review Centre, where you can block or allow Placement targeted Ads. To access this feature, login to your Google adsense account and go to Adsense Set up Tab and then to the Ad Review Centre and enable this feature. When an advertiser goes for Placement targeted campaign then these ads will be shown on your web page and you can block these ads.

Its not advised to block these ads as it has negative impact on your earnings. If you block these ads then you need to provide the reason for that and this feedback will be provided to the advertiser by Google.

Blocking ad groups may have a negative revenue impact because ads that are blocked won’t compete in the auction on your site, and therefore won’t drive up potential earnings for that ad space. Also, advertisers whose ads you block may choose not to target your site again in the future.

In addition, waiting to review ads by choosing the “manually review” setting may decrease your revenue. This is because ads that are awaiting review won’t participate in the auction either. Please consider the potential revenue impact before choosing manual review instead of auto-allow.

Google Says NO to Google Adsense Ad Blending

I had done a post related to Google Adsense Ad Blending last week. After that I was doing some research on the controversy of Ad Blending to find out more information. It is strange that Google had advised the Adsense users to Blend the ads according to the theme of the webpage and now its telling, its against the guidelines.

I am bit annoyed with this as when they have provided us with the option to adjust the color and we can make is more like a part of the blog. I do understand that Google Adsense is alive only if Google Adwords is live and for the interest of the Advertisers Google needs to take some steps to keep the advertisers happy. I am also a Google Adwords user and many times I avoid ads to be displayed to the content network.

If we blend the ads and make it in a way that the visitor is not able to understand which are advertisements and which are internal links, then its like making the visitors click on the ads by mistake and may not even return back to our site. To do this I have added an heading as sponsors to the the Google Ads.

To conclude, we can blend our ads, but in a way that the visitor is aware that he is clicking on the ads and not links on the web page and this is what Google wants us to do. They don’t want us to place the ads in a way that it looks like its links inside the blog or website.

Recommended Reading

• Adsense Blog
• SEO Round Table

Blending Google Adsense to your blog

After doing some changes on the template of this blog, I was working on optimising my Google Adsense Ads placement and did some blending work. So what is this blending work. Now a days what happens is most of the visitors are seeing these Google Adsense ads on every web page and they know about these ads well. What we need to do is to blend these ads and make it a part of our blog. Google adsense ads should not be separated from our blog. I did some blending work by modifying the sidebar links using CSS. The ads I created on Google Adsense is according to the color scheme of my blog theme and the links I have created in way that really blends with the Google Adsense Ads.

I am just experimenting it and will come out with the change in click through rate. Just have a look at the image on the right, which is of my sidebar, this includes Google ads as well as my recent post links. I have also added a block of Google ads inside the content page, which floats on the top left side of each post. The interesting part of Google adsense is it serves relevant ads and ads which are related to the post. By using this method the chances of increasing the click through rate is good.

Even you should try using image ads, which are good for increasing your Google adsense revenue.

While writing your CSS style please make sure that you test it both on Internet explorer and Firefox as both are popular browsers and widely used. There are some problems with Internet explorer and shows funny views for some CSS scripts.

According to the Google terms and conditions

1. Ads shouldn’t be placed under a title or section heading in a way that implies that the ads are not ads.
For example, ads shouldn’t be placed under titles such as “Dallas Business Opportunities” or “Today’s Hot Deals”. Placing ads directly below titles such as these implies to your users that the links in the ads are publisher-created content. The example below shows a placement that does not follow this guideline.

2. Ads should be easily distinguishable from surrounding content.
Similarly, you should not place an ad unit by a group of links that has identical colors and line spacing. Doing so may cause users to think the ad unit is content created by you. In this situation, we recommend using a different color for the ad titles or indenting the ad unit to help distinguish the ads from your own content. This screenshot shows an implementation that does not follow this guideline:

Google adsense is one of the best revenue generator for your blog if you use it wisely

To comply with the terms and condition of we have placed a heading as sponsor and separated from the group

How to maximize your adsense revenue

As I have described in my previous posts that Google Adsense is the best program for new blogs and the set up is very simple. You do not need to deal with the advertisers directly buy Google adsense serves ads to your blog your website. Google has two programs which connects advertisers to publishers. Google Adwords is a program for advertisers and Google Adsense is a program for publishers or webmasters. Advertisers buy ads and pay for it and Google servers these ads to publishers through Google Adsense.

Most of the publishers find that the revenue generated from Google adsense is not even enough to pay their hosting charges, but there are many website owners / pubishsers who earn good from this program

Factors deciding the revenue for Google Adsense

1. Traffic
2. Ad placement
3. Ad styling
4. Quality content
5. High paying keywords
6. Ad Sizes

Traffic

Traffic is the most important factor that effects your Google Adsense revenue. If you do not have much traffic, the do no expect much revenue. You get paid only for the clicks that are generated from the ads placed using the Google Adsense code. If you do no have good number of visitors then there will be less clicks and the revenue will be very low. You can even earn from Adsense using others traffic using adsense revenue sharing portals. I have given some tips to increase your increase your traffic in my earlier posts.

Ad Placement

Ad placement is very important for increase your Google Adsense revenue. You have the flexibility to place the Google adsense ads at places where you want to keep. You should place the ads in way that they are visible to your visitors. The biggest advantage of Google Adsense is that it shows ads relevant to the content of the page.

Ad Styling and right format

You can place different kinds of ads like text ads, image ads, linked units with different sizes. You also have the flexibility to style your ads. You should create the ads which look natural with the content. You need to blend the ads into your pages so that the visitors do not feel that they are going to click on any ads

Quality Content

Before even thinking of placing ads on your blog, you should have good content which should make your blog attractive to the visitors. Do not make people think that your blog is just a MFA site.

High Paying keywords

If you have used Google adwords, you should be knowing how much does a keyword bid goes. If you have content which has topic / content which has keywords with high value, then the payment for such clicks are very high. If you have checked the reports of your Google Adsense earnings, you may find that the pay rate for every click is different. I am using Google adsense in different websites and every website has different content. Some websites fetch me more than US$ 1.00 per click and some clicks, just less than US$ 0.02. There are many websites giving information about highly paid keywords which you can find by Googling. I do not want to go in details of that as its against the Google Terms and conditions

Ad Sizes

There is option to get different sizes of ads. I have found ads with size 300 x 250 gives good click through rate again that depends on the layout of your blog. You should select the right Ad size for your blog and go through the Adsense revenue sharing reports ad decide the best and try different ad sizes.

These are few tips that should boost your Google Adsense revenue. I would like to remind you that you should always work according to the terms and conditions of Google adsense and never try to get more earnings by clicking on your own ads or ask anybody to click on the ads or you will get your Google adsense account banned. You can even earn from Google Adsense using Revver if you have Video posts and Google Adsense revenue sharing portals are other way to maximize your google adsense income.

Earning from Adsense using others traffic

Google Adsense is a revenue tool for webmasters and bloggers who get paid for the clicks generated. Some clicks bring you 0.01 cents and some more than a 1$. You should have noticed that earning for Google Adsense is very less and it takes long time to get your first check. As I mentioned in my previous post, I got my first check after 6 months. If you try something against the guidelines, then your Google Adsense account is surely banned. Most of the Adsense users do not even get paid for even compensating the hosting charges, so how can you get some earning from Google Adsense.

You need traffic, which is very difficult when you start a blog. You need to do miracles to get traffic instantly when you launch your website, or you need to depend of programs like Google Adwords, which will prove costly and be sure you will not get even half the money you invest for your campaign. Never depend on the earnings from Google Adsense for your new blog or website.

What to be done to get earnings without having traffic on your own blog?

Use some others website, who has traffic. Insert your Google Adsense code to a website which is old and has good traffic. Yes, I am not kidding, you can do that. I am not telling you to hack other website and get your Adsense code in. There are many Adsense Revenue Sharing Sites where you can add your Adsense ID and get earnings as per the Google Adsense Guidelines and its acceptable and its working well.

Just adding your Google Adsense ID will not get you earnings, you need to go through the working procedure of the particular program and work accordingly. Some websites like IndianPad, Pollo, Indian citizens, need to add pages and you get your Adsense code to work when your page is viewed. Sites will good traffic will have more page view and you can surely earn from that.

In this post, I would like to highlight about Indian Citizen’s website, where you can join for free and add pages related to Indian Citizens and get the revenue share. This site has good traffic and the site is heavily promoted.

Join Indian Citizens and start earning

Is revenue sharing allowed with Google Adsense Program

Few months back, I wanted to introduced a revenue sharing model for one of my bookmarking sites. I did some googling on this and confirmed that Google do allow this, even though they have not made it clear that its not allowed. The webmaster do not have the risk of click fraud if any member tries to do it. If any member tries to work against the guidelines, then the account of the member is terminated and not the site owner’s.

There are many popular plugins and extensions available for popular content management systems like Wordpress , Drupal , Joomla which manages the revenue sharing task taking care of the Google Adsense Terms of service. The most important point to be noted is that one page should not show ads from two different account. For example in the header part if you display an ad which belongs to the site and the sidebar ad belongs to a member, then its violation of Google Terms and conditions and you have good chance to get your account banned. I have listed some popular sites where you can sign-up as a member and earn from Google Adsense.

There are lots of sites which work on the Google Adsense Revenue sharing model. You can earn from Google Adsense without even having a website.