More is less….. how I increased adsense earnings by 1000%
Part of my recent online money making strategy has involved me optimizing a few choice sites so that I have decent models to roll out across an entire range of different sites.
Eventually I can see that I will be making most of my money from affiliate marketing but Adsense is earning me more right now and has been the focus of my optimizations in this early stage.
My site 3D and Digital Wallpapers has been receiving anywhere from 300-1000 visits a day.
I was noticing that Adsense clicks were earning me very little, in many cases less then $0.03. This did not seem right or worth my time. Luckily I had applied channels to each of my Adsense ad blocks. This enabled me to see where clicks had been most prominent.
This is how my site looked:
Top:
Bottom:
As you can see I had 4 Adsense units on each post page.
- Nav Bar
- Above post
- Below Post
- Bottom Right of side bar
I also had some Pepperjam ads squeezed in.
After some reading and looking at various site layouts I came across a theory. Some people think that the more Google ads you have the more likely hood of lower quality ads reaching your ad blocks.
So I worked out where the majority of my clicks were directed and also used the Google Adsense Preview Tool to remove a few ‘Made For Adsense’ (MFA) sites that were advertising on my blog. These MFA sites often pay very little per click.
After the Optimization
So the outcome was that all Adsense blocks were removed apart from the one above the post. This gives the visitor a much easier choice when clicking and assumes that Google will only provide the top paying ads. I also removed the Pepperjam ads and added a more relevant Affiliate block.
The Outcome:
Recently visitors to my site are down, as I had to re-locate a popular image. However I am actually earning more from Adsense.
My earnings per click have risen by 500-1000%. I suggest you look at your Adsense today, you could be missing out on a huge source of income.
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June 14th, 2008 at 12:55 am
Interesting. On one of my old sites, I managed to reach that $100 payout amount one time, and was considering possibly adding adsense to my blog if I can fit it in somewhere where it will be effective and not intrusive once the new design is done. Some good information here. I’ll be back later to really look over it. Thanks for this post!
June 14th, 2008 at 6:24 am
Thanks Mr P….
I’ll let you know how this goes in the long term.
June 14th, 2008 at 8:26 am
Some good advice here Forest, sometimes less is more when it comes to Adsense style ads.
June 19th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
hmmmmmmm…….very nice observation Forrest….I’d like to know….what theme you are using? I am very interested in this information as I just started my own little niche site experiment.
June 20th, 2008 at 5:55 am
I would like to know more on how you discovered and eliminated the MFA ads from your Adsense ads.
Thanks in advance
ciao
alexander
June 20th, 2008 at 8:14 am
@JK, I use SEOADMAX from Garry Conn for many of my blogs, here I use a butchered version of Kubrick the standard wordpress theme.
@Big Blogger, Hey getting rid of MFA’s and other sites you don’t want is easy. The Google preview tool https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/topic.py?topic=160 allows you to preview your Adsense pages and click on the links…. then you can build up a list of sites that you do not want advertising on your blog. These can then be filtered out in the Adsense Setup > Competitive Ad Filter section in your Adsense account.
You can also use the Google Preview toll to see what ads your site will display in other territories.
June 21st, 2008 at 8:55 pm
Well done Forest! I had the same experience on a couple of my sites. After getting such low payouts per click I was about to pull AdSense all together. Then, like you, I did some investigating. Now I’m seeing a lot more per click. I’m still not thoroughly pleased with AdSense as of late, but the big increase I’ve seen after I made the changes has persuaded me to keep it…at least for now.
Anyway, great post on the subject. Hopefully, as more and more people know about this sorta thing, less and less of those bastardly MFA’s will be created.
Shine on,
Aaron
June 22nd, 2008 at 4:58 am
Hey Aaron,
Thanks for stopping by, have not seem you here in an age
Adsense is a stupid name for the program….. it should be callled Nosense if you ask me.
June 24th, 2008 at 6:17 am
Thanks Forest, I’ll test the Google preview tool.
ciao
alexander