Adsense Earnings Up

[Andy]

I recently started improving some of my old websites and noticed that Adsense revenue has been increasing even though the traffic didn't seem to change much.

Actually it is up nearly 50% from  late last year. It could be because the quality of my pages is improving. With PPC, the quality score of a page is a well known important criteria, so it makes sense that this factor also applies to organic traffic ranking and Adsense.

How am I improving my sites? Basically I am introducing fresh content plus user input content. Also, I am re-designing the templates and reviewing the keywords I am using. Following the overhaul, I intend to work more on generating traffic from inbound links.

So if you have old neglected web sites or dormant domain names, consider revamping them before you start yet another new site.

I like to make low maintenance sites, these work best for passive income I find. It is sad to see some people working terribly hard on sites such as make-money online blogs that earn them almost zero. For example, one blogger I have seen with over 2000 regular readers is maybe working 8 hours a day on the blog and making only circa $30 a month in Adsense income. It would be ok for a static site, but for a high maintenance site such as a popular blog, this is a disaster.

Once you are making some money from a passive income site, it gives you a template to scale it up. Even if you only make a few bucks per day from a site, it teaches you what works and how to duplicate it. So, since it is a low-maintenance site you simply rinse and repeat. Maybe even 100 times as long as it is profitable.

Related: I checked out the Adsense referral Ads and these allow you to select particular advertisers that would exactly fit your site topic. The payouts seem very good per action. So rather than having some clicks convert for a few cents, it could make sense to hunt down a high-paying relevant referral Ad to place on your site instead?

Another Tip: I read a tip that suggested that badly performing Adsense on one of your sites can drag down the payouts on the other sites under the same account. I think what this means is if you have a site where the visitors click Ads and don't relate well to the landing page of the Advertiser, then the epc will drop and drag down your other epc's.

So it may be better to delete Adsense from your badly performing pages. I did this today for one of my sites. I left up some sites that get poor CTR since the pay per click value was high. I think the way to detect a poor performer is where you have non-specific content leading to clicks that consistently pay just a few cents.

Some sites have widely varying payouts per click so I just leave those alone.

btw. if you are wondering how much money you can make from Adsense off an average site, I would say it is about $17 per month since several of my average sites make this kind of money each from Adsense. They are hugely profitable sites! Others make more or less than this. But don't rely on just Adsense income.

To get this money, you should aim to make content heavy sites in various niches and focus on keyword optimization and low maintenance. What I like to think of as "set and forget" sites. And monetize them. Then, you just drive traffic to them from external keyword-anchored links. This is the boring part 

[Manu]

really? whats your previous rpm and what is it now?

[Andy]

really? whats your previous rpm and what is it now?

Sorry dude, you lost me with some Geek Speak there, don't know what you are saying, I don't follow the SEO forums.

Basically, my earnings suddenly jumped up. It could be something to do with me revitalizing older sites. I was almost giving up on Adsense when the earnings dropped to ~$100 monthly and then it spiked up to regain my enthusiasm for it. In the past I made $600 a month from it, it would be nice to get back to those levels again 

[Manu]

http://www.techterms.com/definition/rpm

[Andy]

In December 2007 it was $3.45
Last month it was $4.88

For noobs, this is earnings per 1000 displays of an Adsense unit on a web page. Bear in mind that this is one of the lowest paying forms of revenue online but it is so easy to cut and paste this code to your site.

If you surf around the Adsense official site they have some great tutorials on how to place the Ads on your site for best conversion. For example, they provide a heat map to show you exactly where is the best place to include the Ads.

My stats are actually poor since I have some high traffic pages that are useless at conversions but on the other hand I have some that rock! The rocking pages convert nearly 50% of visitors to a click that pays about 90 cents per click. On the other hand, I have pages that sometimes pay 2 cents per click. But you can study what to do at the Google tutorial pages. Adsense is an essential tool in your make money online arsenal, use this, affiliate programs and your own product sales to give you the much needed income to live the life that you dream of away from the cubicle and commute.

So it's actually up 41% I just used my calculator rather than the brain  Also, it looks like an upwards trend rather than a spike, I just lost interest in Adsense and when I started seeing these bigger earnings coming in it spiked my interest. Time flies and this year is moving fast!

[Andy]

Dang, it must be a seasonal spike. Over the May bank holiday it spiked up to $5.89 ecpm which for me is great. Now it's slumped down  I can't complain though. This year Adsense has worked well and I even found the 1 lone webmaster that had yet to sign up with the Adsense program! Caching $100 Sorry guys, keep looking for the next one  Schedule 1 year into your marketing plan for this activity.

So dudes, go mental with Adsense next May 1st! A bit like stock trading. Ignore it most of the time and pile in ahead of the regular peaks. Check out Google Trends to spot the trends such as the weight loss spikes around new year.

Summer is supposed to be a flat spot for online money making. But why not target Bikini sales, Jet Skis, propeller-blade injury lawyers etc. Think seasonal!

[catfightreport]

My blog is still doing pretty poorly on adsense.

I got 16 clicks today, and only made $1.10

However, a friend of mine has a website, and he routinely gets 2 or 3 clicks per day, that pay something like 77 cents a piece last time we checked.   (this was over a few days, so it is not precise nor accurate most likely)

I guess it must be like Andy said above.

On my blog, there are google ads coming up for Ann Coulter, since I just did a story on her little spat with Tina Fey.     Since the landing clicks may "not be relevant" to the page, maybe that is why I am not making much.

In any case, if someone could give a brief explanation, that would be great.

[Andy]

There's a good article on it here: http://makemoneyforbeginners.blogspot.com/2008/04/optimization-tips-for-adsense.html

My blog is still doing pretty poorly on adsense.

I guess it's because your posts are not focused on keywords that Adwords advertisers are bidding top dollar on.

I would start by building up your traffic and inbound links, then look for relevant affiliate programs to try out on the blog such as Adult dating or Fighting DVDs maybe.

Also, do keyword research so your topics are optimized for what consumers are searching for.

To get organic search engine traffic, you have to write a lot of original content. So when you post pictures or videos, include a few paragraphs of keyword rich text with each one. It takes just a few minutes to write this.

p.s. I checked my results for this month (May) and so far it is looking very good. I was amazed to see one day having an extra digit added to my daily Adsense earnings. Very nice!

So it wasn't just a blip after all, like I thought before.

But I am not only working on improving my Adsense income, there is much more. I recommend everyone to at least start with Adsense since it is the easiest way to make some money to pay for your web hosting and maybe more IMO.

Now I have started testing different Adsense Ad formats. I noticed some big differences in pay per click between some dimensions of the Ads. But it is too early to be sure of which is best for my test pages.

I also had the idea to adjust the exposure rate between Ad variants according to their eCPM (Earnings per 1000 impressions) so as to maximise revenue but at the same time continue to split test.

I hope to cover more about this on my blog.