Google AdSense: How To Make Money With Your Blog!
Google AdSense is something you’ve probably heard can make you a lot of money, but how do you make it work for YOUR blog?
In our modern economy, finding more ways to make money is important. In fact, being able to increase your earnings on your own is one of the most important aspects to surviving such treacherous economic times. Knowing how to generate Google AdSense revenue is one way that you can boost your bottom line every month.
While Google AdSense was initially designed with website and blog publishers in mind, anyone who creates and maintains their own blog or website can take advantage of the incredible opportunity. Whether you have a full-time job and are building a web presence for yourself in your free time or run a web design business, for example, you can generate a great deal of revenue using this tool, if you know how to use it to your advantage.
By allowing advertisements on your blogs, you create a static revenue stream. It’s basically that simple, yet there are important considerations to be made.
The Advertising Effect
Traffic coming to your blog, regardless of how they found it, is going to judge you and your business based on many factors. The design, layout, and navigation of the blog is one factor. Another factor has to deal with any advertisements that you post on the site.
If you visit some of the larger media outlets in the world, such as CNN, you have probably seen plenty of advertisements throughout their sites. When an ad is front and center, though, it takes away from the purpose of the blog itself and can drive visitors away.
You’re not CNN, so any new visitor to your site will be important. Some blog owners don’t understand the basic concept that consumers can and often are turned off by too many ads on a site or ads that overtake the blog itself. Ads need to be secondary to the content of the blog.
It serves no purpose to you or your business to have ads that grab more attention than your blog design or content. You haven’t worked hard on internet marketing and done all the legwork to bring visitors to your site only to have them click on an ad and leave your site, never to return again. You want them to focus first and foremost on your site, and then take a look at the ads you post.
Building A Quality Blog
You may not consider the design factor of your blog to be all that important, at least not when it pertains to ads, but it is crucial to success. The design of your blog should always be directed toward keeping visitors on your site. There are three main areas to which you should focus your design efforts.
The first is where a visitor looks as soon as the page loads on their web browser. Most people look to the upper left corner of the screen. This is where your business name and/or logo should be. Placing an ad here is tantamount to saying, ‘Thanks for stopping by, but why don’t you check this other business’s website out instead.’
Next, the eyes will travel toward the upper center of the screen. You’ll find that most websites tend to place their mission statement or slogan here. This is where you tell your visitor why this website is exactly what they’re looking for.
This is also where navigation tends to originate, and for good reason. You want your visitors to be able to find their way around relatively easily; you don’t want them to struggle to find the other pages of your site. Having an ad within this zone may work, but if it gets in the way of your message, or the navigation, then it’s being counterproductive.
Then a visitor’s eyes tend to drift down the page. Many visitors won’t scroll down unless they really like the content. Placing ads below the bottom of the viewable area will often mean that your visitors never even see it.
The best placement for ads will be to the right and bottom of the screen. That way your website and your message still remain the focus of attention. Then, if an ad captures attention, then when someone clicks on the link, you earn money.
Keywords And Google AdSense
When it comes to Google AdSense, you will be building your campaign around your website. While you don’t want to have ads for your direct competition on your site, you want to keep within the same genre. In other words, if you sell auto parts, advertising for used car dealers would be a good fit.
If you choose the represent keywords or keyword phrases that have nothing to do with your website, then visitors to your site are not likely to follow those ad links and you’ll be wasting valuable space. It’s a balancing act to choose the right keywords to represent. But when you get it right, you will be earning revenue every single month.
The More Traffic You Get, The More Money You Will Earn
Google AdSense revenue will not happen by simply being static with your website. Just because you build a website, have a web hosting company maintain it, or take care of some of the other aspects of launching it does not mean that anyone will come to your website. If they don’t come to your website, then they will not see the ads that you have posted on it and therefore you won’t be earning any extra money.
It’s important to keep in mind that you can have up to 3 ads on your site at any given time. Some people would want more in order to maximize the potential earnings, but more than 3 and visitors will begin to navigate away from your site before they even have a chance to see what you offer. You don’t need to post 3, either; you can post 1 or 2 ads if that’s your preference.
You still need to employ all of the same marketing strategies for your website that you would normally do. Google AdSense revenue is all about earning money from visitors who might be interested in other topics than what they searched for. If you bring in visitors who realize they should have entered something else into your search, they can certainly go back to the search engine or they can follow an ad from your site to something more in line with their needs.
Evaluate Your Strategy Monthly
When you are looking to generate Google AdSense revenue, there will be a balance between targeting the right keywords to supplement your website and avoiding giving your business away to your competitors. Determine whether you’re targeting the right keywords every month and make changes accordingly. It’s much better to make changes quickly rather than wait and lose out on all that potential revenue.
by Dan & Jennifer