I feel the color, conspicuous color also useful.

I also have a question want to ask, for same ad on left side, or turn over the whole page layout and put the ad on right side, which way will have better click rate?

Try both and see which works for you. If you're familiar with PHP, it's very easy to serve up different pages randomly and then test which ones do best with AdSense Channels. I haven't tested placement yet, but this year I tested link color, and was amazed to find out the red links did much better than the standard blue ones, and nobody liked green. But that was only one site - there's another site with an essentially black & white color scheme where ONLY blue links seem to work well.

I had more clicks when my ads were on the left side. I moved the ads to the right side and earnings just keep going up, up up. I can only guess why but I suspect I get fewer accidental clicks.

If you do as netmeg suggest with PHP and you don't have a lot of traffic to start with on that site - set up the monthly changes in advance by a few months or you will just forget them on a small site. That's the biggest thing which has helped me! Before that I had far too many unbalanced tests due to one condition being a month long and the other being six months long.

The most discerning statement that I've read in the entire Adsense+Earnings dialogue is one I attribute to EFV. Essentially, he stated that Adsense and affiliate ads are a natural adjunct - ergo a "successful companion and addition" - to websites that labor to help people decide how to (wisey) spend their money.

In so doing - being a writer whose work helps people make purchase decisions - you are A) writing to the person who is at the stage of making purchase decisions, and therefore your content may appear in response to queries indicative of a purchase or near-to-purchase intent; and, B) your publication is likely driving clicks that convert IF what you have offered "the reader" - your "content" - is that final input necessary to make a choice. "Yes, I DO want to take an Elbonia river cruise. This confirms my belief AND allays my anxiety. This IS what I want! Now, where can I sign up for a cruise? Oh, look there! An ad for discount Elbonia river cruises!"

The heck with all the "If you put the ads near pictures you get more clicks" mentality, which is not to say that Google doesn't actively encourage strategic placement of ads - above the fold, hot spots, etc. At some point, however, "smart pricing" - and smart website targeting by advertisers - has to weigh in, heavily, and at such a point "more clicks" actually becomes counter-productive.

Which is better -

More clicks / less pay per click (ex. 1000 clicks @ .05 per click)
-or-
Less clicks / more pay per click (ex. 500 clicks @ .10 per click)

To me, they both will earn the same, but what would you rather have?

Providing advertising for the benefit of the readers.

A page swamped with sneaky Adsense adverts may trick people into clicking, but it's a short-lived fantasy. Clear links relevant to the subject, of use to the reader, will naturally generate interest because of the mutual benefit.

Excessive advertising just annoys readers.

Matt

The most discerning statement that I've read in the entire Adsense+Earnings dialogue is one I attribute to EFV. Essentially, he stated that Adsense and affiliate ads are a natural adjunct - ergo a "successful companion and addition" - to websites that labor to help people decide how to (wisey) spend their money.

I remember that post as well, and it's one I have kept in mind...not just for adsense, but for other sites that I want to sell advertising space on.

I didn't think that way when I originally created my site(s), but it was just something that came naturally.

Once you fully grasp that idea though, it makes it much easier to monetize a website (and realize why some websites are MUCH harder to monetize than others).

More clicks / less pay per click (ex. 1000 clicks @ .05 per click)
-or-
Less clicks / more pay per click (ex. 500 clicks @ .10 per click)

It's more like .03 vs .40 for me and people must like the site because organic traffic keeps growing.

If you're just MFA it probably really doesn't matter, but if you have other agendas, like selling your own products or promoting a niche, then I would say, of course
"Less clicks / more pay per click (ex. 500 clicks @ .10 per click) "
is preferrable as more people are staying on your OWN site and possibly buying your OWN product or delving futher intor your own pages rather than leaving sooner.
In fact I remember a time just a few years ago, when Adsense had barely started, when this was the OBVIOUS consensus, and this question would never have been asked, because all of the publishers in this forum at that time had created their websites BEFORE there WAS such a thing as Adsense and thus EVERYONE had motives other than Adsense. MY, how times change.

[edited by: MikeNoLastName at 10:25 am (utc) on Sep. 21, 2007]

MikeNoLastName,

I was going to write almost the same thing. Thanks for taking that burden off me. :-)

tips, ones which helped to increase your clicks

Publish good content => more visitors => more clicks :)

I concur with the "more good content" tip.

I used to have several microsites containing subtopics of my niches (because collecting cool domain names and making websites is fun), but in the past year I've increased my income by recombining the content from the microsites back into my main high-traffic sites for each niche.

Here's a tip: I suppose this is obvious to some, but it wasn't to me until I stumbled across this.

My "search this site" link was originally on the left side, below the fold. When I redesigned my site, I moved it to a more logical location, in the upper right corner of the pages. The result - search revenue instantly increased by more than five times.

I used to have several microsites containing subtopics of my niches (because collecting cool domain names and making websites is fun), but in the past year I've increased my income by recombining the content from the microsites back into my main high-traffic sites for each niche.

I finally did exactly the opposite on my 10 year old sites. More diversity hopefully against -900, - 30, double content penalties and whatever comes next.