I don't get it, what does this have to do with adsense?

When I made sure I had appropriate keywords tagged and in my h1, etc. I was getting better ads served - "generally". There is a new page of "blue-widgets" I added recently that seem to not be as specific as I want it to be and keeps serving me "widgets" ads. Maybe the bot still needs to visit and crunch the info...

Also, better tags, better SE results, more traffic :-)

But if writing about mobile downloads earns 0.04 per click and writing about mobile ringtones earns 0.50 per click, I know what I'd be writing about and optimising my page for.

It's not that obvious, and this advice could send someone in the wrong direction.

For instance, if the market with the lower click value has fewer web sites that will compete for your audience, it might be a far wiser choice than the higher-paying-keyword sector.

Chasing higher paying keywords is not a good strategy. In the end,its all about how much of the audience can you reach, how many click, and (now to your point) how much a click is worth. All three point are important; focusing on just one is a mistake.

And for the highest eCPM, remove all pages except your highest-earning page.

I'll assume EFV was being sarcastic because removing lower earning pages makes no sense at all because you're leaving money on the table.

eCPM is just an average as some pages that earn like crazy and others not so well but at the end of the day, if the lower earning pages are removed, you'll have a higher eCPM but there would be money left on the table that you lost.

It's fine with me if people want to do silly things as it just leaves more for me.

[edited by: incrediBILL at 8:32 pm (utc) on Oct. 11, 2007]

Also, I think we have established that a good way to get good targeting is to have keywords in your urls. Even though I don't need the subdirectories from a site management standpoint, using rewrites I have sites with urls like:

www.mysite.com/widget-news/blue-widgets/widgets-save-energy.html

while the page it's really getting is:

www.mysite.com/news.cgi?story=widgets-save-energy

Now that I have my sites like this, newly added pages get exact-on targeting immediately.

I'll assume EFV was being sarcastic because removing lower earning pages makes no sense at all because you're leaving money on the table.

Tongue-in-cheek, not sarcastic, although there are people who confuse eCPM and EPC with earnings.

I'm currently trying to identify cheapskate ads that pay a few cents a click and put those websites into the competitor filter box.

Last week I finally decided to fiddle with the competitive ad filter and added about a dozen URLs that looked like garbage sites to me. The next day, my eCPM plunged so I removed all of the URLs from the ad filter, and a few hours later the eCPM began to recover. So it seems that you can't tell which is a cheapskate ad just by looking at their landing page.

I wish there was a way to know for sure how much an ad will pay. Google shows publisher stats to the advertisers, so why can't they reciprocate and show us the advertiser stats?

Now that I have my sites like this, newly added pages get exact-on targeting immediately.

That sounds great. Do your individual pages/widgets get good SE results AND good targeted ads? Or are they dependent on the main widget site to serve up those pages.

I mostly use a single 160x600 block on the left side of a page, because of the Google HEAT map. Sometimes I add a link unit somewhere as well, that's it. I'm currently trying to identify cheapskate ads that pay a few cents a click and put those websites into the competitor filter box. The advice about running an Adwords campaign is an ecellent idea, as it gives you the lowdown on what keywords are expensive without having to subscribe to some software or list to get the info.

Personally I'm pretty fond of the 300x250. Ever notice almost everyone of Google's AD properties use this site. It's just really really weird.

Google shows publisher stats to the advertisers, so why can't they reciprocate and show us the advertiser stats?

Seems pretty simple to me: Advertisers are paying customers who need to know how their money is being spent.

We get our best results running adsense on the pages of a links directory. By the time a user has drilled down to his desired category, he's done a lot to pre-qualify himself. Besides, the users are in the links directory to look for links to content, not content itself, so it's reasonable to conclude that they're more open to clicking on an ad (especially one that's essentially a list of links).

The links directory category pages are pulled from a database. The "categories" table in the database has extra fields for "seo text", "seo url", and "adsense channel".

The "seo text" field is used to store a manually-determined keyword or keyphrase associated with that directory category, that can be variously inserted onto the page via a template. This is especially helpful when the name of a certain directory category isn't very SEO-ish.

The "seo url" field stores a unique keyword-rich url by which each directory category is identified. Usually similar to "seo text", but hyphenated.

If plausible, it's nice to have a separate adsense channel for each directory category, which is where the "adsense channel" field comes in. When you can't do that, you can use the adsense channel for the parent directory, or a generic one.

Links to directory categories all look like this:

website.com/links/key-word-phrase

And are rewritten, Wikipedia-style, to:

website.com/links/category.php?seo_url=key-word-phrase

If the category has multiple pages, the url looks something like this:

website.com/links/key-word-phrase-2

We tried using an artificial directory structure to help insert keywords, like this:

website.com/links/key-word-of-superparent-category/key-word-of-parent-category/key-word-of-category

This may help adsense targeting, but, IMO, negatively affects the ranking of the page to have it so deep down in the directory structure. So, all categories appear on the same level: website.com/links/

The links directory uses a Google Linked CSE (with Adsense) as its search engine. The XML annotation files for the CSE are auto-generated when a new link is added to the links directory.

The highest paying keyword is what you love.
(I hope you understand what i mean) :))

Massage?

I think it is Pizza...

Seems pretty simple to me: Advertisers are paying customers who need to know how their money is being spent.

It's a two way street. They're paying for the ads, but likewise we have a commodity that's worth paying for. I think we deserve equal information. I'm glad advertisers can see that their ads are appearing on my site, because I'm confident that they'll like what they see. I just wish we had equal access.

I just wish we had equal access.

It probably won't happen. Why would Google want to make it easy for publishers to identify (and potentially contact) a long list of advertisers?

As a practical matter, signing on with an ad network means relinquishing a degree of control. The basic network pitch is pretty simple: "Give us a block of space, and we'll fill it with ads from our pool." If you want to control what's in that block of space, the best solution is to hire a rep firm or sell direct.

Surely useful to have a look at some existing threads, which include some classic or near classic posts.

Encouraging persistence etc with adsense, started by Incredibill:
[webmasterworld.com...]

There at least used to be thread on how a guy made a million in three months (can google to find elsewhere; getting 404s when trying for pages here)

For flip side, see
How I made a 3 dollars in one day
[webmasterworld.com...]

also thoughtful, re adsense not being money for nothing (and your chicks for free ... singalong now):
[webmasterworld.com...]

Surely would be useful, if time consuming, if could have various nuggets on webmasterworld grouped together.
- I suggested something akin to this some time ago; a collection of top threads. (Could even gather some of mods' favourite posts together.) Know there's the "library", but to me this seems like great sea of info.

Now that I have my sites like this, newly added pages get exact-on targeting immediately.

That sounds great. Do your individual pages/widgets get good SE results AND good targeted ads? Or are they dependent on the main widget site to serve up those pages.

mslina2002: Hm. I don't know. I don't do too much tracking where my traffic comes from. But I do notice when my ads are not targeted properly (which hardly ever happens anymore...)

I recently decided to add link units directly below my large banner ad units- with the same color background as the banners.
Didn't expect much to change, but was pleasantly surprised to find my earnings rise significantly almost immediately.
This is on a "forum" type site, so perhaps the regular visitors noticed something different and decided to click...hard to say for sure.

Will watch it closely to monitor and hope for the best.

I posted a similar great tip a while ago so I will repost this great advice for those of you who are looking for good advice and good tips.

If you want to find great tips on Webmasterworld.com, just search your favorite search engine for:

"great tip" site:www.webmasterworld.com
"great advice" site:www.webmasterworld.com
"good tip" site:www.webmasterworld.com
"great idea" site:www.webmasterworld.com
"great advice" site:www.webmasterworld.com
etc.

and you'll find some of the best tips and best advice on Webmastworld.

(sorry that I SEO-optimized this text...very tired today)

See you guys at PubCon. Just signed up, along with two other colleagues from my shop in Chicago.

There at least used to be thread on how a guy made a million in three months

He made free websites where others asked for money. Basic inflation strategy. More free content, more junk (not by him, but that's where all this free stuff leads too, imo). Works in the beginning .. Stories like this will send masses of people onto the adsense trail .. Stories like this, although true, just dilute the fact that rarely someone writes a Harry Potter etc.

Best adsense tips for me are:

Expect to earn a pittance, maybe a living, rarely a fortune.
[webmasterworld.com...]

I have double the amount of PI etc mentioned here.
[webmasterworld.com...]

Choose your market carefully ...

IMO, you really need a very old site and masses of reasonably good to excellent content if you want to start now.

And traffic is the A and O, imo.

Is your site scalable? as Google suddenly loved me for a couple of months, I had to feed 100K visitors, half a million hits and 3 to 4 GB a day. That made 10.000 a month.

So really, if the luck hits can you cope technically? Database servers, reverse squids, round robin dns, load balancers .. It's not gonna work on your $3.50 web space.

And can you cope if Google suddenly cuts you off the Google luv again, and you have the one year long contracts for all of above?

[edited by: mattg3 at 2:48 am (utc) on Oct. 16, 2007]

My best tip:

Think beyond AdSense. Look at the bigger, long-term picture, and ask yourself "If AdSense disappeared tomorrow or five years from now, would my site still have the ability to produce revenue?"

I wish there was a way to know for sure how much an ad will pay. Google shows publisher stats to the advertisers, so why can't they reciprocate and show us the advertiser stats?

If Google began sharing that information tonight, by tomorrow night there would be blogs, newsletters, sites, ebooks, etc. providing lists of keywords, sorted by the amount they pay highest to lowest.

Then thousands of publishers would abandon their current strategy and begin chasing the highest paying words with whatever content they can steal or throw together in a hurry.

I don't think the result would be desirable.

FarmBoy

We get our best results running adsense on the pages of a links directory.

What position on a page of this type do you find best for displaying AdSense?

FarmBoy

And on the positive side: Adsense was actually the first that DID create revenue. :)

Savvy affiliates were earning revenue from their sites long before Adsense came on the scene.

Don't forget adsense search. Since Google knows exactly what it does there, the CTR is mindboggling. A search on every page, first gets them really clicking and if they don't click they look at double as many pages. I have site integrated search.

By including your other servers in that search (you can ad up to 3) with higher CTR you can also make a few bob extra. I make now up to a third more.

Think beyond AdSense. Look at the bigger, long-term picture, and ask yourself "If AdSense disappeared tomorrow or five years from now, would my site still have the ability to produce revenue?"

My sites would still exist even if they didn't produce any revenue at all.

Don't forget adsense search.

Absolutely! It's very interesting what you can learn from the things that folks search for which have absolutely nothing to do with your own site. There's gold in that hill for sure.

Savvy affiliates were earning revenue from their sites long before Adsense came on the scene.

Germans don't do credit cards that often and especially not until a couple of years ago. So the chances to hit enough students with a credit card then would have been laughably low. Now things have changed, but Germans like to use technology but only after its been tested a while. At that time there weren't enough people on the web to really make it happen in my market. Maybe if you made an MFAff site or in limited markets. We made content first and then thought about making money. Probably wrong strategy but hey that's how it was.

I made some money then this way:
In 2000 I was leasing my domain name and had a couple of good years money for free :). This publisher then produced many backlinks that point still to us. Sadly also they couldn't do it and gave it back and subsidise their website with 500.000 Euros each year. Another revenue stream was to sell your web programs to boom and busters, that then went bust and never used it..

Good that mattg3 agreed re two of top posts/threads on adsense here on webmasterworld.
Without various searches, any more such threads to spotlight?

The best trick is to sell something from your web site that is digital, so you can sell the same item over and over again.

Mike