NeedMoney: Make Money With AdSense

How many times have you read those words?

A Google Search shows hundreds of thousands of searches for this phrase and others like it such as..

"making money with Adsense"
"how to make money with Adsense"
"tips to make money with Adsense"
"how to increase Adsense earnings"

and so on.

AdSense is Google's quick to use system for web publishers to put ads on their sites and start making revenue from visitors. Publishers only make money when visitors click on ads though. So just putting ads on a page will not bring in the money; you have to have click thrus on the ads to get a check.

There are plenty of free guides and websites offering generic information on how to make money with Adsense. Most will give you solid but well used advice such as "blend your ads into the look and feel of your content", "place ads on the left upper side of the screen" and "experiment with different ad types". All good information, especially if you are new to publishing on the Internet, but old information all the same.

Adsense has gone through a number of changes. Some well known rules no longer apply (alternate ads on same page with adsense) while others have been fine tuned to protect the advertisers and their investment (pictures and other enticements near ads to encourage clicks).

Click thru rates or CTR, the golden measure of success, can be a fraction of a percent (bad), 1-3% (average) or 5-7% (very good). By percentage, we mean clicks per hundred unique visitors. Most websites have average CTR at best while others have insane CTR.

Expected revenue is another golden number for publishers. "How much will I get per click?". What Adsense pays per click is a tightly guarded secret at Google and what's more, can vary. A website with higher traffic and page rank may earn significantly more per click than a lightly traveled blog for the same advertisement.

That being said, revenue per click is the holy grail of publishers. Ads which pay more per click are desired and since ads are based upon content, naturally, publishers do what they can to generate lots of high paying ads.

Now, with all that information, how can you Make Money with Adsense?

The only advice you need:

You need pages with the high paying keyword content and lots of organically driven traffic.

Sounds easy, right? Not really. Most publishers stumble into big money with Adsense.

For instance, I have a couple of celebrity focused blogs. One article in particular discussed the arrangements of a late star's legal will. The blog article was cited on a big news site and overnight I had over 40,000 visitors to this blog. My Adsense earnings went through the roof. For three days. Then they dropped off as the story dropped off the radar.

I have another blog which reviews software. I tore into a product which I thought was overpriced and was somewhat questionable for buyers. The certain combination of unintended keywords in the article resulted in a fifty fold increase in visitors to my blog. Because the Adsense ads were related to the content on the page, I had a great click thru rate and equally high earnings. The problem? The market was limited for this product and while I still have a fair number of viewers, the actual number of visitors and ad revenue has fallen off from those heady early days.

Finding the right combination of content, high paying keywords and subsequent ads is tough for even full time publishers. The secret is maintaining high traffic regardless of specific content. That is why websites like Facebook and LinkedIn constantly earn big dollars from Adsense through tons of traffic.

To make money from Adsense, first find some small, yet high paying niches. These have been discussed here before.

Next, write plenty of original content. Make that content legible and interesting. Poor grammar and spelling won't help.

Focus on content which answers questions ("Is this product good? Is this a ripoff? Where do I find this?") or piques curiosity ("Your drinking water is dangerous. The government wants you fat. Watching TV adds years to your eyes").

Publish frequently. Each web page or blog entry is another channel which brings traffic to your site. Each is an opportunity to make Adsense money.

Can you make money with Adsense? Yes, thousands of publishers do every month. Most earn the basic 100.00 every few months while a select few make over a grand a month. The really big fish earn much more, but they are few and far between. Be ready to work and publish to get the big dollars.