Adsense Basics
By Vic on Jan 7, 2008 in Adsense
Let’s start with the basics understanding how the contextual part works. When your page loads it makes a java call function to the server side of Adsense in return if serves ads that are related to your content based on keyword density. In other words the more of a single keyword that you have the easier the ad serving will be. Now the more time you have a page up the more Adsense can spider your post and get a more specific ad and at the same time the better pricing you get. Now here comes the part that most of you have no idea. Those of us that are stat cruncher, also want to see how many bots visit our sites and the frequency of such visit. Now one of the bots that people seem to not know is one called Adsense bot.
If you look at your bot stats you see in different from the standard Google bot you do not get visited everyday and the frequency is just a turtle pace compared to the normal Google bot. When you get this bot you get a final pricing on each individual page. The thing that is really fucked is you will see sometimes the bot come in and only spider a few pages at a time, do not ask me why I have no fucking idea why it works that way it just does.
Now folks Adsense changes are gradual and not instantaneous in other words folks you really need to start having some patience you can not expect in a few days of implementing things of a sudden burst clicks and money. Folks Adsense is a whole different world and if you are working a niche where you will be using Adsense you need to be committed and focused on Adsense.
You can not have one million ads on a page besides Adsense and have a high CTR think about this again, PEOPLE YOU CAN NOT HAVE A FUCKING MILLION ADS ON A PAGE and expect to have a high CTR. Now the lower your CTR the more shit ads you get. Think about it does it not make sense that if you where advertising you would want to have your ads show on a page where people actually click on them because they are well placed?
The more options you have with ads the lower your overall CTR will be there have been many studies about this and it is what it is. I am not going to get into a fucking debate about it. The more ads you have the lower your overall CTR will be!! So have a commitment to Adsense if you are going to use it and remove as many ads as you can.
The way I work all my niches. I have one 468×60 under the title and also one 468×60 at the end of the post just like this site except they are Adsense ads. Now I have one 300×250 top left inline post. This Adsense ad is where most people start there post with an image I have one 300×250 right there. And finally I have one 300×250 Affiliate ad exactly where you see it in this post.
Ok so now this is the mentality behind it. A person searches Google and finds you post he clicks on it and the first thing he will read is the title this is the first opportunity for the person to see something on your ads that catches your attention. Now he starts to read your post and if he feels is either shit or he has already read the same info he will want to click out and leave your page. If he wants to click out and leave you will hope he is a lazy bastard and instead of going back to Google to search again he will look at the links on his left and see a related link on your Adsense ads to something he is looking for. Now he does not click out and he is actually reading your whole post, so we did not get him with the 468×60 of the 300×250 folks by now you have almost no chance to get him to click he is probably ad blind so instead of wasting another 300×250 Adsense ad we will go for the remote possibility that a 300×250 will peek his curiosity and this time you may actually make some good money on the remote opportunity that he actually clicks on it. No he does not click on that we will give it one last big chance we will try to get him with the bottom 468×60 if you wrote a correct post by the time he finishes reading your post he has not found his solution yet, FOLKS THIS IS CRUCIAL!!!! IF YOU SOLVED HIS PROBLEM HE DOES NOT NEED TO CLICK ANY FUCKING ADS!!!! So let’s assume you made a correct post which is not spam but indeed is good fluff but he still has a problem and needs more info now he finishes reading and he sees two links that if you chose a correct niche all your ads should be related so now we hope he finally clicks. This is how I do it and why. I do not put ads on my sidebars I want him focused on my Adense ads.
Now folks let’s see what happens with pricing. The top ads on your page have the higher price in other words the higher in the page they click the more money you make. The top 468×60 will give you the highest CPC the lower 468×60 will give you the lowest CPC. So folks make sure you put ads that have a real opportunity to click. Ads on the front page stat wise have the less clicks most people that did not click on any ads inside your post will now go to your front page and just look and leave the stats say at least 80% of people who come in an organic search that click to the front page spend less then 3 seconds and leaves to make a search. SO if you have ads in the front page you are now getting more page views and lowering your CTR and getting priced worst. My niche sites I so everything possible to maintain and CTR of 3% or more. Right now my niche network as of this writing is running for the month at 6.23%.
Folks I will keep writing about Adsense later because this is a huge fucking topic and even then their are things I still say what the fuck?
Popularity: 12% [?]
I will try the under the title thing…it might be a good one to adopt.
Hope you’re feeling better Vic,
Would you say a 2 column theme is better than a 3 column theme if you’re putting ads inline?
One thing I’ve noticed about some niche blogs that were setup with Court’s Keyword theme is that the big rectangles looked cramped and gave a spammier feel to the page. Using a 600×160 inline instead of a rectangle seemed to help this somewhat though.
Frank I like 2 column themes Court and me kind of setup a bit different. I set up this way because it has been after many test my best CTR
Hey vic, good to see you posting again.
Would you take some time and see the positioning of my adsense ads? My CTR is something around .35 with 4,729 impressions just for today (so far). Also there is a ad at bottom of each article after each post is clicked.
Also, is it a bad practice to ask feed readers to click on ads by a saying (please visit my sponsors by clicking on their ads)?
Is there better alternative for my niche than adsense?
Thanks for any help
(ps, you feed count is very impressive considering the age of your blog)
@pavs,
Encouraging or asking your readers to click on your Adsense ads will get your account suspended and all money gone! Don’t encourage or ask your readers to do that, period.
thanks eliot, I didnt know that.
Pavs is it the site in your URL or do you have other niches?
vic yeah buddy thats the one the one on my nick.
I do have other sites but this is my best site.
Vic,
Great information, do you think this is what is happening to my site that I emailed you about? To much precise info or to many ads or both?
Elliot yes but we need to talk pls give me a few days so we can focus on your niches better
Not a problem, I was going to clean that one site up some and get rid of some of the “fluff” ads and try just adsense only for a few days.
I just had to laugh because I see all that stuff all the time! People are clueless!
Hey Sucker,
Sad that you are laughing instead of trying to help like Vic.
What is so funny about people not knowing how to market?
It’s ’so funny’ when they start their own blog telling people how to make money online.
Of course people are clueless until they’ve been educated, then they get very clued up and can beat the shit out of their competition. He who laughs last laughs longest pal…
Hope your getting better. Cheers for this post, was great timing for me, I’m trying to put together a few good niche sites with what I have learn’t here so far. Advert placement and ad type was something I was just looking at.
Cheers
You are welcome buddy I hope to get to you down the line see if we can help you work the niches.
Vic:
Hope you’re recovery is going well. I have what may be a stupid question. I have adsense set up with a channel for each location on my site. is the CTR that google uses to determine pricing calculated across all channels on a page? I would assume so. So each channel does need to have a 3% CTR to avoid smart pricing, the whole page (or whole site?) needs a 3% CTR. Great fukin post by the way. I like how you, griz and court all decided to post on the same day.
Lots of reading to do now.
CTR is based on your whole network. So even if you have a bad performing page you might get shit ads there need to keep an eye on that. As down the line the whole network can be affected.
Well, all this stuff makes my head hurt
First I take down all my Adsense from my sports blog (.04% CTR) and then focus everything on one Adsense 300×250 location on A Mike Life in the top left of my post.
My CTR is still sucky, but at least .5-1% now, but it still sucks. If I add more Adsense like you say, it will just get worse.
I have gone with an affiliate route too, with a top 468×60 banner and a 300×300 banner on the right side. Those have been doing okay, mostly because I think people like to click on the chicky ads that are there.
Anyways, not seeing much money (Although I did sell a shirt from Busted Tees), but now you tell me to not write as great of content as I’m doing and that I cannot do.
I guess I’m doomed to be a blogger who can’t make money this way. I’ll have to resort to getting advertisers myself and working on email campaigns and other deals.
LMAO Mike remember when I talk about niches are sites just to get cash period. Your main site is not like that. Listen buddy you are getting 3 cent ads remember you have to be really keyword focus on niches and you first select a keyword to work the niche your site is not like that so Adsense would be a horrible performer on your site.
What I would do on your site would be a bit different. I would still serve adsense type ads but I would make them myself. Install OpenAds and chose high converting affiliates make ads just like adsense. Now remove the border on the ad what you want is to not make it look like an ad right now it has ad written all over it.
Now what type of ads I would use.
Tv Video Related
Weight Loss applies to everybody
And maybe a few making money
But Mike on a past post in a comment I mentioned your blog my best be suited to work CPM advertising and if you use this advertising then I would not place the ad top left inline I would place it where the affiliate banner on this post is.
Maybe CPM one 325×250 and one top under title 468×60
The problem with using Adsense on your site is you are all over the place I use Adsense on straight up niches that I focus all my post on the same set of keywords which I already know how much they pay, the only time I strayed from that was with Bu.bulicio.us and it bit me in the ass because I got priced.
Buddy it might be better if we have a Skype call if you want to discuss this better.
Okay, well I guess that’s what I have been trying to do. I Went with that Adbrite but in 4 days I didn’t make a cent and didn’t see anyone buying up ad space on it, so I let it go…perhaps I’m too impatient.
What happened was that I had a Conan OBrien story go nuts because of owning the #1 spot on Google (plus #2, thanks BZ) and so I figured if I had Adsense there I would have made some money on clicks.
But basically I’ve tried to find useful affiliates that people will use on a site like mine: movie posters, nbc store, t-shirts, music, ebay, Hosting, etc.
LOL, I put that border around the ad because my wife complained about the ads blending in with the text
Vic I have 4 domains in my stable right now and Adsense has turned me down for the fourth time, I need alternatives, we need to talk soon , hope you are feeling better , Got a Vic comment on my blog today , life is good!
Don I hope by Friday to be to my semi-normal pace and we can talk on Skype we will figure out options.
Vic you mentioned that I have to create post that’s not really solving people’s problems so they will click on the ads instead. How do I then get backlinks since people don’t find it useful to link back to me?
Or are you saying that backlinks are not that important to rank well in google?
Thanks Vic. You’ve been an inspiration for us all since you started this blog. Keep on teaching us how to make money
affzan, try Court’s article marketing methods to get backlinks and also Vic mentioned tagging via Bookmarking Demon. Also commenting on other blogs/sites if you have the time. If we depended on others to link back, it’s not gonna happen well enough.
Affzan I do not look at niche blogs the same way I look at this blog or a “normal blog” when I work a niche I promote it with BMD article submission for anchored links and directories all three I either do it automatically or semi-auto so it is fast an easy for me. Now with blogs you will still get scraped by your feed so if you use my scraper advice you will still get track backs with anchored links.
Quick clarification Vic: are you saying you put a 468×60 banner under the post title, and the 300×250 inline of the post itself, directly under it?
Robert yes that is exactly how I do it, I really hope I am back to pace by Friday and start the niche site so you guys see how I do it.
A dumb question. I noticed that bloggers in general complain other bloggers don’t click on their adsense ads.
What are the stats for browser users that prevent java script from running?
I admit I never see the ads and I notice with my plug-in scripts are only partially allowed. Google scripts are not running unless I specifically give them the permission.
Has anyone ever run a survey? I know most visitors to my site use IE7
AlexK that is an awesome point and I will try to find stats on that. The other question would be does Adsense count a blocked ad as an impression.
Alex,
I did a short study on this on my VB.NET tutorial blog and a guitar blog. Software developers, being tech savvy as a rule, tend to block ads and I saw about 40% blocked ads there. On the guitar site, it runs less than 10%. That’s comparing the difference in hits as measured by Google Analytics, WordPress Stats and Adsense.
I don’t think that blocked ads count against your CTR since if the script doesn’t run there’s no “phone home” to Google. Some ad blocking software may allow the script to run though so this isn’t an exact indicator.
Frank thanks for the stats and info cause that was a really good one it actually made me think especially how Adsense would relate to CTR vs blocked ads but as you so well put it there’s no “phone home†to Google.
Thanks Buddy
I hope the readers don’t miss my point. I think if you want to make money with adsense or similar you need to an audience that isn’t tech savvy nor one that lives in the niche. Another blog about blogging isn’t going to get rake in the money. Considering that many are tech savvy or soon will be blocking ads (I don’t consider myself tech savvy but block ads not only with java script blocking and also host file blocking).
I consider a 40% loss in seeing the ads is significant. Also you see the same ads often enough you’ve either already bought it or are simply not interested.
While blogs in general would like a regular readership, regular “customers” will check out the add occasionally and offer JV or affilate offers. Niche markets wants a turnover where it’s not necessary to sign up for RSS feeds.
Blogs about blogging like like a well known coffee house they have a regular clientele, they come and stay for a while.
Niche markets are more like that well burger joint, do you want fries with that? The customer is in and out quickly. The locals may come back more often and you can sell them the new sidelines.
Vic has pointed out that a blog about blogging isn’t going to make you much money because the market is a busy niche and difficult to break into. With Franks help we can add another point that a market were people are tech savvy aren’t going to see your ads.
Reason for my comment is that I’ve noticed that many participants following Vic and on BZ have been shifting towards blogs about blogging because that pulls the zooms and traffic to their sites. As Vic has stressed so often. Patience. However as humans that’s easier said than done. So because they are impatient they are chasing the audience rather than building their niche.
Hi Alex,
The VB.NET site does convert well for the traffic that sees the ads so I wouldn’t write off a tech savvy niche entirely. The ad relevance is usually quite good. There are niche tech sites out there who’s content is entirely scraped newsgroup and forum posts and they do very well from what I understand.
Also remember that my site wasn’t originally designed as a content thin niche site but as a site to highlight my programming skills and to be a social blogging site to some degree. If it were a straight-up niche blog it would probably do even better.
Wow. I’m not fucking worthy! *bows*
I just came across your blog recently. This is the third or 4th post I’ve reading. fucking dynomite. Thanks for the solid info.
- Tevin
LMAO Hi Tevin and welcome to my little world.
Hi Vic
Good to see you back.
I haven’t inserted any Adsense yet as the blog I showed you is only getting about 20 hits at present mostly from Google. Thought I would wait a little bit longer to get better CTR. Is that advisable?
Costa I try to wait till I got multiple post they have been indexed and have been getting links for a few weeks then I place ads the whole point is number one Google does not flag me as a MFA site and to get a better pricing. I would suggest the same we all need to be patient when it comes to a new niche.
Vic — to confirm, are you saying you’ve got a 468×60 banner sitting on top of a 300×250 inline of the post, or do you do one or the other?
Thought I posted this earlier, doesn’t seem to have gone through though.
Got you at the top
Glad to see you’re back at your f*cking best. This post makes a lot of sense. Looking forward to the next post.
Hi Markk,
trying to get back on pace but this post needed to be made asap as it would cost money to you folks.
Hi Vic,
I’m a litttle new to here. I discovered you only last week. Very sad to hear you are not well. HOpe you get better soon.
btw my Adsense CTR is more than 3% infacts its more than 5% for the last month. I’m doing it like you have described here. but still I’m getting only 2-4$ for 20 odd clicks. But when I started adsense some months ago I used to get 1 or 2$ for 2 or 3 clicks.. What’s wrong here?
It sure sounds like you are getting priced. There is no real answer from Google on pricing but Court, Grizz and me agree that it seems to be 1/10 of a regular CPC. Try to look at your ads and see if you see any random non related ads to your post if so you are priced.
Vic,
I spend two weeks writing a post centered around this theory and you just come out with it like that! And I bet you spent about 2 seconds on it.
But that’s why I’m the fucking noob and you are the guru. Back to writing about plugins for me!
Planet Apex, there are several factors which may explain the adsense in your case. I went through your blog and looked at the content. Remember when you first get adsense and put it on a site it does a lot of skipping and hopping until it can resolve to the type of ads that match your content sometimes.
Either you had some good ads popping up once in a while, or the content you had before that it matched with for certain posts had a high cost per click which meant money for you. Either way, iy is best to look at what the ads are serving up on your site. Several I noticed prominantly on your pages was Dubai ads, and also Apex ads. So I did a little search on these. While these two terms had lots of competition for ads, they were not really high CPC. This means that these ads that are showing will not make you much money because they are not being paid much for by advertisers.
This is the nature of the game when it comes to targeting keywords. If Vic were to put adsense all over this site it would kill him. He would get tons of ads for blogging which would 3-10 cent clicks. This is where a niche blog comes into play. Get keyword targeted and you make money. Write posts you enjoy writing and be random about subjects and you will get mostly low and random paying adsense.
I found this blog about 12 days ago and I’ve finally am all caught up! *phew*
Most of the reading was done in marathon sessions over the past 3 days.
Boy is my head swimming with all this new information. I’m an extreme noob. I had to look up what BANS meant. Actually I needed to look up almost all the terms used except for adsense. At least I know what that meant lol.
I only recently started reading the comments and now realize that they contain a whole lot of useful information! so I’ll be going back to review posts.
Anyways the point is thanks for the blog! You certainly sound like a guy that could be making more money doing other things than running this website.
I have all sorts of questions about older posts but I’ll throw those up in the forum!
Richie welcome,
I know that it may be bit overwhelming but you will see how things will start to click and become second nature.
Vic,
I hope you are starting to feel a little bit better and can’t wait to hear from you again.
I wish I was back full blast but right now I am around 60% but with the medication I am on the my part I will get to 100%.
Thanks Buddy
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