Joomla Tips: Adding Google Adsense Ads to Joomla

Make money with your website traffic, Google Adsense is unobtrusive if done correctly. This video will explain the basics of what you need to do to add Google Adsense to Joomla.



from : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REE0BJ4Gy58

How to Choose Your Ads Placement

Strategic ads placement is not just talk, it actually gives good results with AdSense. You'll see here how to find the optimum place for your ads, so that the visitor can see them and click before getting bored or annoyed of their presence.

Starting from the natural course of readers' eyes, namely from left to right, from top to bottom, we sustain the theory according to which the reader is inclined to grant more attention to content in these areas, being the first he lays eyes on, so the first choice for ads placement would be the top-left area of the page.

As it can be seen, Google's "heat" map relies greatly on this. It presents the hottest spots at the top and left areas of the delimited "readable section" -- that is, the section in the page that any reader automatically identifies as worthy of interest -- immediately under the top level navigation, at the left and above of the primary content, and within the same top-left areas of the primary content. Google offers also another "hint": that the reader would assimilate the section right below the end of an article, for example, as a sequel of the content, and would be drawn to learn more.

This works to a great extent, and in most cases, but it is not absolute, as Google agrees too. For the best placement depends on other factors, and what's more important, it varies from one page to another. It depends on the on the type of visitor who arrives on your page and on the page design and structure:

• Visitors: most of them are scanners and a smaller part are actual readers. That is why you should favour the areas that are most likely to be noticed at the first glance.
• Design: a design-related placement optimizes ads mostly for the "scanning" visitor.
  • Place your ads next to the eye-catchers on your page -- headlines, graphics, pictures, tables etc -- that direct your visitors' attention towards the areas they're placed.
  • In all cases, a simple, uncluttered design for a page serves the best. It makes the page look clear, inviting, and better showing visitors' options to leave the page through one of the links that are more visible this way.
  • It is better if the ads have more free space around them.
• Content structure: ads placement according to content structure targets mainly the visitor who actually reads your site.
  • Having a certain section of great interest on the page (such as something with "Latest..."), that the visitor will most certainly read means that the part of the page with that content will be most likely a good ads place.
  • Inserting your ads in the content, where they are the most contextually relevant is very effective, and results also in better ads targetting.
  • If you insert a skyscraper in the content (reader-directed), at the top-left or right, and its heigth is overpassed by the length of that content, it is probable for the visitor who really reads to skip those ads. In this case, it would be better to position them closer to or right at the end.

In all cases, keep the ads not too intrusive, don't make the users feel the ad is in their way, screaming for a click -- it's guaranteed, they won't click!

Blindspots

...are the places ignored by most visitors. Here are some examples:

• the bottom-right area (as opposed to the top-left one);
• outside what the "readable" area (the part in the immediate proximity of the content), namely beyond the page footer and in the right extremity above the top level navigation (as shown in Google's map);
• the traditional spot for banner ads -- don't place banner-shaped ads at the top or bottom of your page!

Multiple ad units

Many ask themselves whether to go for them or not. Many think erroneously that the more ads the better, without considering that in fact the quality of those ads it's what matters in the end. For a visitor will most probably not click on too many ads -- in fact the highest probability is that he will click only on one ad.

More ads on the same topic will mean display of lower cost ads also. You obtain nothing than more less-paying possibilities for the visitor to leave your page. Thus a lower EPC for you. So, it is better to find and keep the high paying ads and place them strategically.

To conclude, only if your content is varied and the ads displaying are also varied, it's worth keeping more ad units. But again, it's a matter of trials, see what works best for you.

Of course, these are just some lines to roughly guide you and spare you the unpleasures that others have been through. You'll obtain the best possible results by testing and testing again.

from : http://www.adsensehowtos.com/learn/choose-your-ads-placement.html

Google Adsense Activation Demo

Learn how and where to paste the ad code and publish your ads to the web. Follow along using your own web editor or sign up for a free Blogger or Google Page Creator page to start displaying ads in minutes.Google Adsense Activation Demo.


www.dougstech.com

How to Increase Targeted Traffic

If you know how to increase targeted traffic of your site that means you know how to make money with your work.

For websites participating in AdSense™, the goal is to increase targeted traffic. Targetting traffic is far more valuable than just getting high traffic. Visitors who reach your site not just by accident, and who are really interested in the topic you're dealing with, will probably search further and are more likely to click on your ads.

Yet, really high traffic can be of use to AdSense™ participants. It will add to the number of ad impressions. Then think, for example, of Google™'s AdSense Premium Service: sites that have a really high number of visitors benefit from a priviledged treatment from Google.

How Do People Find Your Site?

• by keyword search on search engines

  SE traffic and directory listings are partially profitable for AdSense participants. They mix targeted traffic and bystanders, thus, although not all traffic sent to your page will be “productive”, there'll still be some visitors interested to click on your ads.

• by coming across links on pages/sites that are related to your theme. These are likely to bring mostly targeted traffic.

So, make your site findable by:

• keyword optimization, good Meta description tag, title tag, header tags, optimized ALT tags applied to images (on-page SEO techniques)
• link building (off-page SEO technique) — you benefit doubly from this: more people are likely to find you more easily on other sites and you get higher PR (Google™'s PR algorithm takes into account a site's link popularity, on condition they are relevant links) obtaining thus better SERP positioning.

Attracting Targeted Traffic

On one hand, you have to get visitors to your site, on the other hand you have to keep them there if you want some clicks. Ways to increase targeted traffic:

1. Provide good, relevant content, keep your visitor interested. Maintaining high targeted traffic means not adding just anything to your web site, but focus on your particular niche of interest. Update frequently, give readers reasons to come back.
2. Promoting your site by means of a PPC program (AdWords and Overture) is probably the most effective way to increase targeted traffic. You benefit twice: visitors who come on your site are really interested in the subject you deal with, besides, they are "pre-qualified clickers" -- there is the theory according to which visitors coming thru a click will leave also by clicking on an ad.

   However to be profitable and efficient, this must be done scientifically. Read on to find out how to combine AdWords and AdSense.

3. A functional site will serve you right. When a visitor sees at a glance the whole mechanism and has a clear image of what he can find and how, it's for sure an invitation to navigate through your site. This is a great way to increase the number of impressions.
   Good design and functionality include:
   • an uncomplicated homepage, relevant for the site. Your homepage is your visiting card. Learn to make your site more appealing by using your homepage; for example, put a blurb here whenever you add something new.
   • the site is easy to navigate
   • the text is easily readable by its format — paragraphs, bolds attracting attention
   • easily findable information
   • pages load easily
   • put a menu of links on each page and pay a great deal of attention at the links labeling. A good choice of words will entice your readers to click on the links you want them to — the ones with the highest paying potential. (words like “free” or “download” are still good “charmers”)
4. Contribute to forums and blogs. Popularize your work widely, highlighting the benefits it offers to the reader.
5. Write free short articles demonstrating you have something valuable to say and create the opportunity to place links to your site.
6. Use RSS feeds to attract new visitors to your site. You can promote your work by sharing headlines and articles with other sites.
7. Create your own affiliate program or participate in advertising programs such as AdWords or Overture. Place your ads on sites and pay a comission to webmasters according to your agreement (payment can be Pay Per Click, Pay Per Sale, Pay Per Lead).
8. Other techniques used to attract visitors, such as giving away free stuff (downloads, coupons, discounts), running contests and promoting them might work, but not to an extraordinary extent, in as far as CTR improvement is concerned.
9. The idea of granting awards for excellent sites in your niche seems a good one, for it will bring you not only links but it will work wonders for your image: establishing you as an expert and building credibility.

How to Increase Earnings Per Click

Many think that the only way to increase EPC is to hunt for high paying keywords. Well, in reality, this is totally inefficient. The soundest ways to work on improving EPC imply targeting the right market, enriching content, improving CTR, tracking, testing. All these done, there's nothing else left than trusting AdSense™'s payment system.

When hearing about EPC boost, everybody thinks of high paying keywords, pick some and then build pages around them. Well it's not like that at all, do not go for it blindly! Artificially created sites around some keywords won't do you any good! High EPC goes beyond just high paying keywords. Media Partners Bot analyses much more than your keywords to serve the ads to your page. And we'll see what are these parameters.

Earnings per click cannot be kept very well under control, all that one can do is to create the premises for attracting high-paying ads, but even doing your best in this direction will not bring absolute certainty on a steady high EPC. For sure, there will be fluctuations.

First of all, there is the class of ads that AdSense™ will serve your pages. Apparently, it takes into account the following parameters when showing ads of a certain cost:

• Everything related to webpage content: context, keywords, theming
• Quality traffic — sites generating quality traffic will earn more, for the rate of conversion is estimated as bigger.
• The age and size of a site. The Page Rank.

Some of the factors that will influence further the EPC on your site (and over which you have little, if any, control):

• advertiser’s budget
• seasonal fluctuations
• campaigns launched and ceased
• changes of competition for keywords (new advertisers)
• the smart pricing algorithm — if the estimated conversion rate of an ad is lower than expected, the earning per click will lower.

What to Do

Of the parameters mentioned above, let us see what parts are under your control:

1. Create authentic, valuable, well-thematized webpage content. The potential of conversion of your content is analyzed. Put your marketing skills into creating pages that pre-sell. Good content will increase also your CTR attracting thus higher CPC ads.
2. Strive for improving CTR. Any action in this direction will be beneficial. Adsense™ will serve higher value ads to sites registering high ads CTR, for thus its profit will increase too. From this, higher CTR, higher possibility of conversion, thus higher EPC.
3. Study AdSense™'s payment system and analyze your site from the perspective of “smart” pricing.
4. The choice of the right keywords and phrases (not just the highest paying ones).

   You can make a good profit from using phrases containing keywords that pay well instead of simple keywords, that way you get into a niche where the competitivity is lower and the chances to get higher EPC are greater.

5. Target the right markets. Businesses with a higher profit margin will afford to spend more on marketing.
6. Tracking, testing, previewing. Track the activity of your pages, see which perform better, concentrate on the type of content that generates good or at least decent earnings, optimize pages and use the preview tool to see what happens, if the resulting ads are as expected.

   Remember to always preview the geographically targeted ads. Some of these might be lower paying.

Common Mistakes

Keep in mind! There are some mistakes that people do while trying to increase EPC.

• Chosing highly searched for keywords.

  Keyword popularity has nothing to do with their potential for conversion to money. Popular keywords, ones that have many searches, are not necessarily high paying ones.

• Using URL filter to block filter what they think are low-paying ads.

  They do this in hope it will bring in place some ads with a higher value. In fact, this is an erroneus judgement, for thus, they block the highest bidders.

  According to the bidding rules of the system, it's only the highest value ads that will show. Blocking the ads served will determine AdSense™ to serve the next highest paying ones. Make sure you always track and test when blocking ads.

• Doing everything they can to increase traffic as much as possible.

  Wrong again! You should look for ways to increase targeted traffic. AdSense™ analyzes the quality of the traffic and the possibility of conversion. Targeted traffic is more likely to convert well.

• Trying to increase CTR by artificial methods, obtaining a huge increase in CTR in a very short while will more than sure be interpreted by AdSense™ as click fraud and will not only be ignored at payment but you won't get away with it — click fraud cases are penalized by account disabling!

from : http://www.adsensehowtos.com/learn/increase-earnings-per-click.html

tips to save your adsense account

Majority of hubbers, bloggers, individual and business sites participate in affiliate programs to show ads of one or another company and earn money through these orograms. It takes lot of time and efforts to make their sites visible. Earning through affiliate programs also take considerable time in the begining. Monopoly of few of the firms in the field of advertising has made it so difficult for the publishers that even if they follow the terms and conditions honestly, their membership and account are always at the risks of being disabled. Once your account is disabled, your appeals falls on deaf ears and almost 0% chances exist for being reinstated. Not only you loose your account but you loose your earned money too. Hence, it becomes important to know how you can save your account from getting disabled.The most important question that comes to mind is whether one can save one's account if it belongs to google adsense by following policies of google adsense. The answer, I got browsing hundreds of sites, is simply no. One you loose your account, there is rare chances of getting reinstated. Anyways, its better to know the actions that can result in violation of adsense policies that may result in disabling of your account.

Clicks: The following type of clicks are treated as invalid clicks:

• repeated manual clicks
• impressions, using robots, automated click and impression generating tools,
• clicks or impressions generated through third-party services such as paid-to-click, paid-to-surf, autosurf, and click-exchange programs, or any deceptive software.
• clicking on your own ads

• clicks generated by encouraging users to click the Google ads
• attract users to click using arrows or other graphical gimmicks

Following practices are considered illegal:

• placing misleading images alongside individual ads

• sites promoted for displaying ads through unsolicited mass emails
• unwanted advertisements on third-party websites
• May not compensate users for viewing ads or performing searches, or
• promise for compensation to a third party for such behavior
• placement of misleading labels above Google ad units such as "Favorite Sites"

The following content is considered against the adsense policies:

• violent content, racial intolerance, or advocacy against any individual, group, or organization, Pornography, adult, or mature conten, hacking/cracking content, illicit drugs and drug paraphernalia, excessive profanity, gambling/casino-related content, Deceptive or manipulative content to improve site's search engine ranking, content regarding programs which compensate users for clicking on ads, Excessive, repetitive, or irrelevant keywords in the content or code of web pages, weapons or ammunition, beer/hard alcohol, tobacco, prescription drugs, replicas or imitations of designer goods, distribution of term papers or student essays, illegal content that promotes illegal activity, or infringes on the legal rights of others, web pages having content protected by copyright law without necessary legal rights to display that content.

Ad displayed on your webpages must not cross these limits:

• three ad units on each page.

• two Google AdSense for search boxes on a page.
• three link units on each page.
• three referral units on a page, in addition to the ad units, search boxes, and link units specified above.
• AdSense for search results pages may show only a single ad link unit in addition to the ads Google serves with the search results. No other ads may be displayed on your search results page.

Precautions:

As soon as you join as a adsense publisher, add your sites in the "My Allowed Sites " list. Another precaution to take is to include yourself in "Publishers White List".

Can you prevent your account from being disabled?

Its not only difficult but impossible task as you have no control over invalid clicks. If you have made enough enemies, there are chances that your enemies may repeatedly click google adsense ads displayed on your webpage. You are helpless you can't do anything in this regard.

What happens if someone steals your publisher Id and pastes it on an adult webpage and then himself reports it to the adsense support team? Result: You simply receive a warning mail from google. You inform adsense support about yours being innocent. As soon as your mail is received by adsense support team, you receive next mail from adsense informing that your account is disabled.

Some disturbing & annoying facts:

Why adsense publishers are being attacked suddenly? Are they really being attacked by spammers andsick people or it's a great organized conspiracy?

Why most of the objectionable sites displaying stolen adsense publisher ID's are being published on Blogger (blogspot.com), a site owned by google? If google is just interested to display ads on clean sites, why they are displaying ads like wife sharing?Look at the google ad shown in side bar. Click to have interesting discussion.......

Why adsense accounts of those new and individual hubbers/bloggers just received their first earnings are being disabled?

Why earnings of these bloggers (disabled accounts) are being seized by adsense without verifying the facts? Usually adsense accounts disabled for reasons other than invalid clicks are paid their remaining earnings but earnings of accounts being disabled recently are not dispatched to the publishers. Just imagine $100 X 10000?

Why google experts are not trying to verify facts?

Why google is advertising in adsense help forum that publisher ID's are being stolen and pasted on objectionable sites? If google is aware, why don't google expert's try to confirm who's the owner of adult site, how long the site has been on web and why the publishers account disabled instead of stopping ad display on such a site?

Google is financially very strong and we hope this company remains untouched by current crisis and tries to find out the facts and save its publishers from harrassment. Publishers can understand that this is a crisis and can bear with low earnings. However, they will develop a hatred towards a good company if their accounts are disabled without explaining the reasons.

* Source: http://www.rosswalker.co.uk/adsense_top10; To read more about the alternatives listed above please click this link

6 Hot Tips For Using Google AdSense

What is AdSense? A program run by Google providing ads to be placed on your websites or blogs (you are called a publisher). When an AdSense ad is clicked by a visitor to your site, you get paid. AdSense is an easy way to monetize your blog. The ads are contextual, meaning they are relevant to the content of your site. The ads are provided by advertisers using Google’s AdWords program.

Hot Tip Number 1 - Just Do It

All you need to get started is a website or blog with interesting content and a regular flow of traffic. Then you can get started. Google needs you. You have traffic coming to your site and they want a piece of your action. So, open an AdSense account with Google. It’s free, easy to apply and essential to your business partnership with Google. You are only allowed to have one account. Go to:-
http://www.google.com/adsense and click on the big “Sign Up Now” button.

There is no complicated software to install. If you know how to cut and paste simple code into your website you can use AdSense.

Hot Tip Number 2 - Comply

Read the Google Terms of Service (TOS) carefully. It’s important to understand the service guidelines and your responsibilities. Basically, the do’s and don’t’s of using AdSense. Find Google’s AdSense TOS (by country) here:-
http://www.google.com/adsense/localized-terms

Hot Tip Number 3 - Don’t Get Banned

Your AdSense income could become very important to you, so be very careful not to do anything to get your account banned. Of course, when you have read the TOS you’ll understand more, but put very simply here are some points to remember:-

- never click the ads on your own sites
- follow the guidelines about the number and type of ads you can have on your page
- follow the guidelines about placement of the ads, e.g., you can’t place an Adsense ad on a page without content, like a registration page or a page under construction
- remember that you can’t tell visitors to click on the ads
- you can’t entice visitors to click on the ads
- you can’t make any changes to the code generated by Google
- you can’t use other contextual ad providers on the same page as AdSense
- any automated method of ad clicking is banned

The aim is for your real visitors to click on ads which genuinely interest them.

Hot Tip Number 4 - Use All The Options Google Provides

There is more to AdSense that you might think. The available formats are:-
- AdSense for Content
- Text Ads - various styles and shapes to fit the available “real estate” n your site. Ads “above the fold” (viewable without scrolling) often get more clicks.
- Image Ads - not as popular as text ads. You could try them out and see how they work for your site.
- Link units - like a list - in both vertical or horizontal formats.

- AdSense ads in RSS feeds - giving your subscribers another chance to click on an ad. Recently FeedBurner was acquired by Google. You must migrate your RSS feeds to Google to use this service.

- New - YouTube video with ads - providing both contextual content and ads in one go - you need to link your YouTube account with Google AdSense to use this service.

- AdSense for Search - you create a custom search engine - probably offering the most control over what your visitors can view.
- you decide how it looks (you can add your own logo and graphics)
- you decide what sites it searches
- you get paid when someone clicks on an ad

Use all the ad formats Google will allow. You can use 3 ad units, 2 AdSense for Search boxes and 1 link unit per page.

Hot Tip Number 5 - Use Channels

Google provides channels as a way of tracking your AdSense income ad by ad. When you create an ad you can assign it a channel name. This helps you to determine which ads are making you the most money and gives you the chance to “fine tune” your ads to increase their click through rate (CTR) by seeing which ad formats, placement and colors are being clicked on most often.

Hot Tip Number 6 - Ad Design

Match the colors of your ads to the colors of your site. This means you can get the ads to blend in with your other content, so it’s not so obvious that it’s an ad. The words “ads by Google” will still appear.

Select a background color to match your sites’ background, make the ad border disappear by choosing the same color. Select the title and text colors to match the heading and text colors used in your web pages. You can get exact matches by using hexadecimal color codes. Though if you color choice doesn’t provide enough contrast you may find Google will ignore your exact colors. What about the URL? The most recognized color for a clickable link is blue. So, don’t fight the habits of millions of people, use blue.

While using these Hot Tips will improve your AdSense income, it’s also vital to realize the quality of your sites content and the traffic volume are huge factors in establishing a viable AdSense income stream.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Cody Moya writes about Internet Marketing Tips in his
Free Internet Marketing Courses. You can sign up for his free
Tips and get additional information at his
website: http://FreeInternetMarketingCourses.com

Google Adsense, Ad"sensibilty" that is

Google continues to turn the search engine world upside down. For years, advertisers have been paying for high placement in search results for keyword searches on Yahoo, Alta Visa, and Google. Overture, recently bought by Yahoo, built its business by brokering such placements around different high profile sites. Google recently released a program called Adsense that extends the placement of keyword sponsored ads beyond high profile sites to almost any site. Adsense allows any website, large or small, to place Google keyword sponsor ads directly on their web pages. By placing a few lines of special Google javascript on your page, you can automatically serve up simple, unobtrusive, text-based ads that are contextually appropriate to your page. The more targeted, content-rich your page, the more targeted and appropriate the Google ads will be.

When a visitor clicks on a Google Adsense ad, the website gets a small fee, ranging anywhere from 3¢ to $12 per click. Although Google doesn't release the fees it pays for keywords unless you are an advertiser, you can get a general idea by going to the Overture website and using their View Bids Tool.

So what does this mean? Websites with great content that people want, no matter what the size of operation, will be able to make a few bucks. Power to the people. What else does this mean? Advertising inventory will increase and the rates paid for clicks decrease, thus furthering the downward pressure on the advertising revenue model.

from : http://www.elise.com

Adding AdSense to Blogger

Learn how to add AdSense units to your Blogger blog. This video will show you some advanced tactics on adding AdSense to your blog without the use of the widgets in Blogger.



from : http://www.youtube.com/user/AffiliateDiary

Adding Google adSense to a Blogger Blog

In this video we show you how to add adSense ads to your your google blog to start earing money from your Google Blogger Blog.



from : http://www.youtube.com/user/marketingice

How To Make Money Online FREE GOOGLE ADSENSE, MARKETING

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from : http://thespiderwebsystem.com/striker

Google: No AdSense Ads Below Blog Title

By referring to Google AdSense placement heat map, we put Google AdSense ads above blog content (below post title) for better performance. But Google AdSense team does not quite agree with the ads placement.

QuickOnlineTips received an email from Google AdSense support pointing out the issue on their site.

In fact, Google Adsense Blog published 2 guidelines earlier and one of them is “ads shouldn’t be placed under a title or section heading in a way that implies that the ads are not ads.”

I didn’t take much attention to the guideline because I thought mine is different than the example. My AdSense ads was separated by categories and date. But it seems AdSense team think the different.
AdSense team advised QuickOnlineTips that:

“publishers may not label the Google ads with text other than ’sponsored links’ or ‘advertisements’.”

As a result, QuickOnlineTips now put a “ADVERTISEMENT” word above the AdSense ads.

I also made the change to add “advertisement” image above my AdSense ads, although I haven’t received any email from Google AdSense about matter.

I know many AdSense publishers used put AdSense ads below post title (it’s really a heat spot!), so make the required changes before too late!

from : http://www.liewcf.com/blog/archives/2008/08/google-no-adsense-ads-below-blog-title/#

Is Google AdSense messing with small bloggers who are critical of big Google clients?

Google's robots canceled this guy's AdSense account and did not explain why:

...

There had been a large uptick in ad clicks--as I think they are called--the previous few days, taking me from about $15 a day in average revenue from Google ads to a high of about $30 a day on either Sunday or Monday. I don't know what day that was since Google won't let me look at my stats anymore. So there was an email from Google saying I was up to no good, see ya' later, dude. Had I been going onto my own site and clicking ads? No. Had I had any weird, unusual patterns of traffic to my site? None.

The big uptick in clicks on my ads was the result of a lecture I gave at a college in Florida last week as near as I can tell, but there's Google treating me like I am some spam blogger sitting offshore creating phony porn blogs and hair treatment sites to milk Google's ad dollars. I don't like that insinuation very much since I've played by the rules right down the line since I put up their text ads in August. Also, I've been playing by the rules of the Web 2.0 for over two years...and this is what I get?

This is how Google and all the other twerps in the Bay Area are making the new media? This is how they are monetizing the Web? By cutting off legitimate content providers when they have a sudden uptick in popularity and leaving them in fear that they can't make next month's rent while the founders and CEOs of companies like Google fly around in private 767s and their wives are out playing tennis and their employees get free transit to work and free meals in the office? If so, take me back to the days when newspapers will still linotyped. Because this is nonsense and has some obvious implications for others who provide content on the 'Net: Don't you dare get popular. But more on this nonsense in a minute.

I appealed Google's action, giving them my best guess as to what led to the click increase (I couldn't detect any malicious hacking as some readers had suggested), and the company has already exceeded its own 48-hour response time. I've contacted the press office twice and have gotten no reply.OK, Google, it's time for some Adsense customer feedback, and since you are not responding to my queries, then you are going to get it right here. Your customer service stinks. Your press office is useless. Dealing with your company is like talking to a black box. Your monitoring algorithms are set way too tight. You seem to be a company run by computers and not humans, and if there happens to be a human being working at Google, then give me a call. You owe me at least $600--for accumulated clicks from August through November that was to be my first payout from Google at the end of December--and you owe it to me pronto. You also owe me an apology for treating me like a scab. You guys are the ones making billions off the original content of others such as my colleagues in the journalism business and your values for how you reward content providers seem to me to be a bit out of whack--because as near as I can figure you guys cut me off over a lousy $40 or so. Seriously, that's all the marginal increase in money that the uptick in clicks would've brought me. That isn't enough for 10 gallons of jet fuel for a 767.

You are the scabs. I'm the one who's been upholding the Web 2.0 values your company claims to hold dear while your Blogger subsidiary lets people put up sick, ridiculous blogs such as this one (note: it's an awful site alleging that that poor Megan Meier girl got what she deserved) and your YouTube subsidiary lets people post all sorts of useless stupidity (and some interesting stuff as well at times). ...

So this is interesting in light of our conversation a few weeks ago about how Google might bear some responsibility for trackback and comment spam. Here, Google was probably trying to get a handle on such things. But a real person got denied.

On the other hand, a darker possibility: This blog in question offers critical investigative reports on pharmaceuticals and the industry. Obviously, Google sells ad space to pharmaceuticals. Could this be because Google is concerned about losing Pharma money?

Here is part of the original email Google sent this guy:

"While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. Since keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage our advertisers in the future, we've decided to disable your account.

"Please understand that we consider this a necessary step to protect the interests of both our advertisers and our other AdSense publishers. We realize the inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you in advance for your understanding and cooperation."

What's going on here? What is a "significant risk?"

Anyone have some ideas?

Thanks, Jonah!

Filed under: What If Big Ads Don't Work
Posted by Siva Vaidhyanathan

Google Launches AdSense for Feeds

I noticed a new option in my AdSense account: AdSense for feeds, a program that displays contextual and placement-targeted ads in FeedBurner feeds. FeedBurner announced in May that AdSense for Feeds will be available to a small number of publishers and now it seems that everyone can use it.

FeedBurner has recently closed FAN, its advertising network. "No new applications for FAN publishers are being accepted and we expect the broad variety of options provided through AdSense (including the new AdSense for Feeds product, powered with FeedBurner feeds) will give publishers valuable new revenue-earning potential," says a FeedBurner/Google employee.

The new AdSense for Feeds option lets you create a new ad unit that has a format automatically selected from 468x60 and 300x250. "Generally, the 300x250 size will display when there's more content and when your feed is being viewed in a device with a larger display," explains Google. You can choose if you want image ads, the ad frequency, the position (top or bottom of the post), the colors and a channel that tracks the ad performance.



For the moment, there's no connection between your AdSense account and the FeedBurner account, so Google automatically adds the FeedBurner service to your AdSense account. Unfortunately, your feeds are still connected to the old FeedBurner account and you need to migrate them first. The migration process is manual: just send an email at adsense-support-aff@google.com and mention your FeedBurner username and the AdSense account email address.


From AdSense, you can easily burn a new feed by entering the address of your blog and selecting some tracking options. The feeds can be managed at the new FeedBurner site, but there's no visible change other than the integration with Google Accounts and the new URLs for feeds: http://feedproxy.google.com/NAME.


Here's an ad from a feed of a FeedBurner/Google employee:


I doubt that these ads are an effective way to monetize feeds, since people use feed readers to get timely updates from a lot of sites and spend less time for each item. Besides, feed readers are mostly used by tech-savvy readers that are less likely to click on ads.

At some point, I may experiment with some infrequent ads in Google Operating System's feed and I'll post my findings.

Resources:
AdSense for Feeds Help Center - you should read the tips
Migrating an existing FeedBurner account
The new FeedBurner homepage

How To Set Up Google AdSense Video Units Via YouTube

Yesterday I wrote about the launch of Google AdSense video units, but like I said, no one with an AdSense account was able to use the feature yet. As of last night that changed.

Here is a how to, on setting up Google AdSense Video Units via YouTube.

Step 1: Go to your AdSense Set Up Page and click on the YouTube (Video Units) option as pointed out in the image below:

Step 2: Agree to legal disclaimer (first time only):

Step 3: Confirm your AdSense account with YouTube (first time only). You are taken to YouTube after you agree to the disclaimer. This is where you plugin your AdSense account information, so YouTube and AdSense can communicate.

Step 4: When that is done, it should tell you they have associated your account with YouTube.

Step 5: Then you set up your first player. You define the player name and description, the layout and the colors also.

Step 6: Define the content matching options. You can let Google figure out your content and provide relevant video ads, or you can help with hints or by specifying the content you want on your site.

Step 7:Then you just click the generate ad code:

Paste the code into your page, like I did here below and you should see an add related to search stuff.

The next time you go to your Google AdSense set up page and click on video units, you will be taken to a page that shows you your old units and gives you the ability to create new ones or remove old ones.

That pretty much is the detailed walk through of how to set up Google AdSense Video Units for the first time.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums

Track Google AdSense Clicks via Google Analytics - Free AdSense Tracker

There have been 3rd party javascripts that track adsense clicks out for a while, but no free ones to my knowledge that track clicks on Firefox. Until now.

This free script integrates with Google Analytics to allow you to track your adsense clicks.

This tracking is done through "Goals". A goal is a way of tracking when a website visitor does something you want - Buy an item, submit a contact form, or in our case click an adsense ad.

Create a goal: To create a goal you assign it a URL. This url doesn't have to exist, as the javascript will trigger it.
In the Goal URL field, enter "/asclick" and "AdClick" for the goal name.

Adding the javscript to your page: Copy the astrack.js to your website server and add the following to the footer of your website. This has to come after all adsense code.

Testing it: DON'T! There is no way to test that this works as it tracks adsense clicks, and you can't click your own adsense. You'll just have to trust me that works :)

After some time you should start seeing goal tracking appearing in your stats.
For example, here is source conversion. Note that the percentages are based on Visitors, not Pageviews, so they do not compare to CTR.

So from that graphic we can see that out of 11 visitors that came from MSN, 54% of then clicked on an adsense ad over the course of their visit.

Below many graphs in Google Analytics is a list with round arrows. If you click the arrows on almost any item you see an option for "To-date Lifetime value".

Click this and you see the Goal conversion for that item. For example here is the Coversion rate for DSL users.

Once you have Google Analytics tracking your clicks, you can cross segment that data to almost any other data Google Analytics shows. It becomes a very powerful way of optimising your site, not just for CTR, but for the type of visitors that click adsense.

[Thanks to Shawn Hogan and Jim from Digital Media Minute]

How to Build Hundreds of Adsense Sites

http://viralurl.com/dgreat/hypervre

Google AdSense Steps to Success

The Australian AdSense team has put together a step-by-step guide to optimising your AdSense performance. We cover:

1. Analysing your webpage
2. Creating custom channels
3. Determining best ad design and placement
4. Maximising ad units on a page
5. Tracking and measuring your results

For more information on AdSense optimisation, visit the Help Center guide - https://www.google.com/adsense/suppor...

Google AdSense Tips !

Google just released a Newbie Central for their AdSense program, those ads webmasters can include on their site to earn money for every click on the ad from a visitor (if you're using the program, part of the advertiser budget will go to you, and the other part to Google). I wanted to add some tips from my own experience:

1. Ads can work well in-between other stuff. On a games site of mine, some of the games don't contain ads next to the game area; the AdSense ad will only be shown in-between game rounds. This is the time the visitor is not concentrating on performing a task but might take a small break, and be open to the option of visiting new sites.

2. Put too much emphasis on AdSense and your site may be linked to less. The more available space you dedicate to AdSense on your site, and the less you differentiate between ads and content in your design, the more money you earn with the program, right? Not quite. While pushing the AdSense may result in short-term gains, it might also convince some visitors that the site is too crowded to be worth visiting again. And some of those visitors may also be bloggers or other people who might otherwise help to promote your site with links to it. And the less your site gets linked to, the less traffic it gets, meaning AdSense revenues may go down in the long term.

3. Even if you get huge traffic, the AdSense income from the site is more dependent on the site type and audience. Google targets AdSense ads automatically to the site content. Or at least, it does so ideally – but some types of content fare better than others with this targeting. I noticed for instance that AdSense does better on a games site than on a technology blog. I also heard people say that AdSense does quite good on product oriented blogs; say, one post solely about the iPod; another post solely about Gadget XYZ, and so on.

4. Image ads can be relevant and work for you, but they might also apall some visitors. Google's AdSense program gives you the option to choose between a couple of different ad formats. Two main groups are text ads vs text & image ads. When you choose the latter, Google will deliver what they deem works best for your content (or so one would hope, and it would be in Google's best self-interest to serve you the best possible ad, it seems).
   
   However, Google doesn't really know your layout preferences, and they don't really understand when your audience thinks ads are "too much"; and considering image ads include Flash animations (which you can't disable, once you go for image ads), Flash animations may well push some people away. One thing you can do is to only show image ads in areas where they don't disturb the content, e.g. at the end of posts. Also, you might want to listen to visitor feedback on the ads being served; I received emails before that the blinking ad on this or that site made a person want to leave the site, at which point I blocked the specific advertiser via the AdSense Setup -> Competitive Ad Filter option.

5. When it comes to context sensitive targeting, you can increase or lower the importance of certain parts of your page. To help Google find a matching ad for your content, you can use the HTML comment syntax by encapsulating more important parts with
   
   

   
   ... your important site content here ...
   .

   Or, to lower the importance of a section, use:
   
   

   
   ... your not so important site content here ...
   

   (Google notes that it may take up to 2 weeks for this change to your site will be taken into account by the AdSense.)
   
   What if your site doesn't have any good matchable content to begin with, though? Say, the page just includes an image. Well, for the reasons of search engine optimization but also ad optimization you might want to consider using at least a descriptive title, an explanatory footer containing the important keywords or keyphrases (the kind of footer that actually helps the human visitor by explaining what the page is about). In the case of image content, reasonable alt and title attribute texts should be used as well.*
   
   *Whatever you do, don't resort to "keyword-stuffing" as it doesn't help your visitors and may get your page ranked lower in search engines.

6. Be aware of risks when you change ad layouts too much. I once had a system on the server to randomly differ between various AdSense layouts on the same page. Doing so I was hoping to add some good variety to keep the ads at least somewhat interesting and notable. Shortly after I stopped doing so and simply included a rather big static area for the AdSense to "do what it wants," the AdSense revenues for that site increased. Now, I don't know if this was a coincidence of some sorts, as revenues often go down or up even when you don't do anything, but it might well have been that there was a connection between adding too much homemade randomization, and lowered revenues.
   
   At another time, during the redesign of this blog, I switched from one ad format to another for the end-of-posts AdSense ad space. This, combined with perhaps other layout changes, suddenly cut the ad revenues in half for the blog. It took me some time to realize that I had some ad channels* set up for the specific old layout size, and by changing this I must have kicked out all those advertisers who were pushing their ads through the channel.
   
   *This setting can be found at AdSense Setup -> Channels.

7. Use competing ad systems when AdSense doesn't seem to work for a site. At CoverBrowser.com, which shows galleries of comic and book covers and so on, I tried including AdSense ads in "non-annoying" places in the layout (including trying to use AdSense affiliate links via AdSense Setup -> Referrals), but this didn't seem to work at all. However I then tried "affiliating" the "buy" link below individual covers, utilizing the eBay affiliate commission system offered by AuctionAds.com*. (Disclosure: Patrick Gavin, co-owner of AuctionAds, paid me for consulting before on other projects, like Sketchcast.com.) This worked a lot better, and as it was simply connected to an existing site feature, it also didn't add clutter.
   
   A good start to find other ad programs is to search for adsense alternatives on Google... you will see a lot of lists which are dedicated to competitors. (Note that some of these competitors may be US-only.) You may also want to join an ad or blog network like The Deck, Federated Media (disclosure: I was part of Federated Media before), or 9 Rules. Before joining such a network – which might require you to show them your traffic stats and so on – check if their typical ads and campaigns fit with your site layout and your general ad type preferences.
   
   *CommissionJunction also offers an eBay affiliate system but CommissionJunction has really low usability, in my opinion; setting it up is confusing.

8. Sometimes you may get a sudden increase in traffic, hence ad clicks, but you can't locate the source of the traffic. I'm using Google Analytics to track my sites, though AdSense is also a good first indicator of traffic explosions... because it will show the combined page views of all your sites (provided you include AdSense on all of them), as opposed to Google Analytics, where you need to check site by site individually.
   
   However, sometimes even with Google Analytics, you won't be able to locate the source of your traffic because there's no specific new popular referrer being shown (a referrer is the site linking to your site, provided people click on that link). In these cases, it may well be that your site has been discussed in a TV show or similar, as the show won't "link" to you (but audiences will be entering your domain manually into the browser when they like what the saw on TV). When you feel that there has been a traffic explosion sometimes you may get additional email feedback in regards to your site, and it makes sense for you to ask your visitor: where did you first find out about the site? Maybe the can let you know about the name of the TV show, or magazine, or other "offline" source responsible for the peak. (I sometimes sent pointers to the BBC Click show for instance, with partly enormous effect.)

9. Consider using AdSense even when the page doesn't get any traffic yet. Who knows, some day the traffic suddenly explodes, and you might not realize fast enough and thus miss out on the action (as sometimes, traffic goes as fast as it comes).
   
   On the other hand, reversely I would suggest to never do a site just to make ad money with it. That kind of motivation may lead to spammy sites that don't help anyone really. (If a project is great, it's great even if it doesn't make any money.)

10. Making money with AdSense takes time. In my experience, it may take many months to years for a site to gain enough traffic to make OK money through AdSense... if ever. I have almost never experienced any site making quick and easy money with AdSense (though you may be getting quicker results than me of course, as it depends on so many variables!).
    I think for any site getting a couple of thousands of visitors a day, you might want to start playing around with AdSense to see where it takes you (if you didn't already include AdSense anyway just to see what happens, and following up on tip #9). As you are paid in US-$, the actual benefit the ad revenue will bring depends on your local costs of living as well (you might even ponder moving or going on an extended holiday trip if your local costs of living are too high for your site revenues to cover).

PS: What are your AdSense tips?

Google AdSense Tips by Philipp Lenssen

What's AdSense?

Google AdSense is the program that can give you advertising revenue from each page on your website—with a minimal investment in time and no additional resources.

AdSense delivers relevant text and image ads that are precisely targeted to your site and your site content. And when you add a Google search box to your site, AdSense delivers relevant text ads that are targeted to the Google search results pages generated by your visitors’ search request.

source : http://www.google.com/services/adsense_tour/index.html