Ways to increase your Adsense Earnings

So you've had Adsense on your site for a few months now, maybe even longer, but you're still not getting anywhere decent earnings. I'm still learning as i go with Adsense, but the following has helped me somewhat.

The clicks on your ads might only be earning you 0.01 or 0.02 each.

There are a couple of reasons why this might be happening.

1. First of all, the keywords in your area of expertise or niche may only be low paying keywords - it may be an area where there isn't big money eg Bonsai Tree Grooming or Gardening. The cost of the keywords will only go as high as an advertiser is willing to pay. And if its not a high profit oriented industry then its likely to be low paying ads/keywords


2. You may be getting whats called Made for Adsense Ads. This is also known as Adsense Arbitrage. Basically what happens here is web-site owners build sites (Made for Adsense or MFA sites) with the sole purpose of sticking Adsense ads on their pages. They then bid low for keywords as an advertiser eg 0.05 per click.

They then optimise their site for these keywords and hope to make a profit, by receiving clicks on higher paying keywords. N.B. Google is reportedly cracking down on publishers who do this - it is considered grossly unethical, obviously though for some the risk is worth the reward.


So what can you do to get around these hurdles. Well firstly, with Made for Adsense Ads or MFA. YOu can actually go to a site that reports on these type of sites. Go to http://www.adsblacklist.com/
AdsBlackList is a site that allows you to check on sites that are notorious for this practice - you can enter your site and related keywords and they will generate a list of sites likely to send the cheap paying ads based on your site topic and keywords your way.

It also gives you the opportunity to report a known MFA site, so other members can benefit and basically not get screwed also. There are several types of membership: Basic (Free), Premier (£2.50/mth) and Premier+ (£4.99/mth). The basic level is sufficient to start off with, although the Premier does let you generate a longer list of sites (200)

Anyway, once you have your list go and log in to your Adsense account. Go to Adsense Set-up, Competitive Ad Filter and paste the list of MFA sites into the white space. There is a limit to how many sites you can add. Be careful that you don't block too many sites or sites that could be borderline, you are relying on a third-party source for this information and other peoples experience.

Give it some time to take effect, and my advice would be to trial it for a few weeks and compare the results to before. You should see a slight increase in earnings, but of course this will depend largely on your niche/industry and the type of keywords used on your site.


Secondly, the other tips to improve your adsense earnings performance is simply to review the format and colour of your ads.

Its been proven that the colour scheme of ads can influence whether a reader will subconsciously or consciously click our ads. As you've probably read before, change the colours of your ads to match/blend in with your site. Unfortunately you can't shake the 'Ads by Google' text on the lower right hand corner, but you can blend ads with your colour scheme.

I've found great results with matching white text on a coloured background that matchs the tone of my sites.

The other tip i can attest to working is changing the size of your ads. Don't go crazy with this, make sure they still look good and don't cramp the style of your site. According to Google and people in the know most people have the best results with the 'Large Rectangle' size (336x280).

A good method when using this size, is to wrap the text of your articles around the ads. This way, the ads look more in place and like they're meant to be there not an ad.

Good luck with your earnings

Cheers
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