At this point I think it’s safe to say that 99.9% of bloggers who have any interest in making money online currently have or once had Google Adsense on their page. It’s fast and easy to setup, and there are no requirements for getting started.
Pay Per Click Ads Are Frustrating
Pay Per Click ads are somewhat frustrating by nature. You spend hours optimizing your site to have just the right number of ads in the right places, so you don’t look like a tool just trying to make money (even if that is what you are).
Each morning you check your Adsense. So far today, you might have 2 clicks each worth $1.50 each. Not a bad average depending on your keywords (I have heard $5+ in some niches… crazy).
Around noon you check again. This time you have 10 more clicks… for $0.02 cents each. WTF?!?
You have just been the victim of a MFA (that doesn’t mean Mother F—ing A–hole) site. While there are some sites that simply just don’t want to shell out the big bucks for ads called LCPC (low cost per click) sites, there are others that are Made For Ads.
Made For Ads Sites Are Stealing Your Money
These Made For Ads sites pay very low prices for your ad space, then have nothing but ads on their sites which pay out higher. Basically, they pay $0.02 for your reader, then send them off to another site at a much higher payout; the site they should have gone to from your site in the first place!
Beat MFA and LCPC Sites
Google shows the highest cost ads first on every page. That means the ads at the top of the page will pay out better. Legitimate advertisers know that most sites use text ad block sizes that include 4 links, so they pay a premium price for those spots. After that, the price frequently goes down very quickly. There are three ways to limit the amount of MFA sites you run face.
First, you can limit the number of ads your site displays. If you check your Adsense stats and see that your ads at the bottom of your page are paying out a lot less per click, you might consider removing those ad blocks. You can replace those ads with ads from another network. If the ads at the top of your page aren’t getting many clicks, you can also remove those which will bump the higher paying ads down on your page.
Second,you can switch you image only ads for some or all of your ads. This is the method I am using currently, although I’m not sure the CTR is always as good. Another thing that you have to consider using this method is the selection of ads available. Certain ad size blocks are more popular, so there might be better image ads for different sizes.
Finally, you can make use of the competitive ad filter in your AdSense setup. If you know which sites have bad PPC rates, you can filter up to 200 of them (maybe more now).
The problem is there are so many, it would take a long time to manually figure out which ads to block and which ones were good.
Use Ads Black List To Help Filter MFA and LCPC Sites
Ads Black List is a site dedicated to helping you filter out as many of these profit stealing thieves as possible. When you arrive to the site, you’ll have to register to get to the good stuff. A basic membership is free, and there are premium options as well.
After you log in go to “My Account” and click “Add New Domain.” Enter you URL and then click Auto Populate. If your site title and meta keywords are good, you won’t have to do anything. If they aren’t good, you’ll want to fill in a few more keywords to help the filter then hit submit.
Now go to “Generate Filter List.” Drag you website URL from the left box to the right box and check both MFA and LCPC boxes. Unfortunately, you have to use Internet Explorer to drag your domain over. Hopefully my wasted 15 min trying to figure this out saves you that time. Click submit and voila! You have 200 sites you can cntl+a, cntrl+c, and cntl+v into your AdSense Competitive Filter.
Focus Your Ads On Your Content
Occasionally, you might talk about something off topic, and it will cause unfocused ads on your site. I get ads for boat props because the title of my blog. Obviously, boat props have almost nothing to do with my blog, so those ads are useless. There are two way to limit how much this happens.
Use the HTML tag <!–google_ad_section_start-> at the start of the content that you want Google to use for keywords. For me that might be words like blog ideas, blogging, blog reviews, or whatever. Then add <-google_ad_section_end-> after the related content.
The second way works exactly the opposite. If you open the tag with <!- google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) ->, Google will ignore everything in between your tags. This actually works better for really off topic posts like my post on high fashion.
Make The Most From Your Ads
These tips might not help you get more clicks, but they will help you get the most per click possible. Many of these ideas came from John Chow’s eBook and Problogger’s Adsense Tips. Do you use any of these methods to make more money blogging?
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Daan | Whenigetrich.com Says:
October 17th, 2009 at 6:53 PM
Wow, this has brought me a lot of insight to making my blog a bit more profitable. I’m a bit more into the affiliate marketing though. I use Google Adsense but I don’t expect to much from it, but maybe in this way it might be a bit more profitable!
Thnx for this!
Daan
– WhenIgetrich.com
Daan | Whenigetrich.com Reply:
October 17th, 2009 at 6:57 PM
If I may, I would like to add that Sponsored Tweets has been responsible for making a nice share of my online profits.
I would definitely recommend it!
Blake Waddill Reply:
October 19th, 2009 at 10:38 AM
Adsense is rarely the best long term choice for monetizing a blog. In his eBook, Daniel Scocco claims that sites with at least 5000 pageviews/day and get most of their traffic from search engines do best on adsense.
I think AdSense is a good tool for figuring out where to put ads and how to optimize them, but at the end of the day, affiliates are going to have a higher payout for the majority of blogs.
Dana@Online Knowledge Says:
October 17th, 2009 at 10:26 PM
What a complete way to make more earn trough adsense. I found that filtering the ads content really work great for earn improving.
.-= Dana@Online Knowledge´s last blog ..ShoutMix as Guest Book =-.
ronelM Says:
October 18th, 2009 at 8:09 AM
thanks for this its really help newbies like me..
zeesu Says:
October 18th, 2009 at 1:00 PM
hey Blake have you tried any of these tricks?I heard but never tried them.I think in beginning it not good to play with adsense bcz u may get banned.
Blake Waddill Reply:
October 19th, 2009 at 10:42 AM
I have used all of these methods, although I’m not seriously concerned with monetizing my site at this point.
Since I started using the methods I mentioned, my earnings per click has gone up considerably. My ads aren’t in the ideal places to get the most clicks, so I’m not making huge amounts. I think if I put ads in a more premium location (and took away from end user experience) I could greatly increase my CTR.
These tags are actually mentioned by Google on how to optimize your ads. There is nothing that breaks the Adsense TOS in anyway.
zeesu Reply:
October 19th, 2009 at 10:56 AM
Ok cool.I will try them once.Just was afraid of messing with adsense
Gabe | freebloghelp.com Says:
October 19th, 2009 at 11:51 AM
Great info there on MFA. When there’s a system, unfortunately there’s always a way to break the system.
For me, Google AdSense still brings me more than my other ads. However, I don’t focus on optimizing the ads right now. The reality is, it’s much more important for me to keep generating quality content and promoting activity. The difference between a few dollars and a few cents isn’t worth my time.
Now if I ever hit John Chow numbers, that’s a different story. Tweaking those ads could make the difference between a few thousand dollars and a few hundred dollars!
.-= Gabe | freebloghelp.com´s last blog ..Have a new project in mind? Start today! =-.
Blake Waddill Reply:
October 19th, 2009 at 12:22 PM
Problogger wrote a little article last week about how changing one ad to be slight bigger increased his income by nearly $60 PER DAY.
Neither of us are at that traffic level, so our slight tweeks won’t make that big of a difference, but getting in good habits now will make our sites more valuable and profitable as they grow.
Himanshu Says:
October 19th, 2009 at 12:53 PM
Thanks Blake! Amazing adsense tips, I am new to adsense and never gone experimenting it. But your article tending me to do some creative experiments on my blog. Thanks for all the links you have given.
.-= Himanshu´s last blog ..8 Greatest advantages of WordPress =-.
Dinesh Says:
October 20th, 2009 at 11:31 AM
I used adsense few months ago, but removed those ads because of low pay-out. Going to add them and will watch out the effect of above stated tips.
.-= Dinesh´s last blog ..Twitter On Cloud Nine :- 5 Billion Tweets Served =-.
Lee Ka Hoong Says:
October 21st, 2009 at 8:11 PM
This is good, I’ve used the adsblacklist long time ago and I found this tool quite useful. I think the cons of this would be when you’re using the same Adsense account for many different niche blog, you can only block 1 niche. But it’s better than nothing, after I blocked certain ads with AdsBlackList, then I received a $3+ click another day.
I believe that many people still don’t know about this, great sharing. :)
Thanks,
Lee
Jayce Says:
October 22nd, 2009 at 10:04 PM
Tried Ads Black List. No improvement at all. :(
Blake Waddill Reply:
October 23rd, 2009 at 11:42 AM
Did you check to see if the sites being listed changed?
Your site covers a wide range of topics, so there are 2 thing I can see that might be keeping ABL from helping.
First, because you site covers a wide range of keywords and ABL only filters for a few specific keywords, it is possible there are still other MFA sites showing up for different keywords than you used for ABL.
Second, the keywords that Google is targeting for your ads might not be in high demand, so people just aren’t paying as much for them.
You might consider using the Google Ad Section filter I mentioned to target more specific keywords that are likely to pay out better.
I hope this helps.
Tekshek Says:
October 23rd, 2009 at 5:55 AM
i did know adsense blacklist before.thanks for telling about these
Rahul Says:
October 28th, 2009 at 11:39 AM
Yes, i am always keep less ads to get more from every single click. My blog is still new.
Cleto Tirabassi Says:
October 28th, 2009 at 5:36 PM
Great resource info – thanks. I used AdSense on my previous Site, but since I hadn’t optimized it very well, did not draw very much traffic. I’m taking the necessary time and effort to build my new Site in a way I hope I can properly exploit AdSense once I get to 20+ pages. I hope I can then put some of the advice you’ve given here to good use.
Thanks – Ciao.