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Six Figure Blogging

© 2005 Andy Wibbels and Darren Rowse. All Rights Reserved. http://www.sixfigureblogging.com/

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Six Figure Blogging Call 3 Transcript Andy: So today we are talking AdSense, right?

Darren: That’s right. It’s my favorite. I’ve been preparing for this one for weeks

now.

Andy: You’ve been a-bubble all week, I know!

Darren: We’ve got two hours of content that we’ve got to squeeze into one hour

so we are going to have to push.

Andy: So Darren, tell us about your AdSense knowledge.

AdSense Basics

Darren: Wow, it’s quite an overwhelming topic. I think we could go for two or

three hours today. There are probably a hundred to two hundred tips that I can

give you. I am trying to give you a brief overview. We’ll try and get a little bit

more specific as we go along but we’ll start with the basics. I know a few people

on this call who have never used AdSense before and some who still have not

signed up for an account. They are not convinced yet. We’ll give you a brief

overview of that.

What is a Contextual Ad?

Darren: Basically, the way I explain AdSense is that if you go to Google.com and

you do a search for any particular word or keyword, you’ll find ads come up for

that keyword that relate to what you’ve written. That is the way that I describe

AdSense to people. Those particular ads are the same ads that you can put on

your blog. They are contextual ads. So what you write about on your blog triggers

particular ads on particular topics. The way you get paid is when someone comes

to your blog and they see an ad that they are interested in, if they click on that ad,

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you get a small payment for that. I say small because usually it is small but those

payment levels vary quite considerably depending upon what that ad is for.

Behind the scenes there is another system called AdWords which is what the

advertisers sign up for and it may be on a particular keyword. Some keywords,

you might get one cent per click; some people think you get less than one cent;

other words you might have heard of people getting up to fifty dollars for a click.

That is very rare and I haven’t heard that happening too much recently. They do

vary quite a bit.

How AdSense Makes You Money

Darren: Basically, Google adds up all those clicks. At the end of the month, if

your total income gets to a hundred dollars, they’ll send you a check. They’ll send

it to you in US dollars or they’ll send it to you in Australian dollars, and

depending on what country you are in, and whether they are able to pay in

different currencies, they’ll send you a check. In some countries, they’ll transfer it

straight into your account as well.

If your total for the month gets to thirty dollars, you won’t get a check that month

but those thirty dollars gets added to the next month and eventually, you’ll get a

check once you go over the one hundred dollar mark.

The Difference Between Google AdSense and Google

AdWords

Andy: So just to review, the AdSense is from our perspective as the publisher of

the website and the AdWords is from the advertiser’s perspective?

Darren: That is right.

Andy: We can view both sides. Like you said last week, we can join AdWords so

then we can see what the advertisers are going to see when they are putting ads in

to the Google system.

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Darren: Exactly. I find it quite useful. Once you are accustomed to AdSense and

you are feeling comfortable with that, actually join AdWords. It doesn’t cost you

that much. I think it might cost you five dollars. Just have a play with that and see

what the advertisers are doing as well because it does add to your experience to

AdSense.

Payment Terms and Schedule

Participant: May I ask a quick question, Darren?

Darren: Yes sure.

Participant: Is the hundred dollars per blog site or per blogger? So if you have

two or three sites.

Darren: It’s per blogger. You can run from the one account on a variety of

different blogs. I have one AdSense account but I have twenty something blogs. It

all goes into one pool. I’ll talk a little bit later, if we got time, about channels and

how you can track and see how each blog performs. It all comes in under the one

account, which makes it a lot easier to make it to that one hundred dollar mark.

Participant: Excellent thank you.

Useful AdSense Links and Resources

Darren: So we’ll go to that AdSense useful links page. We won’t go through

them one by one but there are a variety of links there. The pro ones are all official

Google AdSense pages. If you go to the AdSense terms of service, it is pretty hard

to read the terms of service but I really suggest you get into the AdSense policies

page. It is really important to have a good grasp of some of the rules. It is not a

free for all. They have some boundaries to what you can and can’t do. We’ll talk

about some of those but we haven’t got time to go through them all.

The other few pages are quite good. The format page we’ll come back to later. You

may want to open that up in another window and have it sitting there. That gives

https://google.com/adsense/terms

https://www.google.com/adsense/policies

https://www.google.com/adsense/policies

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you the variety of different size ads and types of ads you can get on AdSense. The

optimization tips page is probably the bible and we’ll come back to that later too.

Particularly, there is a heat map on that page, which is really quite important.

We’ll talk about that a bit later. There are some case studies there which I’ve

learned a lot from with people telling their experience.

The AdSense help page is not very well organized, but there is a lot of useful

information there. Then I’ve just given you a few links of things that I’ve written

on Problogger and a couple of other resources down at the bottom. Jen Vince is a

blogger (at www.jensense.com). She is brilliant on AdSense and contextual

advertising and I really recommend you get to her. I’ve given you a link, down at

the bottom there to an ebook, which some of you may be interested in if you are

at the beginnings of your AdSense earnings. I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone

[but it is for bloggers] who are a bit advanced on it.

So there are some useful links which hopefully will help you as we go on today. I’ll

refer to some of those so you may want to keep that page open if you can.

Is Your Blog Suitable for AdSense?

Darren: We are going to talk about blog suitability. Is your blog suitable for

AdSense? A lot of bloggers just think, “I’ve got a blog and my blog will be great

with AdSense.” They don’t do any critical thinking about the system. It is not

perfect for every blog.

Where it’s great is for blogs are about products. That seems to be where it

performs at its peak. I’ve given you five different points. Probably the key point is

about products. If you’ve got a specific product or a service, something that

people would buy, and something that people would be researching in an active

way. They are not interested in it as a hobby. They actually want to take some

action it. They seem to be the topics that perform best on AdSense. That doesn’t

mean that you can’t do a blog about a news thing, for instance, and use AdSense.

You can do it but it won’t perform as well.

https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html


http://www.jensense.com/

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So for me, my digital camera site, that is my highest performing one, people come

to that site from search engines looking for information so they can make a

purchase. So when they see an ad, it offers them that product. They are more

likely to click on that particular ad when people are in a buying mood, when

people are researching, and when people are interested in other things and not

just your content.

Searchers Engine Traffic Performs Best; Regular Readers

Not So Much

Darren: I guess the other point, which is really quite profound, is that pages that

don’t have regular readers seem to do best. So pages that have a lot of search

engine visitors tend to do better than pages that have a lot of regular readers. For

example, on my Problogger site, that site is read by the same people everyday. A

few people come in from search engines but not many. The people that come in

everyday, they may have noticed the ads when they first came in but the second

time, they are less likely to see them. Then every time they come back, they are

even less likely again.

Really, regular readers are great for blogs but they don’t pay too well. So there are

blogs that are suitable for AdSense: product ones, search engine visitors.

The Problem with Political and Religious Blogs

Darren: I’ve listed a few different types of blogs which may not be quite suited.

You can run ads on some of them but they are not suited: political blogs. The

problem with political blogs is that AdSense doesn’t know what side of politics

you are writing about. It could give you something in politics that you are quite

opposed about. Religious blogs, the same problem.

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AdSense Performance with Other Blog Topics

Darren: Celebrity and gossip blogs. The problem with those is, they can get a lot

of traffic but AdSense for one, doesn’t seem to know what you are writing about,

quite often and two, the ads just aren’t worth much at all.

We had a Michael Jackson trial blog. We got a lot of traffic on it, but really the

ads they use, weren’t that great. We ended up putting in impression-based ads on

that which we talked about in week one. It may be a lot better than AdSense.

Sports blogs, depending on the sport, you might do well out of ads on that that

actually sell products for that particular sport. In general, they don’t pay as well.

Sometimes, we get relevancy problems on sport blogs as well.

So there are some of the things that you might want to keep in mind. I have run

AdSense on all of those types of blogs and made a bit of money from them but

they don’t do as well as product based blogs.

Banned Topics with AdSense

Darren: Then I’ve listed blogs that you just can’t use AdSense on: porn blogs,

explicit language, gambling, blogs where you don’t own the copyright. These are

some of the rules. I’ve expanded the list of those. On the policy page are things

you shouldn’t put AdSense on. You’ll risk being banned from the system.

Other Considerations and Summary

Andy: To summarize all this up, a big part of it is that when people are going to

these pages, they are searching for something. The regular readers, they are there

to read the content, they know that you got some ads and they know that might

not be applicable to what they are looking for.

If you have people who are actively searching, which I remember when the first

demographics came out about who reads blogs; blogs readers are people looking

http://www.breakingnewsblog.com/michaeljackson/

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for stuff; they are researching purchasing decisions; they are not scared of

ecommerce or using online technology to buy stuff. If you can think about getting

that alignment of people looking for stuff, looking for answers, looking for

product reviews and resources and then bringing those up, that is the marriage

that you are talking about.

Darren: That’s right. It makes sense. In my own mind, I take a lot more notice of

advertisements on television or in newspaper when I am looking for a product

and I am about to make a purchase. It is the same with blogs. When I am reading

the newspaper just because I am reading the newspaper, and not wanting to

make a purchase, it just becomes blah, blah, blah, blah in the background. It is

just noise. It’s just amazing when you suddenly start to notice ads when you are

looking for stuff. That is the principle that I work on. It seems to work pretty well.

Shall we move on to the formula?

The Six Figure Blogging Formula

Darren: I wrote an article, probably about two years ago now, maybe a year and

a half on this formula. It is a little bit outdated but I’ve updated it for you today. If

you look on my blog, you’ll see a different version of this.

The formula of this is there are four different aspects of doing better with

AdSense. There are four different things that you can work on. I think if you work

on any one individual one of these a week, it will help a bit. When you work on

them all together, it is quite amazing how it comes together. They do work best. If

you leave one of these elements out, your AdSense equation suffers quite

considerably.

Formula Ingredient #1: Traffic Levels and Overview

Darren: The formula for this is traffic levels. Obviously with all parts of

advertising the more people that you expose an ad to, the more chance of an

effect that it has. If you increase your traffic, you’ll significantly increase the

earning capacity of your blog.

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Number two is high paying ads. As I mentioned before, different ads for different

products will pay different amounts of money depending on what advertisers are

willing to pay for it.

The third part is relevant ads. There are things that you can do to make your ads

more relevant to others. If you are writing a blog on scuba diving, someone is

writing a blog on that and you see ads on coffee mugs, chances are someone is not

going to click on those ads. But if I see an ad on scuba diving equipment, there is

increase likelihood on that. We want to work on the relevancy of our ads. There

are some strategies that I am going to give you in a few minutes on that.

We’ve got optimally positioned and design ads. We’ll break that up into two parts

today. But the position of your ads on your page can significantly increase the

rates that people click on those ads. I remember the night where I discovered this

for the first time. I moved my ad from the banner position right up to the top of

my blog, which I thought was a great position. I moved it down inside the

content, just under the heading and my click through rate, within a couple hours

had doubled. The position of your ads has incredible power. The design of your

ad also. We’ll talk about some different design principles that you might want to

work through.

When these things come together, things really work. I’ve written a post there, I

linked it the holistic AdSense development. When those things come together,

you do best. So don’t just work on one of them but let’s be working on all four of

those.

Formula Ingredient #2: High-Paying Ads, Example:

PVRBlog

Darren: We’ll start with high paying ads and we might stop at the end of this

section for some more questions. High paying ads, it’s pretty obvious.

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I linked there to the PVRBlog and an article to the guy who is behind that blog.

It’s a legendary article. It was written in October of 2003.

Andy: That is right.

Darren: It was one of the first articles out there that got bloggers into AdSense.

It was one of the first articles that I saw. One of his keys to his success with the

PVRBlog is that the ads, when he first started were very high paying. It was niche

topic; it was a high demand topic and the advertisers were going silly in

competing with bidding for ads to appear in his blog and other blogs with that

topic. In comparison to a blog on say, ‘toothpicks’, I think he used an example

there; it is going to pay a lot more.

There is a variety of ways to increase or to find high paying keywords. Probably

the ultimate one and it is not a very sexy one, it is really just to try it and to track

it. Trial and error, this is what ultimately I do on every one of the blogs I started. I

start them small. I start them sometimes on free blog software just to test them.

You might want to start on blogger.com just give it a few weeks and see what

rates the ads come in at.

How Many Times Should I Post a Day?

Andy: How many times a day are you posting on your trial and error blogs?

What is a good rate to say?

Darren: I try and get it up to a total of about thirty or forty posts over a couple of

weeks. Get some content up there and let it sit there and link to it from a few

other blogs and try and get a bit of traffic across and just see what the ad values

are.

That is probably the ultimate way I would say is to just try it. I’m really happy to

hear that some you have picked more than one niche because you are actually are

going to be testing these. That is one of the things you will be testing out is what

http://www.pvrblog.com/

https://www.google.com/adsense/pvrblog

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are the ads worth? Track your results as well and we will talk a bit about how to

do that later.

Test if there are ads available. Obviously, if there are no ads in the Google system,

chances are it won’t be high paying. Go to Google.com and type in your keywords

and see what ads come up; see how many ads come up. Just in the search results,

you’ll see down the right hand side some ads. If there are a lot of ads there then

chances are that at least there are some ads in the system that will come to your

blog. You may want to try different words around you niche also there just to see

what the supply is like. If there is a lot of supply, you might do a little better.

You can buy lists of top paying words. I’ve given you a link there to a service that

sells lists of keywords. To be honest, I’ve never bought a list of keywords. I just

found the trial and error works a lot better. Some people, they are on a fast track

and they want to buy them. Those lists will tell you how much different keywords

are paying at the moment. I know a lot of people who do use those lists quite

effectively.

Keyword Selection Tools

Darren: There are some free tools, we mentioned last week, Overture’s tool.

Keep in mind with Overture that the amount you get there is what another

system not what AdSense pays. It’s an Overture system and takes into account

that Overture takes a cut off that as well. What you, as a publisher, get is even less

than what they say there.

I use that tool a lot just to see what one word compares to another. It is

particularly useful to think about what keywords within a niche you will target. It

may be that you want to write a blog about phones. You go into Overture and do a

search for cell phones and you do a search for mobile phones and you do a search

for phones. You’ll find that the keywords actually pay quite differently. That is

useful as you think about, “What am I going to call my blog?” Then you pick the

http://inventory.overture.com/

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highest keyword to call your blog. Compare the different keywords within your

niche.

I’ve mentioned AdWords and I’ve given you the link there. You can sign up as an

advertiser and have a look at the back-end and see how many people are bidding

for words.

There are a couple of links there from Seven Search. The first one there is quite a

depressing list. Seven Search is another system like AdSense. They got a little bit

lower standard in the type of ads that they actually allow. If you click on the first

one, you’ll see the top one hundred paying words on their system. It is quite

depressing at least to be honest. It is all about gambling and probably

pharmaceuticals. It is probably not the most uplifting or helpful at least.

The second link I’ve got there is one where you can actually type in. It is like

Overture. You can type in the keywords and it will give you what people are

paying on their system for those keywords. I would suspect that lots of numbers

will be different from AdSense. Again, if you are comparing one word with

another word, this would be a useful tool to be thinking about in that one.

It’s worth keeping in mind, when you are thinking about high paying keywords,

that the highest keywords have highest competitive terms as well. So you pick a

term that might be worth ten dollars. The rumor goes around that this word is

paying ten dollars. You can bet that there will be millions of other sites out there

on that same term.

I was talking to someone this week and they said that they have chosen

‘lawnmowers’, ‘riding mowers’ and ‘riding tractors’ as their keywords. There is

not much competition on those keywords and it pays ok. It is not a top paying

word but it’s not the lowest either.

I listened to someone this week who was talking about how he chose the keyword

‘prom dresses’. Again, it is reasonable paying but not that competitive because it

is not the top one.

http://7search.com/scripts/searchterms/top_paying.asp?n=100

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Then another guy did one on ‘fridges’ for refrigerators. It is an obscure term and

they pay ok but they are not going to have as much competition.

Don’t Choose a Niche That is Too Popular

Darren: Remember what we were talking about last week with competition: We

don’t want to do something that is too popular. So keep that in mind when you

are thinking about the use of keywords.

Formula Ingredient #3: Relevant Ads

Darren: Ok, we’ll continue on. The second part of the formula is relevant. Say

you want to be working on getting some relevant ads over to your blog. Again,

your first point of call would be to look on Google and check whether there are

ads for your system. If there are no ads on your particular niche then it will be

hard to find relevancy for your ads. Generally, you’ll find these days that most

niches that there are some ads there.

Keyword Density

Darren: The most important thing to be thinking about is your keyword density

on a page. Keyword density is the amount of times that your keywords appear on

your page. The best way to get ads on a particular a topic is to write about that

topic and to write about it in such a way that the words that you want trigger out

numerous times across your blog and across your post. Think about putting those

words into the title of your post, into the title of your blog, into the body of your

post, into the content itself, and into the picture tags. This will help not only for

getting the right ads on your site but it will help with your search engine

optimization. In particular, the post titles and page titles are really important

with that.

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Meta Tags

Darren: Related to that is looking at your site’s meta tags. This might be a little

technical to some, but meta tags are descriptive tags that appear in your page

source code. Meta tags, these days, don’t have much impact upon search engine

optimization or how well you’re ranking search engines. They do have an impact

upon your AdSense ads. If in your meta tag description have the word ‘scuba

diving’ on your scuba diving site, you’ll more likely to get more relevant ads for

that particular topic.

There is a variety of different tutorials around the web on how to change meta

tags on your blog. We are not going into the technical aspect of that. You should

be able to do it through your template on your blog if you got a blog that have

template systems. It is not too hard to do but you might want to check with

someone before you go messing around with your templates too much. It is one

of the first things I look at when someone asks me to look at their blog is what

does the meta tags say.

Avoiding the Word ‘Blog’

Darren: Avoid the word ‘blog’ as much as possible. It seems to be this magical

word that if you mentioned it once or twice on your site even though you might

mention other keys words millions of times, Blogads come up as ads. Blogads

don’t pay very well particularly when your blog is about scuba diving or some

other topic.

Unless your topic is about blogging, try to get rid of that word as much as

possible. It is worse for some blogs than others but that is a common problem

that I see with relevancy. A lot of bloggers get blogging ads.

Andy: You mean ads about blogging and not the service Blogads.

Darren: Yes, sorry, it is confusing there but you’ll see on Problogger, for

instance, we get a lot of ads for blogging. That is cool. I am happy about that

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because that is what I write about. You can see those same ads on a lot of other

blogs going around as well.

How Long Does it Take for Google to Index My Blog?

Darren: Number five there, it takes time especially when you are starting a new

blog as many of you are. It can take a couple of weeks to get relevant ads up on

that blog. Google claims that it takes a couple of hours. My experience is a little

bit different to that. It maybe partly because you don’t have much content on

your blog yet so give it a week or two before you start making too many changes.

Just see, after a couple of weeks what is coming up as ads on your particular blog.

Don’t get too panicky at the start if you are seeing lots of blog ads even though

you don’t have the word blog. Sometimes, Google just sees that you are a blog and

decides to put those ads up there. So it takes a little bit of time for it to work

through the system.

One Topic Per Page

Darren: Number six is a really important one. It is picking one topic per page.

We talked already about how we want one topic per blog. Within a blogs’ niche,

there are lots of sub-niches and lots of sub-topics so just pick one of them per

post. Don’t just talk about your topic in general terms. Think about what products

could I talk about? What aspect of my niche could I talk about today? You’ll find

that that helps to give relevancy to your ads. AdSense is not confused about what

topic you’re writing about. They can see it and they’ll stick to it with the ads.

On my digital camera one, you’ll see that I have a different page for each one of

the cameras that I write about. Each camera has that page so I get quite relevant

ads quite often to those specific models of cameras.

Importance of Sidebars

Darren: Look at your side bars is number seven. It’s not just your content that

AdSense looks at to determine what ads to serve you. It looks at your side bar, it

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looks at your menus, it looks at your header, and it looks at your footer. So all the

words that are in those can have an impact upon what sort of ads that you are

getting. If you’ve got a relevant words in those spaces, it can have an impact. It

doesn’t always but it can.

Blocking Useless Ads

Darren: Number eight is you have the ability within AdSense to block certain

URLs. If you are seeing an ad that is totally irrelevant to your site and it keeps

appearing, you can add it to the filter system that AdSense has in there and you’ll

see that fairly clearly within AdSense is to where to add those things.

I mentioned in week one, the problem with the filter is that you can only ever see

what ads are being targeted to your part of the world. The ads I see here in

Australia on your site will be different from the ones that you see in your part of

the world. So it will be very difficult for you to block the ads that I am seeing

unless I tell you about them. So the filtering is ok but it doesn’t help that much in

my mind.

Checking Your Source Code

Darren: Number nine is look at your source code. It is a technical thing and it

comes in the meta tag that I’ve mentioned before. Depending on what web

browser you are using, if you go up in your web browser to View menu, usually

there is something that says, ‘view page source’. I don’t know what it says on your

browser but for me, if I do ‘view source page’, it will open up another little

window. It will show you the code that is behind your blog.

It is interesting when AdSense sends its little robot over to scan your site to see

what to put your ads for, it doesn’t see your beautiful graphics. It doesn’t see your

wonderful design; all it sees is your code. It is the code that determines what

comes up on your site. Look through that code and see what words are there. It

may be that in your source code is the word, ‘blog’. I know a few blog designers

actually include the word ‘blog’ in their template codes.

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You want to be thinking that and look in your source code. One of the things is to

look at where the AdSense code is in your source code. Generally AdSense code

that is towards the top of the code performs better than AdSense code that is

towards the bottom. AdSense that is near your content in your page, source code

often does better because it is closer to the content that you wanted to draw and

contextually. I may have been too technical here for some of you. Maybe this is

something down the track that you want to think about. Down the track, if you

are uncomfortable with source code templates, then you might want to begin to

look at some of that.

Section Targeting

Darren: Number ten is section targeting. This is a new feature that AdSense has

included in the last few months which gives you the ability to say to AdSense,

“Look at this bit of my blog and determine from looking at this particular section

of my blog what ads to serve.” They give you a little start and end tags to wrap

around your content or your title. It is a little bit technical and it is something you

might not want to do up front but I am happy to help people with that if you want

to see me an email, I’ll give you a tutorial on how to do that.

Asking for Help

Darren: Number eleven is simply just to ask AdSense for help. If you are getting

irrelevant ads consistently after a month of blogging, send them an email. I know

a number of people who have sent Google emails and they have found that

Google has done something at their end at AdSense to change the relevancy of

ads on your blog. I suspect from reading between the lines and talking to AdSense

people recently that they’ll probably release a system in the next few months that

allows you to target specific topics. I know that Yahoo’s publishing system allows

you to do this now. I suspect Google will do that as well so that should help with

the relevancy too.

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Andy: Something else to throw in there is a lot of stuff is going to apply to the

Yahoo Publisher’s Network and Microsoft’s AdCenter. MSN just started their

group up this week, right?

Darren: Yes, they’ve announced that they’ll probably be about six months before

we see anything that we can participate in. That will be coming along soon too.

Andy: A lot of this stuff is still going to apply even if it is not just AdSense.

Darren: That is right and a lot of it will, especially in the positioning and design

stuff that we are about to get into will apply and for affiliate stuff as well which

we’ll talk about next week.

Test Driving Different Ad Networks

Participant: I have a question.

Darren: Sure.

Participant: I just got accepted into the YPN today, the Yahoo Publisher’s

Network but I am a little hesitant to test it out because I get a lot of income from

AdSense so, is there a way to ease into it and test it out without cutting off my

income stream completely?

Darren: How many blogs do you have? You just got one?

Participant: Two. One with a lot of traffic.

Darren: What I suggest you do is try it on some of your pages. You might want

to try on your category pages or your main page and then continue using AdSense

on your individual pages. You can use both on the same blog as long as they don’t

appear on the same page. That might be one way to ease in.

I’ve heard a few people say that Yahoo!’s system is brilliant. The rates are so

much higher than AdSense but the relevancy of the ads aren’t quite as good.

Depending on what topics you are writing on and depending on what ads they’ve

http://publisher.yahoo.com/

http://adcenter.msn.com/

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got, it might actually be beneficial to swap over. Either do it on some pages, if

you’ve got the ability on your blog to target different ads on different pages, do

that or just try it for a couple of days. You might lose a little bit in the mean time

but you’ll soon work out whether it’s going to pay more or less.

I would definitely give it a go. I am very jealous. I am non-American and can’t

join it yet. I would be interested to see how you go with it.

Participant: Sounds good, thanks.

Meta Tag Resources

Participant: I have a question. I was wondering, when you mentioned the meta

tag stuff and it is very technical, could you give us some links to that information?

Darren: Ok, I’ll put some information up probably later today. I’ll make a note

to myself now.

Participant: That would be great. Thank you.

Darren: No problem.

Formula Ingredient #4: Optimized and Well-Positioned

Darren: If you keep going down that page, down the formula, you’ll see another

section called ‘positioning ads.’

This is really important. As I’ve mentioned before, it can double your income

overnight literally if you’ve got poor positions for your ads now and you change

them.

The first thing I’ll get you to look at, on that page, I think I posted under the ‘well

positioned ad’ section, a heat map from Google. This comes from optimization

page which I mentioned earlier which is the bible for AdSense.

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The Google Heatmap

Darren: What you’ll see there is an orange and yellow and grey diagram. What

they’ve done there is they are presenting to you what are the hot spots on any web

page. They’ve done a lot of research into where people look on sites. This is an eye

tracking tool and this is the result of that.

You’ll see there the redder the colors get, is the hotter the place that is primary

what you’ll want to be focusing. The primary content right there, in the top

middle of your primary content, that is the best spot that you can put an ad. It

may not be the best spot design wise for your site. You may feel that it takes

something away from your sight and you don’t want to use that spot. In my

experience, that is the best spot to put an AdSense ad.

I’ve given you a link there that says, ‘example’ at the bottom of your ‘well

positioned’ ads list that will take you to one of my sites. It will be a page for a

Kodak camera. You’ll see there, to the left of the camera picture, I’ve got a

rectangle ad. I may have four ads in it. I may just have one or two depending on

where you are in the world but that there is my best positioned ad ever. I have

that across most of my blog. I’ll have that space in the middle of my content or

just to the left of my content or just to the right of my content. Depending on my

blog design, that is primary earning position on all of my blogs.

You are asking yourself, “Where do people look when they come to your blog?”

and try and place ads there. Another primary position you’ll see on the heat map

there is on the left hand side towards the top, that seems to be a really good

position. One of the things I see bloggers doing is putting skyscraper AdSense

down the right hand side, the big long ads, down the right hand side. If you look

on that, is probably one of the worse place you can put it. I was really surprised

when I saw that. I thought that the right hand side would be good because people

go to there for the scroll bar but definitely, on the left hand side of the page that

tends to be better than others.


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Use that heat map and actually experiment with it. The thing that AdSense say in

their optimization page is that this doesn’t work on every blog. You’ve got to

experiment quite a bit. I find different things happen on different blogs for me. I

don’t understand why. It is about experimenting and moving things around.

So where do people look? Primarily ads do better with they are ‘above the fold’ so

in the top half of your screen. You will see down there, just above the page footer

on that diagram that those ads do pretty well. Then at the end of articles is often a

good spot because as people get to the end of your article and a certain

percentage will, a lot of people don’t get to the end of articles on web but that is

often a good spot because as people get to the end of an article, they are looking

for something else to do so that is a good spot to put ads down at the bottom.

Generally above the fold is better. You can try between the end of a post and

before comments on a blog. I find that that is a really great position on a lot of my

blogs.

Importance of White Space

Darren: Use white space so they don’t clutter your blog as much as I have on

that page I gave you before. Don’t clutter your blog with too many ads. On most

blogs, that won’t work. Those work pretty well on mind but if you put white space

around an ad, that is a visual queue that draws people’s eye to the ad.

There has been some studies on that. There is a guy who does eye tracking. He

had a blog on it a while ago which isn’t live anymore but he use to write about

white spaces and how white spaces around ads are brilliant.

Be Careful with Placement

Similarly, you can use visual queues or pictures. You need to be very careful when

using pictures around AdSense because the AdSense people don’t like it. They

don’t want you do, in an unfair way, draw people’s eyes to blog ads.

Andy: So no blinking arrows?!

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Darren: No blinking arrows, no things that say ‘click here’ or anything like that.

I’ve experimented with having pictures around my ads or just above them or just

below them, not trying to make them look like they are the ads but it does draw

people’s eyes to that section of the page. Just think about what else have I got

around in that particular ad and will it detract or add to the ad?

Andy: Something with the heat map work too is if folks are doing blogs that are

making money from your blog as well as because of your blog, you’re going to

have to make some decisions. If you got a newsletter, is your blog about guiding

people towards your newsletter or is it about getting them to click on an ad? It is

not a pure ‘either or’ but you have to start thinking about what is the hierarchy.

Do you want to guide people to come into your own business funnel, your sales

funnel, or do you want them to click on an ad so you can get the income?

Darren: That is right. I guess the other thing I would say is that even if it is

purely about making from your blog, there are other things that might be better

to put in those prime positions. For instance, on my digital camera one, if you

look on the top left hand corner there, I do have a Google ad but underneath that,

I’ve got some affiliate programs which actually can pay twenty dollars if someone

signs up for that. They do pretty well. I am putting there, in the prime position as

much AdSense ads. So depending in what you are trying to sell and what your

goals are, you might want to put something other than AdSense ads in the heat

map’s position.

Do Ads Detract from Sales Copy?

Audri: Can I make a comment on this?

Darren: Sure.

Audri: This is Audri Landford. We have recently signed up for AdSense and have

done an enormous amount of research on this and we discovered that even

though people feel as if having AdSense would detract from people going into

their sales funnels, etc, we’ve discovered that in fact that very rarely ever

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happens. It is definitely worth testing. Even on sales pages, we’ve found that it

doesn’t decrease sales or it decreases it less than the amount that you made from

AdSense. It is definitely something to test.

Darren: That is so true. The criticism that I hear from a lot of people is, “It is

going to ruin my page.” I actually find that it enhances it. Some of the ads that

you get served are actually really useful ads and I think that can look quite classy

if you design them all as well. I would completely go with what you are saying

Audri.

The next point there I got is consider putting more than one ad unit per page.

AdSense will allow you to put up to three AdSense text ad units on any page.

You’ll find some pages around the web have more than that and a lot of them

have permission to do so with AdSense. Without permission, don’t put more than

three. Consider putting more than one. You might find that when you go for more

than one, you want to think about the ordering of your ads.

I’ve talked about page source code before. You’ll find that whatever ad appears

first in that page code, not what looks first on your site, but what is first in the

page code, that will be the highest paying ads. That is where Google puts the best

ads. If for instance, high is in your left hand side bar down in the bottom, that is

not the best place for an ad but it will be your best paying ads get served to. You

want to be thinking about what would be the impact if we are putting in three ads

on the page if the first one in the source code is actually not in a good position, it

is the last one. It may be a bit technical but it is worth considering the ordering of

things in your source code there.

Don’t put ads in frames. I don’t think many people use frames anymore. It screws

around with the whole system a fair bit. Put your ads on every page. Like Audrey

just said, I put ads on every page in my site that I possible can. Even the ones

where I am trying to sell products myself. I find that it doesn’t really detract too

much from doing that.

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Putting Ads on Every Page

Darren: Some bloggers, they just think, “I’ll just put them on the main page.” If

your blog is anything like mine, it is actually individual pages that get more traffic

than your main page. Put them everywhere, not everywhere but on every page

that you possibly can on your blog.

What are Chitika eMiniMalls?

Participant: I have a question.

Darren: Sure.

Dave: This is Dave and this is my first time that I’ve actually listened to it live

and participated so I am glad to be here. I have a question on an example on the

Digital Photography Blog. I am sorry to ask this but I can’t help. This really isn’t

about AdSense but there is an ad that I see on this page that when I mouse over

it, it says that it’s eMiniMalls which is right above your AdSense ad. This is the

first time I’ve seen this ad format. I was truly confused when I first looked at the

page because what the ad is showing is a different camera than what the page is

about.

Darren: That’s right.

Dave: At first, I was trying to figure out, because the page is largely white, what

the page was talking about because I wasn’t reading it, I was listening to you. I

was wondering if anybody else has mentioned this.

Darren: Yes, with those ones are a beta test from another organization that I am

trying at the moment. I am not completely happy with them. The main problem I

see with them is that they don’t come up with completely relevant ads all the

time. That is what you put your finger on there is that it is about a different

camera that is being served. I’ve written about that on that particular page but it

is in bata test. I think they’ll improve their relevancy but that is one of the things

you want to consider is does the ads actually add to or take away from the page.

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Unfortunately that system, it is performing really well in some sense but they got

a bit of work to do on their relevancy. That is the consideration you want to take

into account. The same can happen with AdSense. You can get quite irrelevant

ads. If you get that, it may be that you don’t want to go with the system.

Dave: Well what blows my mind when I look at this site is I know you make good

money on this and I’m really impressed with the degree to which you try things

on a bread and butter site. One of the problems I’ve had is that I’ve made money

in the past on some of my sites and I was deathly afraid of changing it at times. I

just like your relentlessness.

Keeping a Change Log

Darren: It is risky. One of the tips I was going to come with later is really be

careful when you make changes to your site and to make a record of every change

that you make. I have a change log, I call it. It is just a document that every time I

make a change, if I try something new, I record it so later on, two weeks later

when I go back over my AdSense earnings I can go, “Gee everything fell apart two

weeks ago today. What did I do that day?” I can go back and I can identify what

mistake I made and learn something from that. In the same way, if I do

something and suddenly my AdSense goes up, but I haven’t recorded that, I

haven’t learnt a lesson.

So do try new things but track and record what you learned. It is so important. I

really would encourage people to back up their template before making any

changes also. If you make a change of the template of your site and you can’t get

back to it if you can’t remember what it use to be like. It is really important, if you

are going to be trying new things is to work on that stuff.

Designing Ads

Darren: I think we’ll keep moving forward because we still got a bit of content to

cover in the last few minutes. We’ll move on to designing ads. The ultimately

thing you can do with the design of your ads and Google allows you when you are

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trying to get codes for your ads and try to make changes to the colors and to the

size and thing, probably the ultimate thing you can do in designing your ad is to

blend them into your content.

Blending Ads Into Content

Darren: You’ll see there on that page that, I don’t have any borders to my ads. I

like the borders white. I make the background white. I make the links of those

ads the same colors as link on the rest of my site. I make the text the same colors

as the rest of my site. The little URLs, at the bottom there, I try and make them as

wide as the AdSense will allow me to make them so that they don’t distract too

much.

In the blending approach, a lot of people use this quite effectively. Most people

believe that it’s the best way of designing ads on your site. Some people don’t.

Some people go the opposite and put yellow ads with red links. Is that the best

performing ad? It may be for their site but I would much rather have something

that blends into my site both from esthetics point of view but I also find it most

effective.

Google says in their optimization page that rectangles work best. The one you see

there that is to the left of the camera is a rectangle ad. They tend to pay better for

some reason. The skyscrapers sometimes do well. Again, it’s about finding what

works best on your particular blog.

Rotating Colors

You can rotate the colors of your ad. I don’t have time to go into the technicality

of that but there is a tutorial in Google. Google has help pages on that. The beauty

of rotating the colors of your ads is that if you’ve got a lot of regular reader that

come into your site, this helps to combat that blindness that they get from ads.

It is like Engadget, which we looked at last week. They rotate the colors on their

ads because they have an incredible high loyal readership. So they are trying to


https://www.google.com/support/adsense

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grab the attention of their readers every day. So they constantly are changing how

their ads work. I think you can have up to four different types of designs on those

particular ads.

Don’t Crowd Content

Darren: Don’t crowd out your content. I’ve seen a few blogs over the last few

weeks that you come to their page and there is absolutely no content above the

fold at all. I don’t know how many people would have found those blogs. You’ve

got to make some decisions about how you want your blog to look like as well and

how useful you want it to be for your people.

Varying Different Ad Unit Types

Darren: The other thing I would say about design is you’ll see on that example

page at the top of the left hand menu there, I have four or five different little link

ads by Google. They are a bit different to the other types of ads. They are called

‘ad link unit’. If you were to click on it, don’t click on all my ads because I’ll get in

trouble with Google, but if you were to click on those ads it would take you to

another page which is just ads. That is a new format that Google has brought in

the last few months which I find, in that position, it works quite well. So

experiment with that type of thing.

AdSense Search Bar

Darren: On the other site on the right hand side, you’ll see a little Google search

bar. Again that is an AdSense product. If you do a search for a particular product

there, it will perform like a normal search bar but it would also serve a few ads at

the top of it. It is another way of earning a little bit of an income. I personally

don’t find that that works very well on my site. Maybe I’ve got it in the wrong

position. Maybe my people who read my site don’t use search, but they don’t

work too well for me.

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Experimenting with Outbound Links

Darren: We’ll keep plowing on. I’ve got some miscellaneous tips there. One

thing to consider is how many outbound links you’ve got on your site. If you’ve

got a site that has got hundreds and hundreds of other options for people to click

on to leave your site that will have an impact upon how many people click your

ads. I’ve see a few bloggers experiment with pages which has a very few out

bounds links on them. It just has contents and ads. If you want to leave the site,

you have to click on an ad; there is no other option. They say that that works

quite well. I don’t completely subscribe to that because I want to provide my

readers with useful content on other sites as well. For me it is not quite as

important but it is something to consider as you think about your site.

First come first serve, I think I mentioned before in your page source code. The

ad that appears first in the source code will be the highest paying ad. If it happens

that the first one is at the bottom, you’ll know what to do about that.

Using Channels to Track Effectiveness

Darren: Track your successes and some failures. AdSense allows you to put

channels on your blog. Each ad on my blog, each ad that you see on my example

page there, I’ve assigned a different channel. So the one in the content is one

channel. The one on the right hand side bar, under the search bar is the second

channel. I’ve got another one a bit lower on the page is the third channel. I can

track which ad is performing best by that. I know which ones are being paid

more. I know which ones are being click on more. When I make changes to them

in the positions, I can track which ones are doing best. In conjunction with my

change log, I can track which ads are doing well and which ones aren’t.

Other Tips

Darren: The quantity of content on a page seems to impact on how well ads go

as well, so the quantities of content on a blog seem to increase that. So establish

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blogs that have thousands and thousands pages of ads. Some people believe that

those blogs actually do better. They get a high click rate better than others. This is

a guess but that is what some people say. The older your blog is and the bigger

and the more authoritative your site gets, you’ll certainly see some improvements

over time.

I’ve mentioned there some AdSense services, the other one, you’ve got the adlinks

and the search one. The other one AdSense now have is RSS ads. Again, I haven’t’

found them really work too effectively but it is something you might want to

experiment with. There is plenty of help in the Google help on how to set up

those.

Don’t Get Obsessed!

Darren: One of the big advices that I would give you is just don’t become

obsessed with AdSense. I’ve seen so many bloggers who puts so much time and

energy into designing their AdSense ads that they forget to write content for their

blog and they forget to design well and they forget some of the other basics of

blogging. It is exciting AdSense and it is fun but you need to feed your blog with

content and develop readers and not become obsessed by AdSense. I know you’ll

probably spend a lot of time this week, especially after this call, is tweaking but

don’t forget the rest of it.

Fieldwork

Andy: Yes, we can finish this stuff off for next week. Let’s review the field work

and we’ll open up the call for a final call for questions. The field work for this

week is to get your ads on your blog as well as continuing to do all of your niche

tracking stuff and anything else people should be watching out for Darren?

Darren: The best way to learn about AdSense is to do it and if you’ve got any

questions during the week, shoot me an email and I’ll either directly answer your

question or point you to an article that I’ve written about it or someone else has

written about it.

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Just do it and have fun with it. It is good fun. I would look at it like the stock

market. I love waking up in the morning and seeing how much I earned while I

slept last night. It is fantastic.

More on Chitika eMiniMalls

Andy: So last minute questions.

Participant: Yes, that cute little ad that you’ve got on the top where it’s got a

little camera and then it’s got Kodak description of best deals, does that do well

because that looks really good?

Darren: Yes, if you go to Problogger.net, I’ve written a review on that product in

the last few days. They are called eMiniMalls. We were talking about them before.

I find that they do well in terms of the click value in them is very high. It is much

higher than my Google ads but I get less percentage of people clicking on them.

So the click through rate isn’t as high but the click they use is high. I’ve reviewed

that on Problogger and I recommend you have a read on that before you go and

sign up for it because it won’t suit every blog. It will suit blogs that have products

related to them. If you are going to use them in conjunction with AdSense, you

need to change the code on it. You can’t have them as contextual ads. AdSense

will not allow you to have other contextual advertising systems on the page and

that one is one. There are some ways around that in Google and I do them in a

certain way. I’ve outlined how to do that on Problogger.

Participant: Great, thanks.

Darren: No problem.

Google Sitemaps

Participant: What about Google Sitemaps to increase your hits?

Darren: I haven’t experimented with Sitemaps yet but I know a number of

people who are. Site maps help Google’s little robot to index your site to get

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/09/28/chitika-mini-malls-review/

http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/protocol.html

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around your site and I’m not really sure, I haven’t done any experimenting with

that to this point. Have you tried them Andy?

Andy: I have installed the plugin for WordPress on my two blogs and I haven’t

run my stats yet this month to see if it is increasing but I know that it is out there.

I also know it is out there. I think that the technology is in beta testing in Google

site as well.

Copyright, Image Use and Quoting Content

Participant: For product based blogs, what is the best approach for using

images without doing something wrong?

Darren: In terms of copyright?

Participant: Yes, exactly.

Darren: I generally only use images that are official images from the official

sites. I get a lot of press releases sent to me and they often have images in them. If

I use an image from another site, I usually ask for permission first and I would

always give a link back to the site that the image came from. I have standing

agreements with a lot of the other sites now where I say, “You can use my image if

you let me use yours.”

Participant: So from the manufacturer, it’s ok to go ahead and use those

images?

Darren: Absolutely because you are using their products.

Participant: Thank you.

Another Participant: Darren on that topic, what about the actual reviews that

you do. Is it ok to just post them exactly?

Darren: My policy on that and I think most people would agree is a short

excerpt from another person’s work is OK if you give a link back to that person. I

http://www.arnebrachhold.de/2005/06/05/google-sitemaps-generator-v2-final

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am dead against copying a whole article. I am set against copying more than a

paragraph at a time unless you have the permission. You need to give a link back.

Always give a link back to your source. If someone says, “Please don’t use my

content like that.” I will always remove it. I find that most people, I get emails

from other sites all day everyday from people saying, “Please use my content that

way.” Most people are finding that. I love it when people do it to me. If people

have a problem with it, just don’t do it. Don’t get into that.

Can I just say one more tip Andy because we haven’t got on to it but we’ll covered

it next week in the ‘do nots’. Have a read on the list of ‘do nots’ because it is really

important that you get your head around some of those things like you never click

on your own ads. It is just 101, basic stuff. You’ll get into trouble from Google.

They track who clicks on the ads so don’t click on your own ads and don’t click on

anyone else’s ads too much to help them out. Occasionally if you accidentally do

it, that is cool but it is really important or you’ll get booted out of the system

pretty quick.

Andy: Because Google knows all and they will come and get you!

Darren: Yes they will.

Andy: Alright, are you ready to wind it up Darren?

Darren: I am ready.

Andy: Alright. I know that you have been talking like crazy. So everybody, thank

you for joining us tonight and we’ll talk to you next week. I’ll get the field work

posted up there and have a fantastic week and everybody, thank you so much.

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Six Figure Blogging Class 3 Worksheets Sign Up for Google AdSense

Go Google AdSense and signup for an account. You should already have a blog set

up, along with a few postings as they will ask you for your blog or website

address. You only need to apply for one AdSense account even if you have

multiple blogs.

□ I have signed up for my Google AdSense account and have my username and

password recorded in a reliable place.

Understanding AdSense Requirements

To benefit from AdSense, it’s important that you have a clear understanding of

their requirements. Please read their guidelines carefully. If you have any

questions about implementing AdSense on your blog, email customer support

and find out what to do. It is important that you adhere to their policies otherwise

you may risk losing access to AdSense altogether.

□ I have read and understand the AdSense use requirements.

Add AdSense to Your Blogs

Add AdSense adds to your blog by following the simple instructions located at

Google AdSense and embedding the appropriate HTML code.

□ I have added AdSense to my blogs(s).

Start a Blog Change Log

A change log is a method for recording the changes that you make on your blog.

You should keep a detailed diary of the changes that you make, including the date

and time you made the change and what change youmade. Then you can measure

https://www.google.com/adsense/

https://www.google.com/adsense/

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your blog statistics during these times and record them as well. This log will help

you track what works and what doesn’t.

□ I have started a blog change log.

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AdSense / Blog Compatibility Test

Analyze your blog(s) to see if they are compatible with AdSense. Certain

types of sites are more compatible for use with AdSense than others. Here

are some criteria to consider:

Sites where users are looking for information on specific products

or services that interest them - product, business opportunity, looking to

buy tickets, etc.

Sites where users are in a buying mood

Sites where users are researching ways to spend money

Sites with a high percentage of fresh unique visitors (regular

visitors tend to ignore ads)

Sites where users show an interest to ads, and not just the site’s

offerings

Evaluation Criteria

Blog 1: Blog 2: Blog 3:

Do visitors come to my blog to look for information and/or specific products or services?

Does my blog attract readers who are in a buying mood?

Does my blog attract a regular and steady stream of new readers?

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Is my blog oriented towards political, religious, celebrity/gossip, or sports?

While it is not impossible to make money using AdSense on these types of blogs, they may be unsuitable unless you are able to draw a lot of traffic.

Does my blog contain adult content, explicit language or oriented towards gambling?

You cannot use AdSense with these types of blogs.

Does my blog contain content for which I don’t have copyright content?


Does my blog contain contextual ad systems which would compete with AdSense?


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