Info Challenge

If there’s one question I get a lot when people find out I make a living from running Google Adsense on my sites, it’s the one along the lines of, “Why do my earnings suck?”



Some people are so disheartened from trying to make money online that they’ll flat out state that a normal person can’t make money with Adsense, or you have to have tons and tons of traffic to make anything. Well, I’m not sure how normal I am, but I don’t get zillions of page views a month to my site, and while Google isn’t the only way I make money, I do make enough from that program alone to cover all my monthly living expenses.



So…. what’s the secret?



There are lots of places where people go wrong, but here are perhaps the three most common problems I see, AKA, “Why your Adsense earnings suck.”



1. Site isn’t a good tie-in for pay-per-click revenue



This is the biggest one and honestly the hardest to fix. (2 can easily be changed and 3 isn’t that bad either.)



Sites that don’t have a clear commercial tie-in don’t tend to do well with Adsense. For example, if you blog about writing, exactly what products would people buy related to that? Heck if I know (books and other not very expensive items, I’d guess), and that’s why I don’t have Adsense on this site.



This doesn’t mean that sites focusing more on teaching and less on consumer-oriented stuff can’t make money (some people make a lot of money creating their own information products and selling them), but sometimes it’s not even worth putting Adsense ads on such sites.



I love Adsense because it’s perfect for introverts like me who don’t want to deal with the hassle of selling products, but you really do have to choose a niche and write content with related products and services in mind if you want to do well with the program.



2. Horrible ad placement



This is probably my favorite Adsense “problem,” because it’s such an easy fix. If you want to make good money with Adsense, you really need to get your ads as close to the content as possible. It’s a bad idea to “trick” people into clicking, but you don’t want them to easily ignore those ads either.



The small 480×90 banner ads are easy to ignore (the Internet has “grown up” with that banner size, and we’re all pretty good at blocking it out), and tower ads aren’t particularly effective if they’re stuck over in the side bar. It gets even worse if your ads are below the fold (meaning that people have to scroll down to even have a shot at noticing them).



What really does work is the 250×250, 300×250, or the monster 336×280 ads wrapped right into the content of your article or blog post. It’s hard to miss, and you’ll get a lot more clicks with this type of Adsense layout.



A lot of people don’t want to stick these big ads in right next to their content for fear of looking spammy or perhaps alienating a community of readers. It’s your choice, but if you want to make money, size of ads and placement can make a huge different. Putting ads where “they won’t bother people” is the same as putting ads where nobody will notice (and click) on them.



3. Not enough search engine traffic



You don’t have to get zillions or even millions of page views a month to make a nice living from Adsense (I average a little over 10,000 views a day, across all the sites I run Adsense on). You do, however, have to have some traffic.



And ideally that traffic will come from the search engines.



I know we all like to go out and comment on each others’ blogs so they’ll comment on our blogs and we’ll look popular, but someone returning a comment isn’t a likely candidate to click an ad and buy something from the shop on the other end.



You want someone who typed in “how to make mead” and landed on your blog post on “How to Get Started Making Mead in Your Own Kitchen.” They’re a much better candidate to click on the nearby ads for home brewing kits. They found your site because they were specifically thinking of getting into home brewing, not because they were just returning a comment to be cordial.



The best way to fix a lack of traffic (especially a lack of search engine traffic) is the tried and true method: get links to your site. This can be done through article marketing, guest blogging, forum posting, blog carnivals, and other methods. Pick one you like and put some quality time into working it.



Make sure your site follows all these rules (okay, they’re just guidelines… suggestions, if you will), and your Adsense earnings won’t “suck” any more!