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Maximizing Adsense Revenue
by
28 Aug 2005
Ad banners used to be a good source of income. That's not as true these days, but you can still easily cover basic hosting costs for a small forum with careful attention to your banners. It takes more than slapping a banner in your header template. It takes a bit of time, patience and effort on your part to achieve optimal banner placement. Luckily, if you use Google Adsense banners, you have some tools that can help. The first is a very good document that shows where ad banners generally are the most effective: https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html The second is the ability for you to control the color of your ad banners. Colors can be used to make the ad banners appear like part of the content. Or, they can be used to make the ad pop out of the page. The third option is the wide variety of sizes that you can use. Having more choices than typical 468x60 banner ads means that you can work relevant ads into your content without looking like a banner farm. The fourth option allows you to use alternate ads instead of google's public service banners. Why show ads for free? Finally, Google gives you the ability to create custom channels. These channels will help you monitor the performance of each ad banner on the page. Ad Placement I have found that ads are vital in 2 places. 1. On the archive pages. Most of my guest traffic hits my archives first. If they don't find what they are looking for at my site, the google banner often gives them another viable site to check out. So, they click the ad and away they go. 2. In the postbit template of the first post on the page. (Ideally, the banner should be in the postbit of the LAST post on the page. More readers see the last post than the first. But, putting a banner there causes all sorts of grief for firefox and opera users if they try to use the quick reply box.) What works for me, might not work for you That's where custom channels come in. Google allows you to create custom channels. I have several created - one for each placement of an ad banner in a template. Some examples of channel names are: postbit, header, archiveside, archivebottom, forumdisplay, etc. After you create your custom channel, get the ad code based on that channel and place it in the proper template. For example, in my forumdisplay, I use a link-type banner. I set that banner to my forumdisplay channel, then grab the code and paste it in my forumdisplay template. I can now track the impressions banners on my forumdisplay pages receive and how many times they are clicked. Based on those numbers, I can adjust placement of the ad, colors of the ad, or even the size of the ad. Google helps take the guesswork out of earning money from banners. I have found that using the tips outlined above, my google revenue has gone up 3,000 percent! Yes, 3,000 percent. Before I started working with google's placement tools, I earned pennies every month. Now, I am covering my hosting costs. It is well worth any effort you will expend. Amy |