The simplicity and automatic nature of Adsense

The simplicity and automatic
nature of Adsense can go one
of two ways. Some people can
think that, with the seeming
simplicity of the program, there
must be more to it – and drive themselves mad trying to find
the “secret” of success. Others
can settle on the fact that it is
simple and think that they do
not need to do anything to
make it pay – and they are just as misguided. Adsense will do most of the
work for you. But that’s the
point – most does not equal all.
If you are building a house,
you will leave most of the work
to builders, but don’t assume that everything has been done
and move in or put it on the
market, because you need to
make sure that it is what you
wanted. Don’t think that money
will come to you without your input, because that’s not
workable. There are tweaks and changes
that you can make with
Adsense, to make the ads fit in
better with your content and
the look of your website. For
example, leaving the default settings on can make the ad
stand out a mile, and if you do
this on a site that does not fit in
with it you might as well just
have a sign pointing to the ad
saying “THIS IS AN AD. CLICK IT NOW, PLEASE. I WANT MONEY.”. An hour or so spent playing
with the settings to make the
ads fit in better with the look of
your site can mean the
difference between lots of clicks
and hardly any. Such a small amount of work for potentially a
higher return is really not too
much to expect. Do yourself a
favor by getting it right out of
the gate. Tags: Adsense Mistakes #11: Not
Knowing Your Keywords If it seems like there is a lot to
remember about Adsense, then
there is a reason for that – it is.
Sometimes it takes almost as
much knowledge not to do the
wrong thing as it takes to do the right one. Sometimes you
don’t have to specifically apply
that knowledge, but just avoid
going against it. So for anyone
who feels that there is a
contradiction between “don’t rely on keywords” and “make
sure you use keywords”, it’s
important to know where the
safe ground lies. You shouldn’t specifically rely
on keywords because they can
be overused and make a mess
of your content. However, you
need to have them there
because they are important in terms of attracting visitors. It’s
like making a chilli. You need to
have some peppers in there or it
won’t be spicy – but add too
many and it’s inedible. What you need to do is use the
right keywords, and use them
enough to attract visitors. You
might wonder what the right
keywords are, and there is a
ready-made tool to help you with this – the Google Keyword
Tool. You have a subject in
mind, and you enter this into
the Google Keyword Tool, which
furnishes you with the highest-
paying keywords. Your task from there is to put
these keywords, in large
enough quantities, into your
content so as to attract
advertisers (and to pull in
readers who will click on those advertisements. The more
attractive the keywords, the
more visitors you will get – and
your role is to fit these words
into good content. Tags: Adsense Mistakes #10: Not
Being Image Conscious Catching someone’s eye in a
subtle way is not always easy.
If you are in a crowd and want
to get someone’s attention,
you’ll pretty much have to jump
around like a total buffoon and shout their name at the top of
your voice to even stand a
chance. But on the internet, this
is not an option. You have to be
more subtle if you want to get
anywhere beyond the attention of a select few. With Adsense, the bottom line is
obvious – you want people to
click the ads on your page. In
order for them to click those
ads, they need to see them, and
to feel that they should click them. Now, you can draw
people’s attention to the ad by
placing a very big image on the
page right next to them so they
are hard to miss – but Google
does not like this, as it is seen as influencing the customer. It doesn’t matter if you are
doing it deliberately or
accidentally, it is in Google’s list
of things you must not do, and
if you do it you will be ranked
lower than you would be otherwise. If you are doing it
deliberately, then you need to
learn about more reasonable
ways to influence them – like
powerful content. We’d all like a short cut to make
things easier for us, but the
truth is that a short cut which
pays out every time is not
going to be sustainable. If it
were that simple, everyone would do it and everyone would
be rich – and any economist will
tell you that someone has to
lose out for someone to win big.
To make money you need to be
good at what you do – whatever limitations are placed
on you. Tags: Adsense Mistakes #9: “It’s
About Content, Forget The
Keywords!” Now, for all that has been said
about writing to your subject
and providing interesting
content, there should be no
confusion on the matter of
keywords. They are certainly important, and outright ignoring
them is not going to get
anyone very far in terms of
Adsense clicks. The question of
balance is an important one
here, and too many people make the mistake of ignoring
one thing to serve another. The question “content or
keywords” is a red herring.
Ignore content and you will find
that few people read the site
even though the keywords
have got them there. Ignore keywords and they won’t ever
get to the site to read the
content that might have been
well-written and thought-
provoking, but failed to grab
Google’s attention. It’s not impossible to write good
content and hit the keywords at
the same time. It’s more difficult
than focusing on one or the
other, but that’s why there is a
higher pay-off for managing it. It may be quicker to knock out a
keyword-laden site or to write
what comes into your head, but
you have to put something in
to get something out. Practise writing to your subject
and reading over your content
to make sure that you aren’t
ignoring keywords. After a while
it begins to come naturally, as
you will structure sentences to emphasize a subject and lean
on keywords where necessary.
It might take a while to get to
that point, but no-one rises to
the top and stays there without
putting in time and effort as a minimum. Tags: Adsense Mistakes #8: Too
Little Content It cannot be said too often to
people looking to make the best
of their Adsense website –
content is king. The number of
websites you will see with
uninspiring content can lead you to assume that content
takes a back seat to
optimization, but the fact of the
matter is that the majority of
those sites won’t be doing much
business. It is galling for many people to
hear this, but unless you go for
good content, you’re not likely
to get very far with an Adsense
website. The skills of
optimization and good writing are not necessarily ones that
go hand in hand – you may be
brilliant at creating and tweaking
websites but unable to string a
sentence together, or you might
be a witty, intelligent writer who can’t tell his URL from his SEO. The regrettable fact for many
people is that no matter how
difficult it is, you really want to
have good and plentiful content
on your site – or no-one’s
going to want to read it. If you can’t write to save yourself you
have two choices – learn to write
better, or find someone who
can. The idea of paying
someone to write your content
may seem like unnecessary expense to some, and like
cheating to others – but in the
end you have to provide what
readers want, or fail. Many sites fail to reach their
potential because the creator of
the site thinks they can get
away with skimping on the
content. You can’t. Do what it
takes to get good, original content on your site, and you’ll
be a lot better off, even if you
do have to factor in payment to
a good copy writer. Tags: Adsense Mistakes #7: “If
Everyone Likes It, I’m In
The Money” Just as it is a bad idea to run a
website for Adsense purposes
and make it about an unpopular
niche, the reverse can be
similarly true. Now, there is an
aspect of balance to be considered here. Certainly, you
want to make your website
attractive, and having a popular
topic for it is important. No-one
should try to tell you “that’s
been done, try something else”. But there is more to it than that. If you are looking to “exploit” a
niche, consider exactly how
popular the niche is. If it’s a
fundamentally “limited” niche,
then it will not bring in much
traffic. On the other hand, if it is a spectacularly popular niche,
there is the chance that your
site will get lost in the churn of
so many sites about the same
subject, and you’ll lose out to
more expensive, more established sites. This makes for a difficult
decision. How popular is “too
popular”? That’s a value
judgement and it varies from
niche to niche. But if there are
already twenty well established sites on the subject you want
to write about, you’re going to
have the mother of all battles on
your hands just to get noticed.
On the other hand, looking for
something no-one has already done doesn’t leave you much
space. What you can look to do is
bring a unique slant to the
subject, such as geographically
localising it. There are lots of
sites about, for example, herbal
medicine. What you might consider doing is taking a local
approach by talking about
herbal medicine in a specific
locality. Equally, you might take
a more nuanced approach by
making it about the pros and the cons of herbal medicine,
where many sites talk all about
the pros. Tags: Adsense Mistakes #6: “If I
Like It, They Will Too!” One of the foremost rules of real
estate and property
development is as follows:
Develop for the market and not
for yourself. To take an extreme
example, you might really love Justin Bieber. You might think
“I’d definitely buy a house that
had a huge picture of Justin
Bieber on the wall, one that was
impossible to remove or paint
over!”. But you’re selling the house, not buying it, so what
you like doesn’t matter. That’s not meant to sound
callous, simply to illustrate a
point about how you make
money. What you think is worth
buying is not the important
aspect when you’re trying to sell. To maximise your chances
of selling something, you have
to give it mass appeal. Too many
people get emotionally attached
to developing a house for sale
and make it something they’d buy, without thinking about the
market. The same goes for monetising a
website. You might really like a
particular niche – it can have a
particular emotional attachment
for you and you will find it easy
to write enthusiastically about. Placing ads on that kind of
content might well attract a small
number of clicks from people
who are equally enthusiastic
about the subject – but it will
not bring in much in the way of traffic. This does not mean that you
should refrain from setting up a
website about a subject that
enthrals you. Just don’t expect
it to be your money maker, and
if you want to make big money you should look to develop a
site which will have mass appeal
and will attract clicks. Any money
you make from the more
obscure niche that you love is a
bonus, because you like the subject matter anyway. Tags: Adsense Mistakes #5: “More
Is Always Better!” If you don’t buy a ticket, you
won’t win the lottery – well, that
much is true. But this of course
does not mean that you will win
the lottery if you buy a
hundred tickets. More to the point, here’s another
conundrum – if you ask one
person out on a date, they
might well say no, but this
doesn’t mean that you should
spread your chances and ask twenty people out. Why is this? Well, in the second
case, the impression that you
give is that you’re not
particularly fussy who you go
out with, as long as someone
says “yes”. Someone might, by the law of averages. But if they
find out that you also asked
another nineteen people, they
aren’t going to be thrilled. In
fact, by the time you get to
person number #14, the chances are that they’ll have heard just
how desperate you are. What does this have to do with
Adsense? Well, quite a lot,
surprisingly. If you paste
Adsense units all over your
webpage, you might think that
one of them has to get clicked. But the fact of the matter is that
people visiting your site will
think “Would you look at how
many ads there are here? I can’t
find any content – this is just
an ad farm!”. It’s spam, and any clicks you do get will also have
less value. Favor quality over quantity.
You may think that you’re
increasing your chances of
making some cash by offering
more opportunities, but if you
look desperate, you’re not going to get the quality you are
after. You might get a date, but
it will be with someone equally
unfussy and the relationship
won’t be very satisfactory. Tags: Adsense Mistakes #4:
Plagiarising Content If you know a little bit about
Adsense, then you will know
that content which people want
to read will attract the most
clicks. It’s just common sense.
Many people, aware of this fact, will make a logical leap that can
get them into trouble – and it’s
often impossible to have any
sympathy for them when they
do it. You want readable content on
your site, of course. That’s how
it works. But a staggering
number of people labor under
the impression that if they can’t
write it themselves, the best idea is to take it from somewhere
they know it will be read. The
idea is as follows: “I’m no writer,
but this guy is really good. I’ll
use his content on my site,
people will read it, and I’ll get more clicks!”. The first thing wrong with this
assumption is nothing to do
with legality or morality. For one
thing, it may get read a lot on
one site, but that has a lot to do
with placement and existing readers. Just placing it on your
site won’t immediately bring
people in. Secondly, and this
has a lot to do with legality, it is
breach of copyright. You’re not
just breaking the law, you’re doing it inefficiently. It cannot be said often enough
– you stand and fall on your
own content. You might love
that article on another site, but if
you do, then you are better off
linking to it and explaining why you love it. It’s more honest and
it won’t get you into trouble.
Write your own content, and if
you really are an awful writer,
pay someone else to do it –
freelancers have surprisingly reasonable rates. Tags: Adsense Mistakes #3:
Clicking Your Own Ads Have you heard the phrase
“self-praise is no
recommendation”? Well, whether
or not you have, it’s true. If you
are intent on becoming
President or Prime Minister, then you are not going to get very
far by wandering the streets
saying “I’m amazing! Vote for
me! Ask me about how fantastic
I am – you’ll be stunned by
what a good account I give of myself!”. By the same token, you are not
going to make much money on
Adsense by consistently
clicking your own ads. This has
less to do with the fact that it
takes a lot of clicks to make any real money, and more to do with
the fact that Google are not
stupid. You’re not going to get
any money from clicking your
own ad – Google knows where
the clicks are coming from and it will rule out any that you make
for yourself. Now, there is a difference
between inadvertently clicking
on your own ad – or trying it
just to see what will happen –
and consistently and regularly
clicking on it. In the first case, Google doesn’t bother much
about it because such things
can happen by accident or be
put down to curiosity. But if
you try to game them by
repeated clicking on your ad, they will know – and not only
will they not pay you, they will
ban you. There is a double punishment
for anyone who tries to
hoodwink the system in this
way, which makes it doubly
stupid to even try. Firstly, you
waste a lot of your own time for no gain at all. Secondly, you
won’t be allowed to use the
service anymore. So it’s not
worth trying to see if you can
do it – do you think they’re
about to hand out free money to everyone? Tags: