When it comes to monetizing a blog you have a lot of options. If you know your audience and are good at marketing, you can try and sell your own advertising. Another alternative is to place advertisements on your site through Google Adsense. Depending on what type of web site you run, your results will vary. In this post we will break down Google Adsense and see if it’s right for your blog?
Are You a Marketer or a Blogger?
Blogging wasn’t supposed to be about marketing and making money online. Instead it was a simple way for you to jot down your thoughts and create an online journal. Now wordpress is one of the best and largest web site / blog platforms around. Just because you are blogging and know how to write great content, doesn’t mean you have to be a genius marketer as well. Since the introduction of Google Adsense, Google has made it easy for anyone to make money with a web site or blog. You simply grab a line of code and Google does the rest, then sends you a check at the end of the month. If you have a blog and want to see if it can make any money, Google Adsense is a great and hands free way to get started.
Do You Have International Traffic?
Just because you are in a certain country, it doesn’t mean all of your blog readers are from there as well. If you break down the actual traffic to your blog, you may find that 10% are from Europe and another 15% are from India… that’s 25% of your traffic which may be clicking on your affiliate links and ad spots, but sales and leads for their countries might not be accepted. If you have a blog that currently receives a lot of foreign traffic and you don’t know how to geotarget your traffic and properly monetize, Google Adsense might be a good way for you to advertise to your foreign traffic. Since most premium ad networks want only US traffic, Google Adsense has become a god send for blogs with traffic from all over the world.
Will Your Blog Audience Click?
The results from Google Adsense on a blog can swing heavily. I have seen some sites pull over $100 CPM amounts, while others remain under $1 CPM. In the end, it all comes down to your content (for ad matching) and audience. For example, I run a large blogging tips site that has a lot of bloggers and marketers who already know what Google Adsense is, and what their ads look like. If I put Adsense on this blog, it will get a low click through rate, since the audience knows it’s an Adsense ad. On the other hand, I have a pet food coupons web site that does very well with Google Adsense. Not only does it show relevant banners, but the people coming to the site are regular web users and customers, who don’t see Adsense as an ad platform, but an additional resource for information.
Google Adsense Keeps It Clean
When it comes to site advertising, you have a few options. Annoying popup ads, text links or banner ads. One of the reasons why Google Adsense has done so well for many web sites, is because their ads blend in extremely well with content. If you don’t like displaying banner ads on your site, you can play around with your Adsense settings so it will only display text links. Adsense also offers many different sizes for their ad spaces, and also offer a navigation bar and search box, which do well for many sites.
Is Google Adsense Right for Your Blog?
In the end, the best way to answer this question is to actually get Adsense up and running on your blog for a few days. It’s extremely easy to setup Adsense and play around with it’s placement, settings and colors with your blog. Simple changes like using their 336×280 banner sizes versus their 300×250 size will usually yield better results. You will also want to try and blend in your Adsense spots in with you text content, usually at the top of each post.
There is nothing you can lose by testing out Adsense on your blog. If you find that you are having success and making decent money, you can then look at the advertisers being served on your blog, then start running your own ads or affiliate links, which may double or even triple your Adsense earnings.
For more on how to improve the performance of Adsense on your blog, be sure to check out my free Google Adsense guide.
This guest post was written by Zac Johnson, a full time internet marketer and blogger at ZacJohnson.com and PPC.ORG
Though the ad unit on the top (just before the post) is a good way to monetize a site, I would rather suggest that the ads remain out of the main content area – Either on the sidebar or on the bottom of every post. One might lose some revenue due to it, but the users will have a good reading experience.
Depending on the type of site you run, you would want to play around with your ad spots. If you are building an authority web site, you would likely place ads along the side bar and below the post. If you are building a site that will get one time traffic, you will probably want to put ads in their face if you don’t have your own sales/product to offer them.
Hi Zac,
For me personally, I think adsense is a good choice and I love it. I mean, it is so easy to get it going and of course, as you said, it keeps it clean.
Of course, I dont solely rely on adsense. I use a combination of monitazation methods on my blog and I think that’s the way it should be. Thanks.
Adsense has been a great solution because it’s so simple and also allowed to be used by web site owners around the world, which many other ad networks wouldn’t accept.
I use Adsense on my blog all the time.I have found it works well with my blog niche. Have made regular money all the time with it.It is far better than having banner ads and pop ups
Adsense blends in so well with content, that it will almost always work better than regular banner ads. Fortunately Adsense allows you to play with the settings so you can serve TEXT, BANNER or a variation of both to see which result in the best revenue for your site.
I have used Google Adsense in my blogs and have had a great experience with it. I try to focus on keywords with high pay per click so I get more revenue with it. I usually place the ad units within my content because I get more clicks and it blends in better. Pop ups is annoying to visitors so I prefer text links or banner ads.
Google adsense is one of the best in terms of monetizing a website. But we have to make sure the site is consistently up and running especially that a lot of competition are also growing.
Thanks for these tips, Andrew! I do have a fair percentage of international traffic and hadn’t really thought it through. AdSense is making me a couple of bucks a month and it is “smart” about targeting ads to content. That’s important with a mixed content site.
If you are looking for more ways to make money with your site, see what ads Adsense is serving, then you may be able to join their affiliate programs directly. Compare Adsense versus affiliate programs and see which bring in more money. If they are continually advertising on your site, there is a good chance it is making them money.
Adsense can be a great form of income, whether a main source or just a little side-money, but it’s not the only game in town. If you have a lot of international traffic you may want to look into some of the other programs out there. It seems like I remember Clickbank coming out with their own form of textual ads similar to Adsense. ~David Walker
it took me a year before i became interested on adsense it happen when my friend send a precious gift it’s joel comm’s ebook about adsense secrets since then it became my passion..
Joel is a good friend of mine and he has done very well with Adsense!
Andrew
I totally agree with your distinction about the audience for this. When I first started my blog, I put Adsense Ads in it because I was just ignorant. They surely are looked at by IM’ers as noise but in specific niches I can see their value
Cheers
Mark
It’s all about conceived value, and it’s always tough marketing to marketers. Ads to consumers is much easier.
We are looking into AdSense to add to our blog. We are not sure if its a good match yet and will give it a try until we start to get reportable results.
I definitely have to agree that to be sure if Google Adsense is really right for your blog then you have to try it out even just for a couple of days.
I would suggest that keeping the ads away from content will do good in return, your users will have a better reading experience and will surely comeback to your site. Less revenue but more readers.
Sure thing, let me know if you have any questions about setting your blog up with adsense or any other revenue methods.
Corinne
I think it your niche…it is certainly worth testing out.
Andrew
I’ve been getting scads of US traffic and the majority are from countries on the Pacific rim. Glad to see the support from the web.
I have tried different sizes, text ads, and image ads. I move them around and try different locations on a page and it doesn’t seem to help much. I know you need traffic too if you want to make anything. Some people say they do well with adsense, although they usually don’t tell you exactly what well is. At any rate adsense is a decent program compared to a lot of similar types out there.
I think having Google Adsense is great in any blog, but using too many ad spots can annoy the readers. I have encountered some websites that I stopped visiting because their ad spaces are so big and there’s little room left for the content, and it is even harder to comment because of the really narrow space those sites provide.
the part about if you are running a blog where visitors can no a lot about marketing and AdSense and that the PPC amounts Would be low I never thought about that before.
Do you think that if you were running a Marketing/SEO blog that it is better to focus on e-mail signups have to clickbank products?
From my experience, it’s always best to start with Adsense, as it can offer ways to see what your blog can do, how much it sells. Then, after you get some nummbers, you can sell that ad space to other people and ask for a fair sum.
This is a really great write up, I have just started my blog and was actually thinking of adsense but I think i need to establish an audience get to posting regularly before trying it out.
That’s a nice post, Zac! Google Adsense is great way to generate revenue for most blogs. It can take some time to find the correct placement of ads for best results. One needs to have good targeted website traffic to make the most of adsense.
There are many adsense made themes for wordpress. And people mostly use them. They put adsense everywhere where is the possibility of clicking the add. But they dont add value to search engines and they will be penalized with another good update of google.
I think adsense is right choose to make money from your blog because easy and free to use for everyone, either you are blogger or marketer.
I’ve been planning of monetizing my blog and I think Google Adsense is the answer for it. I really appreciate your tips and sharing this wonderful idea about Google Adsene Andrew, and I look forward to learn a lot from the link guide that you included here. 2012 will be here soon and I want to welcome it with my Blog already having Adsense.
Excellent post. The thing is 40% of internet traffic from Asians but they wont try to buy through affiliates. In adsense its useful. Still bloggers need US because of affiliate& adsense income.