Adsense Tips For Beginners

Let me start off by saying you are unlikely to get rich from Adsense. To make more than a supplemental income requires traffic - a LOT of traffic (or an extremly good knowledge of how to make adsense work to its full potential). But none the less, its a useful monetisation model, and should be used in addition to any other income streams.

So if its not going to make you a millionaire, at least maximize the earning that you DO get. There can be a very fine line between a site that gets plenty of clicks, and one that gets very few. On one of my websites, a change in the colors of my ads resulted in a 300% increase in clicks. So you do have to experiment. If something isn't working for you, try something else.

Placement Of Adsense

The accepted "best practice" is to imagine an inverted triangle from the top 2 corners of your page, going to a point around the center. This is the area that the ads are more likely to be noticed, and therefore should receive more clicks. Think about it from your point of view as a net surfer. When was the last time you noticed an advert and clicked on it? Was it at the top, middle or bottom of the page?

Some sites put the majority of adsense on the sides and the bottom of the page - I think this is a mistake quite frankly. But if you ARE going to put adsense on one side or another, try it the right side. Thats right, as in right, not right as in correct! ;-) But be prepared to experiment....some do very well with it at the top left. Set up channels to track the performance of your placements.

Blend Or Contrast?

My view is that a site with a white background and black font (such as this one) is best served by the standard google pallete. I tend to think ads that jump out at you are offputting to would be clickers. However, some sites look better with contrasting colors, it all depends on the style and theme of the site.

Number of Adverts

Have you seen those websites on the 'net that are absolutely packed with adverts? Whats your opinion of them? Im betting its the same as mine - not much! Some website owners have the attitude that if a few is good, then more must be better. More chance for someone to click on your ads, right? Wrong! What better way to alienate your visitors than making them have to wade through adverts that they don't want to see, just so they can read your content.

Another tactic that some webmasters employ, is to try and disguise the adverts so they appear as part of the text, or to try and place them so they may get accidently clicked.

From a personal point of view, I would rather have a few less clicks, and sleep well at night.

This is a very high level view of using Adsense. Adsense Secrets shows a little more low level detail on maximising income.