I’ve already shared the bit of work I’ve done an one of my low producing content sites and that I immediately saw in increase in earnings (from zero affiliate sales to 3 in one week). I also shared that I’m doing more tracking of the AdSense activity on another site that already performed well, and the results were very exciting there too.

So I thought I would share a few tips on examining and improving your earnings for those who are monetizing with AdSense.

First of all, AdSense isn’t right for every website. It shouldn’t be on a sales page that you’re sending affiliates to, for example. Webmasters have experienced varying degrees of success with Google’s Adsense program, and the ones who report higher satisfaction with their Adsense income have learned to monitor the performance of their ads and make changes that increase click-thrus.

This is where testing and tracking comes in. It can huge a huge and very quick difference in your earnings. You can start tracking with the Channels that AdSense offers inside your account. Recently, Google made tracking with channels even easier because you can now track different areas of your website without changing the actual code in your site’s html.

Some of the things you want to track are:

• Best performing ad block size
• Best performing ad block placement(s)
• Best performing colors (for the text and url)
• Best performing pages of your site (so you can add more like those!)

Some general advice for improving click thru:

Ads that work best for most websites are those that blend in with content and appear high up in the page – “above the fold”. They look almost like part of the site’s design or navigation. Make the clickable links blue (you can do this inside your AdSense account when you get the code to add to your site), not a fancy color that matches the color scheme of your site. And for me at least, borders around the ads mean less money.

And finally, more traffic almost always equals more earnings. So work on traffic building alongside tweaking and tracking your AdSense. Trust me – I have gone from my monthly AdSense income being my daily income, and it’s realllly nice.

Moms Talk Radio

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I’ve meant to, really I have.

It’s just that I’ve been really lazy busy lately.

I’m just ashamed happy that it took Kelly mentioning the topic on Moms Morning Show yesterday to refresh my memory.

So here’s a quickie review before I get to my DUH! moment.

AdSpy Tracker is a tool that you use to track your Google AdSense activity. You simply place the tracking code on your sites (and this wasn’t that difficult at all, the how to is VERY detailed and I only had to resort to ONE frantic instant message to Kelly McCausey who first told me about it to get it done, and then it was only a silly error on my part).

Then you log in to your AdSpy account and see what’s going on. AdSpy tells you all kinds of juicy and valuable information, such as:

• Exactly which keywords people are using to enter your site
• The actual Google ads people are clicking on
• The pages those ads are located on
• The ad formats that are getting the most clicks
• The Click Through Rates of your pages

Yesterday Kelly mentioned the fact that it’s difficult to tell WHICH ADS are making money on a particular site that’s earning income through AdSense. After using AdSpy she learned that it was ONE page on one of her sites that was earning the bulk of the money – so what do you think she did with that information?

She built more pages like that one to get more results!

When I first got AdSpy I let it cook for a couple of days then started looking at the stats. What I found was that one of my sites that did pretty well with AdSense was making most of its money from two or three pages.

So, I immediately spent about an hour tweaking those ad blocks to make them more irresistible to clicking, as well as building a few more incoming links to those pages. Here’s what happened.

That site now earns more every day than my entire network of sites did two months ago.

I’m pretty pleased with that, to say the least.

So. My advice to you, if you’re using Google AdSense, is to run not walk to this little website: AdSpy Tracker and pick up yourself a copy. This is a one time buy people. You don’t have to pay every month for it. It’s ONE. TIME. And you can use it on ALL your sites. Ok?

Ok. Here it is again: AdSpy Tracker.

Cause tracking is really important for us lazy busy internet marketers.

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Here is a site that has been gathering dust for FAR too long. I haven’t added content to it or made any changes in over a year (although I have sent out a couple of newsletters to the list.)

I thought of selling it, but decided to keep it since it fits into my overall target market. I also had some ideas on how to improve the site. One of the reasons I wanted to start with this one is because it makes NO money. It’s the only site I own that doesn’t generate sales or Adsense income.

So, similar to the thinking of a person who pays off their debt starting with the lowest balance for the psychological boost it will give them, I am starting with this one. Anything would be an improvement. LOL!

For starters, this is a content site all about limiting screen time. It has articles on why too much TV is a bad idea, and ideas on what to do instead. It makes affiliate recommendations, mostly books about research on TV’s effects and a couple of other products (some from Amazon.com and a few ebooks). It has a newsletter (actually just an autoresponder with a bunch of messages) with tips and ideas for family time that don’t involve screens. There are over 1,000 subscribers on the list. There is serious potential there, so I need to work on getting those folks to buy too.

I thought it had potential however, and was already getting some decent traffic and had incoming links from similar sites in this “un-TV” genre. It gets search engine traffic from a couple hundred unique keyword phrases.

Here is a screen shot of the Before:

And about half an hour Later:

You probably can’t tell a whole lot from the pictures, but I did the following:

1. Removed Adsense ads from 90% of the pages. The ads were making NO money. When I emailed a friend about the site, she said she wasn’t surprised that this was the case, since the ads were showing up all about watching TV on the computer. DUH! People who are trying to watch less TV aren’t likely to click on ads about watching TV, are they? So that was an obvious thing to change.

2. Changed the left nav menu so the links were smaller and shorter. I also added several affiliate recommendations to the left menu, and that font is a bit larger, making them stand out more.
3. Wrote a bolder, more direct headline.
4. Made the font larger and bolder on the right nav to draw attention to the newsletter sign up box.
5. Added a picture of a product that I found on Amazon, it’s a perfect fit: a device that plugs into a Tv, computer or video game that enables a parent to set a timer that will turn the device off completely. This is a higher priced product than most I promote so I’m interested to see if it converts well.
6. Made the page wider to give it a more modern look.

That’s it for now. Later on this month I’ll: add some more content, hire a ghostwriter to write an article I can send out, do some keyword research to guide me when I add new pages, and look for more appropriate affiliate products to recommend.

Stay tuned. No pun intended.

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