Ways To Increase Adsense Earnings

Adsense contributes quite a sizeable source of  advertising income for most people who use them on their sites or blogs. Many people also try to target high paying keywords in order to increase the advertising income that they get since Adsense pays different amounts for different ads.  You might even have tried to employ one of those methods of finding high paying keywords and writing content about that hoping that somehow that will increase your adsense earnings.  But very often, it is not simple as that.

So what might be wrong?

Having pages or content with these supposed high paying keywords is one thing. But driving visitors to those pages is another matter and often the factor that is lacking.  If the number of clicks on your ads is a function of the number of page impressions.  The number of page impressions is dependent on the number of visitors that you get.  To get more clicks, you need to increase your page impressions.

Assuming that you get a fixed number of visitors every day to your site, is there a way to improve the page impression?  Yes, there is.    It is really about making your site more user friendly.  And that includes having some form of site navigation that will get readers to the page that you want them to go to.

Try to picture your site and even navigate your own site.  How will you use your site if you were a visitor?  Which links would you click on?  Having links around your site helps.  This helps to link the various pages together such that traffic flows from one site to another or from one post to another.  LinkWithin is something that I have used on various of my sites.  My page impressions literally doubled just by using it.  This has also helped to increase my adsense earnings.

Another method that I have used to great effect is ad placement and also the colours for the ads.  Basically, I try to put ads at the top and right hand side of the site.  This works best for me.  The colours are also "merged" with the rest of the site so that it is colour coordinated and does not stand out too much.

You can also read my previous article on "How to Boost Adsense Earnings" to see some of the other strategies.

Adsense Earnings and Targeted Traffic

After being on the adsense programme for many years, I have made one simple conclusion: Targeted traffic is the key to driving up your adsense earnings.

The difference between traffic and targeted traffic

When I talk about targeted traffic, I am not just talking about mere traffic or number of visitors to your site alone. I really mean targeted traffic. Normal traffic is akin to your usual or loyal readers who visit your site and are just about willing to read whatever trash or gems you post on any particular day. They land on your site because they are probably bored at work, or are just surfing the internet. There is nothing that they are looking for in particular.

Targeted traffic on the other hand refers to the visitors to your site who are LOOKING for something. They might have stumbled upon your site through certain search engines or a friend might have shared your site with them because they found certain information that was really useful and just wanted to pass it on.

Based on my analysis of my ad performance, I was surprised that some of the rather random posts that I have written were actually the ones where the ads did particularly well. And I realised that it also happened to rank highly in the search engines for particular keywords. This means one thing: the people were looking for something and that drove them to my site. That is targeted traffic. And if one needs to write content, make sure that you write it for a particular group of people. Who is your targeted audience? How old are they? What are they looking for?

Another Adsense Cheque

Have received yet another adsense cheque payment. The amount is around US$120 which is quite reasonable considering the amount of work that I have put in. Or should I say that I have hardly put in any effort.

The earnings have still be unpredictable and though there are days when my adsense earnings can reach as high as $7, there are days it also falters for no apparent reason. New blog posts and stuff just don't seem to work. Sometimes, it almost makes more sense for me to just stop posting new articles and stuff and the adsense earnings actually still come in!

Amazing if you think about it. It is really the Parato principle where 20% of the work drives 80% of the results. Problem is I have yet to identified what I am doing right or wrong. And that will probably take me a longer time to figure out.

6th Cheque from Google Adsense

I got my 6th cheque from Google's Adsense program. Slightly over $100USD

Some days, it just seems that I am going nowhere in life. And these cheques will then pop up in my mail box to my surprise. Then suddenly I realise that I have a virtual "life" online where I shed my office clothes and turn into a serial blogger/writer/journalist (except without the high pay and expertise)

It almost feels like this office parkour clip. Watch it for a good laugh

Peter Lim Drives up Viewership to Blog

News about Peter Lim ( a Singaporean billionaire) who made an offer to buy over Liverpool Football Club has caused my adsense earnings to soar over the past 2 days.

It is one of those instances where a previous posting rides the surge in searches for a certain keyword and all of a sudden, you see a tenfold increase in viewership to your site. Of course, the earnings also go up as a result.

This was totally unintentional as I wrote about Peter Lim around a year back. I certainly did not expect him to make the headlines about buying Liverpool FC.

However, there have been instances when I tried to ride the wave of google search trends and blogged about certain topics that were HOT on people's search. That did not last long though as very often, I wasn't passionate about the topic that I was blogging about at all.

September Adsense Earnings

Sept 2010 earnings amounted to $34.07

Not bad for a month where I hardly did anything.

Guess it should be just treated as passive income.

Not enough to eat a good meal but surely enough to pay the internet bills.

PayCheck from Adsense

I received another cheque from Adsense one week back. Have not found the time to bank it in yet. Cannot remember whether this is the 4th or 5th cheque that I have received. Guess I am losing count and that is good.

I guess the first cheque that I received was special because it made me realise that I can actually do the impossible - Make Money Online!

The 2nd cheque confirmed that the first cheque was not a fluke.

The 3rd and subsequent cheques actually are very much a non-event. I hardly felt much excitement as I sort of expected the cheques to come.

I guess this is what they mean by passive income?