Money Online

“What niche should I choose for my site in order to make money with adsense?” I am sure many of you have heard this questions at least once.
First of all, I would not recomnend to anybody to start a website or a blog just to make money with adsense (or any kind of money-making program); I know that this is probably not what you would like to hear, but keep in mind that no matter what anybody tells you, it make take some time before you would gain a decent exposure on the web, and if you are not prepared for this, you’re in for a disappointment. You can not be successful at something if you don’t like it.

However, judging from another point of view, it is always nice to be rewarded for your hard work and commitment even if you don’t do it JUST for the money or in other words. sometimes is good to combine business with pleasure.

So let’s get to the point of this article. Why do some bloggers and website owners make more money with adsense than others, even though they have comparable traffic and they have carefully followed all the advices out there (such as ad placement and blending the adsense ads with the layout of the site)? In my opinion, in the end it all comes down to the actual niche of the website and the audience that is attracted by that specific niche.

You have to make sure that there is a market out there for the subject that you have chosen. You can not make a website about UFOs and expect to make money with adsense. I am not saying that you could not monetize it at all; if it attracts traffic, there are a lot of solutions to make money from it, but adsense will not be one of them.
The UFO example is a little bit extreme, but I gave it just to have a general idea. Politics and other topics of this kind fall into the same category.

In order to be able to make money with adsense you need to focus either on products or services. But still you need to think about the profile of the audience that you will attract depending on the topic of your website. For example a product related website will always make much more than a site about SEO, for 2 main reasons:

1-People that are visiting a website that is focused on reviewing a specific type of     products (digital cameras, phones, etc.) are more likely to click on the adsense ads especially because there is a far better chance that the actual product that is advertised would interest them.
Visitors of a SEO website don’t give a damn about the ads as 90% of them will be most probably promoting ebooks.

2-Another reason would be because visitors of a SEO website are web-savy and they almost automatically avoid the ads, while for the other situation the audience may not even be interested if they click on an ad or another section of your website. This can vary depending of the nature of the products that you are promoting; many people say that websites dedicated to women and teenagers products have the highest CTR; and I tend to believe it.

One last thing before you start the work, make sure to check the competition of the niche that you are thinking about. I have described how to do that in “Choosing a niche” article.

Good luck!

Technorati Tags: Adsense, Adsense and niches, niche websites, niche

So far I have written only positive things regarding adsense; I thought it was about time I write something about what I don’t like and that is the way that google treats publishers regarding possible fraudulent clicks.

In every democratic country of our planet, if one is accused of a crime, the prosecutors are the ones who strive on providing the evidence to a judge or jury (or both) in order to prove that the subject is guilty.
The “google way” of dealing with it is a little “upside-down“; when they spot something that seems suspicious to them, they usually give you a warning and they expect some prove from your part that none of those fraudulent clicks involved you in any way. If you fail to do that, probably there won’t be a next warning for you and your account will be disabled for life!
I can understand up to a point that google thinks that this kind of acting could discourage people that are only thinking of ways of cheating because they would not benefit from a trial and error work-around but I know for a fact that a lot of innocent publishers have been banned for no reason.
I am sure that a lot of you would jump and say that Google would give you the right to an appeal and if you are innocent, you should be able to prove it.
I must say that the only one, that I have heard of so far, that succeeded after an appeal like this was Cristian Mezei, the owner of Seopedia and I strongly believe that in his case, if he did not have the support that he had from the community (considering the fact that he is known to be a really honest person by every webmaster that I know ) wouldn’t have had a chance.

There are some 3-rd party plugins (like adlogger, for example) that should help them be safe from big G fraudulent clicks policy. Basically what they do is that they disable the adsense ads for users after having clicked on them several times (usually you are allowed to set the number of clicks that a users is allowed to perform within a specific period of time). What I can not understand is why is it this difficult for a company like Google to integrate such features? or better yet, why doesn’t Google simply disregard the clicks that are considered fraudulent, and why they blame the webmaster for them? There are 2 frequent situation that can get you in trouble:
1- Someone (probably your competition) wants to get you in trouble, and they insanely click on your ads just so you will have your account banned.
2- A friend of yours, who is not aware of Google adsense policy, may think that if they repeatedly click on your ads, would help you earn more money. Some of you may say that it is a webmaster’s duty to tell their friends not to click on their ads; I can agree to the fact that one should not encourage his friends to click on his ads because this would simply mean cheating, but I can not understand why should I tell my visitors NOT to click on my ads even if they spot something that might be of interest to them. Isn’t that suppose to be the purpose of the ads?

What really made me a little angry was that sometime ago when I was visiting a forum (digital point) I have found a very interesting post… a guy that was making a huge amount of money (around 200 000 usd per moth if I am not mistaking) has received an email from google telling him that after an audit they have discovered that almost half of the total amount was made through fraudulent clicks so that they would keep that amount from his next payment. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing but respect for that guy and I am sure that he had nothing to do with those fraudulent clicks either, but I am surprised about Google’s attitude towards him. If he was a small publisher most probably we would have had his account closed.
Again, I strongly feel that is the correct attitude, but I don’t understand why small publishers receive a different treatment.
In my opinion, Google is playing “God” in some situations…
For the record, I haven’t been banned from adsense so far, so I haven’t written the article above as a result of a personal frustration.
Technorati: Adsense fraudulent clicks, Adsense

The Facts,
It is a well known fact by every webmaster out there that blending the adsense ads with the overall design of your website results in a much higher CTR.
Here are some points that will help you integrate your ads with the layout:
1- Make the background of the adsense ads the same color as the background of your website
2- Also, make the border of the ad box the same color as the background, so it will appear that you have no border
3- The colors of the fonts in the headings and description of the ads should be the same as the colors in your content.
4- Don’t isolate the adsense ads in some corner of the layout; place them where your people would expect to find navigation elements
5- Lately, webmasters have been experimenting something new. They placed images next to the ads, so they would make them more attractive. There has been a lot of debate about this but Google stated that this not against their TOS, as long as there are some visual elements that separate the images from the ads (such as bars, borderlines, etc.) Even Google has been testing something like this but so far this type of ads are still in beta testing.

Is it trickery or not?
As I have stated above, it has been proven the adsense ads that are well blended with the website’s layout generate a lot more revenue due to a much higher CTR, but WHY?
Basically, by following those steps, you will actually trick your visitors into clicking on the ads. Some are saying that this is not true, and by blending the ads you will have a nice harmonious design. Although I can agree to that to some extent, I really think that you can have a pretty good design even with accentuated ads, by using complementary colors that will probably give you more contrast to the composition of the layout, but still this will result in a lower CTR.
I believe that it all has to do with human nature. Many visitors don’t even bother to read ads, while others don’t click on them just because they feel like your taking advantage of them; as impossible as it may seem to some of you I have seen it with my own eyes.
Having this said, my personal opinion is that blending the adsense ads with the layout of the website is still a trickery, but it is for sure something you must do if you want to monetize your website with google adsense.

Technorati: Blending adsense ads, Adsense