Regular readers will remember me promising over a year ago to share some of my knowledge of making money online - well here is the beginning of the series and sorry to have kept you waiting.
If the idea of monetization from a blog offends you then please turn back now and please stop sending me
hate mail telling me about it!
Today I am going to talk about an affiliate program called Google Adsense. I started off late in the game as I thought that you only get 1 cent per click - not so as I discovered after joining the program. Receiving up to 1.75 USD per click. On a good day I get about 50 USD and make enough from it to pay for all my monthly bills (hosting, telephone, electric, gas yada yada), my monthly mags and a few figures.
Google Adsense is a program which displays contextual ads on your website based on the content. For example, If you are writing a figure review, you should have ads automatically show up which are relevant (toy/figure shops etc). Ads show up also based on what Google thinks your site is about. I have a lot of Japan articles which is why a lot of Japan related ads show up. Will give you details on how to sign up for Asdense at the end of this post.
Once you signup for an Adsense account at Google, you login and create blocks of ads which are in the form of Javascript snippets that you place within your HTML. Notice how I dont have any visible borders around my ads and how the colors match my site - this is the best converting combination.
I know some site owners want to distinguish ads from content by leaving the ads in their default colors (includes border) but less people are likely to click on them. Its not a matter of tricking your users - Adsense ads are clearly labeled "Ads by Google" as you can see. If the ads blend in with your site then users can easily make decisions as to whether they want to click or not.
Ads in default colors scream out "I'm an Ad!" and the likelihood of people clicking on them drops significantly. If you still want to make it clear that Adsense is not part of your site content, then maybe you can add a heading above the ads and use colors that blend with your site but the conversion is going to be extremely low and may as well not bother. Even Google mention that borderless ads convert well within their help pages.
Now that you have decided on colors, you need to decide on placement. "Above the fold" is an internet UI expression which means "everything above the status bar at the bottom of the browser" - its the area from the top of the page until the bottom of the browser window (without scrolling down). Everything above the fold is the highest converting real estate you have - you stick more ads up there and you will earn more money.
At one point I used to have 3 blocks of Adsense above the fold - sure I was making a ton of money but the site looked awful! The single row of Adsense that you see at the top of my site is the highest converting block for me.
Now that you have decided on colors and placement, you need to consider your content - Adsense ads appear automatically and there are no settings to display the ads of your choice. If ads are relevant to your site content then people are likely to click. for example...
Take a look at the screenshot of
my post on working in Japan. You can see that most of the ads are Japan related - one of the ads is even entitled "Work in Japan".
In order to achieve this you need to do a few things starting with the title of your post. One of the reasons why I have short titles is because I want relative ads to show up. If I chose a title "My tutorial on looking for work in the land of the rising sun" over "Work in Japan" then the ads that show up will be less relevant. Ultimately its up to you as to how you want to title your posts. Some people say that short titles are un-descriptive but I believe that one can be creative in coming up with short titles that represent the content of the post.
Notice how that Work in Japan page has related Japan posts in the left column. I made the post detail pages so that the Related Posts section is actually related to the page content - same for figures, Gundam posts etc too.
This is because I want a particular page to be as focused as possible on one subject. I dont want too much text about Gundam for example on that Japan post. For a Japan post for example, I try to keep the percentage of text about Japan over 70%. If I have a mix of Japan and Gundam text at a 50/50 ratio then the relevance of the ads drop.
Now that you have decided on colors and placement, you need to do a few tweaks to your HTML code to ensure that you are getting ads displayed at a high relevance.
Again taking the
Work in Japan page as an example - have a look at the source code. You will see that the title of the post is in a H1 tag. Adsense places importance on the text within H1 tags. Only use this once on your pages or you may be penalized for spamming. Make sure the blog software that you are using places your titles in a H1 tag.
Are the titles of your post still looking like" www.somedomain.com/?P=13" ? when it can be looking like "www.somedomain.com/15/working+in+japan/" ? Not only does having the title in your url help to increase the importance of the post title (and therefore help display relevant ads), it also benefits your site in terms of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). The better SEO your site is, the higher the rankings are - one of the reasons why figure.fm shows up a lot when you search for figures. There should be options in the blog software that you use to enable you to control what your urls look like.
When you create blocks of ads, you can designate channels. A channel is a mean for you to identify which blocks of ads are effective. For example, you want to see whether its worth putting ads within the text of your posts - you think that it will earn more money but also think it may annoy your readers. By using channels, you can see whether people click on that ad - if they dont then remove it.
Sometimes, Adsense cant figure out what your site is about and may display a public service ad (donate to red cross etc) and sometimes may just show up blank leaving a nasty gap in your page. You can over come this by installing piece of Javascript that Google gives you - its hidden in the options which allow you to designate what to show when Adsense cant serve you ads.
From time to time, you will see ads appear on your site that you dont particularly want displayed - you can block these domains within your Adsense control panel.
Here are some tips on running a site but dont necessarily affect Adsense (but are important).
- For those thinking of starting a blog, starting off with something niche is good. For me that means Otaku and Japan. If you are starting off and try to cover everything under the sun then it may be difficult for you to gain substantial readership.
- Volume of traffic = more revenue. Plain and simple equation. Bloggers who want to keep their site small scale with a small group of regular readers is fine but should not expect to make money from blogging.
- Being active in communities and commenting on other peoples blogs will help generate traffic to your site.
- The more content that you write, the more it will be picked up by search engines and if your pages are properly SEO'ed then you should expect more and more traffic.
- Working with others. Working with other site owners will benefit both parties and in this case I mean sharing traffic. I know some bloggers are not keen on sharing traffic as they think that they will be loosing readers - thats not what the internet is about. The readers choose what they want to read - not the blogger.
Bloggers who are afraid of loosing readers are probably not confident about the quality of their content. Channeling readers to other sites rarely means that they will loose readers. If regular readers like your content then they will come back.
Working with other bloggers has made a huge contribution to the current readership of this site.
Being able to make money from affiliates is not a myth - your passion for your niche category and your focus will enable you to reach your destination like it has helped me.
The most I have ever made through all my affiliate programs is just over 1000 USD per day last December - my next goal is to keep it a steady 1000 by Q4 of this year - nearly there ^^.
Just like me, one of my ex colleagues at Amazon left to start his own company because he had the financial backing from income through his affiliate sites. The ironic thing is that I got him started on affiliating and taught him a lot of the tricks of the trade. He is built like a brick - never gets sick and never sleeps and has been able to build much more affiliate sites than me - resulting in much much more money than I earn! He is also much more focused than me as he does not have scantly clad figures on his desk to distract him ^^;
Seriously, its good to share info with entrepreneurs like him - sharing our methods means that we both benefit.
Google Adsense is actually the lowest generating form of income for me - I make much more money through
Amazon associates and other programs such as
DTI,
Affiliate 2.0,
Rakuten Affiliate etc etc - I will be talking about some of these in the future but in the meantime do check out Adsense below.
For those who have not done so before can read
my affiliate story.
If you have any affiliate questions - post away and I will be more than happy to help.
So what are you waiting for? Signup for Adsense below.
EDIT: There is now also
Featured Feeds - get your feed all across this site and on
Otaku.fm.
