There are many ways that you can use your website to make money. You can sell products, provide information to others through a subscription newsletter that people can sign up for on your website, you can sell affiliate products, you can create and sell your own e-books, you can sell advertising space on your web pages to others, or you can place ads on your web pages for visitors to click on and get paid for those clicks (this is PPC ads).
And one of the companies that offers Pay Per Click ads is Google, via their AdSense system. Of all the ways to make money, using PPC ads is by far, the easiest.
Now Google AdSense is not the only PPC advertising system available on the web. There are several others, but the Google Adsense system is the largest on the Internet and it is one of the easiest to use. It is the AdSense system that I am going to address on this page.
To use their system, you simply sign up for an account, step through their wizard to configure their code for your ad display unit, and then just plop the code into your website pages and you're ready to go.
Unfortunately, setting up the ads and placing the code into your web pages is the easy part.
Making money with AdSense is a bit harder.
To make money with AdSense or any other PPC system, there are three very important things that you must have:
- Lots of Visitors or Traffic. The more traffic you get, the more you will make from your ads.
- Lots of Clicks on your Ads. The higher your CTR, the more you will make..
- High payout for each Click. The content on your pages and the keywords you use will have a large impact on how much you get paid per click.
For the remainder of the topic on this page, I will address the second item:
How do you get visitors to click on your AdSense ads.
The other two items, Building up your Traffic and Getting a High Payout per Click will be addressed in topics on other pages.
Five Power Tips To Rocket Up Your Adsense CTR
The BIG Question on everyone's mind who has ever worked with the Google Adsense system is
"How In The World Do You Get People to Click on Your Ads?"
If you know the correct answer to this question, it will mean the difference between making a few pennies a day from your AdSense ads and making $10, $20 or even $50 a day.
To start off with, let me say one thing that you need to really understand about advertising:
"LOOKS REALLY MATTER"
1. Your ADs Should Attract Attention and Not Be a Distraction
It doesn't matter how much time and money you spend trying to make an internet ad look bright, fancy and bold, if people don't pay attention to it because it is a distraction, they are not going to click on it.
Most everyone believes that the best way to attract attention to an ad is to use vibrant colors, make it bold and in general, make it stand out in the crowd of ads or other things that surround it. In theory, this sounds good because we all know that we will glance at such an ad,.... at least once. But for PPC advertising on the internet, you don't want people to just glance at an ad, you want them to read it and CLICK ON IT.
What happens in the real world, is that the first time you see a flashy advertisement, you look at it because it gets your attention, and you think, "Yep, that's an ad". The second time you see it, you pay less attention to it and if you look at it, it is for a shorter time period.
When you see it for the fourth or fifth time, you ignore it completely and keep your attention focused on what you are reading.
You have just developed AD BLINDNESS. Your mind completely shuts it out because you view it as a Distraction and you don't want to be bothered by it.
- So the first thing you must do is create ads that attract attention, but are not a distraction.
2. Make Your Ads Become NON-ADS
in the fast paced society of today, as well as on the Internet, we are constantly and continually bombarded by ads and we have developed a subconscious resistance to them. Many of us have developed a psychological barrier that makes us believe that "Ads Are Bad". Thus, you have to get around this bias against ads. You don't want people to view your ads as "Being Bad".
To accomplish this, you must present your ads so they don't look like ads. You must present your ads as information. Not only information, but Information that the visitor is looking for.
So first you have to figure out what your visitors want. Then you have to make sure your ads fulfill that need. You need to "Scratch their Itch", so to speak. Help them get what they want.
Transform your Ads into Information.
Make your Ad block look less like an ad and more like the text on your page. Remember, your visitors came to your website looking for information on a particular topic. Your goal is to make sure that your ads look as much as possible like the information they are seeking and not like a sales Advertisement.
- The font type in your ads should be the same font type as on your web page.
- The color of the text in your ads should match the text color on your web page.
- The size of the general text on your web page should match the text size in your ads.
- The hyperlinks on your web page should look like the hyperlinks in your ads.
3. The Best Ad Formats
Not only does the text used in an ad matter, but so does the shape of the ad. Some ad formats get a lot more clicks than other formats:
High CTR Ad Formats:
These formats get more clicks because they are able to better fit into the content areas of the page and look more like the content. They also can be easily positioned into the most visible areas of your web pages.
- 336 x 280 (large rectangle)
- 300 x 250 (rectangle)
- 250 x 250 (square)
Low CTR Ad Formats:
In general, banner ads and skyscraper ads don't work as well because they "Look Like Ads".
- 468 x 60 (banner ad size) This will work if it is a text ad that is integrated into the text of your page.
- 160 x 600 (wide skyscraper size)
- 120 x 600 (skyscraper size)
Banner ads usually look like traditional advertising and thus, visitors pay less attention to them. Visitors have acquired ad-blindness towards these ad shapes.
I have had some personal success with the 468 x 60 banner ads when using them only for Google text ads and imbedding them in the page content. They can also work to a limited extent if they are placed at the bottom of an article.
Skyscraper ads don't have a bad design, but they have a lower CTR because their size and shape usually means that they have to be placed on the sides of the page, which is where the navigation structure usually is. This placement forces them to compete with the navigation structure and also places them away from the center of the page where the main content is.
- Usually you will do better if you use the High CTR ad formats and avoid the Low CTR formats.
- The 336 x 280 rectangular Ad format gets the best results and should be used whenever possible. It is the widest of the three High CTR Ad boxes. Ads placed inside this box will have more room to spread out horizontally so it will be easier to read them from left to right, just like the content on your web pages is read.
- Only consider using the other High CTR ad formats if you have space limitations.
4. The Best Ad Locations
The location of the ads on your page will have a huge impact on attracting the attention of your readers and this will also affect the CTR.
Studies have determined that readers most often look at the center and middle of a page (above the fold, i.e. the top part of the page). Thus, for ads to get maximum visibility, this is where they should be.
But remember, they still should look like part of the the page and match the the text on the page so they don't become a "distraction" that makes the visitor "not look at it".
There are two good options for ad positions on your page:
- Position the ads above the content of the page, but below the heading. The ad won't actually be in the text content, but will be immediately above it. So if your page is about "Fly Fishing", your HTML would be organized something like this:
-----
Fly Fishing
336 x 280 rectangular Adblock (aligned either left or centered)
The rest of the page content
----- - Position the ads inside the content (aligned either left or right) and let the text of the page wrap around them (see the ads at the top of this page for an example).
This option works well because it allows you to put ads in a prominent position on the page without giving your web pages an ad saturation look.
5, Make Color Combinations Match
In most all cases, matching your ad colors with the colors of your web pages will increase your CTR because it will make your ads look less out of place, less like ads and more like part of the page content. For example, if your web page (or website)background color is white, then the background and border colors of the ads should also be white.
If the advertiser's URL shows in the ad, then it's color should match the text color on you page. You want it to blend in with the rest of your text. You can also choose a color that complements the background color of your site but does not stand out. On a white background, you could use a light-gray.
For the hotlink URL in the ad, it's color should match the link URL colors on your page..
Generally, the traditional ‘blue' link URL color works best, no matter what kind of color scheme you use for your site. This is because people are so used to seeing blue underlined text for a hot link that can be followed.
Also, consider that search engine users are the ones most likely to click on your ads. What this means is that you really don't need to come up with a fancy color scheme to make your hot links stand out. You can if you want to, but this target group of visitors really doesn't care about a fancy color scheme. They are looking for information or products and once they see the link to it, they are going to click on it. For them, the standard blue link will stand out and be the most obvious.
- Remember, the goal is to make your ads look less like ads and more like regular text.
