Since I wrote this a long time ago, my Adsense income went from 330/day DOWN TO maybe $2.00/day if I’m lucky.  All the money making MFA sites got penalized, so be wary of this when reading the post below

I’ve been coaching some marketing buddies on the side on how to make a “passive” income with Adsense, so instead of endlessly repeating myself I figured I’d outline the process here.

NOTE: I’ve seen many threads on forums discussing Adsense success methods and the process was pretty much the same for them too so there is some conventional wisdom after all…

Crucial steps that can’t be skipped or done improperly

1- Research

2- Site set up, content

3- site promotion (ranking the sites)

Preamble Notes…

Many people who do well with Adsense site have their own theories on how to pick niches, but they all agree on one thing; you need search volume and traffic in order to get a modicum of earnings from any site/niche.

• Some say to pick a common household item and build a site around those terms
• Some say to pick high paying keywords or niches
• Some say to focus on physical products and product names

Well, I’ve tried all 3 methods, have built all types of sites and they all perform differently, so there’s truth to all those suggestions bulleted above, and no method is incorrect (they just work better/worse depending on the target audience)

BUT… you still need traffic no matter what…

Keyword research versus niche research…

Some people think that if a keyword ranks #1 for a term getting 10 dollars CPC (cost per click) that means they will get 10 dollars every time someone clicks on their site’s Adsense ad block, and this just isn’t the case… You get a percentage of what the PPC advertiser is paying for that click and the ads on your sites aren’t always going to be for the keyword your site or site content is ranked for.

The reason I mention this is…when doing keyword research, you tend to limit yourself a little bit because there might not be many other keywords that your site will rank for that will also have high CPC and search, therefore it’s niche research you want to focus on, since advertisers will find your site and will want to advertise on it for various other terms you haven’t uncovered during the research phase.

So when doing research, make sure that there’s other decent paying CPC terms related to your site content that’s getting some searches, too.  Create a mini site that’s high CPC keyword-based, basically.

Doing the research, criteria….

Google’s keyword tool is allegedly more accurate nowadays with regards to expected search engine traffic a term gets, so focus on finding terms that getting at least 1k exact local searches a month.  The reason I stress that you want to focus on Exact  search volume counts is because broad match search volume isn’t realistic search volume and to focus on the Local counts for volume because it’s unrealistic to think your site is going to rank globally for your chosen keywords and phrases on site, anytime soon.

So focus on Exact Local search volume and keywords or phrases that show a CPC of at least $1.70 CPC and at least 1000- 1500 Exact Local searches/month.

Important research criteria - keywords or phrases with 1500 exact local searches/month and CPC of $1.70 minimum.

Site set up- The acronym EMD means exact match domain and part of your research process, and subsequent decision to proceed with developing a site in a certain niche should be dependent on being able to register an EMD for the main keyword, the one getting the most traffic.

If main keyword is not available as an EMD, then find a domain you can register that has main keyword and another “volume keyword” in the domain name.

Note: you could also buy an aged domain with PageRank and backlinks to it and rank that site for your chosen keywords, and while this might be a good shortcut, you should remember that sometimes Sites can get banned form Adsense due to prior domain owners mistake or violation of Adsense’s TOS, so I like to start fresh with my sites in the hopes that my newly registered EMD doesn’t have any “badness” attached to it…

Also, while it might take you longer to rank a newly registered EMD for your terms than it would an aged domain, over time you stand a better chance of outranking your competition, and ranking #1 for a term… if you have an exact match domain.

What kind of sites to build?

Mini-sites. One Page sites. authority sites…

I have one-page sites that rank well, but I don’t like taking chances with anything so I spend another 25-30 dollars on articles to flesh out the sites in case the search engines “dislike” my one-pagers….

Remember, the goal here is passive income which means researching niches and keywords, building sites, ranking them, then let them be (earn), leaving you time to perfect your research methods better, and build more sites.

Build blogs or HTML or other… sites?

It doesn’t really matter, and is merely a matter of preference to you, or your site builder…

So buy or register a domain and put some unique content on there.  It doesn’t have to be Pulitzer prize-winning content, but unique content does rank easier than rewritten PLR or scraped articles from directories.

Your site content should focus on all the other keywords you found during research phase that have some volume to them, and decent CPC.  you will rank the main domain url for the main keyword the domain is focused on, the highest search volume keyword or phrase.

Site promotion – the last phase

You won’t make much with Adsense unless your site’s getting traffic that converts, therefore you have to get your sites to page 1 for a specific relevant keyword in order to get impressions and clicks form targeted traffic.  The higher you rank for your keywords, the higher your CT R(click Through Rate) will be.  I’ve had sites ranked #3 on page 1 that got about 10% less , lower CTR than they now do when ranked #1 for that same term.  Also, when you’re #1, instead of #3, expect earnings to double, triple, and/or sometimes even quadruple due to the increased number of impressions and higher CTR.

I rely on search engine traffic for traffic to my sites, therefore  my real job is to rank the sites, since the research process and subsequent site building is pretty straightforward.  Researching niches and creating sites is pretty much a one-time thing, whereas striving to rank your sites is what will take the most time and where most of your energies will be spent.

I’ve decided to outsource the creation of a set of Adsense themes that are designed to make it easy for Adsense publishers to increase their CTR..

As of right now, the themes I’ve used are the nicheadsensethemes but there’s still some issues with those themes.

You have to hack the theme code to remove a lot of the extras that appear after the posts, like tags and categories, dates of publication etc…

Plus, if you want to create a new ad block for testing, or move the ad blocks from the sidebar to the end of the posts, you have to create a new ad style, then hack the code some more to move the blocks around.

I decided to hire an elancer to make me a series of themes that will make it real easy to optimize your adsense blog themes for maximum ease of use and of course, maximum earnings.

However, it seems that you really DO need plugin functionality to do all the things I want to do with my themes.

In a way, earning with Adsense is as easy at getting lots of impressions to a site with optimal click through rates.

I used the free semiologic theme so I could have an Adsense site that displayed ads on the bottom of posts, not just the sidebar like the nicheadsensethemes ones do, but when I used the same Adsense code, it created a sidebar-style ad grouping and I had to log into Google to create a different style ad more suitable for the end of the posts..

When I went to do create a new ad via Google Adsense area, it gave me the code, I put it on my site, then it said my code was invalid…

The easier way to do all this is to use a plugin, it seems, and there are plugins that will put your ad blocks wherever you want them to go.

As you can guess, tweaking and optimizing your adsense ads for optimal CTR is where the tricky stuff comes in, and that’s why I am creating this theme series.

Not only will these themes have features that allow you to easily strip all the distractions off your site for optimal Adsense CTR, but it will also include a mini-guide to

1- Google Adsense channel tracking
2- Google Analytics guide for Adsense

As much as I wanted to make a very lightweight theme that tested, tracked, and was pre-destined for high CTR for Adsense clicks, it seems that there’s no way around using these features (channels and Google Analytics).

There’s also a bit of a hassle involved in creating theme functionality that allows you to move ad blocks wherever you want them to be while remaining a lightweight theme, so there will be 2 plugins that need to be installed on the Adsense sites you make with these themes.

The 2 plugins recommended are for managing your ad blocks and another one for Google Analytics, and that’s as simple as I could make this theme be…

I’m not sure if I am going to make these themes paid themes or freebies, but I will be letting some people be beta testers for free once theme is ready in a week or two from now..

If you’re interested in helping me test out these themes, you can opt in to the list below to get it sent to you for free.

However, I would really appreciate some feedback from you on how the themes are working for you, and if you experience any bugs with them.

Part of the reason that I’m writing this series is to share my personal experiences with Google Adsense. I’m not one of those 6-figure Adsense earners yet, and I’m learning the ropes as I build more and more sites.  All I can say right now is that making money with Adsense is all about 3 things.

1- Choosing a good niche

2- then getting a lot of Adsense impressions,

3- then increasing CTR…

Here’s a some basic outlines for increasing your ads CTR…

PART 1 – Remove all distractions ! 

The goal of having Adsense on your site is to get clicks on the ads you’re displaying.  Your content is merely the vehicle that attracts visitors come to your site prior to clicking on an ad and going elsewhere.

Front -page defaults - If you’re running a WordPress blog, then you probably know that the default number of posts to display on the front page is 10, and most people leave this setting as it is.

…and what happens here is people go to a blog, scroll down the whole front page to see what content is there, and when they get to the bottom, there’s nothing but white space, nothing else to click, so they go “bye-bye”…

That’s why blogs in the normal site design default state will have such high bounce rates.

So set your blog up for displaying a lot less posts on the front page (1 or 2), and do it and tweak it in such a way that at the bottom of your front page everything “evens out” or is close to it.

Some sidebar distractions are widgets like Recent Posts, Pages, Recent Comments, and any text widgets that are displaying banner images of some kind.

Pre-post or pre-content distractions - I sometimes use the WWSGD (What Would Seth Godin Do ) plugin to notify new site visitors about my RSS feed or better yet to let them know I have a valuable report to give away.

But on an Adsense site you don’t want that. You don’t want the subscribers, and you don’t want the RSS readers necessarily.  I feel strange writing that because it seems such a waste to never build up a list of any kind, but this is Adsense monetization we’re talking about here and it requires a different site design structure and model.

Of course it’d be great to gather new subscribers AND RSS readers AND have people clicking your displayed ads with no descreases in anything, but it’s just common sense that when people are faced with multiple decisions, they usually only pick one, not all three.

There are other widgets and plugins that could distract from the reading of your content but suffice to say that less is more on an Adsense site.

Post-content - On most blogs you will see a whole bunch of colorful and distracting stuff after the content posts, pages, or articles.

You’ll see social bookmarking icons, some related websites being linked to, some related posts being linked to, some “tags used on this post” distractions, and so on…

Look at the site design of my site you’re on right now, I tried to keep it as clean as possible, I don’t put social bookmarking icons at the end of my posts, and yet it’s still requires a bit of focus to read this post doesn’t it?

Site design is probably 80% of the battle when it comes to increasing your Click Through Rates, so here’s the checklist for Site Design Tasks To Increase CTR..

Remove sidebar distractions - Recent comments, recent posts, pages, optin box, text widgets, any banners

Remove distractions before and after your content - no social bookmarking icons, RSS feeds notifiers, links to related sites, or even related posts.

NOTE: I am still having a hard time giving up my usage of related posts plugin on my sites because I think it’s really good for SEO and helps fills out the front page with a useful sidebar widget that makes for more page views/visitor.

However, none of the 3 Adsense experts I know use this plugin on their sites and don’t display anything like it so maybe my CTR will be like theirs (20-35%) once I start doing everything exactly as they do.

PART 2 – Increasing Adsense CTR

Content must be relevant.  If you’re accepting Unique Article Wizard articles or My Article Network articles, or Syndicate Kahuna articles to your site and they’re not totally relevant to overall niche theme, then your CTR will be miserably low.

IF you have a way of linking to previous or Next posts on your site, then the moment you link to a title that seems NOT related to previous article being read, then you’ll lose that visitor.

And losing a visitor is lost money… so make sure your content is relevant  and you’ll see better CTRs that way.

NOTE: Test everything to see what works for you and your sites.

Here’s a eye heat map that shows what areas of sites people’s eyes gravitate towards when reading a site.

Increase Google Adsense CTR

The point here is to remind you that “eye Gravititation” should determine your site navigation and ads placements.

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One of the downsides to internet information is that there’s so much of it, and a lot of it is conflicting…

Who are you to believe when some people say;

Google’s ripping you off, Adsense isn’t worth it, Google’s constantly changing the rules, it’s better to use AdBrite etc… ?

The best thing for ANYONE to do when faced with half-truths or conflicting information is to consult with multiple experts on a certain topic.

It’s important to note that “there’s more than one way to skin a cat” as they say, so the best thing to do is see what the common denominators are…

I’m lucky enough to know people who are quietly making 4-5 figure monthly incomes with Adsense and each of them do things differently, but there are some principles they have all abided by.

• Some put up small 5-10 page sites focusing on a few high-paying keywords
• Others build monster sites with a lot of content focusing on high-search volume keywords…
• Another one does a combination of both…

Even when analyzing these truly successful people there’s still some conflicts because they each are successful in their own way, but they ARE successful, and that’s the whole point.

Here are the common denonimators exhibited by these experts…

1- Unique Content only - no dupes, no EZineArticles re-posted, not even any spun content articles from Unique Article Wizard plugin. (I have had minimal success with an Adsense site 100% populated with UAW articles…)

Also, it’s widely reported that 250-word articles are the bare minimum for content pieces, but these 3 experts are posting no less than 300-word articles to their sites.  Sometimes they’ll even get 500-word or 750-word articles written for them.

2- Don’t put Adsense on these sites right away. Let these sites get ranked, add unique content periodically, make sure previous articles are indexed before posting new articles.

Once these pure content sites are getting new posts or pages indexed quickly via frequent spidering, the next step is to ascertain the rankings and traffic numbers.

If rankings are good and traffic is coming in steadily, then there’s enough traffic coming in to start testing Adsense on the sites.

3- Testing ad placements and colors. They all tested their site design with various themes.  It doesn’t seem to make a difference if they sites are WordPress blogs or HTML sites, and it doesn’t seem to matter if these are static sites or site with new content being added frequently, either.

Part of the reason why Adsense isn’t put on the sites right away is to build up the “trust” with the search engines and to build up enough incoming unique visitors to the site to test Adsense colors and placements accurately.

4- MORE, about site design…

Adsense sites are built with one goal in mind; to get visitors to click on the ads displayed…therefore the site design is instrumental in achieving this desired action.

There’s no distracting banners for affiliate products on their sites, and no link leakage that sends visitors elsewhere…  A site designed with Adsens ein mind has to be built differently than other types of sites…and that even includes the way the content is written…

5- How to write content for Adsense sites…

The content has to read like any of the boring articles you might read in article directories that only give you a “taste” of what you really want to know and/or read about.

An effective article submitted to an article directory will act more like a teaser and produce high CTRs (click thru rates).

Since article directories are content sites, your Adsense sites should emulate this type of business model and focus more on the content than anything else.

If your content is TOO good, then you’ve done a good job by FULLY informing your visitors, but therein lies the “danger” of over-fulfilling the visitors’ needs (for information) and could result in low CTRs….

For example, if you wrote an article on your site about mortgage calculators, you’d be better off writing about how best to use one than actually providing the calculator to use, otherwise, there’s nowhere else to go, and nothing else for the site visitor to do once you’ve fulfilled their needs…

Remember what your goal is here with your Adsense sites (to get clicks) and keep that goal in mind as you post content and design your sites…

NEXT UP – Simple ways to easily get decent CTRs for Adsense sites

Niche research and selection is probably the most important factor in your Adsense success.   Back when I started pursuing Adsense as an added income stream, my niche selection was poor.

Currently those sites still manage to pull in some earnings daily but i/you/we can do a lot more with less effort if you pick your niches carefully and with a certain goal in mind ( make more by doing less).

As mentioned in the previous post, there’s 2 schools of thought when it comes to finding good Adsense niches (find high-paying-niches with low competition or just pick common household terms)

There are some niches that I recommend against going into and this non-recommendation is based upon my personal experiences, what I’ve read on other blogs, and from the truly successful Adsense people I know.

Avoid tech-related niches because that audience is web-savvy and more apt to be banner-blind therefore Adsense Ads-blind.  However, I have a tech-related site running on complete autopilot and it makes close to $1.00 a day with automated content but the click payouts are very low…

Avoid the internet marketing niche for Adsense as well, as this niche doesn’t really do well for same reason as the tech niches don’t; banner blindness and besides, with the IM niche, you want to build your list not send people elsewhere.

What you want to do is find some niches that are paying out over $1.00/click for Adsense clicks and the way I do that is to use Google’s Keyword Tool to ascertain what the CPC (cost per click ) is for their PPC advertisers.

IF the PPC-ers are going to have to pay 3-5 dollars per click, then it’s somewhat safe to assume that you MIGHT be getting some $1.00 Adsense clicks on your site if you have content and titles targeting those keywords, and other related terms as well.  In other words, write for those higher-paying terms but also include some other ralted keywords on the site content articles, posts, pages etc…

Now, a lot of people will tell you to find the high-paying niches with little to NO competition and you’ll be spending a long time shooting in the dark before you happen to find that perfect, undiscovered niche like that.

In my opinion, and experience you can level the SEO competition and playing field by getting a great keyword-rich domain name since that’s one of the most important SEO elements on a site…

With a great domain name you can get ranked pretty well for the keywords you’re targeting, over time, but it will be a lot easier if your domain name has some of your main keywords in there.

Summary:

Finding a good Adsense niche means finding niches with high-cost CPC keywords, then finding good domain names that will help you level the SEO competition.

Then you need to write content that targets those terms and terms related to them so the content seems more relevant to the site topic overall and so it’s doesn’t appear as if you’re making a blatant effort to optimize a piece of site content for just one particular keyword of phrase….

NEXT UP – 3 Adsense Success stories and what they all have in common

This is the first post in a series of posts I’m going to be making on earning money with Google Adsense.

I’m going to start with some of the myths surrounding Google Adsense, then move on to effective methods for earning money with it…

Google Adsense Myth #1 – “nobody’s really making any money with Adsense”

I have a “skype-buddy” who makes 1500/day with Adsense in a completely, 100% automated fashion.  The method he uses is pretty high-tech and involves uses some custom-made scripts (that’s all I’m gonna say on that…)

Google Adsense Myth #2 – ” you only make like 15 cents a click with Adsense sites”

Again, not 100% correct here, , and I’ve seen clicks ranging from 10 cents to $3.38 per Adsense click and those clicks both came from the same site…

However, if you target a niche that has high-paying keywords, then you’ll most likely receive higher-paying clicks for Adsense clicks on your site, generally speaking…

Google Adsense Myth #3 – “…but you need to have a site that’s 3 months old before you can put Adsense on it”

When I start a new Adsense site, the first thing I do is activate one of the most SEO-friendly themes I’ve ever used (the theme this blog uses, Code Blue Revolution).

After the new sites has been indexed, and subsequent posts have all been indexed, I active an Adsense-friendly WordPress theme time-tested for high CTR and start making Adsense “click-dough” shortly thereafter.

Google Adsense Myth #34 – ” You have to get luck and find high-paying Adsense niches with little to no competition in order to make big bucks with Adsense”

Well, there’s 2 schools of thought for finding good Adsense niches

#1 – The first school of thought says to blog about common every day items that get a lot of searches, like household items, any items that are lying around your home or office like furniture, desks, pens, speakers, kitchen appliances etc…

#2- The second school of thought suggests finding the high-paying niches with low competition and “doing more”, or making more with less clicks.

Next up: How to find both types of Google Adsense niches

If you read my 2-part report on Making money with Google Adsense and MFA sites, you know that I’m not a big fan of Adsense as a foundation of a sound business plan.

However, if you’re committed to following this type of business model here’s one way to make money with Adsense on every blog post.
Here’s what a lot of marketers are doing today, especially those in the IM game of marketing to other marketers.

First you need to have Adsense ads on your site.
Secondly, you need a list of subscribers, a mailing list.
Notify your list via email when there’s a new blog post, and the readers will either read the post, click on an Adsense ad, or click away.
That’s a good way to make money with every blog post.

The general way to make money with Adsense is outlined below.
1-Pick a niche you want to have a site or blog about.
2- Get an Adsense account, and pick your channels
3- Create content for the site
4- Get traffic to the site(s)
5- Test the placement of the Adsense ads for optimal click-throughs
6- Track your channels and traffic
7- Wait for the checks to come from Google, if you make anything from this at all
If you’re good at getting traffic, you can make money with anything
With MFA sites, all you need to do after you put the Adsense blocks are up is to test and see how to get the most amount of clicks.