Make More Money with Google Adsense

I’ve recently made several changes to the way I deliver Google Adsense advertisements at Site Sketch 101 and I’ve noticed a tremendous change in the amount of revenue it’s been bringing in.

It would violate the Adsense terms of service for me to reveal how much it has gone up or how much I am making, but I can say that it has been a very significant increase since I made these changes and that I’m very excited about the income I’m seeing from this now-lucrative revenue stream.

5 Ways to Make More Money With Google Adsense

Listed below are five simple changes that have exploded my Adsense profits. Make these changes at your site and I’m sure that you’ll see similar results.

Display Google Adsense in the Content

For a long time I struggled with whether or not to show advertising in the content because I understand that if it’s not done right, it can become intrusive and annoying to your readers.

However, as you’ll see in the next few points, I’ve found a way to make it generally nice looking and I’m still able to enjoy an amazing amount of revenue that clearly justifies using the ads in this way.

Only display in-content Google Adsense on old Articles

Because these ads in the content can be annoying to regular visitors and because your regular visitors are the actually the least likely to click on your ads, it’s a good idea to only display the advertisements in the content on older articles. This way your regular community of readers are presented with a nice clean article and only those visitors coming from search engines who are finding your older articles will be presented with them.

At Site Sketch 101, I have the ads set to display in the content only on pages that are more than 7 days old.

Customize the Color Scheme

Far too often people underestimate the value of their website’s design. When you can deliver a powerful first impression, you can draw people into your site and create regular readers from them. When you have ugly or disorganized advertisements staring them in the face then they are very likely not going to be returning.

Select a text color that is the same as the text color used at your site. At Site Sketch 101 that is a dark gray. Select a link color that matches the links on your site. Select a title color that matches the titles on your site.

You get the idea.

If you make it blend right in with the content, it can actually violate the Adsense terms of service because it can appear as though you are trying to make the ads look like part of your content rather than allowing them to look like advertisements. However, you can remedy that by finding fun ways of setting it apart from content by wrapping it in a subtle box or something like that.

The goal still remains: make it look nice.

Wrap the Text Around the Ad

If you don’t float the ad to the left or right of the text then your readers will actually have to scroll down just to get to your content. You don’t want this. You want a smooth looking advertisement that appears the same way that they do on the big corporate websites like MSN and Yahoo.

Make the text float smoothly around the ad with a comfortable amount of space between them so that they don’t look crowded or crammed.

Use text ads…not just image ads

This single tip has resulted in more clicks than any other piece of advice in this article. From a designer’s perspective, I always thought that banners would convert much more effectively than text blocks…but I was wrong.

On the very day that I switched from image ads to text ads, my revenue more than tripled. I saw a huge growth in profits that day even more since then.

Group Reflection

Don’t ever lose site of the fact that advertisements can make your readers feel uncomfortable if they are not positioned well. Always keep your readers in mind. You certainly want to generate as much revenue as possible, but you don’t want to sacrifice the experience of your visitors. It’s up to you to find the right balance.

What strategies have you found to provide your site with a greater level of success with Google Adsense? What strategies have you decided don’t work? What advice would you give to someone who is just beginning to use Adsense?