AdSense Hints & Advice Revised
AdSense Hints & Advice Revised
I remember when I first starting to blog back in the mid-2000s. I was a newly minted blogger who had no idea what to expect from my first blog post, how long it would be, how much traffic it would generate, or if people were going to click on any of that. The only thing I knew for certain was that there are some things you just have to go through with your own eyes before you can make any sense of them. Thankfully, years later, we're less foreign to the process and know more about what works and doesn't work with AdSense as well as other monetization platforms.
What I've come to learn over the years is that, even though Google AdSense is an ad network, it's not all that different from a full-fledged ecommerce store. This means that you have to understand how best to position and market your content in order for it to be worth ad revenue, like it or not. Thankfully, I recently took a look back through my blog archives to see where I started and where I ended up in terms of traffic and AdSense revenues. In this post I'm going to share with you some of the valuable advice I learned after years of blogging on the topic of AdSense and fresh content creation, as well as some other techniques that have proven successful for me.
Nepotism
It's worth noting that I never used AdSense on any of my main blog posts. My first stab at monetization was on my personal blog. By now, most of you know that I write the "How Long Until I Make Money" series and those posts were the first AdSense pieces I ever posted. However, while they were successful and earned me a decent profit over the years with only minimal effort from me, they weren't great for several reasons.
First, there were no blog posts on AdSense before that series was published. Secondly, there is often a shortage of quality content on personal blogs compared to more commercial/brand-oriented blogs like The School of Greatness . I also didn't have any notable connections to back me up, like, say Matt Cutts, who was my connection with Google back when I first joined AdSense.
As a result of these factors, I received comments from people like this:
I recommend you take a look at your site and evaluate whether the content is worth the ad-space that Google displays. If you are getting clicks from your own site then the ads may be relevant, but if you get few clicks from Google but lots of clicks on your site then it might be time to rethink what to display in that ad-space.
I can't tell you how much this comment irked me (and still does), mainly because he had it all wrong. I'm sure he meant well and he was just trying to help, which is a grand idea in principle. But, in this case, it's not how you present your content (or yourself) that matters or what bit of advice you can possibly offer that can turn a poor blog post into an ad revenue generator.
What matters is the quality of the piece of content itself. In my case, I received much more traffic from AdSense (which was great for me), but my blog posts didn't generate nearly as much revenue as those I posted on The School of Greatness . This meant that I could have had tens of thousands of readers, but because their clicks weren't worth as much as others, my revenue was diluted.
It's a common problem with Google and other ad networks. For example, I just watched the following video of Michael Hyatt and I guarantee you that it will be extraordinarily helpful to at least the first 10 or so people to watch it:
But here is the eventual response from one viewer after watching it:
I don't believe this is what he intended nor what he thought would happen when he released this video. That exact response happened for me after my first few successful AdSense pieces at my own blog. However, the most important thing to understand is that it's not always up to you or how you present your content. The quality of the content itself drives a lot of the success metrics that are of concern to these networks.
Don't believe me? Consider how ads are displayed on Facebook and other social media platforms:
It's all about relevance! In this case, Facebook knows who you are (or at least who it thinks you are), what kind of posts and stories you like, what your interests are based on your friends and their likes/dislikes and so forth. The more it knows about you, the better it will be able to serve ads that are relevant to you and your interests.
To be clear, I'm not suggesting that you become a one-note blogger , churning out content that is the same over and over again. You shouldn't do this because topics will eventually become stale with your readers. Instead, it's important that you start to look at your site as a store or ecommerce platform. That means understanding what products to offer and how best to promote them in order for them to bring profit (or traffic) back into your pocket.
To learn more about having a successful ecommerce website, check out this book:
The Payoff: Why Smart Businesspeople Use Teachable Moments (And How You Can Profit From Partying Like a Rockstar)
Think of your blog or site as an ecommerce store. In order for your content to be worth AdSense revenue, your writing should be the best you can make it. This means that you should be writing about topics that are of interest to you and to others. If you're writing about a particular niche that is not very profitable or not particularly interesting, then it's best to stay away from it and focus on something else instead. This can also mean writing about a specific topic that is popular within your niche, but taking a different approach to it.
The more people like you and what you write about, the more traffic you'll get back from ads.
Writing For AdSense
In order to make AdSense relevant to your readers, you have to start writing for them and not for advertisers. In other words, the best way to monetize content is by publishing pieces that are compelling for your readers and informative enough that they decide to stick around rather than simply bounce from the page or click away via an ad.
A big mistake that I made when I first started out was trying too hard to push myself or my blog on people.
Conclusion
A blog is meant to communicate with readers, not advertisers. It's what I like to call an "informative website". It's a platform where you can share bits of wisdom or your experiences, talk about current events or post interesting stories that are relevant to your readers. There are many ways to do this, but the goal is the same: getting in touch with your audience and keeping them engaged.
"You had me at hello" is not just something reserved for romantic comedies. It applies to many relationships as well, including the ones between bloggers and their readers.