If there’s one question I get a lot when people find out I make a living from running Google Adsense on my sites, it’s the one along the lines of, “Why do my earnings suck?”
Some people are so disheartened from trying to make money online that they’ll flat out state that a normal person can’t make money with Adsense, or you have to have tons and tons of traffic to make anything. Well, I’m not sure how normal I am, but I don’t get zillions of page views a month to my site, and while Google isn’t the only way I make money, I do make enough from that program alone to cover all my monthly living expenses.
So…. what’s the secret?
There are lots of places where people go wrong, but here are perhaps the three most common problems I see, AKA, “Why your Adsense earnings suck.”
1. Site isn’t a good tie-in for pay-per-click revenue
This is the biggest one and honestly the hardest to fix. (2 can easily be changed and 3 isn’t that bad either.)
Sites that don’t have a clear commercial tie-in don’t tend to do well with Adsense. For example, if you blog about writing, exactly what products would people buy related to that? Heck if I know (books and other not very expensive items, I’d guess), and that’s why I don’t have Adsense on this site.
This doesn’t mean that sites focusing more on teaching and less on consumer-oriented stuff can’t make money (some people make a lot of money creating their own information products and selling them), but sometimes it’s not even worth putting Adsense ads on such sites.
I love Adsense because it’s perfect for introverts like me who don’t want to deal with the hassle of selling products, but you really do have to choose a niche and write content with related products and services in mind if you want to do well with the program.
2. Horrible ad placement
This is probably my favorite Adsense “problem,” because it’s such an easy fix. If you want to make good money with Adsense, you really need to get your ads as close to the content as possible. It’s a bad idea to “trick” people into clicking, but you don’t want them to easily ignore those ads either.
The small 480×90 banner ads are easy to ignore (the Internet has “grown up” with that banner size, and we’re all pretty good at blocking it out), and tower ads aren’t particularly effective if they’re stuck over in the side bar. It gets even worse if your ads are below the fold (meaning that people have to scroll down to even have a shot at noticing them).
What really does work is the 250×250, 300×250, or the monster 336×280 ads wrapped right into the content of your article or blog post. It’s hard to miss, and you’ll get a lot more clicks with this type of Adsense layout.
A lot of people don’t want to stick these big ads in right next to their content for fear of looking spammy or perhaps alienating a community of readers. It’s your choice, but if you want to make money, size of ads and placement can make a huge different. Putting ads where “they won’t bother people” is the same as putting ads where nobody will notice (and click) on them.
3. Not enough search engine traffic
You don’t have to get zillions or even millions of page views a month to make a nice living from Adsense (I average a little over 10,000 views a day, across all the sites I run Adsense on). You do, however, have to have some traffic.
And ideally that traffic will come from the search engines.
I know we all like to go out and comment on each others’ blogs so they’ll comment on our blogs and we’ll look popular, but someone returning a comment isn’t a likely candidate to click an ad and buy something from the shop on the other end.
You want someone who typed in “how to make mead” and landed on your blog post on “How to Get Started Making Mead in Your Own Kitchen.” They’re a much better candidate to click on the nearby ads for home brewing kits. They found your site because they were specifically thinking of getting into home brewing, not because they were just returning a comment to be cordial.
The best way to fix a lack of traffic (especially a lack of search engine traffic) is the tried and true method: get links to your site. This can be done through article marketing, guest blogging, forum posting, blog carnivals, and other methods. Pick one you like and put some quality time into working it.
Make sure your site follows all these rules (okay, they’re just guidelines… suggestions, if you will), and your Adsense earnings won’t “suck” any more!
19 responses so far ↓
1 Tumblemoose // Mar 6, 2009 at 1:38 am
Lindsay!
Thanks for the tips. you are right on the money. The niche site I set up and have put about a tenth of the effort into has almost generated the same amount of Adsense revenue that Tumblemoose has in 6 months! It is much more of a product oriented site.
Hope all is well.
George
2 Genevieve // Mar 6, 2009 at 8:50 am
Oh, I am laughing, I just plugged my url into the google keyword finder the other day, and my average ad is going for about .40. Oh dear!
I love my blog for keeping me writing in-depth articles and snagging me good local clients, but I think you are right on – that with the first type of problem, I need to work on creating information products. It was always the plan, but geesh – I didn’t realize adsense for my niche was going to be that bad!
I have a new niche site that’s gotten me $3 from adsense in the last week – with only 20 or so visitors and barely anything written. I can work with that!
3 ArtSiren // Mar 7, 2009 at 5:02 am
A great summary of the pitfalls and how to fix them.
I still haven’t figured out how to put Adsense anywhere but the sidebar in Blogger blogs – but am in the process of following your advice from elsewhere on this blog, and setting up new hosting etc. Then I’ll be able to follow these guidelines with more control!
Oh, just a quickie…what’s a blog carnival? Never heard of that before.
4 Lindsay // Mar 7, 2009 at 11:54 pm
@George Tumblemoose might not score big with Adsense, but I am waiting for it to lead you to Tumblemoose the Book.
@Genevieve Wow, 40 cents… didn’t know bids went that low!
It’s often true that generic terms (like gardening) might not return high bids but more specific items (rototillers, leaf blowers, whatever) can have higher bids associated with them. But I know you’ve got the ebook plan too, so good luck with that!
@ArtSiren Blog carnivals are rotating lists of links to articles that people can submit on specific topics (carnivals are theme-based). They get published on people’s blogs (by folks who volunteer to “host” the carnival), and ultimately you get a free link back to your site. You also get to see what other folks are writing blogs in your niche. You can visit blogcarnival.com to see what’s out there and participate. It’s all free.
5 pfincome // Mar 8, 2009 at 8:45 pm
I think #1 is very important as you mentioned. When I started my site, I knew absolutely nothing about keywords and AdSense. Then several months into blogging I couldn’t figure out why I was hardly bringing in any AdSense income. After reading your series on niche blogging, I have a completely different mindset.
6 Donna // Mar 10, 2009 at 9:47 am
Great advice! I am just starting out blogging and will be sure to reference your site and this article. Thanks!
Donna
7 ArtSiren // Mar 13, 2009 at 6:57 am
Thanks for the info re blog carnivals.
Another question: Google are going ahead with ‘interest-based’ ads next month. Do you think this will have a negative impact on Article Sites using Adsense, as the ads the visitor sees will not necessarily be related to the article niche?
8 Savannah // Mar 16, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Thanks for these tips. I definitely think they’ll help me to improve my site.
9 Brandon // Mar 22, 2009 at 5:56 am
Lindsay,
Thanks for stopping by TAM and leaving your thoughtful comment. When I stopped by here I was immediatly drawn to this post, as we all need help with Adsense. Is there a place here on this site where I can explore other sites that you make money on with Adsense. That would be a huge help.
Thanks and Blessings,
TAM
10 Benard Solomon // Mar 31, 2009 at 6:03 am
Hi, Just to let you know I was here.
Your article is highly informative and well explained.
I’ll find it useful for my adsense program
http://blog.benardsolomon.com
11 rabs // Jun 2, 2009 at 6:59 am
hello i am still confuse about this earning process through google adsense.my earning have been stopped for the last week.however before this it was working very good.
12 Pat // Jun 5, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Lindsay
Hello and thanks for this post- I’m one of the lucky peeps that also earns enough to live on from one pretty big niche site. =)
I am really hoping for some help with these burning questions though.
I have a small new site that I’m thinking of putting Adsense on but I’m chicken cause I’ve heard that if the new site doesn’t get good clicks then I’ll earn less on my other site!
Do you know if the earnings would return to normal pretty quick if I disabled the new ads if this were the case..?
Thanks abunch for your time
warmly
Pat
13 sayyed // Jun 27, 2009 at 6:07 am
Hello,
The information given was quiet helpful.
14 Chris // Jul 3, 2009 at 4:42 pm
I have Adsense on all of my blogs, but I only ever ever did well on one particular day. I’m new to this and don’t have much traffic yet, but I’m learning. One day I made over $4.00 and the rest of the days I’m luckt to make fifty cents. I wonder what was different about that day?
15 George // Aug 22, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Some time your Google Adsense may be low if you have just few contents that you just copy pasted from the internet. I have been writing on hubpages and have noticed that the more you write quality contents the more you get search engine visitors who eventually may convert into sales. Quality article is the way to boost your adsense earning
16 Fernando // Jan 12, 2010 at 12:30 pm
I have 126,00 page views daily…
But I just have 1 or 2 clicks in adsense ads…
Each click pay me .01 USD…
Adsense sucks!
17 WritingForCashExperiment.com // Jan 12, 2010 at 3:22 pm
I agree tat it is imperative to give valuable and needed information, even in advertising blogs. This helps you twofold, because it builds your writing experience for future blogs, and people don’t want to feel like they landed on a total ad spam page if they were looking for genuine content to solve a problem or answer a question they had.
18 Bizintros // Mar 17, 2010 at 10:56 pm
So I can appreciate your blog post more so since I’ve been there done that and then some. It is actually helping me to formulate a better marketing strategy for my adsense account. It take good niche + good content and ad placement to turn a profit. Lesson learned.
19 Johnson Yip // Jun 13, 2010 at 3:12 pm
Thanks for the tips. I been using Youtube and Yahoo answers, and I notice a slight increase in traffic and ad revenue from traffic from my description and source box. I think Ad colour is also very important since people might be more willing to click on an ad if it does not use the default Google colors.
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