6 figure blogging 3

Six Figure Blogging

Six Figure Blogging Call 3 Transcript
Andy: So today we are talking AdSense, right?

Darren: That’s right. It’s my favorite. I’ve been preparing for this one for weeks
now.

Andy: You’ve been a-bubble all week, I know!

Darren: We’ve got two hours of content that we’ve got to squeeze into one hour
so we are going to have to push.

Andy: So Darren, tell us about your AdSense knowledge.

AdSense Basics
Darren: Wow, it’s quite an overwhelming topic. I think we could go for two or
three hours today. There are probably a hundred to two hundred tips that I can
give you. I am trying to give you a brief overview. We’ll try and get a little bit
more specific as we go along but we’ll start with the basics. I know a few people
on this call who have never used AdSense before and some who still have not
signed up for an account. They are not convinced yet. We’ll give you a brief
overview of that.

What is a Contextual Ad?

Darren: Basically, the way I explain AdSense is that if you go to Google.com and
you do a search for any particular word or keyword, you’ll find ads come up for
that keyword that relate to what you’ve written. That is the way that I describe
AdSense to people. Those particular ads are the same ads that you can put on
your blog. They are contextual ads. So what you write about on your blog triggers
particular ads on particular topics. The way you get paid is when someone comes
to your blog and they see an ad that they are interested in, if they click on that ad,

© 2005 Andy Wibbels and Darren Rowse. 72
All Rights Reserved. http://www.sixfigureblogging.com/

Six Figure Blogging

you get a small payment for that. I say small because usually it is small but those
payment levels vary quite considerably depending upon what that ad is for.

Behind the scenes there is another system called AdWords which is what the
advertisers sign up for and it may be on a particular keyword. Some keywords,
you might get one cent per click; some people think you get less than one cent;
other words you might have heard of people getting up to fifty dollars for a click.
That is very rare and I haven’t heard that happening too much recently. They do
vary quite a bit.

How AdSense Makes You Money

Darren: Basically, Google adds up all those clicks. At the end of the month, if
your total income gets to a hundred dollars, they’ll send you a check. They’ll send
it to you in US dollars or they’ll send it to you in Australian dollars, and
depending on what country you are in, and whether they are able to pay in
different currencies, they’ll send you a check. In some countries, they’ll transfer it
straight into your account as well.

If your total for the month gets to thirty dollars, you won’t get a check that month
but those thirty dollars gets added to the next month and eventually, you’ll get a
check once you go over the one hundred dollar mark.

The Difference Between Google AdSense and Google
AdWords

Andy: So just to review, the AdSense is from our perspective as the publisher of
the website and the AdWords is from the advertiser’s perspective?

Darren: That is right.

Andy: We can view both sides. Like you said last week, we can join AdWords so
then we can see what the advertisers are going to see when they are putting ads in
to the Google system.


Six Figure Blogging

Darren: Exactly. I find it quite useful. Once you are accustomed to AdSense and
you are feeling comfortable with that, actually join AdWords. It doesn’t cost you
that much. I think it might cost you five dollars. Just have a play with that and see
what the advertisers are doing as well because it does add to your experience to
AdSense.

Payment Terms and Schedule

Participant: May I ask a quick question, Darren?

Darren: Yes sure.

Participant: Is the hundred dollars per blog site or per blogger? So if you have
two or three sites.

Darren: It’s per blogger. You can run from the one account on a variety of
different blogs. I have one AdSense account but I have twenty something blogs. It
all goes into one pool. I’ll talk a little bit later, if we got time, about channels and
how you can track and see how each blog performs. It all comes in under the one
account, which makes it a lot easier to make it to that one hundred dollar mark.

Participant: Excellent thank you.

Useful AdSense Links and Resources

Darren: So we’ll go to that AdSense useful links page. We won’t go through
them one by one but there are a variety of links there. The pro ones are all official
Google AdSense pages. If you go to the AdSense terms of service, it is pretty hard
to read the terms of service but I really suggest you get into the AdSense policies
page. It is really important to have a good grasp of some of the rules. It is not a
free for all. They have some boundaries to what you can and can’t do. We’ll talk
about some of those but we haven’t got time to go through them all.

The other few pages are quite good. The format page we’ll come back to later. You
may want to open that up in another window and have it sitting there. That gives

Six Figure Blogging

you the variety of different size ads and types of ads you can get on AdSense. The
optimization tips page is probably the bible and we’ll come back to that later too.

Particularly, there is a heat map on that page, which is really quite important.
We’ll talk about that a bit later. There are some case studies there which I’ve
learned a lot from with people telling their experience.

The AdSense help page is not very well organized, but there is a lot of useful
information there. Then I’ve just given you a few links of things that I’ve written
on Problogger and a couple of other resources down at the bottom. Jen Vince is a
blogger (at www.jensense.com). She is brilliant on AdSense and contextual
advertising and I really recommend you get to her. I’ve given you a link, down at
the bottom there to an ebook, which some of you may be interested in if you are
at the beginnings of your AdSense earnings. I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone
[but it is for bloggers] who are a bit advanced on it.

So there are some useful links which hopefully will help you as we go on today. I’ll
refer to some of those so you may want to keep that page open if you can.

Is Your Blog Suitable for AdSense?
Darren: We are going to talk about blog suitability. Is your blog suitable for
AdSense? A lot of bloggers just think, “I’ve got a blog and my blog will be great
with AdSense.” They don’t do any critical thinking about the system. It is not
perfect for every blog.

Where it’s great is for blogs are about products. That seems to be where it
performs at its peak. I’ve given you five different points. Probably the key point is
about products. If you’ve got a specific product or a service, something that
people would buy, and something that people would be researching in an active
way. They are not interested in it as a hobby. They actually want to take some
action it. They seem to be the topics that perform best on AdSense. That doesn’t
mean that you can’t do a blog about a news thing, for instance, and use AdSense.
You can do it but it won’t perform as well.

Six Figure Blogging

So for me, my digital camera site, that is my highest performing one, people come
to that site from search engines looking for information so they can make a
purchase. So when they see an ad, it offers them that product. They are more
likely to click on that particular ad when people are in a buying mood, when
people are researching, and when people are interested in other things and not
just your content.

Searchers Engine Traffic Performs Best; Regular Readers
Not So Much

Darren: I guess the other point, which is really quite profound, is that pages that
don’t have regular readers seem to do best. So pages that have a lot of search
engine visitors tend to do better than pages that have a lot of regular readers. For
example, on my Problogger site, that site is read by the same people everyday. A
few people come in from search engines but not many. The people that come in
everyday, they may have noticed the ads when they first came in but the second
time, they are less likely to see them. Then every time they come back, they are
even less likely again.

Really, regular readers are great for blogs but they don’t pay too well. So there are
blogs that are suitable for AdSense: product ones, search engine visitors.

The Problem with Political and Religious Blogs

Darren: I’ve listed a few different types of blogs which may not be quite suited.
You can run ads on some of them but they are not suited: political blogs. The
problem with political blogs is that AdSense doesn’t know what side of politics
you are writing about. It could give you something in politics that you are quite
opposed about. Religious blogs, the same problem.


Six Figure Blogging

AdSense Performance with Other Blog Topics

Darren: Celebrity and gossip blogs. The problem with those is, they can get a lot
of traffic but AdSense for one, doesn’t seem to know what you are writing about,
quite often and two, the ads just aren’t worth much at all.

We had a Michael Jackson trial blog. We got a lot of traffic on it, but really the
ads they use, weren’t that great. We ended up putting in impression-based ads on
that which we talked about in week one. It may be a lot better than AdSense.

Sports blogs, depending on the sport, you might do well out of ads on that that
actually sell products for that particular sport. In general, they don’t pay as well.
Sometimes, we get relevancy problems on sport blogs as well.

So there are some of the things that you might want to keep in mind. I have run
AdSense on all of those types of blogs and made a bit of money from them but
they don’t do as well as product based blogs.

Banned Topics with AdSense

Darren: Then I’ve listed blogs that you just can’t use AdSense on: porn blogs,
explicit language, gambling, blogs where you don’t own the copyright. These are
some of the rules. I’ve expanded the list of those. On the policy page are things
you shouldn’t put AdSense on. You’ll risk being banned from the system.

Other Considerations and Summary

Andy: To summarize all this up, a big part of it is that when people are going to
these pages, they are searching for something. The regular readers, they are there
to read the content, they know that you got some ads and they know that might
not be applicable to what they are looking for.

If you have people who are actively searching, which I remember when the first
demographics came out about who reads blogs; blogs readers are people looking


Six Figure Blogging

for stuff; they are researching purchasing decisions; they are not scared of
ecommerce or using online technology to buy stuff. If you can think about getting
that alignment of people looking for stuff, looking for answers, looking for
product reviews and resources and then bringing those up, that is the marriage
that you are talking about.

Darren: That’s right. It makes sense. In my own mind, I take a lot more notice of
advertisements on television or in newspaper when I am looking for a product
and I am about to make a purchase. It is the same with blogs. When I am reading
the newspaper just because I am reading the newspaper, and not wanting to
make a purchase, it just becomes blah, blah, blah, blah in the background. It is
just noise. It’s just amazing when you suddenly start to notice ads when you are
looking for stuff. That is the principle that I work on. It seems to work pretty well.
Shall we move on to the formula?

The Six Figure Blogging Formula
Darren: I wrote an article, probably about two years ago now, maybe a year and
a half on this formula. It is a little bit outdated but I’ve updated it for you today. If
you look on my blog, you’ll see a different version of this.

The formula of this is there are four different aspects of doing better with
AdSense. There are four different things that you can work on. I think if you work
on any one individual one of these a week, it will help a bit. When you work on
them all together, it is quite amazing how it comes together. They do work best. If
you leave one of these elements out, your AdSense equation suffers quite
considerably.

Formula Ingredient #1: Traffic Levels and Overview

Darren: The formula for this is traffic levels. Obviously with all parts of
advertising the more people that you expose an ad to, the more chance of an
effect that it has. If you increase your traffic, you’ll significantly increase the
earning capacity of your blog.

Six Figure Blogging

Number two is high paying ads. As I mentioned before, different ads for different
products will pay different amounts of money depending on what advertisers are
willing to pay for it.

The third part is relevant ads. There are things that you can do to make your ads
more relevant to others. If you are writing a blog on scuba diving, someone is
writing a blog on that and you see ads on coffee mugs, chances are someone is not
going to click on those ads. But if I see an ad on scuba diving equipment, there is
increase likelihood on that. We want to work on the relevancy of our ads. There
are some strategies that I am going to give you in a few minutes on that.

We’ve got optimally positioned and design ads. We’ll break that up into two parts
today. But the position of your ads on your page can significantly increase the
rates that people click on those ads. I remember the night where I discovered this
for the first time. I moved my ad from the banner position right up to the top of
my blog, which I thought was a great position. I moved it down inside the
content, just under the heading and my click through rate, within a couple hours
had doubled. The position of your ads has incredible power. The design of your
ad also. We’ll talk about some different design principles that you might want to
work through.

When these things come together, things really work. I’ve written a post there, I
linked it the holistic AdSense development. When those things come together,
you do best. So don’t just work on one of them but let’s be working on all four of
those.

Formula Ingredient #2: High-Paying Ads, Example:
PVRBlog

Darren: We’ll start with high paying ads and we might stop at the end of this
section for some more questions. High paying ads, it’s pretty obvious.


Six Figure Blogging

I linked there to the PVRBlog and an article to the guy who is behind that blog.
It’s a legendary article. It was written in October of 2003.

Andy: That is right.

Darren: It was one of the first articles out there that got bloggers into AdSense.
It was one of the first articles that I saw. One of his keys to his success with the
PVRBlog is that the ads, when he first started were very high paying. It was niche
topic; it was a high demand topic and the advertisers were going silly in
competing with bidding for ads to appear in his blog and other blogs with that
topic. In comparison to a blog on say, ‘toothpicks’, I think he used an example
there; it is going to pay a lot more.

There is a variety of ways to increase or to find high paying keywords. Probably
the ultimate one and it is not a very sexy one, it is really just to try it and to track
it. Trial and error, this is what ultimately I do on every one of the blogs I started. I
start them small. I start them sometimes on free blog software just to test them.
You might want to start on blogger.com just give it a few weeks and see what
rates the ads come in at.

How Many Times Should I Post a Day?

Andy: How many times a day are you posting on your trial and error blogs?
What is a good rate to say?

Darren: I try and get it up to a total of about thirty or forty posts over a couple of
weeks. Get some content up there and let it sit there and link to it from a few
other blogs and try and get a bit of traffic across and just see what the ad values
are.

That is probably the ultimate way I would say is to just try it. I’m really happy to
hear that some you have picked more than one niche because you are actually are
going to be testing these. That is one of the things you will be testing out is what


Six Figure Blogging

are the ads worth? Track your results as well and we will talk a bit about how to
do that later.

Test if there are ads available. Obviously, if there are no ads in the Google system,
chances are it won’t be high paying. Go to Google.com and type in your keywords
and see what ads come up; see how many ads come up. Just in the search results,
you’ll see down the right hand side some ads. If there are a lot of ads there then
chances are that at least there are some ads in the system that will come to your
blog. You may want to try different words around you niche also there just to see
what the supply is like. If there is a lot of supply, you might do a little better.

You can buy lists of top paying words. I’ve given you a link there to a service that
sells lists of keywords. To be honest, I’ve never bought a list of keywords. I just
found the trial and error works a lot better. Some people, they are on a fast track
and they want to buy them. Those lists will tell you how much different keywords
are paying at the moment. I know a lot of people who do use those lists quite
effectively.

Keyword Selection Tools

Darren: There are some free tools, we mentioned last week, Overture’s tool.
Keep in mind with Overture that the amount you get there is what another
system not what AdSense pays. It’s an Overture system and takes into account
that Overture takes a cut off that as well. What you, as a publisher, get is even less
than what they say there.

I use that tool a lot just to see what one word compares to another. It is
particularly useful to think about what keywords within a niche you will target. It
may be that you want to write a blog about phones. You go into Overture and do a
search for cell phones and you do a search for mobile phones and you do a search
for phones. You’ll find that the keywords actually pay quite differently. That is
useful as you think about, “What am I going to call my blog?” Then you pick the


Six Figure Blogging

highest keyword to call your blog. Compare the different keywords within your
niche.

I’ve mentioned AdWords and I’ve given you the link there. You can sign up as an
advertiser and have a look at the back-end and see how many people are bidding
for words.

There are a couple of links there from Seven Search. The first one there is quite a
depressing list. Seven Search is another system like AdSense. They got a little bit
lower standard in the type of ads that they actually allow. If you click on the first
one, you’ll see the top one hundred paying words on their system. It is quite
depressing at least to be honest. It is all about gambling and probably
pharmaceuticals. It is probably not the most uplifting or helpful at least.

The second link I’ve got there is one where you can actually type in. It is like
Overture. You can type in the keywords and it will give you what people are
paying on their system for those keywords. I would suspect that lots of numbers
will be different from AdSense. Again, if you are comparing one word with
another word, this would be a useful tool to be thinking about in that one.

It’s worth keeping in mind, when you are thinking about high paying keywords,
that the highest keywords have highest competitive terms as well. So you pick a
term that might be worth ten dollars. The rumor goes around that this word is
paying ten dollars. You can bet that there will be millions of other sites out there
on that same term.

I was talking to someone this week and they said that they have chosen
‘lawnmowers’, ‘riding mowers’ and ‘riding tractors’ as their keywords. There is
not much competition on those keywords and it pays ok. It is not a top paying
word but it’s not the lowest either.

I listened to someone this week who was talking about how he chose the keyword
‘prom dresses’. Again, it is reasonable paying but not that competitive because it
is not the top one.

Six Figure Blogging

Then another guy did one on ‘fridges’ for refrigerators. It is an obscure term and
they pay ok but they are not going to have as much competition.

Don’t Choose a Niche That is Too Popular

Darren: Remember what we were talking about last week with competition: We
don’t want to do something that is too popular. So keep that in mind when you
are thinking about the use of keywords.

Formula Ingredient #3: Relevant Ads

Darren: Ok, we’ll continue on. The second part of the formula is relevant. Say
you want to be working on getting some relevant ads over to your blog. Again,
your first point of call would be to look on Google and check whether there are
ads for your system. If there are no ads on your particular niche then it will be
hard to find relevancy for your ads. Generally, you’ll find these days that most
niches that there are some ads there.

Keyword Density

Darren: The most important thing to be thinking about is your keyword density
on a page. Keyword density is the amount of times that your keywords appear on
your page. The best way to get ads on a particular a topic is to write about that
topic and to write about it in such a way that the words that you want trigger out
numerous times across your blog and across your post. Think about putting those
words into the title of your post, into the title of your blog, into the body of your
post, into the content itself, and into the picture tags. This will help not only for
getting the right ads on your site but it will help with your search engine
optimization. In particular, the post titles and page titles are really important
with that.


Six Figure Blogging

Meta Tags

Darren: Related to that is looking at your site’s meta tags. This might be a little
technical to some, but meta tags are descriptive tags that appear in your page
source code. Meta tags, these days, don’t have much impact upon search engine
optimization or how well you’re ranking search engines. They do have an impact
upon your AdSense ads. If in your meta tag description have the word ‘scuba
diving’ on your scuba diving site, you’ll more likely to get more relevant ads for
that particular topic.

There is a variety of different tutorials around the web on how to change meta
tags on your blog. We are not going into the technical aspect of that. You should
be able to do it through your template on your blog if you got a blog that have
template systems. It is not too hard to do but you might want to check with
someone before you go messing around with your templates too much. It is one
of the first things I look at when someone asks me to look at their blog is what
does the meta tags say.

Avoiding the Word ‘Blog’

Darren: Avoid the word ‘blog’ as much as possible. It seems to be this magical
word that if you mentioned it once or twice on your site even though you might
mention other keys words millions of times, Blogads come up as ads. Blogads
don’t pay very well particularly when your blog is about scuba diving or some
other topic.

Unless your topic is about blogging, try to get rid of that word as much as
possible. It is worse for some blogs than others but that is a common problem
that I see with relevancy. A lot of bloggers get blogging ads.

Andy: You mean ads about blogging and not the service Blogads.

Darren: Yes, sorry, it is confusing there but you’ll see on Problogger, for
instance, we get a lot of ads for blogging. That is cool. I am happy about that


Six Figure Blogging

because that is what I write about. You can see those same ads on a lot of other
blogs going around as well.

How Long Does it Take for Google to Index My Blog?

Darren: Number five there, it takes time especially when you are starting a new
blog as many of you are. It can take a couple of weeks to get relevant ads up on
that blog. Google claims that it takes a couple of hours. My experience is a little
bit different to that. It maybe partly because you don’t have much content on
your blog yet so give it a week or two before you start making too many changes.
Just see, after a couple of weeks what is coming up as ads on your particular blog.

Don’t get too panicky at the start if you are seeing lots of blog ads even though
you don’t have the word blog. Sometimes, Google just sees that you are a blog and
decides to put those ads up there. So it takes a little bit of time for it to work
through the system.

One Topic Per Page

Darren: Number six is a really important one. It is picking one topic per page.
We talked already about how we want one topic per blog. Within a blogs’ niche,
there are lots of sub-niches and lots of sub-topics so just pick one of them per
post. Don’t just talk about your topic in general terms. Think about what products
could I talk about? What aspect of my niche could I talk about today? You’ll find
that that helps to give relevancy to your ads. AdSense is not confused about what
topic you’re writing about. They can see it and they’ll stick to it with the ads.

On my digital camera one, you’ll see that I have a different page for each one of
the cameras that I write about. Each camera has that page so I get quite relevant
ads quite often to those specific models of cameras.

Importance of Sidebars

Darren: Look at your side bars is number seven. It’s not just your content that
AdSense looks at to determine what ads to serve you. It looks at your side bar, it

Six Figure Blogging

looks at your menus, it looks at your header, and it looks at your footer. So all the
words that are in those can have an impact upon what sort of ads that you are
getting. If you’ve got a relevant words in those spaces, it can have an impact. It
doesn’t always but it can.

Blocking Useless Ads

Darren: Number eight is you have the ability within AdSense to block certain
URLs. If you are seeing an ad that is totally irrelevant to your site and it keeps
appearing, you can add it to the filter system that AdSense has in there and you’ll
see that fairly clearly within AdSense is to where to add those things.

I mentioned in week one, the problem with the filter is that you can only ever see
what ads are being targeted to your part of the world. The ads I see here in
Australia on your site will be different from the ones that you see in your part of
the world. So it will be very difficult for you to block the ads that I am seeing
unless I tell you about them. So the filtering is ok but it doesn’t help that much in
my mind.

Checking Your Source Code

Darren: Number nine is look at your source code. It is a technical thing and it
comes in the meta tag that I’ve mentioned before. Depending on what web
browser you are using, if you go up in your web browser to View menu, usually
there is something that says, ‘view page source’. I don’t know what it says on your
browser but for me, if I do ‘view source page’, it will open up another little
window. It will show you the code that is behind your blog.

It is interesting when AdSense sends its little robot over to scan your site to see
what to put your ads for, it doesn’t see your beautiful graphics. It doesn’t see your
wonderful design; all it sees is your code. It is the code that determines what
comes up on your site. Look through that code and see what words are there. It
may be that in your source code is the word, ‘blog’. I know a few blog designers
actually include the word ‘blog’ in their template codes.

Six Figure Blogging

You want to be thinking that and look in your source code. One of the things is to
look at where the AdSense code is in your source code. Generally AdSense code
that is towards the top of the code performs better than AdSense code that is
towards the bottom. AdSense that is near your content in your page, source code
often does better because it is closer to the content that you wanted to draw and
contextually. I may have been too technical here for some of you. Maybe this is
something down the track that you want to think about. Down the track, if you
are uncomfortable with source code templates, then you might want to begin to
look at some of that.

Section Targeting

Darren: Number ten is section targeting. This is a new feature that AdSense has
included in the last few months which gives you the ability to say to AdSense,
“Look at this bit of my blog and determine from looking at this particular section
of my blog what ads to serve.” They give you a little start and end tags to wrap
around your content or your title. It is a little bit technical and it is something you
might not want to do up front but I am happy to help people with that if you want
to see me an email, I’ll give you a tutorial on how to do that.

Asking for Help

Darren: Number eleven is simply just to ask AdSense for help. If you are getting
irrelevant ads consistently after a month of blogging, send them an email. I know
a number of people who have sent Google emails and they have found that
Google has done something at their end at AdSense to change the relevancy of
ads on your blog. I suspect from reading between the lines and talking to AdSense
people recently that they’ll probably release a system in the next few months that
allows you to target specific topics. I know that Yahoo’s publishing system allows
you to do this now. I suspect Google will do that as well so that should help with
the relevancy too.


Six Figure Blogging

Andy: Something else to throw in there is a lot of stuff is going to apply to the
Yahoo Publisher’s Network and Microsoft’s AdCenter. MSN just started their
group up this week, right?

Darren: Yes, they’ve announced that they’ll probably be about six months before
we see anything that we can participate in. That will be coming along soon too.

Andy: A lot of this stuff is still going to apply even if it is not just AdSense.

Darren: That is right and a lot of it will, especially in the positioning and design
stuff that we are about to get into will apply and for affiliate stuff as well which
we’ll talk about next week.

Test Driving Different Ad Networks

Participant: I have a question.

Darren: Sure.

Participant: I just got accepted into the YPN today, the Yahoo Publisher’s
Network but I am a little hesitant to test it out because I get a lot of income from
AdSense so, is there a way to ease into it and test it out without cutting off my
income stream completely?

Darren: How many blogs do you have? You just got one?

Participant: Two. One with a lot of traffic.

Darren: What I suggest you do is try it on some of your pages. You might want
to try on your category pages or your main page and then continue using AdSense
on your individual pages. You can use both on the same blog as long as they don’t
appear on the same page. That might be one way to ease in.

I’ve heard a few people say that Yahoo!’s system is brilliant. The rates are so
much higher than AdSense but the relevancy of the ads aren’t quite as good.
Depending on what topics you are writing on and depending on what ads they’ve

Six Figure Blogging

got, it might actually be beneficial to swap over. Either do it on some pages, if
you’ve got the ability on your blog to target different ads on different pages, do
that or just try it for a couple of days. You might lose a little bit in the mean time
but you’ll soon work out whether it’s going to pay more or less.

I would definitely give it a go. I am very jealous. I am non-American and can’t
join it yet. I would be interested to see how you go with it.

Participant: Sounds good, thanks.

Meta Tag Resources

Participant: I have a question. I was wondering, when you mentioned the meta
tag stuff and it is very technical, could you give us some links to that information?

Darren: Ok, I’ll put some information up probably later today. I’ll make a note
to myself now.

Participant: That would be great. Thank you.

Darren: No problem.

Formula Ingredient #4: Optimized and Well-Positioned

Darren: If you keep going down that page, down the formula, you’ll see another
section called ‘positioning ads.’

This is really important. As I’ve mentioned before, it can double your income
overnight literally if you’ve got poor positions for your ads now and you change
them.

The first thing I’ll get you to look at, on that page, I think I posted under the ‘well
positioned ad’ section, a heat map from Google. This comes from optimization
page which I mentioned earlier which is the bible for AdSense.


Six Figure Blogging

The Google Heatmap

Darren: What you’ll see there is an orange and yellow and grey diagram. What
they’ve done there is they are presenting to you what are the hot spots on any web
page. They’ve done a lot of research into where people look on sites. This is an eye
tracking tool and this is the result of that.

You’ll see there the redder the colors get, is the hotter the place that is primary
what you’ll want to be focusing. The primary content right there, in the top
middle of your primary content, that is the best spot that you can put an ad. It
may not be the best spot design wise for your site. You may feel that it takes
something away from your sight and you don’t want to use that spot. In my
experience, that is the best spot to put an AdSense ad.

I’ve given you a link there that says, ‘example’ at the bottom of your ‘well
positioned’ ads list that will take you to one of my sites. It will be a page for a
Kodak camera. You’ll see there, to the left of the camera picture, I’ve got a
rectangle ad. I may have four ads in it. I may just have one or two depending on
where you are in the world but that there is my best positioned ad ever. I have
that across most of my blog. I’ll have that space in the middle of my content or
just to the left of my content or just to the right of my content. Depending on my
blog design, that is primary earning position on all of my blogs.

You are asking yourself, “Where do people look when they come to your blog?”
and try and place ads there. Another primary position you’ll see on the heat map
there is on the left hand side towards the top, that seems to be a really good
position. One of the things I see bloggers doing is putting skyscraper AdSense
down the right hand side, the big long ads, down the right hand side. If you look
on that, is probably one of the worse place you can put it. I was really surprised
when I saw that. I thought that the right hand side would be good because people
go to there for the scroll bar but definitely, on the left hand side of the page that
tends to be better than others.


Six Figure Blogging

Use that heat map and actually experiment with it. The thing that AdSense say in
their optimization page is that this doesn’t work on every blog. You’ve got to
experiment quite a bit. I find different things happen on different blogs for me. I
don’t understand why. It is about experimenting and moving things around.

So where do people look? Primarily ads do better with they are ‘above the fold’ so
in the top half of your screen. You will see down there, just above the page footer
on that diagram that those ads do pretty well. Then at the end of articles is often a
good spot because as people get to the end of your article and a certain
percentage will, a lot of people don’t get to the end of articles on web but that is
often a good spot because as people get to the end of an article, they are looking
for something else to do so that is a good spot to put ads down at the bottom.
Generally above the fold is better. You can try between the end of a post and
before comments on a blog. I find that that is a really great position on a lot of my
blogs.

Importance of White Space

Darren: Use white space so they don’t clutter your blog as much as I have on
that page I gave you before. Don’t clutter your blog with too many ads. On most
blogs, that won’t work. Those work pretty well on mind but if you put white space
around an ad, that is a visual queue that draws people’s eye to the ad.

There has been some studies on that. There is a guy who does eye tracking. He
had a blog on it a while ago which isn’t live anymore but he use to write about
white spaces and how white spaces around ads are brilliant.

Be Careful with Placement

Similarly, you can use visual queues or pictures. You need to be very careful when
using pictures around AdSense because the AdSense people don’t like it. They
don’t want you do, in an unfair way, draw people’s eyes to blog ads.

Andy: So no blinking arrows?!


Six Figure Blogging

Darren: No blinking arrows, no things that say ‘click here’ or anything like that.
I’ve experimented with having pictures around my ads or just above them or just
below them, not trying to make them look like they are the ads but it does draw
people’s eyes to that section of the page. Just think about what else have I got
around in that particular ad and will it detract or add to the ad?

Andy: Something with the heat map work too is if folks are doing blogs that are
making money from your blog as well as because of your blog, you’re going to
have to make some decisions. If you got a newsletter, is your blog about guiding
people towards your newsletter or is it about getting them to click on an ad? It is
not a pure ‘either or’ but you have to start thinking about what is the hierarchy.
Do you want to guide people to come into your own business funnel, your sales
funnel, or do you want them to click on an ad so you can get the income?

Darren: That is right. I guess the other thing I would say is that even if it is
purely about making from your blog, there are other things that might be better
to put in those prime positions. For instance, on my digital camera one, if you
look on the top left hand corner there, I do have a Google ad but underneath that,
I’ve got some affiliate programs which actually can pay twenty dollars if someone
signs up for that. They do pretty well. I am putting there, in the prime position as
much AdSense ads. So depending in what you are trying to sell and what your
goals are, you might want to put something other than AdSense ads in the heat
map’s position.

Do Ads Detract from Sales Copy?

Audri: Can I make a comment on this?

Darren: Sure.

Audri: This is Audri Landford. We have recently signed up for AdSense and have
done an enormous amount of research on this and we discovered that even
though people feel as if having AdSense would detract from people going into
their sales funnels, etc, we’ve discovered that in fact that very rarely ever

Six Figure Blogging

happens. It is definitely worth testing. Even on sales pages, we’ve found that it
doesn’t decrease sales or it decreases it less than the amount that you made from
AdSense. It is definitely something to test.

Darren: That is so true. The criticism that I hear from a lot of people is, “It is
going to ruin my page.” I actually find that it enhances it. Some of the ads that
you get served are actually really useful ads and I think that can look quite classy
if you design them all as well. I would completely go with what you are saying
Audri.

The next point there I got is consider putting more than one ad unit per page.
AdSense will allow you to put up to three AdSense text ad units on any page.
You’ll find some pages around the web have more than that and a lot of them
have permission to do so with AdSense. Without permission, don’t put more than
three. Consider putting more than one. You might find that when you go for more
than one, you want to think about the ordering of your ads.

I’ve talked about page source code before. You’ll find that whatever ad appears
first in that page code, not what looks first on your site, but what is first in the
page code, that will be the highest paying ads. That is where Google puts the best
ads. If for instance, high is in your left hand side bar down in the bottom, that is
not the best place for an ad but it will be your best paying ads get served to. You
want to be thinking about what would be the impact if we are putting in three ads
on the page if the first one in the source code is actually not in a good position, it
is the last one. It may be a bit technical but it is worth considering the ordering of
things in your source code there.

Don’t put ads in frames. I don’t think many people use frames anymore. It screws
around with the whole system a fair bit. Put your ads on every page. Like Audrey
just said, I put ads on every page in my site that I possible can. Even the ones
where I am trying to sell products myself. I find that it doesn’t really detract too
much from doing that.


Six Figure Blogging

Putting Ads on Every Page

Darren: Some bloggers, they just think, “I’ll just put them on the main page.” If
your blog is anything like mine, it is actually individual pages that get more traffic
than your main page. Put them everywhere, not everywhere but on every page
that you possibly can on your blog.

What are Chitika eMiniMalls?
Participant: I have a question.

Darren: Sure.

Dave: This is Dave and this is my first time that I’ve actually listened to it live
and participated so I am glad to be here. I have a question on an example on the
Digital Photography Blog. I am sorry to ask this but I can’t help. This really isn’t
about AdSense but there is an ad that I see on this page that when I mouse over
it, it says that it’s eMiniMalls which is right above your AdSense ad. This is the
first time I’ve seen this ad format. I was truly confused when I first looked at the
page because what the ad is showing is a different camera than what the page is
about.

Darren: That’s right.

Dave: At first, I was trying to figure out, because the page is largely white, what
the page was talking about because I wasn’t reading it, I was listening to you. I
was wondering if anybody else has mentioned this.

Darren: Yes, with those ones are a beta test from another organization that I am
trying at the moment. I am not completely happy with them. The main problem I
see with them is that they don’t come up with completely relevant ads all the
time. That is what you put your finger on there is that it is about a different
camera that is being served. I’ve written about that on that particular page but it
is in bata test. I think they’ll improve their relevancy but that is one of the things
you want to consider is does the ads actually add to or take away from the page.

Six Figure Blogging

Unfortunately that system, it is performing really well in some sense but they got
a bit of work to do on their relevancy. That is the consideration you want to take
into account. The same can happen with AdSense. You can get quite irrelevant
ads. If you get that, it may be that you don’t want to go with the system.

Dave: Well what blows my mind when I look at this site is I know you make good
money on this and I’m really impressed with the degree to which you try things
on a bread and butter site. One of the problems I’ve had is that I’ve made money
in the past on some of my sites and I was deathly afraid of changing it at times. I
just like your relentlessness.

Keeping a Change Log
Darren: It is risky. One of the tips I was going to come with later is really be
careful when you make changes to your site and to make a record of every change
that you make. I have a change log, I call it. It is just a document that every time I
make a change, if I try something new, I record it so later on, two weeks later
when I go back over my AdSense earnings I can go, “Gee everything fell apart two
weeks ago today. What did I do that day?” I can go back and I can identify what
mistake I made and learn something from that. In the same way, if I do
something and suddenly my AdSense goes up, but I haven’t recorded that, I
haven’t learnt a lesson.

So do try new things but track and record what you learned. It is so important. I
really would encourage people to back up their template before making any
changes also. If you make a change of the template of your site and you can’t get
back to it if you can’t remember what it use to be like. It is really important, if you
are going to be trying new things is to work on that stuff.

Designing Ads
Darren: I think we’ll keep moving forward because we still got a bit of content to
cover in the last few minutes. We’ll move on to designing ads. The ultimately
thing you can do with the design of your ads and Google allows you when you are

Six Figure Blogging

trying to get codes for your ads and try to make changes to the colors and to the
size and thing, probably the ultimate thing you can do in designing your ad is to
blend them into your content.

Blending Ads Into Content

Darren: You’ll see there on that page that, I don’t have any borders to my ads. I
like the borders white. I make the background white. I make the links of those
ads the same colors as link on the rest of my site. I make the text the same colors
as the rest of my site. The little URLs, at the bottom there, I try and make them as
wide as the AdSense will allow me to make them so that they don’t distract too
much.

In the blending approach, a lot of people use this quite effectively. Most people
believe that it’s the best way of designing ads on your site. Some people don’t.
Some people go the opposite and put yellow ads with red links. Is that the best
performing ad? It may be for their site but I would much rather have something
that blends into my site both from esthetics point of view but I also find it most
effective.

Google says in their optimization page that rectangles work best. The one you see
there that is to the left of the camera is a rectangle ad. They tend to pay better for
some reason. The skyscrapers sometimes do well. Again, it’s about finding what
works best on your particular blog.

Rotating Colors

You can rotate the colors of your ad. I don’t have time to go into the technicality
of that but there is a tutorial in Google. Google has help pages on that. The beauty
of rotating the colors of your ads is that if you’ve got a lot of regular reader that
come into your site, this helps to combat that blindness that they get from ads.

It is like Engadget, which we looked at last week. They rotate the colors on their
ads because they have an incredible high loyal readership. So they are trying to

Six Figure Blogging

grab the attention of their readers every day. So they constantly are changing how
their ads work. I think you can have up to four different types of designs on those
particular ads.

Don’t Crowd Content

Darren: Don’t crowd out your content. I’ve seen a few blogs over the last few
weeks that you come to their page and there is absolutely no content above the
fold at all. I don’t know how many people would have found those blogs. You’ve
got to make some decisions about how you want your blog to look like as well and
how useful you want it to be for your people.

Varying Different Ad Unit Types

Darren: The other thing I would say about design is you’ll see on that example
page at the top of the left hand menu there, I have four or five different little link
ads by Google. They are a bit different to the other types of ads. They are called
‘ad link unit’. If you were to click on it, don’t click on all my ads because I’ll get in
trouble with Google, but if you were to click on those ads it would take you to
another page which is just ads. That is a new format that Google has brought in
the last few months which I find, in that position, it works quite well. So
experiment with that type of thing.

AdSense Search Bar

Darren: On the other site on the right hand side, you’ll see a little Google search
bar. Again that is an AdSense product. If you do a search for a particular product
there, it will perform like a normal search bar but it would also serve a few ads at
the top of it. It is another way of earning a little bit of an income. I personally
don’t find that that works very well on my site. Maybe I’ve got it in the wrong
position. Maybe my people who read my site don’t use search, but they don’t
work too well for me.


Six Figure Blogging

Experimenting with Outbound Links

Darren: We’ll keep plowing on. I’ve got some miscellaneous tips there. One
thing to consider is how many outbound links you’ve got on your site. If you’ve
got a site that has got hundreds and hundreds of other options for people to click
on to leave your site that will have an impact upon how many people click your
ads. I’ve see a few bloggers experiment with pages which has a very few out
bounds links on them. It just has contents and ads. If you want to leave the site,
you have to click on an ad; there is no other option. They say that that works
quite well. I don’t completely subscribe to that because I want to provide my
readers with useful content on other sites as well. For me it is not quite as
important but it is something to consider as you think about your site.

First come first serve, I think I mentioned before in your page source code. The
ad that appears first in the source code will be the highest paying ad. If it happens
that the first one is at the bottom, you’ll know what to do about that.

Using Channels to Track Effectiveness

Darren: Track your successes and some failures. AdSense allows you to put
channels on your blog. Each ad on my blog, each ad that you see on my example
page there, I’ve assigned a different channel. So the one in the content is one
channel. The one on the right hand side bar, under the search bar is the second
channel. I’ve got another one a bit lower on the page is the third channel. I can
track which ad is performing best by that. I know which ones are being paid
more. I know which ones are being click on more. When I make changes to them
in the positions, I can track which ones are doing best. In conjunction with my
change log, I can track which ads are doing well and which ones aren’t.

Other Tips

Darren: The quantity of content on a page seems to impact on how well ads go
as well, so the quantities of content on a blog seem to increase that. So establish


Six Figure Blogging

blogs that have thousands and thousands pages of ads. Some people believe that
those blogs actually do better. They get a high click rate better than others. This is
a guess but that is what some people say. The older your blog is and the bigger
and the more authoritative your site gets, you’ll certainly see some improvements
over time.

I’ve mentioned there some AdSense services, the other one, you’ve got the adlinks
and the search one. The other one AdSense now have is RSS ads. Again, I haven’t’
found them really work too effectively but it is something you might want to
experiment with. There is plenty of help in the Google help on how to set up
those.

Don’t Get Obsessed!
Darren: One of the big advices that I would give you is just don’t become
obsessed with AdSense. I’ve seen so many bloggers who puts so much time and
energy into designing their AdSense ads that they forget to write content for their
blog and they forget to design well and they forget some of the other basics of
blogging. It is exciting AdSense and it is fun but you need to feed your blog with
content and develop readers and not become obsessed by AdSense. I know you’ll
probably spend a lot of time this week, especially after this call, is tweaking but
don’t forget the rest of it.

Fieldwork
Andy: Yes, we can finish this stuff off for next week. Let’s review the field work
and we’ll open up the call for a final call for questions. The field work for this
week is to get your ads on your blog as well as continuing to do all of your niche
tracking stuff and anything else people should be watching out for Darren?

Darren: The best way to learn about AdSense is to do it and if you’ve got any
questions during the week, shoot me an email and I’ll either directly answer your
question or point you to an article that I’ve written about it or someone else has
written about it.

Six Figure Blogging

Just do it and have fun with it. It is good fun. I would look at it like the stock
market. I love waking up in the morning and seeing how much I earned while I
slept last night. It is fantastic.

More on Chitika eMiniMalls

Andy: So last minute questions.

Participant: Yes, that cute little ad that you’ve got on the top where it’s got a
little camera and then it’s got Kodak description of best deals, does that do well
because that looks really good?

Darren: Yes, if you go to Problogger.net, I’ve written a review on that product in
the last few days. They are called eMiniMalls. We were talking about them before.
I find that they do well in terms of the click value in them is very high. It is much
higher than my Google ads but I get less percentage of people clicking on them.
So the click through rate isn’t as high but the click they use is high. I’ve reviewed
that on Problogger and I recommend you have a read on that before you go and
sign up for it because it won’t suit every blog. It will suit blogs that have products
related to them. If you are going to use them in conjunction with AdSense, you
need to change the code on it. You can’t have them as contextual ads. AdSense
will not allow you to have other contextual advertising systems on the page and
that one is one. There are some ways around that in Google and I do them in a
certain way. I’ve outlined how to do that on Problogger.

Participant: Great, thanks.

Darren: No problem.

Google Sitemaps

Participant: What about Google Sitemaps to increase your hits?

Darren: I haven’t experimented with Sitemaps yet but I know a number of
people who are. Site maps help Google’s little robot to index your site to get

Six Figure Blogging

around your site and I’m not really sure, I haven’t done any experimenting with
that to this point. Have you tried them Andy?

Andy: I have installed the plugin for WordPress on my two blogs and I haven’t
run my stats yet this month to see if it is increasing but I know that it is out there.
I also know it is out there. I think that the technology is in beta testing in Google
site as well.

Copyright, Image Use and Quoting Content
Participant: For product based blogs, what is the best approach for using
images without doing something wrong?

Darren: In terms of copyright?

Participant: Yes, exactly.

Darren: I generally only use images that are official images from the official
sites. I get a lot of press releases sent to me and they often have images in them. If
I use an image from another site, I usually ask for permission first and I would
always give a link back to the site that the image came from. I have standing
agreements with a lot of the other sites now where I say, “You can use my image if
you let me use yours.”

Participant: So from the manufacturer, it’s ok to go ahead and use those
images?

Darren: Absolutely because you are using their products.

Participant: Thank you.

Another Participant: Darren on that topic, what about the actual reviews that
you do. Is it ok to just post them exactly?

Darren: My policy on that and I think most people would agree is a short
excerpt from another person’s work is OK if you give a link back to that person. I

Six Figure Blogging

am dead against copying a whole article. I am set against copying more than a
paragraph at a time unless you have the permission. You need to give a link back.
Always give a link back to your source. If someone says, “Please don’t use my
content like that.” I will always remove it. I find that most people, I get emails
from other sites all day everyday from people saying, “Please use my content that
way.” Most people are finding that. I love it when people do it to me. If people
have a problem with it, just don’t do it. Don’t get into that.

Can I just say one more tip Andy because we haven’t got on to it but we’ll covered
it next week in the ‘do nots’. Have a read on the list of ‘do nots’ because it is really
important that you get your head around some of those things like you never click
on your own ads. It is just 101, basic stuff. You’ll get into trouble from Google.
They track who clicks on the ads so don’t click on your own ads and don’t click on
anyone else’s ads too much to help them out. Occasionally if you accidentally do
it, that is cool but it is really important or you’ll get booted out of the system
pretty quick.

Andy: Because Google knows all and they will come and get you!

Darren: Yes they will.

Andy: Alright, are you ready to wind it up Darren?

Darren: I am ready.

Andy: Alright. I know that you have been talking like crazy. So everybody, thank
you for joining us tonight and we’ll talk to you next week. I’ll get the field work
posted up there and have a fantastic week and everybody, thank you so much.


Six Figure Blogging

Six Figure Blogging Class 3
Worksheets
Sign Up for Google AdSense
Go Google AdSense and signup for an account. You should already have a blog set
up, along with a few postings as they will ask you for your blog or website
address. You only need to apply for one AdSense account even if you have
multiple blogs.

□ I have signed up for my Google AdSense account and have my username and
password recorded in a reliable place.

Understanding AdSense Requirements
To benefit from AdSense, it’s important that you have a clear understanding of
their requirements. Please read their guidelines carefully. If you have any
questions about implementing AdSense on your blog, email customer support
and find out what to do. It is important that you adhere to their policies otherwise
you may risk losing access to AdSense altogether.

□ I have read and understand the AdSense use requirements.

Add AdSense to Your Blogs
Add AdSense adds to your blog by following the simple instructions located at
Google AdSense and embedding the appropriate HTML code.

□ I have added AdSense to my blogs(s).

Start a Blog Change Log
A change log is a method for recording the changes that you make on your blog.
You should keep a detailed diary of the changes that you make, including the date
and time you made the change and what change youmade. Then you can measure


Six Figure Blogging

your blog statistics during these times and record them as well. This log will help
you track what works and what doesn’t.

□ I have started a blog change log.


Six Figure Blogging

AdSense / Blog Compatibility Test
Analyze your blog(s) to see if they are compatible with AdSense. Certain
types of sites are more compatible for use with AdSense than others. Here
are some criteria to consider:

Sites where users are looking for information on specific products
or services that interest them - product, business opportunity, looking to
buy tickets, etc.

Sites where users are in a buying mood

Sites where users are researching ways to spend money

Sites with a high percentage of fresh unique visitors (regular
visitors tend to ignore ads)

Sites where users show an interest to ads, and not just the site’s
offerings

Evaluation Blog 1: Blog 2: Blog 3:
Criteria

Do visitors come to
my blog to look for
information and/or
specific products or
services?

Does my blog attract
readers who are in a
buying mood?

Does my blog attract
a regular and steady
stream of new
readers?

© 2005 Andy Wibbels and Darren Rowse. All Rights Reserved. 105
http://www.sixfigureblogging.com/
v 1.0

Six Figure Blogging

Is my blog oriented
towards political,
religious,
celebrity/gossip, or
sports?
While it is not
impossible to make
money using AdSense
on these types of
blogs, they may be
unsuitable unless you
are able to draw a lot
of traffic.

Does my blog contain You cannot use AdSense with these types of blogs.
adult content, explicit
language or oriented
towards gambling?

content for which I
don’t have copyright
content?

contextual ad systems
which would compete
with AdSense?

© 2005 Andy Wibbels and Darren Rowse. All Rights Reserved. 106
http://www.sixfigureblogging.com/
v 1.0

6 figure blogging 3

Recomendados

Recomendados

Mais conteúdo relacionado

Mais procurados

Mais procurados (20)

Destaque

Destaque (6)

Semelhante a 6 figure blogging 3

Semelhante a 6 figure blogging 3 (20)

6 figure blogging 3