Where should I place Google ads on my pages? The best location for Google ads varies from page to page, depending on content. Here are a few questions to ask yourself when considering where to position your ads:

• What is the user trying to accomplish by visiting my site?
• What do they do when viewing a particular page?
• Where is their attention likely to be focused?
• How can I integrate ads into this area without getting in the users’ way?
• How can I keep the page looking clean, uncluttered and inviting?

Certain locations tend to be more successful than others. This "heat map" illustrates the ideal placing on a sample page layout. The colors fade from dark orange (strongest performance) to light yellow (weakest performance). All other things being equal, ads located above the fold tend to perform better than those below the fold. Ads placed near rich content and navigational aids usually do well because users are focused on those areas of a page.

While this heat map is useful as a positioning guideline, we strongly recommend putting your users first when deciding on ad location. Think about their behavior on different pages, and what will be most useful and visible to them. You’ll find that the most optimal ad position isn’t always what you expect on certain pages.

For example, on pages where users are typically focused on reading an article, ads placed directly below the end of the editorial content tend to perform very well. It’s almost as if users finish reading and ask themselves, “What can I do next?” Precisely targeted ads can answer that question for them.

Tip for forum webmasters and bloggers: Check out our specific tips on ad placement for forum sites and blogs.

Adsense Blog Design for High Clickthrough time Posted September 20, 2007

Adsense blogs are becoming more and more popular with successful Adsense publishers, using blogs to inform consumers on niche products and reviews. Blogs are among the most successful ways to get started quickly in Adsense. Many people enjoy reading blogs on a daily basis when they are updated regularly. People read blogs to keep up to date with their interests, and to get information on the best products to buy. Links back to your blog should start appearing in Google within hours of posting, helping to boost your site popularity and page rank. While news reports on blogs are not always first choice – I prefer the BBC – product reviews from blogs are gaining credibility. While it is true that some bloggers are being paid to write reviews of a product, blog writers write honestly to reflect their experiences of products and services.

This can be done by having informative or amusing content and good blog layout and design. You may develop your blog’s content or you can also acquire the services of a web content writer to provide you with the blog articles.

When I talk about blogs I should really point our that experience has proved the best bet for any Adsense publisher to make high Adsense earnings is to host your blog on your own domain, through a paid web host. The blog’s layout and design plays a big role and you have much more control over the blog if you have access to the full control panel. With a free blog host, you will not have total control and your blog could be closed down without notice if your blog content breaks any of the company rules.

My preference is to use a Wordpress blog using the free wordpress software supplied by the web hosting company. It takes just moments to set up a new blog in this way.

Here are a few tips to make your blog stand out from the millions of blogs out there that have standard designs.

• Customize the banner – the banner usually has the most generic designs that are common to the blogs from a blogging company or service. You can personalize this banner by having a graphic with the dimensions of the banner. You can also edit the graphic so that it will also include the title of your blog.

• Personalizing photos – of course, most of the photos that you will be posting will be your own. However, if you don’t customize the photos before posting them, you may miss maximizing the enhancing benefits graphics can add to the page. Adding photo borders can help the photo stand out from the page.

It can also add to the design of your blog. You can choose a standard border or you can also create your own border which can be associated with your blog’s templates.

• Add a favicon – sites with icons on the address bar, before the URL, look professional, and they are easy to do using photo or graphic editing software.

• Check out blog templates and layouts, if you use a Wordpress blog these are known as themes and there are thousands of free designs available online.

There are sites that offer free blog templates, layouts, backgrounds, textures and skins. You can make use of these so your blog will not look generic like most of the blogs hosted by the service provider.

• Include RSS feeds – this is a cool way to update people with newsreaders about your blog headlines. You can find out how to get an RSS feed on the internet.

• Audio makes your blog more personal – Not only does audio personalise your blog, it encourages readers to visit again. You can try having streaming radio stations, mp3 file or playlists loading with your blog.

• Advertisements – if you have Signed up for Google Adsense, which I am sure you would like to do, make sure that the ads are conveniently placed so that they will not hinder your readers’ access to the information on your blog.

Try using these tips and you can definitely increase and retain traffic on your blog.

Things You Probably Don’t Know About Google AdSense

• “AdSense Earning = Impression-count x Click-though-rate x Cost-per-click x smart-pricing-factor. Viewing your on website will not get you banned. Just make sure you don’t click on the ads.
• However, repeatedly reload your page to jack up page impressions can get you banned. Click-through-rate (CTR) is ratio of clicks per impressions. It can range from 0.1% to 30%, but most commonly around 1% to 10%.” [100 Google Adsense Tips]
• “First impressions count: make sure the ad unit with the highest CTR is the first ad unit in the HTML code of your page. Keep in mind that the first ad unit in the source code is not always the first ad unit that your users will see when the page finishes loading in their browser.” [Inside AdSense: First impressions count]
• “Ads placed near rich content and navigational aids usually do well because users are focused on those areas of a page. on pages where users are typically focused on reading an article, ads placed directly below the end of the editorial content tend to perform very well.” [Where should I place Google ads on my pages?]
• “Format is important for multiple ad units, display your ad units where repeat users will notice them, place a leaderboard immediately after the last post.” [Six AdSense optimization tips for forums]
• “The middle, above the fold location performs the best. Best performing ad format is the large rectangle, 336×280. So the wider ad formats are doing better than the other ones and the reason is that they actually take up fewer lines. And so with every additional line, you have a chance of losing that interested user.
• So the wider formats do best so specifically, the top three formats are the 336×280 that you see on the page; the 300×250 medium rectangle; and then the 160×600 wide skyscraper.
• We have a feature in the AdSense account where you are able to multi-select different color palettes that blend with your site to add some variety and freshness to the ads. And that also will help decrease ad blindness.” [Google AdSense Optimization Webinar]
• “The second most active placement in terms of click-throughs tends to be the right-hand rail or margin”. “Skyscrapers” and vertical banners do well when placed next to the content in the main body. Square and rectangle ads placed within the center column also do well, provided they are placed in context to the content. Ads placed below the fold tend to perform least well, although that isn’t a hard-and-fast rule.” [Yahoo! Publisher Network: Location, location, location…]
• “I found the most success in placing the Google Adsense medium rectangle either right in the middle of the page or in a middle right column as long as it has content above and below the ad unit. Its is fine to use Adsense Ads on a forum however expect a very low CTR.” [Google Adsense Tips for Webmasters]
• “Post Adsense ads on text rich pages, avoid titles like the approved ‘Sponsored Links’ and ‘Advertisements’, place Ads above the fold, Match the colors of your ads with the colour scheme of your site, Blend ads with your page – remove the borders by having a similar color as your background.” [How to Increase Google Adsense CTR]
• “To remove Public Service Ads (PSA) in Google Adsense develop sufficient good content with keywords, Ensure that META tags like ‘title’ & ‘description’ and the headings tags like h1, h2 etc. have content which matches the rest of your site.” [How to Remove Public Service Ads (PSA) in Google Adsense]
• “You can now run AdSense on the same page as other contextual ad programs.” (January 2007) [It’s official! You can now run AdSense on the same page as other contextual ad programs]
• “Google AdSense Policy: We ask that publishers not line up images and ads in a way that suggests a relationship between the images and the ads.” [Inside AdSense: Ad and image placement: a policy clarification]
• “Section targeting uses certain html tweaks to force the google adsense bot to focus on specific content. Section targeting is the latest and most effective addition to AdSense”. [Display Relevant Adsense Ads Using Section Targeting]
• “Over the weekend, I decided to change the number of ads units on my blog based upon where the traffic is coming from. I have a small PHP function that checks to see if the referrer is a search engine, and if it is, I display and additional 2 ad units. My Adsense revenue increasing by 284% on Saturday, Sunday and Monday!” [Positive Adsense Experiment]
• “Never click your own adsense ads or get them clicked for whatever reason. Never change the Adsense code. Do not run competitive contextual text ad (2006) or search services on the same site. Do not mask ad elements. Avoid excessive advertising and keyword stuffing.” [ 15 Common Mistakes that Violate Google Adsense TOS ]
• “Putting ads on your site won’t hurt your traffic. There are 6 sorts of bloggers’ income: Google Adsense, Donations (e.g. PayPal), Text Link Ads (sold for a fixed amount per month), Chitika eMiniMalls ads (pay per click), affiliate programs like Amazon, Advertising sold to individual advertisers (three-month campaigns or longer) [How to Make Money From Your Blog – a VERY extensive article]
• “A number of factors come into play when AdSense tries to determine what the page is about: The URL of the page, the page title, the anchor text of links, the keywords that appear most frequently within the page, search engine queries that lead to the page or to another page that links to the page”. [How to Get Relevant AdSense Ads (Especially For Bloggers)]
• “Ask yourself if you are willing to compromise your blog’s layout and over-all feel by adding ads in them. Look at your traffic and see if it’s enough to draw the crowd. Make good use of the Ad Channels. Give it time.” [Tips on Blog Adsensification]
• “You can put upto 3 AdSense units on a page. For short articles, CTR is best when ads are placed just above the content. For long articles, CTR improves if ads are placed somewhere in middle of the content. Go Wide – the large rectangle 336×280 is the best paying adsense format.” [Adsense Tips, Layout Optimization Tricks for HigherCTR]
• “Google AdSense folks have unveiled another useful feature for Adsense publishers – Section Targeting. The concept is simple but the advantages and possibilities are endless.” [Display relevant Ads in Blogs: Just suggest Google]

Google AdSense: Google’s Information and Tools

• Google AdSense FAQ the Adsense support for official guidelines.
• Google AdSense Help Page provides a very detailed FAQ about Google AdSense. Learn optimization essentials, how to design successful ads, savvy ad placement and how to use features wisely.
• Google Adsense Program Policies.
• Google AdSense Ad Formats an overview.
• Google AdSense Success Stories provided by Google itself. Many interesting insights in concrete decisions, which helped to increase Google AdSense revenues.
• Google AdWords: Keyword-Tool The Keyword Tool generates potential keywords for your ad campaign and reports their Google statistics, including search performance and seasonal trends. Start your search by entering your own keyword phrases or a specific URL. You can then add new keywords to the green box at the right.

Google AdSense Tools, Services

• Getting The Most Out Of Adsense: Top 10 Adsense Tools Contextual Ads Preview/Comparison Tool (for Google Adsense, Yahoo YPN, Chitika eMiniMalls), AdSense Calculator, AdSense SandBox, AdWords Bidding Tool/Traffic Estimator.
• List of AdSense Trackers 15 AdSense trackers.
• AdWords and AdSense tools directory 1200 tools and services for Google AdWords and Google AdSense.
• Google Adsense Tips and Tools Collection a compilation of common Google tips and tools to make more money from Google Adsense. Among them dozens of AdSense Tools.
• AdLogger » Open-Source Click Fraud Prevention and Click Monitoring intends to prevent click-fraud on your websites by tracking visitors clicks and limiting the number of clicks one may make. AdLogger tracks AdSense clicks in real time and compiles the data for you to review.
• AdsBlackList.com – Filter them and increase your revenue ! increase your adsense revenue up to 50%, increase the reputation of your website by NOT linking to Made for Adsense sites, save the quality of contextual advertising in global.
• Adsense Notifier displays your Adsense earnings on the Firefox statusbar.
• AdSense Tracking Software | The Cutting-Edge Ad Tracking Solution reveals the precise AdSense Ads that are being clicked most frequently on your site, the exact pages that your AdSense Ads are being clicked on, the actual Ad Formats that are bringing you the most clicks and more.
• Free Charts Generated from your Google Adsense Reports Charts include: total earnings, clickthru-rate, earnings per click, number of clicks, earnings per impression, number of page impressions, earnings by day of week and earnings by day of month. Most of charts include 7-day moving averages which allow you to spot trends within your results.
• Using The Competitive Ad Filter To Increase AdSense Earnings The purpose of the Competitive Ad Filter is to enable you to block specific ads, such as competitor’s ads, from appearing on your pages.

Google AdSense Tips, Resources

• Adsense Tips for Bloggers an extensive series of articles on how to make money from the Google Adsense Program. By Problogger Darren Rowse.
• 16 Adsense Optimized Wordpress Themes to Maximize your Contextual Ad Earnings Ads Minded, Typo XP Reloaded, Seo AdSense and Problogger Clean.
• 10 Best Wordpress Plugins for Google Adsense among them AdSense Deluxe, AdRotator Wordpress Plugin.
• Monetizing WordPress Plugins an overview of 8 AdSense-Plugins you can use with Wordpress blog engine. AdSense Widget Wordpress Sidebar, AdSense Paster, AdSense Injection and more.
• What are alternatives to Google AdSense? 46 alternatives, among them Yahoo Publisher Network. Over 70 more services can be found on Other Advertising Networks Besides Google AdSense
• AdSense Forum is one of the most popular AdSense-related forums in the Web with thousands of questions and answers.
• How To Market Your Blog in 2007 41 ways to kickstart your marketing efforts.
• AdSense Niches If you want to make money with Adsense, NicheGeek’s free AdSense niches will show you exactly what niche you need to be in if you want to make 20, 30, 50, 70 cents per click or even more.

StevePavlina.com was launched on Oct 1st, 2004. By April 2005 it was averaging $4.12/day in income. Now it brings in over $200/day $1000/day (updated as of 10/29/06). I didn’t spend a dime on marketing or promotion. In fact, I started this site with just $9 to register the domain name, and everything was bootstrapped from there. Would you like to know how I did it?

This article is seriously long (over 7300 words), but you’re sure to get your money’s worth (hehehe). I’ll even share some specifics. If you don’t have time to read it now, feel free to bookmark it or print it out for later.

Do you actually want to monetize your blog?

Some people have strong personal feelings with respect to making money from their blogs. If you think commercializing your blog is evil, immoral, unethical, uncool, lame, greedy, obnoxious, or anything along those lines, then don’t commercialize it.

If you have mixed feelings about monetizing your blog, then sort out those feelings first. If you think monetizing your site is wonderful, fine. If you think it’s evil, fine. But make up your mind before you seriously consider starting down this path. If you want to succeed, you must be congruent. Generating income from your blog is challenging enough — you don’t want to be dealing with self-sabotage at the same time. It should feel genuinely good to earn income from your blog — you should be driven by a healthy ambition to succeed. If your blog provides genuine value, you fully deserve to earn income from it. If, however, you find yourself full of doubts over whether this is the right path for you, you might find this article helpful: How Selfish Are You? It’s about balancing your needs with the needs of others.

If you do decide to generate income from your blog, then don’t be shy about it. If you’re going to put up ads, then really put up ads. Don’t just stick a puny little ad square in a remote corner somewhere. If you’re going to request donations, then really request donations. Don’t put up a barely visible “Donate” link and pray for the best. If you’re going to sell products, then really sell them. Create or acquire the best quality products you can, and give your visitors compelling reasons to buy. If you’re going to do this, then fully commit to it. Don’t take a half-assed approach. Either be full-assed or no-assed.

You can reasonably expect that when you begin commercializing a free site, some people will complain, depending on how you do it. I launched this site in October 2004, and I began putting Google Adsense ads on the site in February 2005. There were some complaints, but I expected that — it was really no big deal. Less than 1 in 5,000 visitors actually sent me negative feedback. Most people who sent feedback were surprisingly supportive. Most of the complaints died off within a few weeks, and the site began generating income almost immediately, although it was pretty low — a whopping $53 the first month. If you’d like to see some month-by-month specifics, I posted my 2005 Adsense revenue figures earlier this year. Adsense is still my single best source of revenue for this site, although it’s certainly not my only source. More on that later…

Can you make a decent income online?

Yes, absolutely. At the very least, a high five-figure annual income is certainly an attainable goal for an individual working full-time from home. I’m making a healthy income from StevePavlina.com, and the site is only 19 months old… barely a toddler. If you have a day job, it will take longer to generate a livable income, but it can still be done part-time if you’re willing to devote a lot of your spare time to it. I’ve always done it full-time.

Can most people do it?

No, they can’t. I hope it doesn’t shock you to see a personal development web site use the dreaded C-word. But I happen to agree with those who say that 99% of people who try to generate serious income from their blogs will fail. The tagline for this site is “Personal Development for Smart People.” And unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your outlook), smart people are a minority on this planet. So while most people can’t make a living this way, I would say that most smart people can. How do you know whether or not you qualify as smart? Here’s a good rule of thumb: If you have to ask the question, you aren’t.

If that last paragraph doesn’t flood my inbox with flames, I don’t know what will. OK, actually I do.

This kind of 99-1 ratio isn’t unique to blogging though. You’ll see it in any field with relatively low barriers to entry. What percentage of wannabe actors, musicians, or athletes ever make enough money from their passions to support themselves? It doesn’t take much effort to start a blog these days — almost anyone can do it. Talent counts for something, and the talent that matters in blogging is intelligence. But that just gets you in the door. You need to specifically apply your intelligence to one particular talent. And the best words I can think of to describe that particular talent are: web savvy.

If you are very web savvy, or if you can learn to become very web savvy, then you have an excellent shot of making enough money from your blog to cover all your living expenses… and then some. But if becoming truly web savvy is more than your gray matter can handle, then I’ll offer this advice: Don’t quit your day job.

Web savvy

What do I mean by web savvy? You don’t need to be a programmer, but you need a decent functional understanding of a variety of web technologies. What technologies are “key” will depend on the nature of your blog and your means of monetization. But generally speaking I’d list these elements as significant:

• blog publishing software
• HTML/CSS
• blog comments (and comment spam)
• RSS/syndication
• feed aggregators
• pings
• trackbacks
• full vs. partial feeds
• blog carnivals (for kick-starting your blog’s traffic)
• search engines
• search engine optimization (SEO)
• page rank
• social bookmarking
• tagging
• contextual advertising
• affiliate programs
• traffic statistics
• email

Optional: podcasting, instant messaging, PHP or other web scripting languages.

I’m sure I missed a few due to familiarity blindness. If scanning such a list makes your head spin, I wouldn’t recommend trying to make a full-time living from blogging just yet. Certainly you can still blog, but you’ll be at a serious disadvantage compared to someone who’s more web savvy, so don’t expect to achieve stellar results until you expand your knowledge base.

If you want to sell downloadable products such as ebooks, then you can add e-commerce, SSL, digital delivery, fraud prevention, and online databases to the list. Again, you don’t need to be a programmer; you just need a basic understanding of these technologies. Even if you hire someone else to handle the low-level implementation, it’s important to know what you’re getting into. You need to be able to trust your strategic decisions, and you won’t be able to do that if you’re a General who doesn’t know what a gun is.

A lack of understanding is a major cause of failure in the realm of online income generation. For example, if you’re clueless about search engine optimization (SEO), you’ll probably cripple your search engine rankings compared to someone who understands SEO well. But you can’t consider each technology in isolation. You need to understand the connections and trade-offs between them. Monetizing a blog is a balancing act. You may need to balance the needs of yourself, your visitors, search engines, those who link to you, social bookmarking sites, advertisers, affiliate programs, and others. Seemingly minor decisions like what to title a web page are significant. In coming up with the title of this article, I have to take all of these potential viewers into consideration. I want a title that is attractive to human visitors, drives reasonable search engine traffic, yields relevant contextual ads, fits the theme of the site, and encourages linking and social bookmarking. And most importantly I want each article to provide genuine value to my visitors. I do my best to create titles for my articles that balance these various needs. Often that means abandoning cutesy or clever titles in favor of direct and comprehensible ones. It’s little skills like these that help drive sustainable traffic growth month after month. Missing out on just this one skill is enough to cripple your traffic. And there are dozens of these types of skills that require web savvy to understand, respect, and apply.

This sort of knowledge is what separates the 1% from the 99%. Both groups may work just as hard, but the 1% is getting much better results for their efforts. It normally doesn’t take me more than 60 seconds to title an article, but a lot of experience goes into those 60 seconds. You really just have to learn these ideas once; after that you can apply them routinely.

Whenever you come across a significant web technology you don’t understand, look it up on Google or Wikipedia, and dive into it long enough to acquire a basic understanding of it. To make money from blogging it’s important to be something of a jack of all trades. Maybe you’ve heard the expression, “A jack of all trades is a master of none.” That may be true, but you don’t need to master any of these technologies — you just have to be good enough to use them. It’s the difference between being able to drive a car vs. becoming an auto mechanic. Strive to achieve functional knowledge, and then move on to something else. Even though I’m an experienced programmer, I don’t know how many web technologies actually work. I don’t really care. I can still use them to generate results. In the time it would take me to fully understand one new technology, I can achieve sufficient functional knowledge to apply several of them.

Thriving on change

Your greatest risk isn’t that you’ll make mistakes that will cost you. Your greatest risk is that you’ll miss opportunities. You need an entrepreneurial mindset, not an employee mindset. Don’t be too concerned with the risk of loss — be more concerned with the risk of missed gains. It’s what you don’t know and what you don’t do that will hurt you the worst. Blogging is cheap. Your expenses and financial risk should be minimal. Your real concern should be missing opportunities that would have made you money very easily. You need to develop antennae that can listen out for new opportunities. I highly recommend subscribing to Darren Rowse’s Problogger blog — Darren is great at uncovering new income-generating opportunities for bloggers.

The blogosphere changes rapidly, and change creates opportunity. It takes some brains to decipher these opportunities and to take advantage of them before they disappear. If you hesitate to capitalize on something new and exciting, you may simply miss out. Many opportunities are temporary. And every day you don’t implement them, you’re losing money you could have earned. And you’re also missing opportunities to build traffic, grow your audience, and benefit more people.

I used to get annoyed by the rapid rate of change of web technologies. It’s even more rapid than what I saw when I worked in the computer gaming industry. And the rate of change is accelerating. Almost every week now I learn about some fascinating new web service or idea that could potentially lead to big changes down the road. Making sense of them is a full-time job in itself. But I learned to love this insane pace. If I’m confused then everyone else is probably confused too. And people who only do this part-time will be very confused. If they aren’t confused, then they aren’t keeping up. So if I can be just a little bit faster and understand these technologies just a little bit sooner, then I can capitalize on some serious opportunities before the barriers to entry become too high. Even though confusion is uncomfortable, it’s really a good thing for a web entrepreneur. This is what creates the space for a college student to earn $1,000,000 online in just a few months with a clever idea. Remember this isn’t a zero-sum game. Don’t let someone else’s success make you feel diminished or jealous. Let it inspire you instead.

What’s your overall income-generation strategy?

I don’t want to insult anyone, but most people are utterly clueless when it comes to generating income from their blogs. They slap things together haphazardly with no rhyme or reason and hope to generate lots of money. While I’m a strong advocate of the ready-fire-aim approach, that strategy does require that you eventually aim. Ready-fire-fire-fire-fire will just create a mess.

Take a moment to articulate a basic income-generating strategy for your site. If you aren’t good at strategy, then just come up with a general philosophy for how you’re going to generate income. You don’t need a full business plan, just a description of how you plan to get from $0 per month to whatever your income goal is. An initial target goal I used when I first started this site was $3000 per month. It’s a somewhat arbitrary figure, but I knew if I could reach $3000 per month, I could certainly push it higher, and $3000 is enough income that it’s going to make a meaningful difference in my finances. I reached that level 15 months after launching the site (in December 2005). And since then it’s continued to increase nicely. Blogging income is actually quite easy to maintain. It’s a lot more secure than a regular job. No one can fire me, and if one source of income dries up, I can always add new ones. We’ll address multiple streams of income soon…

Are you going to generate income from advertising, affiliate commissions, product sales, donations, or something else? Maybe you want a combination of these things. However you decide to generate income, put your basic strategy down in writing. I took 15 minutes to create a half-page summary of my monetization strategy. I only update it about once a year and review it once a month. This isn’t difficult, but it helps me stay focused on where I’m headed. It also allows me to say no to opportunities that are inconsistent with my plan.

Refer to your monetization strategy (or philosophy) when you need to make design decisions for your web site. Although you may have multiple streams of income, decide which type of income will be your primary source, and design your site around that. Do you need to funnel people towards an order form, or will you place ads all over the site? Different monetization strategies suggest different design approaches. Think about what specific action you want your visitors to eventually take that will generate income for you, and design your site accordingly.

When devising your income strategy, feel free to cheat. Don’t re-invent the wheel. Copy someone else’s strategy that you’re convinced would work for you too. Do NOT copy anyone’s content or site layout (that’s copyright infringement), but take note of how they’re making money. I decided to monetize this site with advertising and affiliate income after researching how various successful bloggers generated income. Later I added donations as well. This is an effective combo.

Traffic, traffic, traffic

Assuming you feel qualified to take on the challenge of generating income from blogging (and I haven’t scared you away yet), the three most important things you need to monetize your blog are traffic, traffic, and traffic.

Just to throw out some figures, last month (April 2006), this site received over 1.1 million visitors and over 2.4 million page views. That’s almost triple what it was just six months ago.

Why is traffic so important? Because for most methods of online income generation, your income is a function of traffic. If you double your traffic, you’ll probably double your income (assuming your visitor demographics remain fairly consistent). You can screw almost everything else up, but if you can generate serious traffic, it’s really hard to fail. With sufficient traffic the realistic worst case is that you’ll eventually be able to monetize your web site via trial and error (as long as you keep those visitors coming).

When I first launched this blog, I knew that traffic building was going to be my biggest challenge. All of my plans hinged on my ability to build traffic. If I couldn’t build traffic, it was going to be very difficult to succeed. So I didn’t even try to monetize my site for the first several months. I just focused on traffic building. Even after 19 months, traffic building is still the most important part of my monetization plan. For my current traffic levels, I know I’m undermonetizing my site, but that’s OK. Right now it’s more important to me to keep growing the site, and I’m optimizing the income generation as I go along.

Traffic is the primary fuel of online income generation. More visitors means more ad clicks, more product sales, more affiliate sales, more donations, more consulting leads, and more of whatever else that generates income for you. And it also means you’re helping more and more people.

With respect to traffic, you should know that in many respects, the rich do get richer. High traffic leads to even more traffic-building opportunities that just aren’t accessible for low-traffic sites. On average at least 20 bloggers add new links to my site every day, my articles can easily surge to the top of social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, and I’m getting more frequent requests for radio interviews. Earlier this year I was featured in USA Today and in Self Magazine, which collectively have millions of readers. Journalists are finding me by doing Google searches on topics I’ve written about. These opportunities were not available to me when I was first starting out. Popular sites have a serious advantage. The more traffic you have, the more you can attract.

If you’re intelligent and web savvy, you should also be able to eventually build a high-traffic web site. And you’ll be able to leverage that traffic to build even more traffic.

How to build traffic

Now if traffic is so crucial, how do you build it up to significant levels if you’re starting from rock bottom?

I’ve already written a lengthy article on this topic, so I’ll refer you there: How to Build a High Traffic Web Site (or Blog). If you don’t have time to read it now, feel free to bookmark it or print it out for later. That article covers my general philosophy of traffic-building, which centers on creating content that provides genuine value to your visitors. No games or gimmicks.

There is one other important traffic-building tip I’ll provide here though.

Blog Carnivals. Take full advantage of blog carnivals when you’re just starting out (click the previous link and read the FAQ there to learn what carnivals are if you don’t already know). Periodically submit your best blog posts to the appropriate carnivals for your niche. Carnivals are easy ways to get links and traffic, and best of all, they’re free. Submitting only takes minutes if you use a multi-carnvival submission form. Do NOT spam the carnivals with irrelevant material — only submit to the carnivals that are a match for your content.

In my early traffic-building days, I’d do carnivals submissions once a week, and it helped a great deal in going from nothing to about 50,000 visitors per month. You still have to produce great content, but carnivals give you a free shot at marketing your unknown blog. Free marketing is precisely the kind of opportunity you don’t want to miss. Carnivals are like an open-mic night at a comedy club — they give amateurs a chance to show off their stuff. I still submit to certain carnivals every once in a while, but now my traffic is so high that relatively speaking, they don’t make much difference anymore. Just to increase my traffic by 1% in a month, I need 11,000 new visitors, and even the best carnivals don’t push that much traffic. But you can pick up dozens or even hundreds of new subscribers from each round of carnival submissions, so it’s a great place to start. Plus it’s very easy.

If your traffic isn’t growing month after month, does it mean you’re doing something wrong? Most likely you aren’t doing enough things right. Again, making mistakes is not the issue. Missing opportunities is.

Will putting ads on your site hurt your traffic?

Here’s a common fear I hear from people who are considering monetizing their web sites:

Putting ads on my site will cripple my traffic. The ads will drive people away, and they’ll never come back.

Well, in my experience this is absolutely, positively, and otherwise completely and totally… FALSE. It’s just not true. Guess what happened to my traffic when I put ads on my site. Nothing. Guess what happened to my traffic when I put up more ads and donation links. Nothing. I could detect no net effect on my traffic whatsoever. Traffic continued increasing at the same rate it did before there were ads on my site. In fact, it might have even helped me a little, since some bloggers actually linked to my site just to point out that they didn’t like my ad layout. I’ll leave it up to you to form your own theories about this. It’s probably because there’s so much advertising online already that even though some people will complain when a free site puts up ads, if they value the content, they’ll still come back, regardless of what they say publicly.

Most mature people understand it’s reasonable for a blogger to earn income from his/her work. I think I’m lucky in that my audience tends to be very mature — immature people generally aren’t interested in personal development. To create an article like this takes serious effort, not to mention the hard-earned experience that’s required to write it. This article alone took me over 15 hours of writing and editing. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to earn an income from such work. If you get no value from it, you don’t pay anything. What could be more fair than that? The more income this blog generates, the more I can put into it. For example, I used some of the income to buy podcasting equipment and added a podcast to the site. I’ve recorded 13 episodes so far. The podcasts are all ad-free. I’m also planning to add some additional services to this site in the years ahead. More income = better service.

At the time of this writing, my site is very ad-heavy. Some people point this out to me as if I’m not aware of it: “You know, Steve. Your web site seems to contain an awful lot of ads.” Of course I’m aware of it. I’m the one who put the ads there. There’s a reason I have this configuration of ads. They’re effective! People keep clicking on them. If they weren’t effective, I’d remove them right away and try something else.

I do avoid putting up ads that I personally find annoying when I see them on other sites, including pop-ups and interstitials (stuff that flies across your screen). Even though they’d make me more money, in my opinion they degrade the visitor experience too much.

I also provide two ad-free outlets, so if you really don’t like ads, you can actually read my content without ads. First, I provide a full-text RSS feed, and at least for now it’s ad-free. I do, however, include a donation request in the bottom of my feeds.

If you want to see some actual traffic data, take a look at the 2005 traffic growth chart. I first put ads on the site in February 2005, and although the chart doesn’t cover pre-February traffic growth, the growth rate was very similar before then. For an independent source, you can also look at my traffic chart on Alexa. You can select different Range options to go further back in time.

Multiple streams of income

You don’t need to put all your eggs in one basket. Think multiple streams of income. On this site I actually have six different streams of income. Can you count them all? Here’s a list:

1. Google Adsense ads (pay per click and pay per impression advertising)
2. Donations (via PayPal or snail mail — yes, some people do mail a check)
3. Text Link Ads (sold for a fixed amount per month)
4. Chitika eMiniMalls ads (pay per click)
5. Affiliate programs like Amazon and LinkShare (commission on products sold, mostly books)
6. Advertising sold to individual advertisers (three-month campaigns or longer)

Note: If you’re reading this article a while after its original publication date, then this list is likely to change. I frequently experiment with different streams.

Adsense is my biggest single source of income, but some of the others do pretty well too. Every stream generates more than $100/month.

My second biggest income stream is actually donations. My average donation is about $10, and I’ve received a number of $100 donations too. It only took me about an hour to set this up via PayPal. So even if your content is free like mine, give your visitors a means to voluntarily contribute if they wish. It’s win-win. I’m very grateful for the visitor support. It’s a nice form of feedback too, since I notice that certain articles produced a surge in donations — this tells me I’m hitting the mark and giving people genuine value.

These aren’t my only streams of income though. I’ve been earning income online since 1995. With my computer games business, I have direct sales, royalty income, some advertising income, affiliate income, and donations (from the free articles). And if you throw in my wife’s streams of income, it gets really ridiculous: advertising, direct book sales, book sales through distributors, web consulting, affiliate income, more Adsense income, and probably a few sources I forgot. Suffice it to say we receive a lot of paychecks. Some of them are small, but they add up. It’s also extremely low risk — if one source of income dries up, we just expand existing sources or create new ones. I encourage you to think of your blog as a potential outlet for multiple streams of income too.

Text Link AdsAutomated income

With the exception of #6, all of these income sources are fully automated. I don’t have to do anything to maintain them except deposit checks, and in most cases I don’t even have to do that because the money is automatically deposited to my bank account.

I love automated income. With this blog I currently have no sales, no employees, no products, no inventory, no credit card processing, no fraud, and no customers. And yet I’m still able to generate a reasonable (and growing) income.

Why get a regular job and trade your time for money when you can let technology do all that work for you? Imagine how it would feel to wake up each morning, go to your computer, and check how much money you made while you were sleeping. It’s a really nice situation to be in.

Blogging software and hardware

I use WordPress for this blog, and I highly recommend it. Wordpress has lots of features and a solid interface. And you can’t beat its price — free.

The rest of this site is custom-coded HTML, CSS, PHP, and MySQL. I’m a programmer, so I coded it all myself. I could have just as easily used an existing template, but I wanted a simple straightforward design for this site, and I wanted the look of the blog to match the rest of the site. Plus I use PHP and MySQL to do some creative things outside the blog, like the Million Dollar Experiment.

I don’t recommend using a hosted service like Blogger if you want to seriously monetize your blog. You don’t get enough control. If you don’t have your own URL, you’re tying yourself to a service you don’t own and building up someone else’s asset. You want to build page rank and links for your own URL, not someone else’s. Plus you want sufficient control over the layout and design of your site, so you can jump on any opportunities that require low-level changes. If you use a hosted blog, you’re at the mercy of the hosting service, and that puts the future of any income streams you create with them at risk. It’s a bit more work up front to self-host, but it’s less risky in the long run.

Web hosting is cheap, and there are plenty of good hosts to choose from. I recommend Pair.com for a starter hosting account. They aren’t the cheapest, but they’re very reliable and have decent support. I know many online businesses that host with them, and my wife refers most of her clients there.

As your traffic grows you may need to upgrade to a dedicated server or a virtual private server (VPS). This web site is hosted by ServInt. I’ve hosted this site with them since day one, and they’ve been a truly awesome host. What I like most about them is that they have a smooth upgrade path as my traffic keeps growing. I’ve gone through several upgrades with them already, and all have been seamless. The nice thing about having your own server is that you can put as many sites on it as the server can handle. I have several sites running on my server, and it doesn’t cost me any additional hosting fees to add another site.

Comments or no comments

When I began this blog, I started out with comments enabled. As traffic grew, so did the level of commenting. Some days there were more than 100 comments. I noticed I was spending more and more time managing comments, and I began to question whether it was worth the effort. It became clear that with continued traffic growth, I was going to have to change my approach or die in comment hell. The personal development topics I write about can easily generate lots of questions and discussion. Just imagine how many follow-up questions an article like this could generate. With tens of thousands of readers, it would be insane. Also, nuking comment spam was chewing up more and more of my time as well.

But after looking through my stats, I soon realized that only a tiny fraction of visitors ever look at comments at all, and an even smaller fraction ever post a comment (well below 1% of total visitors). That made my decision a lot easier, and in October 2005, I turned blog comments off. In retrospect that was one of my best decisions. I wish I had done it sooner.

If you’d like to read the full details of how I came to this decision, I’ve written about it previously: Blog Comments and More on Blog Comments.

Do you need comments to build traffic? Obviously not. Just like when I put up ads, I saw no decline in traffic when I turned off comments. In fact, I think it actually helped me. Although I turned off comments, I kept trackbacks enabled, so I started getting more trackbacks. If people wanted to publicly comment on something I’d written, they had to do so on their own blogs and post a link. So turning off comments didn’t kill the discussion — it just took it off site. The volume of trackbacks is far more reasonable, and I can easily keep up with it. I even pop onto other people’s sites and post comments now and then, but I don’t feel obligated to participate because the discussion isn’t on my own site.

I realize people have very strong feelings about blog comments and community building. Many people hold the opinion that a blog without comments just isn’t a blog. Personally I think that’s utter nonsense — the data just doesn’t support it. The vast majority of blog readers neither read nor post comments. Only a very tiny and very vocal group even care about comments. Some bloggers say that having comments helps build traffic, but I saw no evidence of that. In fact, I think it’s just the opposite. Managing comments detracts from writing new posts, and it’s far better to get a trackback and a link from someone else’s blog vs. a comment on your own blog. As long-term readers of my blog know, when faced with ambiguity, my preference is to try both alternatives and compare real results with real results. After doing that my conclusion is this: No comment. :)

Now if you want to support comments for non-traffic-building reasons like socializing or making new contacts, I say go for it. Just don’t assume that comments are necessary or even helpful in building traffic unless you directly test this assumption yourself.

Build a complete web site, not just a blog

Don’t limit your web site to just a blog. Feel free to build it out. Although most of my traffic goes straight to this blog, there’s a whole site built around it. For example, the home page of this site presents an overview of all the sections of the site, including the blog, article section, audio content, etc. A lot of people still don’t know what a blog is, so if your whole site is your blog, those people may be a little confused.

Testing and optimization

In the beginning you won’t know which potential streams of income will work best for you. So try everything that’s reasonable for you. If you learn about a new potential income stream, test it for a month or two, and measure the results for yourself. Feel free to cut streams that just aren’t working for you, and put more effort into optimizing those streams that show real promise.

A few months ago, I signed up for an account with Text Link Ads. It took about 20 minutes. They sell small text ads on my site, split the revenue with me 50-50, and deposit my earnings directly into my PayPal account. This month I’ll make around $600 from them, possibly more if they sell some new ads during the month. And it’s totally passive. If I never tried this, I’d miss out on this easy extra income.

For many months I’ve been tweaking the Adsense ads on this site. I tried different colors, sizes, layouts, etc. I continue to experiment now and then, but I have a hard time beating the current layout. It works very well for me. Adsense doesn’t allow publishers to reveal specific CPM and CTR data, but mine are definitely above par. They started out in the gutter though. You can easily double or triple your Adsense revenue by converting a poor layout into a better one. This is the main reason why during my first year of income, my traffic grew at 20% per month, but my income grew at 50% per month. Frequent testing and optimization had a major positive impact. Many of my tests failed, and some even made my income go down, but I’m glad I did all that testing. If I didn’t then my Adsense income would only be a fraction of what it is now.

It’s cheap to experiment. Every new advertising or affiliate service I’ve tried so far has been free to sign up. Often I can add a new income stream in less than an hour and then wait a month to see how it does. If it flops then at least I learned something. If it does well, wonderful. As a blogger who wants to generate income, you should always be experimenting with new income streams. If you haven’t tried anything new in six months, you’re almost certainly missing some golden opportunities. Every blog is different, so you need to test things for yourself to see what works for you. Failure is impossible here — you either succeed, or you learn something.

Pick your niche, but make sure it isn’t too small

Pick a niche for your blog where you have some significant expertise, but make sure it’s a big enough niche that you can build significant traffic. My wife runs a popular vegan web site. She does pretty well within her niche, but it’s just not a very big niche. On the other hand, my topic of personal development has much broader appeal. Potentially anyone can be interested in improving themselves, and I have the flexibility to write about topics like productivity, self-discipline, relationships, spirituality, health, and more. It’s all relevant to personal development.

Pick a niche that you’re passionate about. I’ve written 400+ articles so far, and I still feel like I’m just getting started. I’m not feeling burnt out at all. I chose to build a personal development site because I’m very knowledgeable, experienced, and passionate about this subject. I couldn’t imagine a better topic for me to write about.

Don’t pick a niche just because you think it will make you money. I see many bloggers try to do that, and it’s almost invariably a recipe for failure. Think about what you love most, and then find a way to make your topic appealing to a massive global audience. Consider what will provide genuine value to your visitors. It’s all about what you can give.

A broad enough topic creates more potential advertising partners. If I keep writing on the same subtopic over and over, I may exhaust the supply of advertisers and hit an income ceiling. But by writing on many different topics under the same umbrella, I widen the field of potential advertisers. And I expand the appeal of my site at the same time.

Make it clear to your visitors what your blog/site is about. Often I visit a blog with a clever title and tagline that reveals nothing about the site’s contents. In that case I generally assume it’s just a personal journal and move on. I love to be clever too, but I’ve found that clarity yields better results than cleverness.

Posting frequency and length

Bloggers have different opinions about the right posting length and frequency. Some bloggers say it’s best to write short (250-750 word) entries and post 20x per week or more. I’ve seen that strategy work for some, but I decided to do pretty much the opposite. I usually aim for about 3-5 posts per week, but my posts are much longer (typically 1000-2000 words, sometimes longer than 5000 words, including the monster you’re reading right now). That’s because rather than throwing out lots of short tips, I prefer to write more exhaustive, in-depth articles. I find that deeper articles are better at generating links and referrals and building traffic. It’s true that fewer people will take the time to read them, but those that do will enjoy some serious take-away value. I don’t believe in creating disposable content just to increase page views and ad impressions. If I’m not truly helping my visitors, I’m wasting their time.

Expenses

Blogging is dirt cheap.

I don’t spend money on advertising or promotion, so my marketing expenses are nil. Essentially my content is my marketing. If you like this article, you’ll probably find many more gems in the archives.

My only real expenses for this site are the hosting (I currently pay $149/month for the web server and bandwidth) and the domain name renewal ($9/year). Nearly all of the income this site generates is profit. This trickles down to my personal income, so of course it’s subject to income tax. But the actual business expenses are minimal.

The reason I pay so much for hosting is simply due to my traffic. If my traffic were much lower, I could run this site on a cheap shared hosting account. A database-driven blog can be a real resource hog at high traffic levels. The same goes for online forums. As traffic continues to increase, my hosting bill will go up too, but it will still be a tiny fraction of total income.

Perks

Depending on the nature of your blog, you may be able to enjoy some nice perks as your traffic grows. Almost every week I get free personal development books in the mail (for potential review on this site). Sometimes the author will send it directly; other times the publisher will ship me a batch of books. I also receive CDs, DVDs, and other personal development products. It’s hard to keep up sometimes (I have a queue of about two dozen books right now), but I am a voracious consumer of such products, so I do plow through them as fast as I can. When something strikes me as worthy of mention, I do indeed write up a review to share it with my visitors. I have very high standards though, so I review less than 10% of what I receive. I’ve read over 700 books in this field and listened to dozens of audio programs, so I’m pretty good at filtering out the fluff. As I’m sure you can imagine, there’s a great deal of self-help fluff out there.

My criteria for reviewing a product on this site is that it has to be original, compelling, and profound. If it doesn’t meet these criteria, I don’t review it, even if there’s a generous affiliate program. I’m not going to risk abusing my relationship with my visitors just to make a quick buck. Making money is not my main motivation for running this site. My main motivation is to grow and to help others grow, so that always comes first.

Your blog can also gain you access to certain events. A high-traffic blog becomes a potential media outlet, so you can actually think of yourself as a member of the press, which indeed you are. In a few days, my wife and I will be attending a three-day seminar via a free press pass. The regular price for these tickets is $500 per person. I’ll be posting a full review of the seminar next week. I’ve been to this particular seminar in 2004, so I already have high expectations for it. Dr. Wayne Dyer will be the keynote speaker.

I’m also using the popularity of this blog to set up interviews with people I’ve always wanted to learn more about. This is beautifully win-win because it creates value for me, my audience, and the person being interviewed. Recently I posted an exclusive interview with multi-millionaire Marc Allen as well as a review of his latest book, and I’m lining up other interviews as well. It isn’t hard to convince someone to do an interview in exchange for so much free exposure.

Motivation

I don’t think you’ll get very far if money is your #1 motivation for blogging. You have to be driven by something much deeper. Money is just frosting. It’s the cake underneath that matters. My cake is that I absolutely love personal development – not the phony “fast and easy” junk you see on infomercials, but real growth that makes us better human beings. That’s my passion. Pouring money on top of it just adds more fuel to the fire, but the fire is still there with or without the money.

What’s your passion? What would you blog about if you were already set for life?

Blogging lifestyle

Perhaps the best part of generating income from blogging is the freedom it brings. I work from home and set my own hours. I write whenever I’m inspired to write (which for me is quite often). Plus I get to spend my time doing what I love most — working on personal growth and helping others do the same. There’s nothing I’d rather do than this.

Perhaps it’s true that 99 out of 100 people can’t make a decent living from blogging yet. But maybe you’re among the 1 in 100 who can.

On the other hand, I can offer you a good alternative to recommend if you don’t have the technical skills to build a high-traffic, income-generating blog. Check out Build Your Own Successful Online Business for details.

ShareThis Discuss this post in the Steve Pavlina forum.

If you find this site helpful, please leave a donation for Steve so you can enjoy the spirit of giving too.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006 at 10:26 am and is filed under Business, Career & Work, Entrepreneurship, Passion, Personal Development, Success, Technology, Wealth & Money. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site. 171 Responses to “How to Make Money From Your Blog”

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[…] I first started We The Change 6 months ago, I read Steve Pavlina’s famous article “How to Make Money From Your Blog”. In it he discusses a variety of revenue sources including Google adsense, text link ads, asking […]

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Making Money with Your Content

Making Money with Your Content Building a website with great content and getting it to rank well is a great thing. If you’ve done the building and optimizing correctly, you’ll start seeing traffic increasing and page views starting to climb. As a reality check, let’s discuss timelines at this point. I realize the goal here is to make money with your website. Fair enough. But the basics of business still apply. It’s improbable that you’ll place your site live online and within weeks begin seeing revenue. Sure, you might see a dollar or two every few days, but what we’re after is more like $500+ per month – something real, something you can actually use. A lot of talk exists about whether Google has a “sandbox” – a place where new websites go to “age”, before being included in the general search results. Google denies it exists, and while I’m not going to say it DOES exist, I will say that about a year after one of my sites went live, there was suddenly a large increase in inbound search-related traffic from, guess who…Google. The idea of “aging” a website certainly makes sense. It gives the site a chance to establish itself, grow its content and get the bugs sorted out. It also allows Google to watch things for an extended period of time to judge if the site is real, or just some fly-by-night POS that won’t ever get updated or expanded. Google likes sites that receive frequent updates, so using this time (let’s call it one year, it varies, but that ballpark is realistic) to add more content and fine tune internal cross-linking is a very wise move. Having a website and making IT make money takes work and an investment of time. Be prepared to run through several months of you updating content and not generating much revenue. After you emerge from the “sandbox” or “aging period” or whatever it is, though, you will see traffic begin to increase, and along with it, revenue. More traffic, more revenue – it’s a simple equation. Which Ads To Use Well, I’ll focus mainly on suggestions here based on the Google Adsense platform, but the recommendations will work for any contextually based ad system and placement suggestions will also work well for image-based ads. I’ll start by suggesting you stick with contextual systems such as Google and Yahoo offer Webmasters. They are easy to set up, easy to use, offer decent tracking and stats and pay regularly. Google’s system now offers the option of allowing image ads to be shown in the assigned ad spaces, so if you have to have images in those spaces, there you go. If it sounds like I’m not a big fan of image-based ads, well, I’m not. After half a decade of using online ads to drive traffic to various websites, the simple fact is that text-based ads outperform image-based ads easily. Users know a picture is likely an ad, so they ignore it. Text, on the other hand, forces a user to read it if they want to interact with it. Placed carefully on your site, these text-based ads can generate handsome revenues for you. Larger ad formats generally perform better than smaller ad sizes. So, if you plan to place an ad across the web page, then choose to insert the 728×90 format, rather than the 468×60 format. The point here is bigger is better, though you will have to balance this against your design goals, obviously. The rectangular formatted ads tend to perform well when placed “inside” the page, meaning they are placed inside the actual text/article, like you would a picture. Here are some common sizes, as recognized by the Internet Advertising Bureau: Rectangles and Pop-Ups 300×250 IMU – (Medium Rectangle) 250×250 IMU – (Square Pop-Up) 240×400 IMU – (Vertical Rectangle) 336×280 IMU – (Large Rectangle) 180×150 IMU – (Rectangle) Banners and Buttons 468×60 IMU – (Full Banner) 234×60 IMU – (Half Banner) 88×31 IMU – (Micro Bar) 120×90 IMU – (Button 1) 120×60 IMU – (Button 2) 120×240 IMU – (Vertical Banner) 125×125 IMU – (Square Button) 728×90 IMU – (Leaderboard) Skyscrapers 160×600 IMU – (Wide Skyscraper) 120×600 IMU – (Skyscraper) 300×600 IMU – (Half Page Ad) Other sizes can easily be used, but you’ll find that 99% of the ad programs you’ll want to join use these sizes. More information can be found here: http://www.iab.net . All units are measured in pixels, so a 160×600 is 160 pixels wide and 600 pixels tall. It’s also important to remember that you should not be loyal to any one size – test them and see which ones perform best on your web site, then use those sizes. Though larger ads generally perform better than smaller ones, the price you pay is that a site with too many large ads might put off users. By taking the time to plan how and where you will place your ads, you can work them into the design of the page and have a workable solution for you and your users. Most of the programs you’ll want to sign up for have built in limits on how many actual ads they will show on a page, so having too many ads should never be a real problem if you’re running a system like Google Adsense. With Google, you are allowed a maximum of 3 ad units and one text link unit per page. Try for more and the system will see what you’re doing to turn off some ads. Same deal goes for using two systems from competing companies on one page – if Google sees code from Yahoo on the page, it’ll stop showing ads. They may also suspend your account of kick you form the program. Your best bet when joining any advertising or affiliate program is to read every word of the agreement carefully. It will spell out in detail what you can and cannot do. Ad Placement There are many places you could turn to for this type of data, from specific white-papers to historical data, but the easiest to find and understand is from Google themselves. They want you to succeed and generate revenue with their ads on your site. It’s a win-win situation. So, they share the following “heat map” with users to help them place ads in areas of the page that have proven to perform in the past. It’s not a guaranteed formula that works 100% of the time, but after studying reams of data, this is what Google suggest Webmasters do. I can say from personal experience, they’re right on the money spots. Google Website Ad Placement Heat Map: Google Website Ad Heat Map Google Blog Ad Placement Heat Map: Google Blog Ad Heat Map Google Posting Forum Ad Placement Heat Map: Google Posting Forum Ad Heat Map Obviously, placing ads on a web page takes planning and forethought. Unless you like the idea of editing a hundred or more pages every time you want to change an ad’s location, best you plan this in advance. It doesn’t really matter where the content resides on the page, but it certainly matters where the ads are placed. Before you build the entire site, make yourself a template page. This template will be used for all the internal web pages of the site and will have spaces defined for ads, logos, footers and content. Following the heat map provided by Google, it’s a simple exercise to build a template that will be a good starting point. Your main (index) page will look different form the templated pages, most likely, but that’s fine. The main page is the page which is meant to collect all the bits and pieces you offer to users and showcase them in an easy to follow manner. In effect, it’s a page that has one job – to get users to the content they want as directly as possible. Don’t sweat the ad placements on this page, as it’s more important to get users into your content and develop page views, than to have them leave form the main page because they couldn’t figure out how to get to the content they wanted. Blending ads Ideally you’ll want your ads to look as much a part of the site as possible. Same font colors, same background colors, etc. The idea is simple – users tend to tune out things they perceive as ads. Making your ads look the same as the site itself reduces the chance of users thinking of them as ads. Text based ads perform so much better than image-based ads because they can blend in and users simply see the text, not pictures. If the text they see is appealing, they’ll click it and you get paid. Some folks this is trickery, but the bottom line is this is what it takes to generate the revenue. If you don’t believe me, try running ads with the default colors set by Google, etc. and watch your revenues tumble, or never really grow. Inclusion of Ads You will need to decide how you want to place ads into the page itself early in the build process. One way to get ads into the page is to “hard code” them in. This basically involves taking the ad code given to you by Google, etc. and placing it in the code of the page while you are building it. When you save and publish the page, the code goes live and (after a short delay) the ads will begin showing in the space you set the Google Adsense code into. Make sure to match the ad size you want to show (and thus the code you get from Google, etc.) with the space provided in your template. Dropping a 728×90 sized ad into a 468×60 space will result in a bad look. It’ll still show, but it will obviously be problematic and most of the ad will remain invisible. The biggest drawback to hard coding ads into the page is that to change an ad means editing the page. If you hard coded ads into pages as you built them, the workload is minimal. If you later want to change the ads in some way, across the entire website, you would need to edit every individual page to change each, individual ad. Lots of work after you’ve built a couple of hundred pages. A better way to get ads into a page is to use what’s known as an “include”. This nifty little item allows you to use a separate “document” that holds only the ad code for a given space and will be “included” anywhere the include code sits. The benefits are clear. You must edit only one item to change ads across hundreds of pages at once. The include code itself must be inserted into each page and ad space as the page is constructed, but once there, you’re done. Your server platform will dictate which form of include code you use, as Windows and Linux-based servers differ slightly in how they handle this action. The end result is the same, though. By constructing individual “includes”, one for each ad size you want to show, you can maximize the ads placed across your website. If you find advertisers who want to pay to show ads on your site, you simply replace the code in the include from Google, etc. with the information on where the advertisers ads resides (this will depend on whether you are hosting the ad or the advertiser is; either way it’s a simply URL – the direct path to the advertisers ad itself) and you’re done. It takes less than 5 minutes form logging into your administration system to seeing the changes. Here’s a sample of code used in a Linux environment (as with all code, you must use the proper <> brackets at the beginning and end of each string): ?php include(‘’includes/test_header.php’’); ? In this example, we’re including a file named “test_header.php”. It can be called .html and it’ll still work. This file resides in a folder on the server called “includes”. Thus, any time we want to update the header on this website, we simply go to the folder for the includes, open the file called “test_header.php” and make our changes. When uploaded to the server again and saved, the changes will be live across the entire site. It’s important to note that each character and space must be as shown here for this to work properly. You can change the folder and file names, but everything else should remain as shown. For Windows-based folks, this code should work: !–#include virtual=”/Headers_Toolbar/headers/header.html” — It will require you build your pages set up to use “virtual includes” or SSI (server side includes), which is s setting you’ll need to make in your editing software of choice. The bottom line is that when planning your ads and placing them into the pages, it’s a safe bet to use includes for them. It limits the amount of work you’ll have to do down the road and really takes no more time when building a page. Getting the right ads, with the right look, into the right spots takes some time and testing. This information should have you pretty close form the start, but it’s always best to test, test, test and refine on your own. Using the techniques outlined here, I have sites which have started with zero revenue, and after a year have grown to over $500 USD per month in revenue. This will continue to grow as the sites grow in popularity and more users find them. If you had the time and knowledge, you could build a series of these sites and create a whole new career for yourself – managing your websites from home each day.

Google Inc. Advertising Program Terms

These Google Inc. Advertising Program Terms (“Terms”) are entered into by, as applicable, the customer signing these Terms or any document that references these Terms or that accepts these Terms electronically (“Customer”) and Google Inc. (“Google”). These Terms govern Customer’s participation in Google’s advertising program(s) (“Program”) and, as applicable, any insertion orders or service agreements (“IO”) executed by and between the parties and/or Customer’s online management of any advertising campaigns. These Terms and any applicable IO are collectively referred to as the “Agreement.” Google and Customer hereby agree and acknowledge:

1 Policies. Program use is subject to all applicable Google and Partner policies, including without limitation the Editorial Guidelines (adwords.google.com/select/guidelines.html), Google Privacy Policy (www.google.com/privacy.html) and Trademark Guidelines (www.google.com/permissions/guidelines.html), and Google and Partner ad specification requirements (collectively, “Policies”). Policies may be modified at any time. Customer shall direct only to Google communications regarding Customer ads on Partner Properties. Some Program features are identified as “Beta,” “Ad Experiment,” or otherwise unsupported (“Beta Features”). To the fullest extent permitted by law, Beta Features are provided “as is” and at Customer’s option and risk. Customer shall not disclose to any third party any information from Beta Features, existence of non-public Beta Features or access to Beta Features. Google may modify ads to comply with any Policies.

2 The Program. Customer is solely responsible for all: (a) ad targeting options and keywords (collectively “Targets”) and all ad content, ad information, and ad URLs (“Creative”), whether generated by or for Customer; and (b) web sites, services and landing pages which Creative links or directs viewers to, and advertised services and products (collectively “Services”). Customer shall protect any Customer passwords and takes full responsibility for Customer’s own, and third party, use of any Customer accounts. Customer understands and agrees that ads may be placed on (y) any content or property provided by Google (“Google Property”), and, unless Customer opts out of such placement in the manner specified by Google, (z) any other content or property provided by a third party (“Partner”) upon which Google places ads (“Partner Property”). Customer authorizes and consents to all such placements. With respect to AdWords online auction-based advertising, Google may send Customer an email notifying Customer it has 72 hours (“Modification Period”) to modify keywords and settings as posted. The account (as modified by Customer, or if not modified, as initially posted) is deemed approved by Customer in all respects after the Modification Period. Customer agrees that all placements of Customer’s ads shall conclusively be deemed to have been approved by Customer unless Customer produces contemporaneous documentary evidence showing that Customer disapproved such placements in the manner specified by Google. With respect to all other advertising, Customer must provide Google with all relevant Creative by the due date set forth in that Program’s applicable frequently asked questions at www.google.com (“FAQ”) or as otherwise communicated by Google. Customer grants Google permission to utilize an automated software program to retrieve and analyze websites associated with the Services for ad quality and serving purposes, unless Customer specifically opts out of the evaluation in a manner specified by Google. Google may modify any of its Programs at any time without liability. Google also may modify these Terms at any time without liability, and Customer’s use of the Program after notice that these Terms have changed constitutes Customer’s acceptance of the new Terms. Google or Partners may reject or remove any ad or Target for any or no reason.

3 Cancellation. Customer may cancel advertising online through Customer’s account if online cancellation functionality is available, or, if not available, with prior written notice to Google, including without limitation electronic mail. AdWords online auction-based advertising cancelled online will cease serving shortly after cancellation. The cancellation of all other advertising may be subject to Program policies or Google’s ability to re-schedule reserved inventory or cancel ads already in production. Cancelled ads may be published despite cancellation if cancellation of those ads occurs after any applicable commitment date as set forth in advance by the Partner or Google, in which case Customer must pay for those ads. Google may cancel immediately any IO, any of its Programs, or these Terms at any time with notice, in which case Customer will be responsible for any ads already run. Sections 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 will survive any expiration or termination of this Agreement.

4 Prohibited Uses; License Grant; Representations and Warranties. Customer shall not, and shall not authorize any party to: (a) generate automated, fraudulent or otherwise invalid impressions, inquiries, conversions, clicks or other actions; (b) use any automated means or form of scraping or data extraction to access, query or otherwise collect Google advertising related information from any Program website or property except as expressly permitted by Google; or© advertise anything illegal or engage in any illegal or fraudulent business practice. Customer represents and warrants that it holds and hereby grants Google and Partners all rights (including without limitation any copyright, trademark, patent, publicity or other rights) in Creative, Services and Targets needed for Google and Partner to operate Programs (including without limitation any rights needed to host, cache, route, transmit, store, copy, modify, distribute, perform, display, reformat, excerpt, analyze, and create algorithms from and derivative works of Creative or Targets) in connection with this Agreement (“Use”). Customer represents and warrants that (y) all Customer information is complete, correct and current; and (z) any Use hereunder and Customer’s Creative, Targets, and Customer’s Services will not violate or encourage violation of any applicable laws, regulations, code of conduct, or third party rights (including without limitation intellectual property rights). Violation of the foregoing may result in immediate termination of this Agreement or customer’s account without notice and may subject Customer to legal penalties and consequences.

5 Disclaimer and Limitation of Liability. To the fullest extent permitted by law, GOOGLE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION FOR NONINFRINGEMENT, SATISFACTORY QUALITY, MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. To the fullest extent permitted by law, Google disclaims all guarantees regarding positioning, levels, quality, or timing of: (i) costs per click; (ii) click through rates; (iii) availability and delivery of any impressions, Creative, or Targets on any Partner Property, Google Property, or section thereof; (iv) clicks; (v) conversions or other results for any ads or Targets; (vi) the accuracy of Partner data (e.g. reach, size of audience, demographics or other purported characteristics of audience); and (vii) the adjacency or placement of ads within a Program. Customer understands that third parties may generate impressions or clicks on Customer’s ads for prohibited or improper purposes, and Customer accepts the risk of any such impressions and clicks. Customer’s exclusive remedy, and Google’s exclusive liability, for suspected invalid impressions or clicks is for Customer to make a claim for a refund in the form of advertising credits for Google Properties within the time period required under Section 7 below. Any refunds for suspected invalid impressions or clicks are within Google’s sole discretion. EXCEPT FOR INDEMNIFICATION AMOUNTS PAYABLE TO THIRD PARTIES HEREUNDER AND CUSTOMER’S BREACHES OF SECTION 1, TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW: (a) NEITHER PARTY WILL BE LIABLE FOR ANY CONSEQUENTIAL, SPECIAL, INDIRECT, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES (INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, INTEREST, GOODWILL, LOSS OR CORRUPTION OF DATA OR FOR ANY LOSS OR INTERRUPTION TO CUSTOMER’S BUSINESS) WHETHER IN CONTRACT, TORT (INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION NEGLIGENCE) OR ANY OTHER LEGAL THEORY, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES AND NOTWITHSTANDING ANY FAILURE OF ESSENTIAL PURPOSE OF ANY LIMITED REMEDY; AND (b) EACH PARTY’S AGGREGATE LIABILITY TO THE OTHER IS LIMITED TO AMOUNTS PAID OR PAYABLE TO GOOGLE BY CUSTOMER FOR THE AD GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM. Except for payment obligations, neither party is liable for failure or delay resulting from a condition beyond the reasonable control of the party, including without limitation to acts of God, government, terrorism, natural disaster, labor conditions and power failures.

6 Agency. Customer represents and warrants that (a) it is authorized to act on behalf of and has bound to this Agreement any third party for which Customer advertises (a “Principal”), (b) as between Principal and Customer, the Principal owns any rights to Program information in connection with those ads, and© Customer shall not disclose Principal’s Program information to any other party without Principal’s consent.

7 Payment. Customer shall be responsible for all charges up to the amount of each IO, or as set in an online account, and shall pay all charges in U.S. Dollars or in such other currency as agreed to in writing by the parties. Unless agreed to by the parties in writing, Customer shall pay all charges in accordance with the payment terms in the applicable IO or Program FAQ. Late payments bear interest at the rate of 1.5% per month (or the highest rate permitted by law, if less). Charges are exclusive of taxes. Customer is responsible for paying (y) all taxes, government charges, and (z) reasonable expenses and attorneys fees Google incurs collecting late amounts. To the fullest extent permitted by law, Customer waives all claims relating to charges (including without limitation any claims for charges based on suspected invalid clicks) unless claimed within 60 days after the charge (this does not affect Customer’s credit card issuer rights). Charges are solely based on Google’s measurements for the applicable Program, unless otherwise agreed to in writing. To the fullest extent permitted by law, refunds (if any) are at the discretion of Google and only in the form of advertising credit for only Google Properties. Nothing in these Terms or an IO may obligate Google to extend credit to any party. Customer acknowledges and agrees that any credit card and related billing and payment information that Customer provides to Google may be shared by Google with companies who work on Google’s behalf, such as payment processors and/or credit agencies, solely for the purposes of checking credit, effecting payment to Google and servicing Customer’s account. Google may also provide information in response to valid legal process, such as subpoenas, search warrants and court orders, or to establish or exercise its legal rights or defend against legal claims. Google shall not be liable for any use or disclosure of such information by such third parties.

8 Indemnification. Customer shall indemnify and defend Google, its Partners, agents, affiliates, and licensors from any third party claim or liability (collectively, “Liabilities”), arising out of Use, Customer’s Program use, Targets, Creative and Services and breach of the Agreement. Partners shall be deemed third party beneficiaries of the above Partner indemnity. 9 Miscellaneous. THE AGREEMENT MUST BE CONSTRUED AS IF BOTH PARTIES JOINTLY WROTE IT AND GOVERNED BY CALIFORNIA LAW EXCEPT FOR ITS CONFLICTS OF LAWS PRINCIPLES. ALL CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THIS AGREEMENT OR THE GOOGLE PROGRAM SHALL BE LITIGATED EXCLUSIVELY IN THE FEDERAL OR STATE COURTS OF SANTA CLARA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA, USA, AND GOOGLE AND CUSTOMER CONSENT TO PERSONAL JURISDICTION IN THOSE COURTS. The Agreement constitutes the entire and exclusive agreement between the parties with respect to the subject matter hereof, and supersedes and replaces any other agreements, terms and conditions applicable to the subject matter hereof. No statements or promises have been relied upon in entering into this Agreement except as expressly set forth herein, and any conflicting or additional terms contained in any other documents (e.g. reference to a purchase order number) or oral discussions are void. Each party shall not disclose the terms or conditions of these Terms to any third party, except to its professional advisors under a strict duty of confidentiality or as necessary to comply with a government law, rule or regulation. Customer may grant approvals, permissions, extensions and consents by email, but any modifications by Customer to the Agreement must be made in a writing executed by both parties. Any notices to Google must be sent to Google Inc., Advertising Programs, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA, with a copy to Legal Department, via confirmed facsimile, with a copy sent via first class or air mail or overnight courier, and are deemed given upon receipt. A waiver of any default is not a waiver of any subsequent default. Unenforceable provisions will be modified to reflect the parties’ intention and only to the extent necessary to make them enforceable, and remaining provisions of the Agreement will remain in full effect. Customer may not assign any of its rights hereunder and any such attempt is void. Google and Customer and Google and Partners are not legal partners or agents, but are independent contractors. In the event that these Terms or a Program expire or is terminated, Google shall not be obligated to return any materials to Customer. Notice to Customer may be effected by sending an email to the email address specified in Customer’s account, or by posting a message to Customer’s account interface, and is deemed received when sent (for email) or no more than 15 days after having been posted (for messages in Customer’s AdWords interface).

August 22, 2006