Google is changing quickly and what has been ok for AdSense site a year ago, can be not enough today.

Fair and simple questions.

#1 What do you consider to be important about making effective AdSense site?

#2. What have you left as useless during your work with AdSense over this experience that you've had?

Originally Posted by freetraff

Google is changing quickly and what has been ok for AdSense site a year ago, can be not enough today.

Fair and simple questions.

#1 What do you consider to be important about making effective AdSense site?

#2. What have you left as useless during your work with AdSense over this experience that you've had?

the things that work and don't work well differ a lot per site is my experience..
link units on 1 site work very well while they don't work at all on the other..

I'm currently in the middle of an experiment with my email marketing site

As far as I got you are testing the signature effect of brining traffic to your site and then click conversions (plz correct if I'm wrong)

And what are the link units? Can you put some samples or give more details?

Originally Posted by freetraff

As far as I got you are testing the signature effect of brining traffic to your site and then click conversions (plz correct if I'm wrong)

And what are the link units? Can you put some samples or give more details?

well Im generelly going to test out different configuration of the adsense rotation script I'm using.

on the site there is also a link unit place underneath the ads..
A link unit is just a horizontal or vertical list of links..
https://www.google.com/support/adsen...topic=0&type=f

I don't really make adsense sites anymore.
I make sites that people will want to visit again and again, and I know the rest will follow.

Originally Posted by dvduval

I don't really make adsense sites anymore.
I make sites that people will want to visit again and again, and I know the rest will follow.

It's the way I work as well (well, 99% of the time .. )

Originally Posted by freetraff

Google is changing quickly and what has been ok for AdSense site a year ago, can be not enough today.

Fair and simple questions.

#1 What do you consider to be important about making effective AdSense site?

#2. What have you left as useless during your work with AdSense over this experience that you've had?

1. Good content, good design. On my sites, if I don't update regularly, my earnings go down so I try to update every 2-3 days. That's pretty important for my sites, so yeah.

2. Not sure I get what you mean by this question, can you explain a bit more?

What I found was conversion rate was inversely correlated to visitor options.

Therefore the fewer options [other things to click on] there are on the page, the higher your conversion rate will be.

Sad but true in my testing.

The result is an Internet littered with crap sites that are designed to maximize AdSense revenue and offer no other value.

Therefore the fewer options [other things to click on] there are on the page, the higher your conversion rate will be.

I have to agree that applies to 99% of sites. A lot of other publishers i know have been saying the same thing, the only dilemma now: provide your readers with more information or earn more money?

#1 What do you consider to be important about making effective AdSense site?

-Maximizing page views per visit.
-Getting as much click-probabilty as possible without getting accused with misleading your visitors.

#2. What have you left as useless during your work with AdSense over this experience that you've had?

-Hmmm, let me think and edit this later


A.H

#2. What have you left as useless during your work with AdSense over this experience that you've had?

forgot to answer this part.

What's useless is AdSense itself as a long term business model and I've left it behind for the most part.

I realized that real businesses have customers, making money from AdSense, unless you happen to hit it really big and bank enough to retire on, is not a great long term strategy. Vulnerable to too many things that are way beyond your control.

Originally Posted by dvduval

I don't really make adsense sites anymore.
I make sites that people will want to visit again and again, and I know the rest will follow.

I'd like to make a similar shift.

What's useless is AdSense itself as a long term business model

...But yet so many believe that it is a business model when in fact it's like building a house on sand.

When I learned about Adsense, I simply modeled what everyone else was doing. I'll admit that I put a lot of crap on the web but when I started networking in other forums besides IM, I realized there was more to adsense than MFA's.

Contrary to what others have found, I've found that the pages I just throw up and then pretty much ignore do pretty well - I guess its the content...if you have a blog then obviously you need to keep it up to date for people to come back.

I'm concentrating on "how to" type sites, e.g. things where people go to find out about something specific - like if they have a problem with their fridge or their car or something random like that as I find that these seem to do well in serps and get good CTR whilst requiring essentially no upkeep. For example, the one in my signiture about improving your petrol consumption is going great and I hardly ever touch it because the material in it never really needs updating!

Originally Posted by JonnyCash

forgot to answer this part.

What's useless is AdSense itself as a long term business model and I've left it behind for the most part.

I realized that real businesses have customers, making money from AdSense, unless you happen to hit it really big and bank enough to retire on, is not a great long term strategy. Vulnerable to too many things that are way beyond your control.

That's a really great point. And its something that a lot of the current set of "pro bloggers" don't get, or so I think.

Building your business exclusively around Adsense would be like letting Google tie a leash around your neck.

Originally Posted by mattd

Contrary to what others have found, I've found that the pages I just throw up and then pretty much ignore do pretty well - I guess its the content...if you have a blog then obviously you need to keep it up to date for people to come back.

Having a blog that people have to come back to is very hard work and I would discourage anyone from doing it in that way. I'm trying to shift out of it myself into things that are more timeless.

Ultimately if you want to succeed at Adsense you have to think from the point of view of the Adwords advertiser and think of what kind of page would be best for them to put their ads on. If they sell widgets, then a "Top Ten Reasons You Should Buy A Widget" would be pretty darn relevant for their Adwords ads in Google's content network.

At least, that's what I've learned in the Adwords course so far.

Google imo isnt what it used to be they're too technical now a days..

Originally Posted by Hoang

Not sure I get what you mean by this question, can you explain a bit more?

I meant, a lot of things in Internet marketing are pushed by myths. Perhaps, before you started to work with AdSense - you had some myths in your head, but then real experiense showed you they do not work.

So this is not only negative experience (it did not work) but also about something you were sure to work and it faild and now you know why.

and thumbs up on this, vincent!!

if you want to succeed at Adsense you have to think from the point of view of the Adwords advertiser and think of what kind of page would be best for them to put their ads on

I have real content sites and a few MFA sites. The content sites that people actually value and read produce about 1000% more than the cheezy ones.

Definitely, you want to diversify and not have all your eggs in one basket. Early on in my internet career I made that mistake. I used to write for a site that paid you a dime every time someone clicked on your article and PPC was a minimum of a penny then and I put a lot of my money into PPC ads and they only paid quarterly. By the time the end of the quarter rolled around, they had gone bankrupt, stiffing me for the $20,000 they owed me and leaving me with a big PPC bill that produced me nothing. In the years I've been on the internet, I've seen a lot of "Sure Things" come and fade away.

For me the key is new content to keep the site interesting and bring visitors back. I've had the site since 1998, never thought of it as an Adsense site. They called me in Aug 2006 and suggested I try Adsense, said I could make at least a couple hundred a month with it. I was surprised and delighted to see that I was making that much in a day. It makes all the work to keep up a content-rich site worthwhile.

I like GG AdSense