I've gone and added AdSense to my blog, http://alexandersarchive.blogspot.com/, and would appreciate some tips about it. I don't expect to make the $100 required for Google to cut a check in the next six months, or ever. But I think gaining experience with AdSense will make me a little bit more valuable in my career as an ASP.NET programmer and all around web wizard. I know about advertising from one end, being a consumer bombarded with ads, so it's time for me to get hands-on experience from the other end.

First of all, any advice in general? And next, why are they serving me such crappy ads? I guess I understand what got half of them placed. Sadly they missed the point I was trying to get across, and focused on the unimportant stuff to come up with one of the ads from.

My site is about knowledge for its own sake, for the wealth of information that's available on the internet, and how it could be too much but we're learning to sift through it and learn what we need to know when we need to know it. I guess that's a little difficult to peg down. But another user of this site, WebSavvy, called my site "for intellectuals," so if I fooled her, then I need ads that will appeal to smart people. How do I make that happen?

You didn't sell out at all, John. I look at it like this: every time someone clicks on an ad on your site, it's money that doesn't end up in the pockets of some third-rate MFA spam site builder. If I get to choose where the ad revenue goes, that's a no-brainer bro...it goes in your pocket every single time because you deserve it a heck of a lot more than they do. So no sell-out...quite frankly, I think it's overdue on your part. Attaboy!

As far as tips go...well, this is the one area that I've struggled with (although to be perfectly fair, I haven't done a lot of "optimization" as such). I've learned three things about it, though:

1) Sites that focus on providing quality content tend not to do as well in Adsense as the content tends to draw attention away from the ads. In other words, the better you do at drawing repeat visitors, the worse you'll find your Adsense eCPM and numbers in general.

2) Google as a general rule tends to provide better ads over time, as it is a "learning system" of sorts. You may notice a lot of underperforming and garbage ads at first, but as Google learns what users will (or won't) click on, it will adjust accordingly and provide better ads (which leads to higher revenue for its publishers).

3) Remove the word "blog" where and when possible. A lot of the crappier ads show up on sites that appear to be blogs...for about a month, I kept finding ads for Helium on just about every post, so I removed the word where and when I could and the crappy ads disappeared.

My income has very slowly grown from GAS over time, but not to the point where I can go quitting my self-employed "gun for hire" scenario or anything. So I'm not the best guy to ask overall.

Well, John, making the ads appeal for intellectual people won't do any good as intellectual d00ds rarely click ads. And, how are the ads distinguished ? I mean, what do you mean by "ads which would appeal to the intellectual" ?

Whatever the way you approach this question, one thing is for sure. Adsense is definitely not for sites like yours. As far as I know, most of the ads that Adsense serves are kinda n00bish. And there's no way out.

For a tip, I would suggest Section Targeting which lets you have ads based on a small portion of the content in your site. Thats all I can think of right now and I think you should find some attractive theme for your blog and make the ads blend with the layout. Also, try adding the code in the beginning of every post for increased CTR.

Hey John, a while ago I came across another type of advertising company that might be a better fit for you than AdSense. I'll send you the info in PM.

Can you send it here too, please and thank you, Deb?

Sure Adam. Sending it to you right now.

Hey Deb I wouldn't mind that PM as well if it's ok.

John the main thing with AdSense is going to be to test and measure. Adam is right that the ads will improve over time and you can also try section targeting.

Common wisdom says to blend the ads into your site, though I've seen some people claim making them stand out worked better for them. Try placing the ads with the help of the Google Heat Map, but again do some experimenting. Also try different ad types to see what works best.

In your control panel ad AdSense set up channels. Set them up for URLs and also custom type/locations. Over time as you see which ads and locations work best use more of them and less of the underperforming ones.

Also know that Google will deliver the highest paying ads to where they appear first in your code. While having three blocks of ads on a page give you more opportunities for clicks the first block of ads will generally result in the most money per click. You may find that the other two blocks of ads are the ones getting those $0.03 clicks.

And don't think of yourself as selling out. You work hard on your blog so you deserve something back. Blogging is hard work and there's nothing wrong with being paid for hard work.

Hi Steven, OK, sending it to you now, too. LOL.

Thanks Deb. Message received.

np. If you go with either one (or both) of them, let me know how you get on with it, OK?

Deb,

Can you send me the PM too ? Please?

yep, hold on ...

me too please Deb - thanks

why you do not make your ads more visible ?

Here, why don't I just post the sites here (if that's allowed, Mods?)

The sites are:
http://www.thenewsroom.com/
http://www.mochila.com/

The first one provides news mashups that you can add to your site. You can customize the news to match the content of your site, and can have it also match the look and feel.

You get paid everytime a news story is read or is mashed from your site to someone else's. The articles open in a new page on your own site so the visitor never leaves your site.

The second one offers a wider variety of content types in various formats. It pays on a CPM basis.

I haven't joined either one of them yet, but plan to. From what I've read around, they're both getting pretty positive reviews.

I am not associated with either of these two companies in any way. I came across them when doing some related research via google.

I think there are many guys here are dying to find a decent alternative to G Adsense.

Tony, have you had a chance to look at those sites? I think the mochila.com site looks the most interesting.

Right now two other team members and I are doing a quality control check on the db in the directory (reveiwing each and every site and removing ones that have fallen outside of our guidelines) -- but after we're finished, I have a new design to put up and then I plan to apply to both of those publisher sites.

I think they'd both be a good fit for John's site though.

It'd be interesting to hear about how many people sign-up and what their earning experiences will be Vs that of AdSense.

I just implemented thenewsroom as an experiment, you can see it here:
http://www.sigmahotels-dubai.com/content/view/70/80/

and no 1) - I see no ads, and no 2), I think the same clip is going to play and play until its taken off line - I think this would be high maintainance, but I'll leave it up there and let you know

There aren't any ads in the one from thenewsroom.com -- the news story itself is what you get paid on. When someone loads that story into their browser it counts as a "read" and you get paid for each and every "read" ... I believe it was like $1.00 for x-amount of reads or something like that.

I haven't looked at it in a few months because I haven't been online much. Have a ruptured tendon in my arm and am headed for surgery pretty soon, from the looks of it.

OMG those thenewsroom.com news bits load slooooooooooooooow. I'm STILL waiting!

I don't think I'll be joining that one. The other one though, mochila.com looks the better of the two, IMO.