Im pretty happy with where I am now with AdSense. Ive put a lot of effort into figuring out what works and what doesnt and Im pretty sure that my sites are generating as much revenue as possible.
Sure, there are always a few little tweaks I can do here and there, especially when I update my sites, but nothing on the scale of when I was just starting out and had no idea which positions or which colors would bring the most clicks.
Those were pretty exciting days and sometimes I miss them. (Although I dont miss the small checks.) Id make a change to the ads, wait a week and check my stats. Sometimes the difference could be as much as several hundred percentage points and several thousand dollars. Very few of the changes I make these days have effects as exciting as that!
Im sure lots of experienced AdSense publishers are in a similar position: youve spent hours rearranging your ads, you think youre earning as much as you can... so what do you do now
Well, theres lots to do now. It doesnt matter how much youre earning or how well youve planned your website you still have to keep track of your stats and try to figure out new ways to increase your revenue sources.
The first thing you have to do is ensure that any updates you put on your site dont bring your CTR down. That can happen, especially when you bring in new keywords.
But you can also start creating new sites, adding new pages and even playing with new designs. If you have a website about computer games for example, and you notice that ads about first-person-shooters get more clicks and higher CPMs than ads about adventure games, you could create an entire site devoted to first-person-shooters.
The same thing might happen when youre writing your blog. If you noticed that you picked up lots of clicks on high-paying ads when you talked about offensive language on television then you could set up an entire site on that subject, spread the word and cash in.
As long as the content you create is genuinely interesting, theres no reason for you not to use the results you see on your stats to create more sources of revenue.
Think youre done when your site is doing its best Think again.
Joel Comm is The Internet Revenue Expert. Online for over 20 years, Joel teaches people how to make money in the digital age. The recognized authority on Google AdSense, Joel teaches how to multiply your AdSense income at The AdSense Code. To ask Joel Comm a question about making money online, visit Joel invites you to download a free copy of The Internet Money Tree at
Did you ever hear of Replay TV They started up at about the same time as TiVo and did pretty much the same thing: they developed a personal video recorder that stores television shows on a hard drive. Whenever both companies appeared at tech shows, critics would rave about Replays technology and turn their noses up at TiVos.
Replay died just as TiVo hit the big time.
So if Replay had such a great product, what went wrong Well, it seems to be the same thing thats going wrong with Chitika at the moment.
I still think that Chitika have a great product. Their ads look good, theyre fun to mouse over, packed with information and theyre easy for publishers to control. Ive had some pretty impressive CTRs with them.
Like Replay, theres nothing wrong with Chitikas product. But there seems to be plenty wrong with whats happening on the business end of the company. First there was the audit that slashed everyones incomes. That came out of the blue, hit everyone right where it hurt and destroyed much of the trust and enthusiasm that had built up around the companys eMiniMalls. Now theres a delay in paying the results of those same slashed November earnings -- and that delay wasnt announced until after the payments should already have been made.
The people at Chitika are a pretty smart bunch and they went out of their way to make eMiniMalls friendly to publishers. I dont know how they messed up so badly or whos responsible for it, but I sure hope they going to get it fixed (although even if they do, I think theyre going to have to work pretty hard to win back peoples trust.)
But I cant imagine a product as good as eMiniMalls is just going to disappear. Ive already seen traditional ads designed to look exactly like eMiniMalls on Web pages. They werent interactive and they looked too much like ads to be very effective but its pretty clear that ads like eMiniMalls can be a great way to generate extra revenue. Users love them.
Even if Chitika dont get their act together, Im pretty confident that someone else will. Im going to be keeping a close eye on Chitika to see if they can solve their problems... but Im also going to be watching out for other companies to see if theyre going to take advantage of Chitikas big idea.
Joel Comm is The Internet Revenue Expert. Online for over 20 years, Joel teaches people how to make money in the digital age. The recognized authority on Google AdSense, Joel teaches how to multiply your AdSense income at The AdSense Code. To ask Joel Comm a question about making money online, visit Joel invites you to download a free copy of The Internet Money Tree at