When I first started using AdSense, I knew nothing about contextual advertising. It showed in my revenues. For the first few months I was making little more than a few dollars a day.
I had to go through a long learning curve, experimenting with formats, appearances and location. I had to test keywords and colors and fonts. I played around and gradually my revenues rose until eventually they reached the happy levels theyre at today.
When I think about how much money I could have made during that learning period, I get goose bumps. Im very glad Im not in that position any more.
And Im not too pleased about finding myself in danger of slipping back there every few weeks.
It seems as though the online advertising world is changing all the time. Every month, Google makes a change that could have an effect on revenues. Or some company brings out a new contextual advertising system. Or we discover some former secret about how a system were already using works and rush to figure out what we can do with that knowledge.
All of that requires more experimentation.
For example, Ive recently been playing with eMiniMalls. Ive come up with some pretty good ideas to make them generate maximum revenues but again, Ive had to go through a fairly long learning curve to figure them out. And while I was figuring them out, I had to make changes to websites that were already bringing in money with only a vague idea of what the effects might be.
I sometimes wonder if I shouldnt just put up a website that I could use specifically for experimentation. Instead of trying new strategies on sites that I knew worked, I could test them on a practice site first and then incorporate whatever worked into my revenue-generating sites.
That would certainly save me from effectively gambling with my current revenues as I try to figure out ways to use all the new tools coming online.
But of course Id only be losing all the revenues that that test site would be earning if Id optimized it properly.
Still, even if revenues do fall while Im playing with the location of an eMiniMall ad or adjusting the format of my AdSense units or trying to get different AdLinks to light up, the final result is usually a higher income later. I guess those revenue dips while we figure stuff out are just part of the capital investment we all have to make.
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:
Its very easy to make a lot of money with AdSense. I know its easy because in a short space of time, Ive managed to turn the sort of AdSense revenues that wouldnt keep me in candy into the kind of income that pays the mortgage on a large suburban house, makes the payments on a family car and does a whole lot more besides.
But that doesnt mean there arent any number of mistakes that you can make when trying to increase your AdSense income - and any one of those mistakes can keep you earning candy money instead of earning the sort of cash that can pay for your home.
There is one mistake though that will totally destroy your chances of earning a decent AdSense income before youve even started.
That mistake is making your ad look like an ad.
No one wants to click on an ad. Your users dont come to your site looking for advertisements. They come looking for content and their first instinct is to ignore everything else. And theyve grown better and better at doing just that. Todays Internet users know exactly what a banner ad looks like. They know what it means, where to expect it - and they know exactly how to ignore it. In fact most Internet users dont even see the banners at the top of the Web pages theyre reading or the skyscrapers running up the side.
But when you first open an AdSense account, the format and layout of the ads you receive will have been designed to look just like ads. Thats the default setting for AdSense - and thats the setting that you have to work hard to change.
Thats where AdSense gets interesting. There are dozens of different strategies that smart AdSense account holders can use to stop their ads looking like ads - and make them look attractive to users. They include choosing the right formats for your ad, placing them in the most effective spots on the page, putting together the best combination of ad units, enhancing your site with the best keywords, selecting the most ideal colors for the font and the background, and a whole lot more besides.
The biggest AdSense mistake you can make is leaving your AdSense units looking like ads.
The second biggest mistake you can make is to not know the best strategies to change them.
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