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Maximizing Adsense Revenue
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amykhar
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amykhar amykhar is offline 08-27-2005, 10:00 PM

Ad banners used to be a good source of income. That's not as true these days, but you can still easily cover basic hosting costs for a small forum with careful attention to your banners.

It takes more than slapping a banner in your header template. It takes a bit of time, patience and effort on your part to achieve optimal banner placement.

Luckily, if you use Google Adsense banners, you have some tools that can help.

The first is a very good document that shows where ad banners generally are the most effective:

https://www.google.com/support/adsen...page=tips.html

The second is the ability for you to control the color of your ad banners. Colors can be used to make the ad banners appear like part of the content. Or, they can be used to make the ad pop out of the page.

The third option is the wide variety of sizes that you can use. Having more choices than typical 468x60 banner ads means that you can work relevant ads into your content without looking like a banner farm.

The fourth option allows you to use alternate ads instead of google's public service banners. Why show ads for free?

Finally, Google gives you the ability to create custom channels. These channels will help you monitor the performance of each ad banner on the page.

Ad Placement
I have found that ads are vital in 2 places.
1. On the archive pages. Most of my guest traffic hits my archives first. If they don't find what they are looking for at my site, the google banner often gives them another viable site to check out. So, they click the ad and away they go.
2. In the postbit template of the first post on the page. (Ideally, the banner should be in the postbit of the LAST post on the page. More readers see the last post than the first. But, putting a banner there causes all sorts of grief for firefox and opera users if they try to use the quick reply box.)

What works for me, might not work for you
That's where custom channels come in.

Google allows you to create custom channels. I have several created - one for each placement of an ad banner in a template. Some examples of channel names are: postbit, header, archiveside, archivebottom, forumdisplay, etc.

After you create your custom channel, get the ad code based on that channel and place it in the proper template.

For example, in my forumdisplay, I use a link-type banner. I set that banner to my forumdisplay channel, then grab the code and paste it in my forumdisplay template.

I can now track the impressions banners on my forumdisplay pages receive and how many times they are clicked. Based on those numbers, I can adjust placement of the ad, colors of the ad, or even the size of the ad.

Google helps take the guesswork out of earning money from banners. I have found that using the tips outlined above, my google revenue has gone up 3,000 percent! Yes, 3,000 percent. Before I started working with google's placement tools, I earned pennies every month. Now, I am covering my hosting costs.

It is well worth any effort you will expend.

Amy
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Old 11-15-2005, 01:02 AM
MRGTB MRGTB is offline
 
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The only thing I dislike about displaying the full banner image with no background colour to blend in is this. Everybody now knows what a google adsence regular banner looks like and I would image most will avoid clicking it. I mean I know I do when I see a regular adsence banner on a site.

The only ones I've ever clicked is when people blend the background in and place them very near content which catches you off guard click them by mistake. One site did this very well and got two clicks out of me by pure hidding them in content.
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  #23  
Old 11-15-2005, 01:24 AM
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I actually like google ads. I have found many interesting and relative sites by clicking the banners.
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Old 11-15-2005, 01:28 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by amykhar
I actually like google ads. I have found many interesting and relative sites by clicking the banners.
Thats not me being selfish, it's justs because I know the sole purpose of the banner on a site, thats all. So I just don't click them. Nothing personal with peoples sites, just the way I am personally. To be honest I don't even look at the content in a banner.

This is most probably why I prefer text only adds
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  #25  
Old 12-04-2005, 03:08 PM
Sychev_S Sychev_S is offline
 
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I have a problem. On my site, even in postbit only webhosting ads are displayed, which are not relevant to the content of a site. Any idea why and how to get rid of it or change it? Also which is better to use good text ads or image ads?
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  #26  
Old 12-04-2005, 03:16 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sychev_S
I have a problem. On my site, even in postbit only webhosting ads are displayed, which are not relevant to the content of a site. Any idea why and how to get rid of it or change it? Also which is better to use good text ads or image ads?
I've had the same problem with Google adds at times. For example I have a member called Bulldog. Everytime he creates a thread the adsence banner displays links about Bulldogs as though it takes the links from his name rather than thread content.

Strange
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  #27  
Old 12-04-2005, 08:10 PM
Sychev_S Sychev_S is offline
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Gary Bolton
I've had the same problem with Google adds at times. For example I have a member called Bulldog. Everytime he creates a thread the adsence banner displays links about Bulldogs as though it takes the links from his name rather than thread content.

Strange
did you fix that problem somehow?
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  #28  
Old 12-04-2005, 09:23 PM
MRGTB MRGTB is offline
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sychev_S
did you fix that problem somehow?
no I never really looked into fixing it to be honest
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  #29  
Old 12-05-2005, 01:19 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sychev_S
did you fix that problem somehow?
Have you looked at Section targeting?
http://www.google.com/support/adsens...y?answer=23168

For example, you can downplay the area in your postbit that affects your contextual ads by doing something like this:

HTML Code:
<!-- google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) -->
<div id="postmenu_$post[postid]" align="center">
				<if condition="$show['profile']">
				<a class="bigusername" href="member.php?$session[sessionurl]u=$post[userid]">$post[musername]</a>
				<script type="text/javascript"> vbmenu_register("postmenu_$post[postid]", true); </script>
				<else />
				$post[musername]
				</if>
			</div>
<!-- google_ad_section_end(weight=ignore) -->
Adding the code tells google media bot to ignore this area when matching ads to your site's content. (in this case the username)

You can also emphasize the message area of the postbit to help with the ads.
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  #30  
Old 12-12-2005, 01:27 AM
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I know how to create channels, but it seems that when you create a channel and create the code for you web site on adsense that it only puts the channel that you selected. Is there any way to select multiple channels to put in that code that you put in your web site?
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Old 12-12-2005, 01:34 AM
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steven s steven s is offline
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by attroll
I know how to create channels, but it seems that when you create a channel and create the code for you web site on adsense that it only puts the channel that you selected. Is there any way to select multiple channels to put in that code that you put in your web site?
I believe you can have 3 channels per page. Just create another channel and copy the code. I have 3 channels on my page.
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