How to earn with Google Adsense?

Raju, Swarnava and Joseph ask:

I have a blog / website and I am new to adsense. How do I go about increasing my earnings?

Answer:
This seems to be the question on every mind. Let’s have a look at the road map for earning so that you end up getting what is on your mind.

To start with, let me say that Adsense is not a “get rich quick” scheme. To earn a decent sum from adsense you need to put in effort consistently. Let’s look at the main factors that influence earnings with adsense.


Content = Traffic
Content is rightly named the 'Holly Grail' of Internet. It is so important that it can influence all other factors that affect your earnings. So take care to get it right. Keep on adding fresh unique content to your site / blog. Good content gets good back links. This takes your site high up the search engine rankings and brings you lot of quality traffic.

Type of Site you have
Since you already have a website / blog, this point may not be relevant. But it can certainly be used while you plan your next site. CTR is one of the important things when it comes to earning with Adsense or any CPC based ads for that matter. CTR differs across verticals. Sites on certain topics get high CTR while some others doesn’t. For example sites that cater to technically oriented visitors gets a lower CTR when compared to sites having general public as visitors. This because the techies are very much aware of ads and tend to ignore them. Similar is the case with forums. Forums are infamous for their notably low CTR. So, plan sites around topics that get a high CTR.

You Niche
Certain keywords pay more per click. If your site is built around such keywords, you will make money with the same number of clicks. Choosing such a topic to build a site can earn you heavy sums (if executed well). That said, it is better to go for a topic that interests you if you are thinking long term. Such a topic would keep you glued on.

Your visitor type
While adsense determines the pricing of clicks from your site, it takes into account “how useful the leads generated from your site re to the advertisers”. This is shown in the form of smart pricing. If a decent percentage of the leads you generate turn out to be useful to the advertisers, they deem your clicks valuable and you get paid well for every click. Generally sites that have visitors capable of purchasing (like grown up people) are on the safer side. The geographic location from where you get visitors can also judge the earnings.

High CTR
CTR is something that can alter your earnings almost instantaneously. There are a number of factors affecting CTR – ad placement, colors, ad format and so on. We have a set of article for improving your CTR. It’s called the CTR Wednesdays. A post on increasing the CTR is made every Wednesday. Have a look to improve your CTR.

Distinguishing CPC based ads from CPM based ads

Sidharth asks:
1. How do we distinguish between cost-per-click ads and cost-per-1000 impressions ads?
2. In case of cost per thousand impressions ads, how do we get paid? I mean, after 1000 impressions do we get some money into our account automatically?
3. What if I want to select only cost per 1000 impressions type of ads?

Answer:
Here are your answers.
1. You can’t distinguish (at least by documented means) between CPC / CPM based ads. Thinking that only image ads are CPM based is not true. There are also text ads that are CPM based. Advertisers are given the choice to make there ads either CPM based or CPC based.

2. CPM based ads generate revenue when ever they are displayed. The revenue generated would though be very small.

3. In order for a CPM based ad to appear on your site, it has to produce an effective CPM (perform) greater than the sum of the individual text ads that would otherwise appear. Google has an ad serving system that serves the maximum performing ads. So if you ads are not getting clicked by your large traffic, the ad serving program may try switching your ads to CPM based ones.

Alternately, you can mail the adsense team to serve you CPM based ads only.

$3 Keyword paying 50cents?

Adeel asks:
Few days ago I found a keyword paying more than 1 us dollar per click (if clicked by visitor it should have given 3 dollars) but it’s giving me half a dollar when clicked by visitors. The blog is new and has only 4 posts till now. Can you tell me why it’s not paying me maximum?

Answer:
The $3 that was shown against a keyword is what advertisers are willing to pay for that keyword and not what you will get when someone click on an ad (related to that keyword)

Advertisers will be bidding for the first position for a particular keyword. When the number of advertisers bidding for a keyword increase, the bid values increase too, pushing it (the keyword) into the high paying league.

When an advertiser pays $3, you should be aware that a portion of it will go to Google and only what is remaining is paid to you. As for now, Google hasn’t published the percent that they take.

Again, there is something called smart pricing that comes into picture in this case. This depends on how useful (to the advertiser) the leads you send to the advertisers’ sites are. If you can send more visitors who buy (or does something that an advertiser wants) to their site, they will be willing to pay more for each of your visitors. This will highly increase you earnings.
Stay tuned while we come up with an article on smart pricing!