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Google AdSense Review/Overview
Page: 2/2
(2455 total words in this text)
(10416 Reads) 
Google AdSense Review/Overview: Page 2
If Google can't find a relevant ad it will display PSA (Public Service
Announcement) e.g. the Red Cross, United Way , etc. You will not get
any commission/credit for these clickthroughs =(. Google provides a way for you to
put up your own alternate ad in such a case where they can't find a relevant AdWord ad to display.
One thing I've learned from my first month using google adsense is that it's
more important to have a well targeted website than to have a lot of traffic
(it would be best to have both, of course!). RandomDrivel gets around 4 thousand page views
a day, but since the content is all over the map ( political discussions to potty humor to the latest flash animation meme) Google AdSense had a hard time finding a relevant match and either displayed the PSA's or
displayed some really whacked out "as seen on TV" and real ghetto looking ads that weren't likely to be clicked on by my audience. Now would be a good time to mention that you
can filter out ads that you do NOT want shown to your readers. That is useful
if, for instance, one of your competitors took out an AdWord ad you wouldn't
want that displayed on your site. Or if you were a right wing discussion blog and
if adsense served up "parody bush t-shirts", I'm thinking that would be bad. But you have some editorial control over that (once you realize it's happening).
BYOPVR is highly targeted niche site (dedicated to building your own PVR from PC components) that is still building its audience and only gets around 1000 page views a day (if that). Google AdSense serves relevant ads with links to Windows XP Media
Center Edition (M$'s HTPC platform), Tivo, Tivo modding, etc. and for some reason people seem
to click on them! About 2% of the people that vist the site. Which isn't a great clickthrough percentage but for a small site it's not too bad either.
I watched my account page obsessively the first week. (and yes I did click on my own ads a few times to see where they were going, if the clicks registered, and how much a top placement click went for ) I was hoping to average a little over a buck a day
so that I could almost cover my hosting cost and it would only take me three
months to reach the minimum payout threshold of 100 dollars. If you don't make it in to threshold in a month it carrys over to the next month till you surpass the $100 mark.
The first evening the AdSense ads were in place I netted 2 clicks and 20 cents and I admit one of the clicks was me. The next day it was 13 clicks for $3.11 and again I did click on a few ads (FWIW the top spot seemed to go for around 40 - 50 cents at least with the ads being served on my site ). The following day 12 clicks for $2.38
I started to do some rough calculations, "hmmm... if I could average over $3.33 a day, I could break through the $100 dollar a month minimum for a payout!" Long story short: even though it was a short month (February) and I started on the 5th day of the month, I still was able to clear $137.37. My best day being the last day of the month with 1400 impressions, 57 clicktrhoughs, and $18.02 in earnings (the following days were higher than normal but it trailed back down - if I could have kept it at 20 bucks a day I'd be ecstatic). So far I average $6.00 a day (but I think that is going to trend down unless traffic increases) and 22 clickthroughs a day.
If I maintain a 2 percent clickthrough and increase my traffic I could increase my commission/revenue (that's why I'm a little sad that Google AdSense isn't a good match to my higher traffic site, although I'm working on a redesign that might help focus the results a little more. I'll post an update when that's done with the results)
Days where I brought in a lot of new traffic to the site (I happened to post a lot of comments that were moderated up on a particular day on the popular geek/tech site Slashdot and this site's URL is in my comment signature) my number of impressions obviously went up, but also my clicktroughs went up.
I also noticed something interesting when I used a free $25 dollar AdWords voucher I picked up from a 1 and 1 hosting promotion. I made an AdWords ad for this site, with some well written and enticing text, but I only put in the minimum allowed bid per clickthrough of $0.05 and capped it at 7 dollars a day to spread out my advertising budget. During those three and a half days I had my best AdSense days ever with a modest boost in impressions and strong boost in clickthrough % on my AdSense ads. (The days went $14, $18, & $13 dollars)… I invested 25 dollars in advertising and got 45 dollars in AdSense clicks! My theory (besides attracting targeted users to my site), is that when people click on a Google AdWords text ad, they are likely to click on another (some sort of inate text-ad predisposition or something). The down side is that those adwords click happy people aren't sticking around my site (apparently). They'd come in via AdWords and most likely leave by AdSense unless they found what they were looking for. I can't prove the causality but anecdotally there seemed to be a correlation. At the least I found it an interesting outcome… There could be some merit in investing in AdWords to help boost your AdSense clickthough rate ( which on the surface seems kinda silly, and it is possible that my site or that long weekend might just have been an anomaly *shrug* YMMV)
I feel I must point out to the regular viewers of my site(s) that these proceeds go to pay hosting first ( hosting several sites on a semi-dedicated VPS isn't cheap and if things keep growing I'll go to a fully dedicated server soon) and to buy hardware to review on this site. I'm not sure why I feel the need to point that out, I've been paying for sites out of pocket since 2000, and shouldn't feel bad about finally getting a token amount to cover expenses for once.
Google claims that they will pay out within 30 days of any month which you pass the payment threshold. They mailed the check for February on March 11th arriving on March 14th. That was pretty satisfying, although I wish they had a direct deposit option for future checks… hopefully in the near future they will consider adding it.
So, what's the verdict? Well, assuming you have a reasonably targeted site I say go for it. It's easy, it's free, it's based upon clicktrhoughs and not generated sales, and even small sites can reach the threshold (eventually) to offset hosting costs (or to order a keg and some pizza to celebrate). I do wish they showed more info on which destination URLs that people are clicking on and a breakdown on which ads pay what, but all in all I'm happy to be finally getting a little something out of an affiliate program.
Other Reading/Links
Wired Magazine Overview of Adsense/Adwords
Chris Cemper: AdSense Introduction : Chris's Google AdSense Tool Thingie
PVRBLOG's founder: Bloggin For Dollars
O'Reilly article: Adsense, PageRank, and the Way Things Combine
Back to Build Your Own PVR site
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