I have been replying to a lot of threads and figured I would knock out a quick article on how I increased my Google income over the years. This is the 100% legal and proven way to increase your daily earnings. I earn about $5-$10 a day with two very small websites. I hope to double that each year.

It is all in the position
Google terms and conditions allow Google Adsense users to place up to three Google Adsense codes to any one page. The key to this is to ad Google Adsense code in highly visible areas and in areas that are visible and consistent. By visible I mean near places where visitors click. For instance, under your header or navigation bar should be one spot. The second spot should be within or near the main content on your page. The third in in the footer. The footer is usually where people look after they finish reading your content. What better way to get a visitor to click on an ad for Ford Mustangs when he has seen the ads before reading the article, during and after? By consistent I mean in places that show up on every page. Most PHP off the shelf websites are modular and have headers and footers that remain consistent. The key is to get as many impressions as possible! You should be shooting for at least 10,000 impressions a day or you should keep away from Google Adsense and go with something that pays up per sale or referral like Netflix, Ebay or Amazon. For instance, Netflix pay as much $5-12 per new customer (off the top of my head).

Images are better than text
When setting up your Google Adsense code you have several options; text, text and banner, or banner only. Additionally, the square text/banner codes are the most underutilized code, but the code with the highest pay off. Why? Because they allow video ads to be displayed! Video are worth more per click and are more attractive to the eye.

I also recommend you use the banner only code for a while. Test it out and see for yourself if you are getting a lot of nice banners. Banners are worth more per click and are more attractive. There is no better way to get your visitors attention to a Google ad than using banners and videos. Most repeat visitors are trained to overlook Google Text ads, but will be attracted to a nice banner or video.

Other Than Google
Believe it or not there is life after Google! I have read many posts that state their life is over because they got banned from Google. When I am here to tell you that I make more money from non-Google ads than Google ads.

First, I have heard, but have not verified, that Yahoo Publisher pays out higher than Google. This makes sense since Google owns the industry and Yahoo needs to gain market share.

Second, there are two large affiliate marketers that I love to use. They are linkshare.com and cj.com. Linkshare.com has affiliate programs for the NFL, NBA, Playboy, Netflix and hundreds of other large businesses. Commission Junction, or cj.com has Ebay, Major League Baseball, and hundreds more. In many ways you can target your websites better using these two major affiliate marketers. For instance, I only use Google Adsense under my navigation bar and use Ebay and several other affiliates in the other areas. These are just the two I use and there are dozens of other great affiliate marketers. I recommend taking a look at yahoo and MSN's version of Google Adsense and linkshare.com and cj.com for an alternative to Google Adsense. This is especially true if you are not getting a lot of impressions and run a small website.

Use Channels!
Channels take a few seconds and allow you to track each Google Code that you put on your websites. For instance, I have a Channel that says "navbar" and another that says "footer". Channels allow you to know what channels are working and which ones are not. When checking your Adsense reporting you can see which channels are performing the best. This has helped me change around the code (from text to banners) or remove the code completely and replace it with a different affiliate. Channels are even more important if you are running more than one site. How are you going to know which site is getting you more impressions or paying out better? Also, without channels you will not know what areas of your site are performing the best.

If this article was helpful give me a thanks and bump it up! I'm also interested in your feedback. You can also say high to me on my forums.

Mike

Thanks for the article Mike. I think one thing that stands out in your post other than the specific details is that you actually put in both thought and work to making AdSense and the affiliate marketing pay off for you.

It's usually the number 1 oversight I see from people here and elsewhere when complaining about how they're not earning anything with AdSense. Too many seem to think all you do is place some ads once and wait for the money to roll in.

This post was very informative.

Do all of you feel images are better than text? I find this always a topic of controversy from site to site.

Images -> more attractive, jump out

Text-> more adds-> more choice.

Which do you most of you find perform better?

I was under the impression that image ads will out perform the text ads until I recently found that they do not.

I have a website with 2 types of ads on the same page. The first ad is text ad and the other one is image ad. the percentage of text ad impressions is 150% to the impressions of the image ad. But I get a very little clicks from the image ad in comparison to the text ad.

The postion of my text ad is better, but the impression number is very good for the image ad as well, so it should've showed some good results as I expected.

I have a website with 2 types of ads on the same page. The first ad is text ad and the other one is image ad. the percentage of text ad impressions is 150% to the impressions of the image ad. But I get a very little clicks from the image ad in comparison to the text ad.

The postion of my text ad is better, but the impression number is very good for the image ad as well, so it should've showed some good results as I expected.

BJ,

I would say it is unfair to compare the two in your case.

First, you said the Text Ad gets 150% more impressions. You also said your text ad is in a better position. These are two things that throw off the stats.

For instance, the Google Adsense under my navigation bar gets the same amount of impressions as my Google Adsense in my footer. My click through rate (Thus my earnings) are literally 20 times better under my navigation bar. Position is the most important factor. People see the top of a website much more than the bottom. You can spend hours on a website and never see the footer ad, but will see the header/navigation ad 100s of times.

Mike

I agree that I should not infere anything from my results, since this is a one case senario. I should hear from others as well.

I think image Ads should be used on websites that use many images in the website content (like games websites), because the visitors will be seeing alot of images and image ads won't look strange to them. However, In my case, with a website that has more text than images, any image Ad will look stranage and will trigger the ads blindness while the visitor is reading the content.

I do think you have to look at your results for your specific site. There are some general things that will be true about AdSense, but so much can depend on the specifics of your site and your audience.

The best thing any site can do is test and measure. Make a few changes in the look and position and type of ad and measure what works best.

Originally Posted by bj_private

I was under the impression that image ads will out perform the text ads until I recently found that they do not.

I have a website with 2 types of ads on the same page. The first ad is text ad and the other one is image ad. the percentage of text ad impressions is 150% to the impressions of the image ad. But I get a very little clicks from the image ad in comparison to the text ad.

The postion of my text ad is better, but the impression number is very good for the image ad as well, so it should've showed some good results as I expected.

When we talk about 'performance' what are we referring to here?

Google seems to think images "perform" better. I can only assume they mean # of clicks.

You're maybe right, but as Steven said, this may not be the case with your website, so you have to check all possible variations of Ads (position,type,color,size) before choosing a specific combination the performs best with your website.

Thanks Guy, good.

I have come around on the text versus images part. Some times the three text ads performs better than one banner. In many instances, there may not be content available to be displayed and you get a "blank" or a Public Service ad depending on what you have selected. It is a pure number game. You will always have more people with Text Ads than with banners advertising through Google. This means you will have a much higher ad (the rate an ad actually shows up for your viewers to see and hopefully click).

Also, I would guess that more advertiser have 368 pixel wide banners than the 720 pixel wide skyscraper ads, so you may want to select the 368 banner if you are going to use banners. This will ensure more banners actually showing up (vice public service/blanks) and hopefully more clicks.

Originally Posted by vangogh

I do think you have to look at your results for your specific site. There are some general things that will be true about AdSense, but so much can depend on the specifics of your site and your audience.

The best thing any site can do is test and measure. Make a few changes in the look and position and type of ad and measure what works best.

The audience definitely has a lot to do with the type of ads you run. Our site is related to Costa Rica travel info. We went through a number of variations in layout (as recommended by Google) - tried image ads and text ads in all the hot spot areas and, in the end, the text ads top left were the most successful once we got the colors just right. Even the various content ads only bring in a touch of income.

If our site was more general consumer info based I think image ads would do better - however on any site related to the visitor researching a subject, text seems to be the winner in our case - they are already in a mood to read.

i think earnings of 5-10 usd a day isn't a large enough sample to gain much info from, also YPN don't allow non us residents to sign up, as for text v images, the images made my site look crap, so i stuck with text, affilliate sign ups sounds good, but surely signing up direct allows you more commission?

Yeah great post, I have never had much success as a linkshare affiliate and I have tried off and on (mainly off) for years maybe I'll have to try them again.

I have made $0 off of Linshare and don't use it much. If you have a 100% sport site it is good because they have the NBA, MLB, NHL, etc.