AdSense Not Making Sense Sometimes

by Tony on September 8, 2011

So Google tells me that I’m not earning as much as I could and that I should start using image ads. Ok, I’ve tried this experiment a few times. This doesn’t seem to be the case, for me at least. Here is the email they sent me:

We just reviewed your site,yourdomain.com, and noticed that you’re not opted-in to show both text and image/rich media ads on at least 148 units.

Enabling all of your units to display both text and image/rich media ads can significantly increase your revenue. Your 336×280 ad unit on yourdomain.com/ is one example of where you can make this change.

Click to upgrade your units now!

Once you’re logged into your AdSense account, click the “My Ads” tab
Select all ad units
From the Actions dropdown, edit ad type to “Text & Image / rich media ads”

Need more proof?

Opting into text and image/rich media ads increases the pool of advertisers competing to appear on your site. More competition means a higher eCPM for you. Units that are opted into all ad types typically see an eCPM that’s 4402% higher than text or image only units. Check out our case study to see how sf.funcheap.com started earning 51% more by making this change.

I think that’s a load of bull… for me, at least. I’m someone going for optimization and not just throwing as many ads on as many sites as I can – a theory that I’ve seen pay off.

Going with text and rich media ads seems to actually give you a wider group of advertisers but also a wider group of ads. Image ads are pretty much like $0.10 each for advertisers (good, cheap advertising if you’re a business), so they’re not going to earn more, sorry. You’d think that demand would be higher but it just doesn’t work that way for me and I’ve tried this a number of times. It takes about a week to recover once I go back to text ads only so I don’t like testing this too often.

Next, what I found is that if you go with a different ad group (channel?) for your home page than your inside pages, you won’t earn as much. Keep them all the same. It seems that advertisers that will want to get on your home page will then also have to advertise on your other, good pages, too. I thought Google had more per page kind of control but maybe not.

The other experiment is the number of ads per page. For my best website, only 1 ad per page. If advertisers want to get on that page, they’re going to have to pay more. I get more revenue this way. For other sites, go with the max amount of ads (3 of each kind) – go for volume.

So what I’ve found works best (for me, at least) is going with text ads only and have all your ads for one website in the same group and only 1 ad per page.

This analysis is not scientific. I’d be interested in what others have found.

-T

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Income at Home Scam

by Tony on June 21, 2011

There’s a website called IncomeAtHome.com and I’m wondering if anyone has used it and what they think of it. Is it a scam? Is it just for some people and not most people? Is anyone making money with it?

From what I can tell, it’s a marketing system by a company called Online Business Systems for selling Herbalife or something like that. I have heard the ads on Sean Hannity and other radio shows. They seem to advertise on CareerBuilder and Monster.com as well.

It would seem that any business that wants some huge upfront cost to get you into it would be a scam. They would just want to make money off of people who really want to make some money at home but then not support them or have them buy into even more. This would be in poor taste in my opinion since times are really tough and some people really need a good, at-home business opportunity.

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What Kind of Business to Start?

by Tony on June 14, 2011

Times are tough. People are unemployed and looking for work. The ambitious will decide to work for themselves.

I had someone ask me a little while ago what I thought the best kind of business would be to start. My answer was that anything that would help people save money or earn money would be the best kind of business to start.

Think about it – what’s doing well are sites like Groupon and all the copycats. I’ve been reading how the Groupon model could easily fail and I’m not convinced that model would be the best one to follow. But come up with a new idea where you help people save money and you’ll have a winner. I’m thinking about it too, of course.

-T

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