Internet Marketing Ideas by Steve Weber   Reply to Me On Twitter: Click Here

Although this post is about AdSense sites in particular, the same CPM concept applies pretty much across the board for other sites as well. Affiliate sites and those sites selling retail products can have the same issues I am about to point out.

I see too many of my students still picking the WRONG niches to invest their time in. For example, I have one who is working like crazy on a rare plant site. Yes, she will probably get very good Google rankings with it…first page listings for several keywords in fact. But plant sites do not result in high paying AdSense Ads!

It is quite possible her CPM for the site (how much money she will make on clicks for every 1000 visitors) will be in the neighborhood of $2.00 to $3.00. That is not a good CPM at all. On the other hand, if she had chosen a better niche, it is possible to enjoy CPM’s of $15, $20, and even higher.

What that means is that she will have to generate TEN TIMES the amount of traffic in order to make as much money as another higher paying niche would produce for her.

Hey, I am all for making sites around what you know and like; that is very important. However, most of us know about and have interests in multiple areas. Therefore, put some thought into what a higher paying niche might be.

Here’s a hint to make it easier to find one. If the ad is promoting something with a high cost, the advertiser is usually willing to pay more for it (if there is plenty of competition in Adwords for the niche). Thus, you will have a higher CPM.  This is why insurance and mortgage ads pay so much (No, I am not suggesting you make a site in one of those highly competitive areas!)

We talk about such things in great detail on my weekly coaching calls and in my private forum. Honestly, a little effort and research in the beginning can make all the difference in your future AdSense success.

If you’d like to join us on the calls and in the private forum, here is more information:

Steve Weber’s Coaching and Private Forum

I look forward to working with you!

Steve Weber

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One of the biggest you can make when placing AdSense ads on your
pages is placing TOO MANY ad units on a single page!

Besides how this SCREAMS to visitors that you are begging for them
to help you make some income, it is not productive for other
reasons too.

In all my testing, and from my research, it is obvious that less is
more when it comes to better producing AdSense pages. Why is this?

First of all, the most important determining factor for people
clicking your ads is how long they are spending on your site in the
first place. When someone comes to a site which looks to be boring
or simply full of ads, their response will be to click the back
button and NOT one of your AdSense ads.

If your content is compelling and keeps a visitor on the site
longer, they will be more likely to click an AdSense ad. The space
you use showing all those many ad groups could better be spent
featuring valuable content which the visitor will find interesting.

Secondly, Google is all about making money for Google. If you only
select to have one ad group on your page, Google is more likely to
populate that group with higher paying ads. If you have multiple ad
groups on one page, Google will be forced to fill the many groups
with some very low paying ads. Therefore, the average value of
clicks on that page will be diluted by those lower quality ads.

Don’t blindly trust this advice though. Testing is vital! Carefully
record your clicks and earnings for a page over time. Then modify
it (move or delete some ad groups) and let it run until you have a
few hundred or so clicks again; record these and compare with the
previous format. Then modify it and test again! Continued testing
is KEY!

I think you’ll find that less really proves to be more!

Here’s how you can create a residual income with AdSense

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Proper planning is required for building a successful Adsense site.
Proper research and planner are required in order for an Adsense site to be successful.
Success with an AdSense site requires proper planning.

I preach this all the time. However, I still have people contacting me who are struggling with their AdSense sites’ traffic.  Many have skipped a few key steps. Some of these people are even customers of mine who should know better…Shame Shame!

Just kidding!

I realize the problem with impatience. I struggle with it myself.

The biggest mistake I see people doing when creating AdSense sites is jumping the gun and begin investing time before the idea is researched well. Many simply DO NOT spend enough time in the prelims. Internet marketers are all cut from the same cloth in some respects; when the next “greatest idea” hits our brains we cannot wait to implement it! However, the process requires time which is always in short demand. You must use it wisely.

Here is a rough time line you should follow to avoid wasting valuable time with a worthless AdSense site idea:

Day One: The idea pops into your head from nowhere! Go ahead; let it run wild inside your head for a day. Sleep on it well; then see how you feel about it tomorrow. Oftentimes things don’t look the same the next day. Whatever you do, resist the temptation to begin work on the AdSense site that very day! You can spend a bit of time surfing and looking at some possibilities, but don’t spend a lot of time there yet.

Day Two: If the idea still excites you, now is the time to rope it in and be business-like about it. Start planning your research. Surf the web looking at competitors. (If there aren’t many, you had better wonder why.) Start taking notes. Use free keyword tools to help you brainstorm. If at all possible, talk it over with someone. (My wife sure comes in mighty handy in these times; she does a very good job at keeping me away from the deep end.)

Day Three: Plan out and begin your AdWords test campaign. If you don’t do this properly (or at all), you are throwing darts in the dark. If you are not familiar with the AdWords test campaign, contact me! This is by far the most important step of all when building AdSense sites. I really can’t emphasize that enough.

Day Four: Usually, the test campaign only needs run for a day. After that you should have a good handful of very nice keywords which you KNOW receive searches. Today you will decide on the ones you will use. The keyword selection method for the AdSense site involves comparing the number of real searchers to the keyword’s competition. I like to optimize my index page with the one I feel is the best of all the possibilities. Again, if you are not familiar with this research process, contact me!

Day Five: If everything is still a go, it’s time to create the content and build the site. (Remember that 3 or 4 out of every 5 ideas usually are shown to be duds by the above research. Success in Internet marketing requires learning the art of “failing fast”!)

One last thing however:

I know how anxious you may be to get your AdSense sites listed in Google. However, do not begin submitting to the directories before you have most of the content published. It is best to show Google your AdSense site for the first time only after you have plenty of great content! I see far too many beginners throwing up a page or two and then pointing Google to the site. Have some patience and do it right!

If done properly, building small, niche Adsense sites can be a great way to earn a steady “paycheck” from Google! There is no rocket science or tricks involved. Just follow a proven process and success comes amazingly easy.

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If you have not tried Google’s Custom Search Engine for your AdSense sites, you might consider it. Google CSE offers a way to create a custom search engine which also serves your AdSense ads.

For example, you could create a niche site about “eye problems”. You would create and optimize the site just like always in order to drive traffic to it. On the home page you create a Google search box using Google CSE. For the search you can populate the possible results with ONLY the domains you choose. This way you can create a powerful search engine which produces very targeted results. In this way the searchers might continue doing searches and will be more likely to click your ads.

Also, for this site, you could add a heading above the search box such as this:
“Search for an Eye Doctor in Your City”. You might also add an example search like this: “eye doctors in Los Angeles”

This search will result in VERY targeted AdSense ads. Many of them will contain the terms “Los Angeles eye doctor”

These ads will have very good CTR’s! Talk about TARGETED!

You can get a free CSE account at http://www.google.com/cse

There are 1000s of possible niches which would work well for a CSE. Any niches where searcher may search by city, state, model number, etc. are great candidates

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Sometimes I can’t believe the bone-head mistakes I make. My wife can, but I still have a hard time swallowing them. About 2 months ago my conversion income for  FireFox referrals in AdSense went to zero everyday…even though I always showed conversions every day. The amount earned was always zero. I had been making about 4 to 12 dollars each day from that one site promoting FireForx…not a lot, but it does ad up.

When it stayed at zero, I wrote Google. They wrote back and said they would send it to an engineer to look at. Three more weeks and still nothing. I wrote again. This time they said there was a “known issue” with it and they were working on it. OK, at least they acknowledged the problem I was having; maybe they would credit me back all the conversions I had missed in the past month. Three more weeks and still nothing, so I wrote again.

This time I must have reached someone a little sharper. They pointed out I did not have that site in my list of allowed sites! OH MY GOSH! I had just added to my allowed sites when the payments stopped. I forgot to add that site!!

I added it yesterday and looked this morning; I made 9 bucks from it yesterday. All the past months are gone though and can’t be credited back. I probably just gave Google an extra four or five hundred dollars.

This is what happens when you have 15 or 37 things going at once.  Slow down and pay more attention to the details!

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You all know I hate hype! Too many beginners fall for the sales pages which promise “hundreds of dollars” per day with little work and no experience required. Therefore, I had reservations about just how to promote my newest product, AdSense Connection.

AdSense is the one thing I do which is almost like free money. You see, I treat Adsense as a hobby; I do not feel bad if I don’t work on it for days (even weeks) at a time. Adsense is simply something fun I like to be involved with. In return, it pays my mortgage and house insurance each month with plenty left over.

I wish all of my hobbies paid so well!

I have several AdSense sites which earn me a nice little paycheck from Google each month. I created these sites over the past year or so and didn’t put a lot of work into them…but I did use common SEO techniques to get them ranked well. I don’t pay for any traffic; all the traffic I get is free search engine traffic…mostly from Google.

Like I said, it is as close to free money as I can imagine.

Wow, that may have sounded like hype….I have a hard time describing my success with AdSense!

I have a few videos and audio on the AdSense Connection site you can watch and listen to me describe it all in more detail.

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Finally! My newest product is complete!

AdSense Connection 

I started experimenting with AdSense over a year ago and has remained on my “hobby” list since. I don’t devote much time to making money with AdSense at all. In fact, if I told how little I worked for that September Google Adsense check, it would sound like hype!

I hate hype. I wrote the sales page trying to keep it from sounding that way. However, when I only spent a few hours on some of my AdSense sites which now earn hundreds of dollars per month, it’s pretty tough to “un-hype” it!

As I said, I only do AdSense as a hobby. I have so many other projects going I simply can’t devote much time to it; I sure do like those Google checks each month however!

I encourage you to take a look at the sales page and see if it might be something you are interested in…oh, and check out my very unique, $500 per month guarantee!

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Wow! Just what I have been looking for! Here is a new tool which details the maximum AdWord bid, the daily search volume and the estimated number of daily clicks for chosen keywords…all via one clean and simple interface.

Technobloggie has hit a homerun with this new Keyword Tool!

Not only is it great to check popular keywords for AdWords and SEO purposes, if you are using AdSense on your pages you can get an idea of what the clicks might pay for given content.

Plus, I REALLY like the chart which shows the click trends for the past several years for given keywords! What a gold mine of information!

However, (Don’t you hate that when someone adds a “however”!) I just want to point out that you should not trust any keyword tool when it comes to choosing keywords for SEO purposes. I wasted significant time early on optimizing for keywords which the tools said were great, but turned out to have little traffic. Always do your own research! Spend a few bucks testing those keywords with a quick AdWords campaign!

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I began experimenting with AdSense about 18 months ago or so. I spent some time creating several content sites, got them ranking pretty well in Google using SEO, started getting trafffic, and then put AdSense on them.

Most beginners will create a site and slap AdSense or affiliate ads on it right away. I feel this is very wrong. Google, of course, does not care if AdSense is on your brand new site. However, there have been rumors that other search engines may frown when they see a new site with AdSense on it…especially if they don’t think it has really killer content.

So why risk it? There is no traffic at first. Besides, I feel if a site owner tries to monetize his site right from the start, he/she is losing focus on what is really important. The focus needs to be 100% on getting traffic until traffic does starts rolling in.

Back to my AdSense experience:

I spend very little time on my AdSense “hobby”. Lately though I am thinking I should spend more. My dollar or two per day of AdSense income has grown to $20 to $35 per day (I had a $47 day a few days ago.)

Joel Comm (another Okie by the way who lives about 90 minutes from me) has a huge AdSense business making over $600 per day (that was a figure from several years ago too!) His success is built around quality content websites and blogs.

Speaking of blogs, one of my best ideas was to start a blog about a popular MLM product. People are PASSIONATE about MLM products…both pro and con! I setup the blog so that I don’t have to post and all the comments are always displayed. This simply allows the readers to read and respond right there. It works like a charm!

I make sure the comments have the correct keyword optimized for and then simply approve them. It takes me only a few minutes per day and I get all the content they write…for free! It is always fresh content and Google LOVES it! I even started a sister blog for the product. I linked to it from the original blog and guess what! Both are now on page one of Google for that search term!

Do I think AdSense is worth your time? The answer is yes, but ONLY if you are willing to invest the time in creating a quality content site first! You must create value. If your site has no value, you are simply wasting your time. Be honest with yourself when asking if your site has real value.

Oh, by the way, if you register for an AdSense account, you MUST read their terms of service…You MUST follow the rules or they may ban you!

Ok, that’s all for now.

Steve

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