Many “Adsense gurus” would offer you to buy their eBooks, which they wrote based on their own personal results and experience; such books won’t give you much information, they give you basic tips which any publisher learns himself within a few months anyway, and telling you that you need 10,000 visitors a day in order to earn xxx$ daily, won’t help your earnings. Naturally, traffic is essential, but if the adverts implementation is smart, you can collect a few dollars daily with the smallest traffic and just imagine how much would it be when your site will get heavy and steady visitors stream?

The tip I am going to share is basic and obvious, yet they are free and I hope will help to triple your earings.
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Yes, you are saying ‘what the f…’ now, seeing this post nicely embedded in Google Adsense (biggest contextual ads network) from all sides and Kontera in between, yet I come and advice you not to use it? You got me wrong then, I will not advice you not to sign up with Adsense, Yahoo Publisher Network or MSN (I actually do advocate it in general) and most definitely I will not advice you to get rid of your existing account, but, I want to bring to your attention some down sides of monetizing your website with contextual ads.

First of all, what are contextual ads? These are just link to other websites on the body of your pages, related to site’s content, and since you get payed per click (PPC model) you have to place the ads on so-called prime positions of your website and spare a lot of space for them, otherwise they might not be noticed. And all this you are doing to… to make people leave your site. Did you think about it? You get paid for loosing visitors. If contextual ads are your only way to make money off the site, and you really don’t give a damn if your content will be read / viewed, - then it’s perfect. But what if you have other ways of income, such as affiliate sells, subscriptions, donations? Once your visitor left, the chance of him coming back and continue bring you revenue from other sources or clicking other ads is very slim, and I am sure you do realize it. So think about it, you get a few cents compensation for every visitor you wave good bye to.

Secondly, niche plays a significant factor. Some relevant keywords pay a few dollars per single click, while others (and actually many of them) pay a few cents for a click. This means, if your website is targeted to low paying keywords (or better said - created for the niche, where ads are paying low and the competition is small), you can’t possibly make much, unless you have really crazy traffic. This, however, does not mean your content is bad or not interesting or not worthy, it can still potentially make a lot of money (from donations, subscriptions, affiliate marketing, direct ads sales etc), but not from contextual ads.

Lastly, PageRank does not matter when it comes to contextual advertising. PR8 sites that choose to place PPC ads can still get 1 cents off each leaving visitor, while another PR0 websites can easily generate a few dollars per click… Having said that, contextual ads are better for beginners who can’t sell direct ads to advertisers yet (due to low traffic or lack / low PR), while the sharks out there, with high PR’s, are practically wasting space. Just imagine how many text links you can sell directly to advertisers in the place where your skycrapper is located, and how much can you earn monthly…and does your PPC network cover it..?

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Even if you were using AdSense for a few years now, you might still not be aware of the fact that the ads, which show first in your html’s code - have the highest bid. It’s important to emphasize that I refer to the code, and not to the actual position on the page as often CMS templates with a several files mislead the publisher. For example, let’s take a classical 2 columns WordPress theme, with navigation at the right, and say you placed one banner at the footer of your page and a big add at the beginning of your navigation column. Visually, the big ad at the beginning of the right-handed navigation menu is first, but, since the code is “read” from left to right, your footer ad will be the first one (and consequently with the top paying ads), while the apparently upper ad on the right side will be second and get a lower paying ads, click on which will result in lesser revenue. However, since it’s on the upper part of the page and likely to get viewed and clicked more often then the footer banner, your pay-per-click will just be unjustly lower than it could be.

Solution

Just go the other way around and make sure that the ads, which are located at the “prime” spots of your website (I strongly suggest to optimize the “prime” spots in according with Google AdSense heat map) and place the “first” adverts there. If you are unsure how the ads ended up, just view the code of your site, once the ads are places and see which ad slot comes first. If you work with channels or different colours / ads formats, you won’t have a difficulty identifying which code belongs to what ads spot. This will guarantee that the biggest amount of clicks will fall on the top paying Adsense ads, which will either increase your revenue, or won’t let it be reduced if the amount of clicks on your ad goes down (happens due to lack of traffic, normally).

It sounds simple, and indeed it is, so do not let your fancy and complicated layout steal your website’s material potential.

There are so many success stories on the internet, some of them are published in in Business magazines, others in AdSense “success stories” section. Gone are the days when you had to be a super smart geek to make something on the internet, today, some bloggers with basic, if any, knowledge of HTML are making huge money, just thanks to their creative thinking, writing and publications.

If you have no clue what am I talking about, here are some people, who’s blogs I read on a daily basis, and who’s self build success I find tremendously inspiring.

Marcus Frind reports a mere 3,5 million dollar revenue a year from his blog (This I found on Paula Mooney’s blog). Steve Pavlina makes 365,000$ a year with his website / blog, and Matther Daimler is slightly falling behind with his 360,000$ annual income. Sharon Maguire with 270,000$ per year, the very inspiring success of Self Made Minds, with “only” 150,000$ a year, but still not too bad, not as bad as the founder of Digital Point forums who earns 120,000$, according to New York Times. Not forgetting the mogul John Chow, who is making no less than 140,000$ yearly and Darren Rowse with… I don’t even know how much. A lot.

My main “other significant” models are Steve Pavlina, Darren Rowse, Kumiko Suzuki and John Chow. I borrowed tons of tips from their blogs, and seeing their success, which they made with their own hands, brain and Internet connection is without a doubt inspiring. It’s always good to take a look at the blogs that make five figures a month. See what advertising networks they use, see how they present their content and themselves. They all make money in slightly different way, some rely on AdSense, while others implement every possible ads network and solution for publishers. Even in my mini report about how does TopTut.com make money, I said that this blogs generate revenue in a bit different structure, compared to most of my other sites. You have to try different networks, different ads placement, colours, layouts, etc. and see what works best of yourself.
What I don’t understand, however, is how some people get frustrated from reading these stories. Why? Well, mainly because they make significantly less, but will sitting in your computer corner, turning green from narrow-minded envy, make you rich? Will cursing those who make more than you double your income? Don’t hate those who make more than you, it’s your only chance to learn (free) from others’ examples, because these are real stories, real people. And you can be one of them some day, if you won’t let your negativity dominate over your creativity.

As been a psychologist, I thought.. what if I give my readers a few strictly professional advices? Just as a psychologist, and not as a fellow blogger or internet money making machine. So, here are a few tips. They are not a must, feel free only to implement those you feel good about and those that won’t change dramatically your way of blogging, unless you feel it needs to be changed. Anyway, let’s get started…

1. Don’t be so money oriented. The only way to win your readers *love* is not to talk with them about money, at least not all the time, unless you actually teach them how can they earn them themselves. People, who’s only concern and value seems to be money, tend to put off. Promote high values instead.
2. Win your readers’ trust. You know how much fraud there is today on the internet. Everyone is looking for someone genuine, someone real and honest who will tell them the truth about some product or network and won’t try to promote them just to get a commission, never mind what crap they are selling. I refused tons of reviews offers and advertisers’ links only because I felt their products could not deliver what it promises. All these e-Books that guarantee to make you a millionaire… they do pay good money for advertising, but I knew that if my readers will see that I promote such websites, or buy that products and end up disappointed, and, will remember how ardently I was recommending it, they will never trust any other review I make or product I recommend. Basically, advice your readers to use only what you used successfully yourself. If you need to make money with a sponsored review, accept only relevant offers that you believe in yourself, and make it clear to the reader that the review was sponsored, either by placing it in a “sponsored reviews” category, or state it in the post. US law, for instance, demands disclosure of sponsored posts.
   
3. Don’t lose your dignity in readers’ eyes. Talking about your downfalls and how much you need financial support, for example, is needless. Begging for donations under some poor excuses such as you can’t pay the hosting bill - won’t make you look good in readers eyes. Some will feel sorry for you and leave a cheering comment, others will throw a few bucks your way, but others will just not respect you as an online entrepreneur. I mean, you can’t cover 10$ a month? Okay, some of you can’t, and I am not saying there is anything wrong with not been as well-off as Darren Rowse, but letting the whole world know about it - is wrong. Most people tend to respect successful bloggers a lot more than beginners who struggle to make a cent out of their online business. Sad, I know, but this is how the world works.
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About one year ago, ShoeMoney posted in his blog…

IPU is also a really valuable tool I use to evaluate domains for purchase. Many people can tell you what kind of income they are making with AdSense, azoogleads, cj, but that doesn’t mean that you are going to make that much. Niches flux a lot but traffic is traffic and I know that *I* can consistently make a min of 2 cents per uniq and if its a niche that I am familiar with I could say that I know I can make as much as 9 cents per uniq user.

That was one year ago and I should think the standard has been raised a bit. Most of you probably have read that Jeremy Schoemaker’s tip for calculating the IPU - Income Per Use. This way you can see how much you earn from each visitor who enters your website, and not from each click, as the CTR (Click Though Rate) could be low on some sites, and does not reflect the actual income on a website that run a several monetizing programs. So, IPU allows you so see how much does your traffic worth. Jeremy also said in his blog, that he generated an average of 9 cents per visitor (which was over a year ago, don’t forget), and if you make 2 (or less) cents per user (not per click, per user!) you are at great loss.

I decided to calculate how much do I make per user here at toptut.com and honestly it was the most frustrating experience. Is that all, I asked myself? After having added everything I use to monetize this site to my earnings bucket (sponsored reviews were included), I reached 1 cent per user. So, my revenue, which I was already started to be proud of, is in fact half of what is not good enough already.

This makes me think. While the Click Through Rate in this blog was gradually growing (in fact with the new layout structure it has tripled itself over the past 2 months), I still need to pull my revenue up and make it about ten times bigger, in order to achieve a more or less “good” revenue level.

At present I have no clue how to do it. If at present I have 1000+ unique visitors a day, and the most logical step towards increasing the revenue is setting a goal of 10,000 visitors a day, but, the IPU will probably still stay equal in percentage, right? If I made last month 8,4$ from every 1k daily users, i.e. I will be making 84,0$ a day from 10k daily visitors. This makes sense, but the Income Per User will remain the same. So how on earth can I pull the IPU up without trying to scam my users with overpriced products or showering this blog with adverts that will end up dominating? I honestly have no clue. Anyway, if you wanna make yourself feel unworthy and see how measly your income is, calculate the IPU by taking the overall income per month and dividing it by the number of visitors. You will get frustrated, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

This post is basically for bloggers, and not only bloggers but those who make money off sponsored reviews. Not many do, but those who do have a decent PR, Alexa, and Technorati Rank, found blogging for money to be a very nice additional way to monetize your online activity. Let’s assume you already know about been a blogger at ReviewMe and now can benefit from their new feature, campaign reviews. Why is it good? It’s only good for the bloggers who have low rank blog and have no chance of been accepted in the premium position, yet with this new structure they can make good money. Advertisers, however, are not in a profit because they pay minimum 10$ for a review, which can end up on PR0 dead blog. So, if you want to be reviewed by this blog Get Reviewed At ReviewMe!, it’s only 100$ now.
Anyway, enough with shameless self promotion, so how to grab a campaign? Technically it’s very easy, all you need to do is log in regularly to your ReviewMe account and check if there are no ongoing campaigns they offer your (related to your category of the blog). If you like any of the offers, click to accept it, and from that date you will have 3 days to post the review on your website. Practically, it’s easy, but there are a few things you should remember.

• You can only accept 10 campaign offers per month.

What does it mean? It means there are likely to be more offers, but you can’t make more than 10 reviews via campaign offers (you can, however, make unlimited posts with premium reviews), so it would be wiser to grab only the higher paying advertisers. For example, now it’s May 7th, and since the beginning of the month I already was offered to write a review about 25 times. Some were priced 28$, others 5$, and the rest in between. The 5$ reviews came first, so if I’d have accepted the first 10 which all cost 5$, I’d not be able to make more than 50$ this month from the campaigns of ReviewMe. To be honest, the reason I did not accept it was not greed, but rather the fact that they require minimum 200 words in a review, and 200 words for 5$ is… well, not much. Of course, there is an option of submitting up to 6 blogs, I personally have 4 listed, and each of them belongs to a different category, which automatically multiplies my chances of getting an offer by 4. Remember, that ReviewMe marketplace is big, with many many many bloggers, so the offers won’t stay up long, if you see a good offer - grab it right away, and also check a few times a day for an offer, if you really want to hunt down a good opportunity.

Bottom line is, don’t rush into accepting minimum payout offers, but also, don’t curse me in the end of the month when it would turn to be your only offer you could have taken…

Well, there are quite a few ways to monetize your website; you can make money off AdSense, Adbrite, or any other contextual ads, you can implement the elegant looking text link ads, or go with affiliate marketing and sales. Whichever way you choose, you will find yourself freeing more and more space for “sponsored” links and banners, which take up a lot of “pixels”, and let’s face it - make the site look a bit ugly. Not all of them, but if you want to make good money off the adverts, you have to free enough space for placing them, and not only that, but also placing them right under visitor’s nose, otherwise they will not be clicked. That is, even without mentioning the most irritating (yet good paying) type of ads such as interstitial and pop ups.

So, what if you want a perfectly looking, clean site? A serious presentation of your work online (articles, essays, writing, literature, service, whatever), without been classed as a commercial site by the visitors? (who will judge the appearance of your website by the amount of adverts on it). There is very skillful way to do it - Sponsored Search. You just hit the spot by placing this useful function at the upper corner of your website. You will be surprised to see how many people use the search box every day. Don’t forget, visitors are lazy, and no matter how flawless your navigation is, any visitor will always prefer to shorten the process by typing the desired keyword in the search box and letting the cut edge technology do the work. It just saves time, navigating through the jungle of your content.
The “trick” with sponsored search is, you have to place it above your content, where anyone, upon opening your website, will see it. Placing it at the footer or at the bottom of left navigation menu won’t do you any good because the visitor will face the content and then will start browsing around. Search function just loses it’s basic function: to help one to find what he wants, fast.

How sponsored search works? Very simple. All you need to do, if you have not done already, is to sign up with Google Adsense (you can see their link at the top of this page in “We recommend” box). Once you signed up and got you account approved, you will have the option of making money by referrals (currently advocating FireFox, AdSense and Adwords), displaying contextual ads (which is what you see on the right column here, though they come in various formants, and, finally - sponsored search. Since this topic is concentrated on how you can make money without ads, we will choose the sponsored search function only.
I had a search box on one of my websites, which I sticked in a rather forsaken corner and used to think for many month that sponsored search is totally useless waste of space and I kept it there just for visitors to search the site, yet out of 500 unique visitors a day, I hardly got one search query. Then, I read on someone’s blog about the wonder’s of Search function, and how much that blogger was making with it additionally to the ads, so I looked closer at his layout and realized that the top position of the site - the top navigation bar, is a big search window with a nice and juicy “go” button, that I bet no one could refuse pressing on. Neither did it.

This blog, as you can see, have the Search box in a rather respectable position and the amount of queries is huge. Not all of them lead to clicks, but the leitmotif of this article is - if you place the search box under your visitors very nose they will use it. And if they already use it, why not to make money with it..?
Other advantages of sponsored search.

1. Get clicks on ads not related to your site subject. Through the search function, your visitors may come across an advert which is not relevant to your content. For instance, if they look for “WordPress themes” and you only offer “Blogger layouts”, with sponsored search they will most definitely find what they want and hopefully even click on the featured results to proceed further, while regular crawl of your website will just show zero results and make the visitor leave empty handed.
2. Customize the look. With Google AdSense search, you can fully customize the page on which the search results will be displayed, which means you can create a similar look to your website, even using your own logo (clickable, leading to wherever you want it to lead), which will complement your site’s design and in no way imply your are making money off your highly respectable site.

Hope this gives you yet another idea for monetizing your website wisely.