Top 4 Reasons Why Your Google Adsense Earnings Suck!

My hustle to earn some passive income online has been going on for over 2 years now and of the loads of method I’ve tried, Google’s Adsense for Publishers program seems to be the most consistent earner for a past time blogger like me. No wonder that’s where most newbies focus on when they try their hands at hitting it big online.

Most of these newbies, after following all the "rules in the book", still cry out asking why they aren’t reaping enough to show for what they have sown online.

Well allow me to say that, ya’ all need to start looking beyond the whole create high quality content and drive loads of traffic to them recommendations. Those are just tips of the iceberg.

Here are four important things to take note off before you start anticipating huge Google Adsense earnings

The Make Money Online niche sucks:

Most of us probably stumbled on a site that shared tips on making money online via blogging and we quickly decide to create blogs and offer our own advice on making money online. I’m TOTALLY guilty of that but boy am I glad I was quick to realize my mistake .

One thing I failed to realize was that 90% of visitors to make money online sites already knew that I made money via Google Adsense thus they RARELY clicked on ads.

Also the make money online niche pays peanuts per click unless you’re targeting some specific keywords within that niche.

If you ‘re looking to make it big in Adsense, I highly recommend you check out WordStreams’ infographic/free pdf report The 20 Most Expensive Keywords in Google AdWords.

Smart Pricing Is Real:

Google doesn’t really pay the exact amount bidden by an advertiser on an ad. They pay you just a little over 60% of that. Now you may sometimes not get the whole of that 60% if Google feels that click will most likely not end in a sale or a particular action for the advertiser.

This is Smart Pricing in a nutshell.

You’re most likely to be smart priced if the bulk of your traffic is coming from sites like Digg and StumbleUpon. Google pays more for clicks made by search engine visitors since they are more likely to buy than social media visitors thus you’re advised to only show Google Adsense to search engine visitors ONLY.

For more on Smart Pricing please watch YouTube – AdSense Smart Pricing.

NOTE: Google Analytics kinda sucks at tracking where Google Adsense clicks came from thus I’ve reverted to showing my adsense to every Tom, Dick and Harry.

Not All Search Engine Traffic Rocks:

I just told you that payouts on clicks made by search engine visitors are the best BUT these clicks aren’t equal in value.

To further reduce the cost of advertising for its advertisers, Google categorizes its traffic into traffic from developed countries and traffic from developing and undeveloped countries.

Developed countries tend to have a higher purchasing power than other countries thus Google pays more for clicks on ads coming from developed countries. If you’re blogging for adsense, make sure your articles are targeted at folks in the US, Canada, UK, France, UAE etc.

Example: Generally clicks from Nigerian search engine traffic make publishers a maximum of 10 cents only and this is not just coming from me but from other Nigerian bloggers who have studied their earnings closely.

Text Ads With Large Fonts + Plenty White Space Work Best

To increase your CTR, the text of your ads must be clear thus I highly recommend you stick to Arial Large as it seems to be the easiest to read. It works best with 336 * 280 ads but is a fail for 728*90 and 468*90 thus I use both of them for image ads only while I leave the former to show but text and images ads.

Just because Google recommends we show our top performing ad slots above the fold, some of us make the colossal mistake of cramming three many ads into that location and subsequently our CTR begins to drop ’cause we’ve inadvertently created ad blindness.

I was guilty of this too and have learnt my lesson ever since.

LESS IS MORE and I’ve discovered that one image ad, one text/image ad and one ad link banner works best in the top fold but then again, this would depend on your site’s layout.

Always endeavor to leave an adequate amount of white space around your ads so your readers don’t just gloss over those places ’cause they make their eyes sore.

Final Words

Google Adsense readily offers a tool called One Click Optimizer for Adsense publishers and I highly recommend, ya’all check it out as it has helped me a lot.

Finally do not forget to add Google Adsense’s crawler to your robots.txt file as it helps to ensure delivery of relevant ads on your site.

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google

Disallow:

Feel free to share your experience with us regarding how you’ve managed to increase your adsense earnings or ask any questions you’ve got bothering you .

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