Making Dollars - Google AdSense

By Adam Buhler
Friday, November 7, 2003; 1:00pm EST

As the dust settles and the excitement caused by Google's AdSense gives way to the normal, everyday routines of old, it's time to put some serious thought into how you can "milk this cash cow" on your own web site. For the past couple months AdSense has dominated forums, discussions, and newsletters all over the Internet. I've heard tales of fabulous riches to be made with Ad Sense, but up until now I've been admittedly skeptical of placing someone else's ads on my pages.

Why? In short, I didn't like the idea of losing even a single visitor to another site.

The key to success with AdSense is to place your ads on pages that receive high traffic for high demand keywords. The higher the cost-per-click to the advertiser, the more you will receive per click from your site. It doesn't pay to target low cost-per-click keywords and place them on pages that don't receive hits.

Instinctively, my mind drifted to horrible images in which my homepage was buried in little ads promoting other people's services. . .

Then I thought of what's proving to be an excellent idea on my first AdSense page. By placing my first Ad Sense link on a page that offers free e-books related to marketing, I successfully blended a mix of two major factors for overall success.

1) Target high traffic pages on your site. I checked my logs and discovered many of my visitors take advantage of the free affiliate marketing resources and e-books offered on my site. Hmm...

2) If possible place AdSense links on pages that produce little or better yet, no profit. By placing AdSense on a free resources page I have drastically reduced the amount of potential customers lost to other sites. Bingo!

End result? A high traffic page producing a minimal amount of revenue. Sounds like a perfect opportunity to pick up some extra cash with AdSense.

This is especially rewarding to informational sites that focus their efforts on delivering powerful affiliate link free content to their visitors. Now they can gain a return on their services.

By no means is AdSense a perfect program, but, I've yet to stumble across a program that didn't have room for improvement in one category or another. My main gripe concerning AdSense is the inability to determine the profitability of a chosen keyword. competitive, high demand keywords will undoubtedly generate larger commissions, but the exact number is withheld by the big 'G'.

Google promises to update AdSense frequently, tweaking and polishing in order to maintain their 'squeaky-clean' image. Who knows, maybe some day we'll see AdSense add a 2nd tier? Can you imagine the smiles on the faces of webmasters around the world as they sign sub-affiliates and double, triple, quadruple etc... the amount they earn from AdSense!

One particularly handy feature available with AdSense is the ability to filter out up to 200 URL's. This gives you the option of 'blocking' spammy low value offers from your pages as well as competitors to your site.

The possibilities are limitless, yet looming on the edge of my consciousness is the fear that one day someone will find a way to exploit this 'golden goose' and force Google to crack down (much like the pay-per-click affiliate programs of old.). For now they enforce a strict anti-spamming policy, anyone found to be spamming their own links or abusing AdSense by other means will find their AdSense privileges terminated. My advice is quite simple... Hop on the AdSense bandwagon while you can at: http://www.google.com/adsense.

For a step-by-step walkthrough of how YOU can use AdSense on your site visit: http://www.smokesoft.net/adsense.html.

About Source of Article
Adam Buhler is the owner of Affiliate Programs Directory: http://www.smokesoft.net Adam is the author of the weekly newsletter "Affiliate Secrets". He is offering a free trial copy of the BIBLE of selling on the net, "Make Your Site SELL!" For a limited time to anyone who subscribes at: http://www.smokesoft.net/newsletter.html