To use old content, you have to have content in the first place. If you don’t happen to have any out-of-print books that you’ve written lying around — and you don’t feel like writing something new — another option is to ask people to write for your site for free.
Lots of people like writing. Just look at Amazon. They didn’t pay a penny for all those book reviews. Their users write them for free and Amazon benefits.
When I started www.WorldVillage.com, I didn’t have money to pay the people who reviewed software for me. Instead, I contacted the game companies and received complimentary copies of their computer games, which I then forwarded to a staff of volunteer writers. The agreement was that they would provide me with a written review of the game and they would keep the game as payment. I’ve got dozens of game reviews that bring users to my site and get them clicking on my ads. I didn’t pay a penny for them but years later they continue to generate revenue for me.
You don’t have to use reviews though. Whatever the subject of your website, you can add a line asking people to send in their thoughts and comments.
You can just say something like: “We want YOU! We want your thoughts, articles and comments. Send your submissions to editor@yoursite.comand we’ll post them here.”
You can then create a whole new set of pages for your users’ submissions and put AdSense on each one of them.
Blogs have to be written all the time, but if you’ve ever written anything in the past, don’t just let it gather dust on your shelf. Give your old work a new lease of life by throwing it onto the Web!
For example, “Low Fat Linux” by Bob Rankin was written years ago. You may be able to find it on Amazon.com, but it’s not likely that many people are buying it because you can read the entire book for free at www.lowfatlinux.com.
Bob’s content has done its job of selling copies. Now it’s doing a second job, selling clicks to ads.
What have you got lying around that could be earning you money?
Fig. 11.1 Bob Rankin makes money from old notes. Note the position of his ads. They’re prominent but could he get more clicks by putting them on the right? He could also have added an AdLink unit above the list of links on the left.
You might have an ebook of your own that isn’t selling very well. Instead of attempting to sell your ebook for $19.95, why not turn it into web pages and make it available for free for all to enjoy? Paste your AdSense code on the pages and you may make more from the ads than from sales of your ebook. Repurposing old content is a fantastic way to draw water from your own well.
I did this with a book that I’d written about online dating. The home page contains a list of chapter headings with a skyscraper ad on the left and a Google search box beneath it. There’s also a banner on the top, which I expect people largely to ignore. That ad does however make the ad unit look less commercial and the text ads match the list of chapter headings (although I used red for the links to match the color scheme of the page).
Fig. 11.2 BestDates.info — Making money by using old contentto bring people together.
Note that this is a professional-looking website. That’s important. The fact that you’re using old content is no excuse for using an old design. You still have to make the page look good and pick up high-quality traffic if you want to get the clicks and the revenues.
On the internal pages, I’ve pushed the ads a little harder. Above the fold, there’s no real content except for ads. To stop people from scrolling away immediately though, I’ve used a nice big picture. I know that users will stop to look at that image. They’ll then look at the ads and only after they’ve done that will they scroll down to read the page.
I’ve also put a long list of links on the left under the skyscraper to help the ads blend in and placed a third unit at the bottom of the page next to the free download.
Fig. 11.3 Ads and an image above the fold at BestDates.info
And the best thing about this strategy is that I’ve got so many pages of content to use. Each page is a separate chance to capture more clicks. I could even spin off the content on those pages and market them as individual articles or websites.
tag and he’s added a
break tag to add a gap between the head and Google and help his ads to stand out.
To do the same thing to your blogspot blog, click “Change Settings” on the Dashboard and then click “Template Tab.” Somewhere on the page, below the CSS material, you should find a section of code that begins:
Before uploading, check the preview to make sure that the ads are where and how you want them, then “Save Template Changes” and “Republish” to refresh the blog.
Of course, you don’t have to place AdSense directly above the text. Another option is to embed the ads within the text so that they appear after particular entries. That would limit you to three entries per page (if you wanted an ad unit after each entry) but it could increase your click-throughs.
Blogger now lets you do this automatically. Click the Template tab, then the Page Elements link and finally, Edit in the Blog Posts section. You’ll find a check box that lets you show ads between posts on the home page.
You’ll even be able to format the ads from that same control panel, making the whole process very, very simple.
Writing blogs isn’t exactly effortless, but it is something a lot of people do for fun and because they’re updated regularly, Google loves them. If you’re going to write a blog anyway, then you should certainly be making money out of it.
The biggest challenge when writing a blog is getting ads that give you good revenues. Because your entries are going to be talking about all sorts of different things, there’s a chance that you’re going to get ads on all sorts of random topics.
That’s fine, unless your ads are barely giving you enough revenue to pay for the blog.
If you find that you’re getting lots of ads related to “blogs” for example, instead of what you’re blogging about, you can try changing the meta name in your template. Delete the <$Metainfodata$> tag and replace words and description:
Make sure that your blog has plenty of keywords and use lots of headlines containing key phrases, repeating them throughout the blog.
Above all though, make sure that your blog has plenty of text. It might be fun to stuff your pages with pictures of friends, family and pets but Google can’t read them and you’ll end up with public service ads instead of revenue.
AdSense works better than just about every other type of online advertising for one simple reason: the ads are relevant to the content on your page. Users click on the ads because they find them interesting.
And they come back and click on them again because they find your content interesting.
If your site doesn’t have good content, you’re going to struggle to attract users and links, and you won’t be able to persuade anyone to come back to your site.
Having the right content then is crucial to having good revenues with AdSense. It’s also crucial to the relationship you have with Google’s indexing mechanism. Remember, Google is a search engine first and foremost. Their purpose is to provide the web user with the best search results for the terms they are seeking. If you are providing quality content, you have a greater chance of seeing your search results come up higher on the page.
Fortunately, it’s also easier than ever to fill your site with page after page of sticky content, each of which contains ad units and opportunities to earn revenue.
The most obvious way to create content is of course to write it yourself. Pick a subject you like and pour your heart out. If you know everything there is to know about video games, you could set up a site stuffed with reviews, news and walkthroughs, and write all the articles yourself. Your AdSense units will give you ads related to gaming and as long as they’re positioned properly and look right they should give you more than enough revenue to fund your video gaming habit and then some. You can do the same thing for any topic you wanted.
But remember, if you’ve created your site to make money, then writing the content yourself means that you’re working for that money. When you count your revenues, you have to factor in the time and effort it took you to make those revenues.
That’s one of the reasons that many people look for other, easier ways to get content around their ads. (The fact that they just don’t like writing is another good reason.) Fortunately, there are plenty of ways of creating effortless content and some of them are even free.
These strategies make for useful default placements. But there’s one more factor that you should consider when you’re planning your ads: the way that Google distributes ads to multiple units on a page.
The first ad unit to appear on a Web page always shows the ads that placed the highest bids. In other words, the higher an ad appears on a page, the more that ad is worth.
Because ads that are above the fold tend to get more clicks than those lower down the page, you won’t usually have to do a thing to make sure that the ads that receive the most clicks are those that pay the most.
If your Channels do show you that an ad unit at the bottom of the page is picking up more clicks than ad unit at the top of the page though, you might want try moving that unit to a higher position.
Frankly, I doubt that’s going to happen very often. A bigger problem is if you’ve placed your ad units inside DIV tags, tables or other positioning codes. As far as AdSense is concerned, the first ad unit is the first one the robot comes across in the HTML code, even if that HTML code places the unit at the bottom of the page.
When you place multiple ad units on a Web page then, it’s important to make sure that the AdSense codes appear in your HTML in the same order that they appear on your Web page. That should ensure that the ad units with the highest clickthrough rates are always the ones with the highest value ads.
Fig. 10.3 Distributing multiple ads on a merchant site.
There are really two approaches you can take to using AdSense on merchant sites. The first is simply to treat them in the same way as blogs: put a link at the end of each section of advertising copy and place a banner or half banner beneath it. That ad unit should blend into the text above and below. You can use a skyscraper on the edge of the screen, a link unit beneath a list of navigation links, a search box at the top of the page and referral ads on the side.
Alternatively, you could use graphic referral ads as images and write text about the products. That would give you an instant online store!
In the sample layout above, I’ve placed a large rectangular ad unit directly beneath a featured product. The feature would create the most attention and users would have read past it to reach the rest of the page.
Whenever you’re using AdSense on merchant sites though do keep a close eye on the ads you’re serving; you don’t want to advertise your competitors!
Possible alternatives to try:
Using a text link instead one of the ad units between the marketing copy;
Placing a large picture of a product on a page... and an ad unit right next to it;
Using banners instead of half-banners;
Placing a leaderboard either at the top of the page or at the bottom;
Separating each piece of marketing copy with a large square unit.
And if you’re worried you’ve put in too many ad units... just take one out and see if your CTR changes.
