Archive for the ‘Blogging Tips’ Category
Why do my Adsense earnings fluctuate so much?
I check my Google Adsense account on a regular basis. I’m not particularly anal retentive, but I find it is extremely important to monitor this account because it fluctuates on a regular basis. One month my earnings are low, and then the following month they quadruple, and then they fall again.
So what is causing my Adsense revenues to fluctuate so much? According to Google, your earnings fluctuate because they are constantly changing the way their Adsense program functions. They also tell us that this is because they are trying to improve their program although in many cases it ends up hurting the publishers.
Every Google ad that appears on your blog has a different value. One ad might earn you a penny, while the next one that displays on your blog might earn you several dollars. If Google changes its targeting system, you may find that your blog is getting more of the inexpensive ads and your earnings will fall.
Here is the problem. Even if the targeting system is greatly improved and the ads that are displayed on your blog are more relevant than ever, this in no way means that you are going to start earning more money. If the ads aren’t worth much, you aren’t going to earn much even if more people start clicking on them.
How can I improve my Adsense earnings?
Trust me – there is hope for your blog if you have seen your earnings fall with the recent adjustments to the Adsense targeting system. Solution: Pick better keywords. It is as simple as that. Take advantage of the Adsense Keyword tool and select several high paying keywords that you can integrate into your blog!
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Filed under Blogging Tips, Make Money Blogging
Set up custom reports to improve your Adsense tracking
Google Adsense is a great way to monetize your blog with ease. There are several different ways to place Google Ads on your blog. Changing where these are placed and what kind of ads they are will impact your revenues. It is important to track your revenues so you can easily see how these different changes impact your blog!
The easiest way to track your Google Adsense revenue is by taking advantage of their reports. There are a few basic reports provided to you by Google, but you also have the option to create your own custom reports. In order to get the real picture about how your blog is performing, learning how to use these custom reports is essential!
With custom reports, you can easily select what type of information you want to see. Start off by selecting the type of Adsense you want to monitor (content, feeds, search, etc.). Then you can select the date range for the information. You will also be able to choose which of your custom channels (if not all) you want to include in your report.
One area that you might want to pay special attention to is the “choose unit” radio buttons. You can select ad units, link units, or both. I like to run separate reports for both ad units and link units for each of my channels. This tells me which type of ads that my visitors are clicking. If nobody is clicking on my link units, I can move them around, change them, or covert them into ad units to see if I can improve my revenues!
Filed under Blogging Tips, Make Money Blogging
How can I add Google Adsense videos to my blog
The other day I happened to notice that a video I wanted to watch was preceded by a Google Adsense video. Now advertisements before videos are certainly nothing new. In fact, it seems like just about every video you click on anymore is preceded by an advertisement. But this was the first time I noticed that it was an Adsense video.
So it got me thinking. How can I put Adsense videos on my blog? It seems like a brilliant concept and I’m always looking for new ways to increase my blogging revenues. Having used Google Adsense quite a bit already, I knew there wasn’t an option to create a video in my ad setup area.
Basically what you need to do to get these video ads to appear on your blog requires you to opt into image ads. Many of us have probably already done this. Next you need to make sure that you are creating image ads in the required sizes: 300×250, 336×280, or 250×250 Square.
Now here is the downside of video advertisements. Just because you have image ads enabled and you create advertisements of the correct size, there is no guarantee that the video ads will be displayed. If you have a suitable video on your blog, Adsense will play a complimentary video ad for it. Otherwise, you just get video!
Add Google Adsense videos to your blog and increase your revenues. Learn about the advantages of ad videos and how to implement today!
Take advantage of Adsense URL channels
Many bloggers choose to add articles to free sites in an effort to make some extra money on the side and to draw more attention to their own blog. Many of these sites allow you to enter your Google Adsense account info into your profile in order to collect any revenues that your article may earn.
If you are a blogger, chances are you have already created a Google Adsense account. This account is likely used to place pictorial and text advertisements on your blog. Both types of content ads are very easy to track with useful Adsense reports. But how do you track the money you are earning through the free sites?
The answer is actually quite simple. You need to create what are called Adsense URL channels. To access this area in your account, click on the Adsense Setup Tab, and then on the Channels link right below it. There is an area that says URL channels that you will need to click on. From there, simply click on the add new URL channel and type in the URL that you want to track.
There are tricks to entering your URL. First, you want to make sure NOT to include the “http://www” portion of the address. Second, if you want to track all of the articles that you have posted on the site, enter the URL of the site – not your specific articles. Third, if you want to track each article individually then you can add the specific URLs.
Tip: Plan accordingly when you setup your URL channels. Google Adsense will only allow you to track a total of 200 channels so you need to make sure you are tracking the most important ones!
Filed under Blogging Tips, Make Money Blogging
Encrypted blog footers
One of the most annoying things I have encountered in the blog world is encrypted footers in free blog themes. Anyone who has used free blog themes has likely encountered this very problem. There are a lot of talented designers out there who place their blog themes out on the web free of charge. The downside – many of these free blog themes have links and other random information in the footer.
Now it takes a lot of time to create a functional blog theme that is widget friendly, Adsense friendly, free of errors, and a million other things. I have no issue with the designer requesting that the links they leave in the footer remain as they are if you want to take advantage of their free blog theme.
What I do have a problem with is the encryption. If you are going to offer a blog theme to users, they should have reasonable access to all parts of it so they can customize it as they need to. No blog theme is going to be a one size fits all solution for every blogger. There are things that are going to have to be tweaked.
I like to put a link to my blog’s privacy policy in the footer of the theme. If the blog’s footer is encrypted, I can’t do this. As I do use Google Adsense, having a privacy policy on my blog is mandatory. This means that in certain situations I have to place the privacy policy in a less than ideal position.
Yes I do realize that encrypted footers can be hacked, but this is not my desire. I simply want access to them so I can tweak the things I need to. A bit of a rant – but encrypted footers are annoying and unacceptable!
Filed under Blogging, Blogging Tips
How important is my blog theme?
How much time do you spend surfing the internet every week? How many blogs do you think you visit on any given day? What is it that attracts you to explore a new blog after you have found it?
For me, I need to find the blog visually appealing. I don’t want to see the original wordpress theme on a blog. I want to know that someone has spent time to make their blog more interesting for their readers. I like images, but you’ll notice I don’t really use a lot of images on my own blog. Why? For the most part, I believe images would clutter my blog while adding little value.
Now if I had a food blog, I would certainly use images to demonstrate the items that I was talking about. A food blog without images would be like looking through a cookbook without pictures. Blah. I’ll pass. I think images are better suited for certain types of blogs and not others.
Instead of using images to attract readers, a blog theme can accomplish this same objective. If you have a large budget for your blog, you can afford to have a talented designer create a fully functional custom blog theme. For those of us with smaller budgets, there are PLENTY of free blog themes that are perfectly adequate to achieve success.
The trick with finding a great blog theme for free is to be willing to invest time in the hunt. There are millions of themes available and it will be up to you to spend the time sorting through numerous websites and thousands of themes until you find one that is suitable for your blog. Even after you find one you like, make sure you test it out fully to ensure there aren’t errors or other issues that will take away from the quality of your blog!
Filed under Blogging, Blogging Tips
