The Rich Affiliate

Almost everyone has probably heard of AdSense by now, if not then I am pretty sure you have seen AdSense and may have not even known what it was. To explain AdSense, I must first tell you a little about ‘ AdWords ‘, Adwords is a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising system that is available through Google the search engine. You create a small text ad, which is placed on Google’s search result pages, the ads match your websites subject or content. You bid or set a fee that you are willing to pay Google every time someone clicks on your ad, this is a great way to get highly targeted traffic that can turn into sales, subscribers, or whatever you are trying to achieve with your website traffic.

Now that I have explained Adwords, I can now tell you about AdSense. AdSense makes it possible for website owners to earn money by simply letting Google place ads on their web pages. AdSense ads can be either text or images, the ads can be altered to blend into the webpages, so they don’t make your site look junky or poorly designed. AdSense ads are highly relevant to the content of most webpages, for instance if you place AdSense ads on a webpage that sells Coins, you will get ads about selling coins or other coin related subjects. Every time a website visitor clicks on one of the AdSense ads on your webpage, you earn money, and every month after your first balance reaches one hundred dollars, Google will send you a check or you can have the money deposited into your checking account. The AdSense program is a great way to earn extra money if you have a website, it’s easy to make a few dollars every day, and some folks are making thousands of dollars per month doing it.

When I first started Adsense, I placed the ads on my webpages and it wasn’t very long until I had made a small amount of money, a few days later my account balance had grown even more. I was pretty happy, but I thought to myself, after reading a lot of articles, I am not making nearly as much money as others are making with AdSense, something must be wrong. Then I thought, maybe my website doesn’t get the traffic that the others are getting ? I chatted with a lot of people on the internet that were in the program, and I discovered that the amount of visitors I get, was higher than some of the traffic they receive. You may think that 200 – 400 unique visitors a day is low for website traffic, you are very wrong, the average website gets a lot less per day, especially if your website is only a few months old or is not optimized for the search engines, or it’s subject matter has a very low search demand.

If my website was getting a nice amount of traffic or visitors, why was my AdSense earnings so low ? The first thing that I discovered that was wrong was ‘ adsense ad placement ‘, that’s right, you have to study each webpage’s layout that you plan on placing the ads on. Wherever your webpage has sections or areas that grab and hold the visitors attention, this is a prime area to place a section of AdSense ads, in other words, place the ads on your webpages where folks will notice them. We are currently allowed to place up to 3 different AdSense ad sections or groups on each webpage. I found after some testing that the best places for my ads are, just under the title or sub-title, near the middle of the page, and near the end or bottom of my page. If you place one section of AdSense ads near the top of your webpage, folks entering your site will probably notice the ads, and if they scroll down a ways and theres more ads, that increases the odds that they will notice them also. Probably the best place to place one section of ads is at the bottom of your webpages, right after your last bit of text or interesting reading, but make sure you place the ads before any other links, because when visitors are ready to leave your site, they may leave by clicking on one of your ads, earning you money, and if you have other links showing before your ads, they may leave your site by clicking on one of them. So after I studied the layout of all my webpages, I went back through and repositioned the AdSense ads, almost immediately I noticed my earnings increased.

I left my webpages alone, and about three months later I received my first check in the mail, it wasn’t a lot of money but still for really doing no physical work I was very glad to get it. My earnings slowly started getting better and better after that first check, the next month I received another check, then the following month I got another and so on. After having been in the AdSense program for about 8 months, and chatting with more folks who were also in the program I found that my earnings were still low compared to some other people.

I then discovered another method that increased my earnings even more. I noticed that my ads stood out from the rest of my webpages text and content. I had always thought, I should make my ads a different color than my webpages background so folks would notice my ads, and click on them, I was totally wrong. Almost everyone that has been on the internet for any length of time, has become so accustomed to seeing banners and other flashy ads that almost everyone now has what is called ‘ad blindness’, that is, when they visit a site they are automatically turned off or they ignore anything that looks like an ad. I used the Adsense editor and I changed my ads background and border colors so they matched the background color of my webpages, and I changed the text color of the ads so they matched the text color of my webpages content. The ads blended in very well, to me they were barely noticeable from the rest of my webpage, but right away the number of clicks on the ads increased, and the earnings went up even more.

I left my webpages alone and for another couple months my earnings stayed about the same, I was content with the results, but my earnings were still not as good as some of the other folks who received roughly the same amount of traffic that I did. Then I found out that they had done something else to their AdSense ads, something that made the ads seem to really get peoples attention, they were placing images near the ads, it seemed adding images made the ads look unique and it helped make the amount of clicks on them rise. So I searched the internet and I found some little icons and images that matched the content of my webpages, and near where the Adsense ads were shown, I displayed the images by adding a simple html image tag. I asked google if adding the images was within the AdSense rules, and I was advised that they were fine as long as they didn’t make folks click on the ads, by this I mean, you cannot have a flashing sign that says, ‘ click these ads ‘, or you shouldn’t have a scantily dressed girl pointing to the ads saying ‘ make me happy – click here ‘ or stuff like that, just make some nice little images that pertain to your webpages content.

The next couple months or so, my earnings still continued rising slowly. By this time, besides my regular webpages I had been working on several BLOG’s pertaining to different subjects, so I thought I might as well place AdSense ads on all of my blogs also and make even more money. For a couple weeks my earnings went up quite a bit, and I was very happy, then all of a sudden, just like someone turning off a switch, my AdSense earnings plummeted. I was now making in a day, what I had made when I first joined the program, what the heck happened I thought to myself ? My traffic was still slowly rising, the number of clicks was rising, but for some strange reason, the earnings per click, (EPC) had dropped a lot, it was horrible.

Then I learned that Google had introduced a new feature or system into the AdSense program, called ‘smart pricing’, ‘smart pricing’ automatically adjusts the cost of an ad click. Using Googles system of analyzing AdSense data, if it shows that a click from one of your webpages is less likely to turn into an online sale, or other business result for the Ad publisher, the amount you earn per click in AdSense is greatly reduced. When ‘smart pricing’, was introduced, some AdSense users saw their EPC drop to as low as 3 cents a click, where before ‘smart pricing’, that same click might of earned them a dollar or much more, this was quite a drastic drop in earnings. What is horrible about ‘smart pricing’, besides the earnings loss to AdSense users, is that one site or webpage can trigger it, and once triggered by that one webpage, it effects your entire account and every webpage you have will now earn substantially less per click. Remember awhile back when I had added AdSense Ads to my BLOG’s, that seemed to be what had triggered smart pricing for me. The BLOG’s were on numerous subjects, but they were not business or real professional sites, so hardly any business results such as sales, occurred from folks clicking the ads on these sites. After I removed the Adsense ads from the BLOG’s, it took about a week, then I noticed that the EPC was once again climbing back up, yes the ‘smart pricing’, spell had been broken.

If you are thinking about trying AdSense, or if you are already in it, beware of the smart pricing curse, or if it has already effected your earnings, try removing AdSense ads from your webpages a few pages at a time, the smart-pricing system is evaluated each week, so it will take a few days to see if you have removed ads from the page(s) that triggered it.

By Robert W. Benjamin

http://www.rb59.com/software

Copyright © 2006

You may publish this article in your ezine, newsletter or on your web site as long as it is reprinted in its entirety and without modification except for formatting needs or grammar corrections.

Adsense is Googles counterpart to Adwords.   With Adwords an advertiser pays Google to display their ads in the search engines and on relevant content based websites.  The owners of the websites displaying the Google Adwords ads are known as Adsense publishers. 

Here’s what Google has to say about their Adsense program. “How much will I earn through this program? The AdWords ads you are able to display on your content pages are cost-per-click (CPC) ads. This means that advertisers pay only when users click on ads. You’ll receive a portion of the amount paid for clicks on AdWords ads on your website. Although we don’t disclose the exact revenue share, our goal is to enable publishers to make as much or more than they could with other advertising networks.”

Anyone, any age and gender can become money generating Adsense publishers as long as they what it takes.  So just who are some of these super Adsense earners? 

Kids in junior high and high school have learned how to make thousands of dollars per year with Adsense. Even kids in gradeschool are getting into the Adsense game.

Housewives, retirees, mom and dads, who are just staying at home and have never made a dime on the internet have created full-time incomes by simply placing Adsense ads on their web site or blog. 

Bloggers who blog just for the fun of it all have learned how to make some additional income while enjoying their blogging passion by adding Adsense to their blogs. 

Full time internet marketers, webmasters and even gurus are in the Adsense game.  They’ve all figured out that Adsense can be an additional source of revenue for certain websites they own. 

So how does one go about this Internet Adsense game?  All you need to start is a blog or a website that Google can add your Adsense ads to.  There are Adsense ads for any niche or market so go with your passions that you enjoy and love to write about.  There is no level of education or experience required to build an Adsense website so go with “what you know”and enjoy telling others about.  There are websites all over the internet that do nothing more than provide information to their visitors, and these sites are perfect for earning income with Adsense.

Yes, writing is required.  The best websites for Adsense are those that are filled with lots of great content and information.  Writing articles for your website is the way to do it, and adding new articles to your Adsense website on a regular basis is highly recommended. Using the right keywords in your articles is important because Google will see your keywords and place the appropriate and relevant Adsense ads on your sites accordingly. 

This is one of the many reasons why writing original quality content articles is now the latest in marketing buzz. Content and links when combined together can become a really powerful tool to a successful web site and wealthier website owners. Most internet marketing professionals are already aware of the value of an original quality content and how usingkeywords can drive targeted traffic into their sites from the search engines. 

Take the same articles and content you’ve written for your website and submit them to Article directories. There are tons and tons of article directories on the internet full of niches for just about anything you can think of.  Once these articles are published on the article sites and picked up by the search engine spiders and other website owners you’ll be able to drive more traffic to your Adsense websites and get more Adsense click throughs.  Write it once and use it twice!

To get into the Adsense marketing business and start earning some good cash, ask yourself.Did you enjoy writing and sharing your knowledge and passions with others? If you answer yes to this question, you already have an initial advantage over most internet marketing business owners that wants to make money online with Adsense.

So what if you hate to write or don’t know what to write but want to put up an Adsense Website?  Easy…you can find lots of Private Label Rights (PLR) products that allow you to copy and rewrite their articles and use as your own. 

The  Google Adsense market requires websites to have fresh, quality and original keyword rich content. This way, web site owners can have a steady supply of articles with the proper keywords that they relate to their site contents. The result of this is seen in the sites page rank when indexed by the search engines. Which, in turn, gets moreAdsense ads to show above, below or next to the article on their website with targeted traffic.

To sum it all up to make money with Adsense here’s what you need to do. Build a website, web page or blog with targeted keywords and phrase rich original content for the targeted traffic and relevant Adsense ads.  Write quality and original content, keyword or phrase rich articles and submit them to article directories with links to your website in the resource box. Add your adsense coding to your websites and  Google will add Adsense ads that are targeted to your keywords and content.  When visitors come to your website and click on a relevant Google Adsense ad, you’ll be paid for that ad click.

A win-win situation if you think more about it. A favor for persons looking for quality content and information, a win for the Google Adwords advertiser and a win for you,  the owner of the quality original content rich Adsense website.

So who else wants to start earning money with Adsense. You. Everyone. Anybody. Internet marketing has many opportunities wide open for this people. Writing articles and using Adsense for your kind of internet marketing strategy is one sure way of getting a piece of that action and cash.

Adsense is alive and well and is a great source of additional residual income for anyone with a website or blog. 

There are times Google’s heralded ad affiliate program isn’t in your long term business interest. Oh no I said it!

AdSense isn’t the unstoppable revenue engine for every eBusiness. Before I am taken out and flogged by the eCommerce pundits — please let me explain what I mean in my defense.

I make revenues from AdSense at a very high click-through rate. I experience high click-through rates with AdSense without resorting to questionable tactics like tricking site users with photos (the AdSense trick and tip dujour).

There are times Google’s heralded ad affiliate program isn’t in your long term business interest. Oh no I said it!

AdSense isn’t the unstoppable revenue engine for every eBusiness. Before I am taken out and flogged by the eCommerce pundits — please let me explain what I mean in my defense.

I make revenues from AdSense at a very high click-through rate. I experience high click-through rates with AdSense without resorting to questionable tactics like tricking site users with photos (the AdSense trick and tip dujour).

So my perspective is from one who has made decent income from AdSense to fund aspects of his business like advertising seminars — and outsourcing to his virtual assistants. Yes, AdSense is a legitimate and significant revenue source. However evaluate AdSense with some type of balance.

By now you may have heard about people like 6 figure income with AdSense, or Jason Calacanis of Weblogs being on his way to generating 1 million dollars in AdSense revenue. Google’s Ad revenue sharing affiliate program for publishers certainly seems to be an eSales Nirvana for many webmasters.

But there are obvious and not so obvious times not to use AdSense ads on your sites. Let’s list – examine – and explain them below.

1. On Sales or Mini-sites

This is a no-brainer. If you are trying to sell a particular product that is important to your bottomline, you don’t want AdSense ads distracting your customers from either joining your email list, or hindering your site’s online sales process.

However I do see hybrid sites that are mini-sites or full scale eCommerce sites, with AdSense at the bottom of their pages. This might not be so bad since only 1% – 15% of your site visitors will either buy from you or fill out a form.

The thinking with this approach is you might as well make money from disinterested parties using up your server’s bandwidth.

2. SEO Business Sites

If your livelihood depends on search engine optimization or marketing for a living you might want to think twice about displaying AdSense Ads on your site. I can tell you this from personal experience. I once was on top of MSN for search engine marketing in my local area. I concentrated on my local area because I found people felt more comfortable hiring an eCommerce consultant locally.

One day my site fails totally out of the MSN index. After intense study I noticed that I obviously had a filter on my site from MSN.

I analyzed all the top ranking sites in MSN and noticed the only difference between me and the other top ranking sites was I had Google AdSense ads on my site. Someone at MSN felt that my AdSense ads, and perhaps to a less extent, my book on SEO, was getting a free ride in the MSN search engine database.

In fact I noticed that there were no sites with AdSense ads for at least the first 3 pages. Plus the sites with AdSense were only using 1 ad unit at the bottom of the home page (there were very few of them in the top 5 pages).

I knew it was strange to not have AdSense ads on the top Internet marketing sites. This prompted me to scan other industries where I noticed the same trend.

Many of the leading SEO gurus have sites that have been banned from the top listings by the search engines. It seems the more visible you become, the more of a target your sites are to the search engine auditors.

Some of my sites are still on the top of MSN with AdSense ads but that doesn’t mean they won’t also be targets in the future.

Let’s face the facts. MSN and Yahoo! have competing ad networks to Google’s, and this competitive situation is rife for a potential backlash against SEO sites with AdSense ads.

Many SEOs will point to exceptions to this position. However you have been warned!

Think about it, how long will MSN and Yahoo! sit back and watch SEO driven websites use their search indexes to fund Google? Did you know SEO in MSN and Yahoo(!) — is much easier to obtain.

Therefore optimized sites are creating an ad sales wealth transfer from MSN and Yahoo into the pockets of Google! It won’t be long before Yahoo! and MSN begin to devalue ranking on AdSense sites in their databases — if not outright ban them.

If you are in the search engine business stay search engine neutral, or create multiple sites for different search engines.

3. When AdSense Becomes Your Only Business Model

When you become so myopic in your thinking that you build a business solely on AdSense revenue — think again my friend. Why build a business solely on the largess of Google?

I don’t know if your realize it or not, but the sites making the real big AdSense money usually have a following that doesn’t depend on the search engines. Internet mavens like Chris Pirillo or Joel Comm have been on the Internet a while and have followings for their websites. Therefore they can consistently make six figures with AdSense.

These content powerhouses are an asset to Google and not the other way around. But do you think Google is going to sit back and watch just anybody make big bucks off of their top rankings?

If you do a search on most keywords you will notice many of the top ranking sites are news sites, .gov sites, or .org sites these days. The only exception is in industries where these sites don’t really exist like eCommerce industries (clothing, shopping, etc.).

No doubt in most industries you will notice a conspicuous scarity of AdSense sites in the top rankings. In other words don’t bet your future fortunes on AdSense.

An IPO based on projections of AdSense revenue isn’t in the future for the average eBusiness. Think of Google AdSense as supplemental income. Building a business solely on AdSense revenue isn’t just silly — it’s just plain stupid.

If you are subscribed to lots of Internet Marketing lists like me, I’m sure you’ve seen the dramatic rise Adsense and search engine marketing tools. The overwhelming majority of the population has no clue what Google Adsense is and doesn’t understand that Google and the site owner make money when they click on an ad. When you start using Word press to build your Adsense websites, you’ll soon discover what I mean.

1) A fraudulent website is set up and participates in programs like Google’s Adsense program. An alternative to Adsense ads is to go into some pay-per-lead programs. This strategy, coupled with careful tracking of ad performance, will guarantee that you are making serious amounts of money with Google Adsense. For more results visit us at www.guardadsense.com. Google supplies excellent resources on The Dos and The Don’ts of Adsense as well as very comprehensive tutorials on how to set up and use Adsense.

The first Google Adsense tool you need to check out is your Google Adsense channels. “Explode Your Google Adsense and Affiliate Commissions through Niche Blog Content Sites” Did you notice the last two words within the quotations. Housewives, retirees, mom and dads, and others that have never made a dime on the internet have created full-time incomes by simply placing Google Adsense ads on their web sites or blog. Use Adsense, affiliate marketing, pay per lead ads, & more to generate revenue.

With affiliate ads, as opposed to, say, Google Adsense, income depends on your readers actually purchasing the product. While you use Adsense codes on your pages, it is very important to review terms and conditions of Google Adsense program. Once I clicked on a link for more information – it all goes back to that single click, I was bombarded by the “make a fortune”, “generate massive traffic”, “explode your Adsense revenue”, “capture high paying keywords”, and the rest of the “unlimited profit from Adsense” brigade. Com/Made for Adsense (CS Monitor Article) That article made it appear that the entire Adsense program was a huge underground economy, when in fact that program made it truly viable for legitimate publishers of niche content to do very well for themselves for the first time.

So what are the Google Adsense success secrets that other successful webmasters use to make some great money with their website? Google Adsense – this is my personal favorite. Because the Adsense™ program displays advertisements that are so closely related to the website content, it is advantageous to webmasters because the advertisements are actually of interest to website visitors. Adsense will automatically generate ads related to your topic and advertise these on your site.

2) Just note, however, that while this was especially true a couple of years ago, the prevalence of garbage made-for-Adsense type of sites to try and register a domain name with keywords in have led to this factor being overused and abused. (More details are on the Adsense Decoded site here, so I will just give you a run down of the video lessons as an overview. C) Ways to make money from Adsense by Using Articles and a Viral Marketing Website Any online marketing technique that involves the use of referral marketing or viral marketing automatically has a huge chance of being a success. You can also login on to www.guardadsense.com. You should remember that you will have to churn out articles fairly regularly to keep your safe lists well fed and the traffic flowing to your Adsense sites.

This HTML code can contain the “Ignore ” trade, which keeps Google Adsense from using keywords in the specific section of the website when choosing ads for you. They can use them to promote their affiliate marketing business, or they can place Google Adsense ads right into the text. You also have the option of advertising on Google’s content network which includes all Adsense publishers, clicks from the content network can normally be attained at a lower CPC (cost per click) but this generally doesn’t convert into sales as well as the search network and is more likely to receive fraudulent clicks. But if the site involves you in no work (for example if it sells an e-Book or you generate Adsense income etc from it, then why remove it.

Almost everyone has probably heard of AdSense by now, if not then I am pretty sure you have seen AdSense and may have not even known what it was. To explain AdSense, I must first tell you a little about ‘ AdWords ‘, Adwords is a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising system that is available through Google the search engine. You create a small text ad, which is placed on Google’s search result pages, the ads match your websites subject or content. You bid or set a fee that you are willing to pay Google every time someone clicks on your ad, this is a great way to get highly targeted traffic that can turn into sales, subscribers, or whatever you are trying to achieve with your website traffic.

Now that I have explained Adwords, I can now tell you about AdSense. AdSense makes it possible for website owners to earn money by simply letting Google place ads on their web pages. AdSense ads can be either text or images, the ads can be altered to blend into the webpages, so they don’t make your site look junky or poorly designed. AdSense ads are highly relevant to the content of most webpages, for instance if you place AdSense ads on a webpage that sells Coins, you will get ads about selling coins or other coin related subjects. Every time a website visitor clicks on one of the AdSense ads on your webpage, you earn money, and every month after your first balance reaches one hundred dollars, Google will send you a check or you can have the money deposited into your checking account. The AdSense program is a great way to earn extra money if you have a website, it’s easy to make a few dollars every day, and some folks are making thousands of dollars per month doing it.

When I first started Adsense, I placed the ads on my webpages and it wasn’t very long until I had made a small amount of money, a few days later my account balance had grown even more. I was pretty happy, but I thought to myself, after reading a lot of articles, I am not making nearly as much money as others are making with AdSense, something must be wrong. Then I thought, maybe my website doesn’t get the traffic that the others are getting ? I chatted with a lot of people on the internet that were in the program, and I discovered that the amount of visitors I get, was higher than some of the traffic they receive. You may think that 200 – 400 unique visitors a day is low for website traffic, you are very wrong, the average website gets a lot less per day, especially if your website is only a few months old or is not optimized for the search engines, or it’s subject matter has a very low search demand.

If my website was getting a nice amount of traffic or visitors, why was my AdSense earnings so low ? The first thing that I discovered that was wrong was ‘ adsense ad placement ‘, that’s right, you have to study each webpage’s layout that you plan on placing the ads on. Wherever your webpage has sections or areas that grab and hold the visitors attention, this is a prime area to place a section of AdSense ads, in other words, place the ads on your webpages where folks will notice them. We are currently allowed to place up to 3 different AdSense ad sections or groups on each webpage. I found after some testing that the best places for my ads are, just under the title or sub-title, near the middle of the page, and near the end or bottom of my page. If you place one section of AdSense ads near the top of your webpage, folks entering your site will probably notice the ads, and if they scroll down a ways and theres more ads, that increases the odds that they will notice them also. Probably the best place to place one section of ads is at the bottom of your webpages, right after your last bit of text or interesting reading, but make sure you place the ads before any other links, because when visitors are ready to leave your site, they may leave by clicking on one of your ads, earning you money, and if you have other links showing before your ads, they may leave your site by clicking on one of them. So after I studied the layout of all my webpages, I went back through and repositioned the AdSense ads, almost immediately I noticed my earnings increased.

I left my webpages alone, and about three months later I received my first check in the mail, it wasn’t a lot of money but still for really doing no physical work I was very glad to get it. My earnings slowly started getting better and better after that first check, the next month I received another check, then the following month I got another and so on. After having been in the AdSense program for about 8 months, and chatting with more folks who were also in the program I found that my earnings were still low compared to some other people.

I then discovered another method that increased my earnings even more. I noticed that my ads stood out from the rest of my webpages text and content. I had always thought, I should make my ads a different color than my webpages background so folks would notice my ads, and click on them, I was totally wrong. Almost everyone that has been on the internet for any length of time, has become so accustomed to seeing banners and other flashy ads that almost everyone now has what is called ‘ad blindness’, that is, when they visit a site they are automatically turned off or they ignore anything that looks like an ad. I used the Adsense editor and I changed my ads background and border colors so they matched the background color of my webpages, and I changed the text color of the ads so they matched the text color of my webpages content. The ads blended in very well, to me they were barely noticeable from the rest of my webpage, but right away the number of clicks on the ads increased, and the earnings went up even more.

I left my webpages alone and for another couple months my earnings stayed about the same, I was content with the results, but my earnings were still not as good as some of the other folks who received roughly the same amount of traffic that I did. Then I found out that they had done something else to their AdSense ads, something that made the ads seem to really get peoples attention, they were placing images near the ads, it seemed adding images made the ads look unique and it helped make the amount of clicks on them rise. So I searched the internet and I found some little icons and images that matched the content of my webpages, and near where the Adsense ads were shown, I displayed the images by adding a simple html image tag. I asked google if adding the images was within the AdSense rules, and I was advised that they were fine as long as they didn’t make folks click on the ads, by this I mean, you cannot have a flashing sign that says, ‘ click these ads ‘, or you shouldn’t have a scantily dressed girl pointing to the ads saying ‘ make me happy – click here ‘ or stuff like that, just make some nice little images that pertain to your webpages content.

The next couple months or so, my earnings still continued rising slowly. By this time, besides my regular webpages I had been working on several BLOG’s pertaining to different subjects, so I thought I might as well place AdSense ads on all of my blogs also and make even more money. For a couple weeks my earnings went up quite a bit, and I was very happy, then all of a sudden, just like someone turning off a switch, my AdSense earnings plummeted. I was now making in a day, what I had made when I first joined the program, what the heck happened I thought to myself ? My traffic was still slowly rising, the number of clicks was rising, but for some strange reason, the earnings per click, (EPC) had dropped a lot, it was horrible.

Then I learned that Google had introduced a new feature or system into the AdSense program, called ‘smart pricing’, ‘smart pricing’ automatically adjusts the cost of an ad click. Using Googles system of analyzing AdSense data, if it shows that a click from one of your webpages is less likely to turn into an online sale, or other business result for the Ad publisher, the amount you earn per click in AdSense is greatly reduced. When ‘smart pricing’, was introduced, some AdSense users saw their EPC drop to as low as 3 cents a click, where before ‘smart pricing’, that same click might of earned them a dollar or much more, this was quite a drastic drop in earnings. What is horrible about ‘smart pricing’, besides the earnings loss to AdSense users, is that one site or webpage can trigger it, and once triggered by that one webpage, it effects your entire account and every webpage you have will now earn substantially less per click. Remember awhile back when I had added AdSense Ads to my BLOG’s, that seemed to be what had triggered smart pricing for me. The BLOG’s were on numerous subjects, but they were not business or real professional sites, so hardly any business results such as sales, occurred from folks clicking the ads on these sites. After I removed the Adsense ads from the BLOG’s, it took about a week, then I noticed that the EPC was once again climbing back up, yes the ‘smart pricing’, spell had been broken.

If you are thinking about trying AdSense, or if you are already in it, beware of the smart pricing curse, or if it has already effected your earnings, try removing AdSense ads from your webpages a few pages at a time, the smart-pricing system is evaluated each week, so it will take a few days to see if you have removed ads from the page(s) that triggered it.

By Robert W. Benjamin

http://www.rb59.com/software

Copyright © 2006

You may publish this article in your ezine, newsletter or on your web site as long as it is reprinted in its entirety and without modification except for formatting needs or grammar corrections.