How to Maximize Your AdSense Revenue

So Google AdSense is the 800 pound gorilla in the display advertising world. They allow publishers to put ads in their website and make money by running ads from Google's network of advertisers, which is Google AdWords. More than a million people use Google AdSense on their websites, and Google generated $67 billion in revenue from advertising in 2015. So because of their massive kind of network of advertisers and publishers, Google is just much larger than most of the other advertising networks that are out there. And because of this, publishers tend to find that AdSense pays a lot more than many of the other networks that are out there. So if you want to run Google AdSense on your website, the first step is to create an account. So you go to google.com adsense and then they'll ask you some questions, part of the application process. They'll want to know about your website and get some company information, bank account information, tax information, stuff like that. So they can do everything on the up and up, recognize you're a real person or a real business, and then send in a tax form for you at the end of the year. So after your account is approved, you can then kind of create your first ads on your website. So you'll log into Google AdSense, you'll click the my ads, tap on my ads, tap the my ads, tap on top. And then you can do create a new ad unit. And then you'll get options for different sizes. Typically standard sizes are 728 by 90. That's kind of the long horizontal banner that will go up kind of in your header somewhere. Then either kind of 300 by 250 or 336 by 280 units. And those typically will go like in your content, around your content, in your sidebar. Then you'll get ad codes from Google. You'll be able to pick out colors, pick out colors that match the colors on your website. You'll probably put three or four ads on a page, depending on the size of the page. So make four different ad units, get the code for them, and then you'll be able to take those and put them on your website. So after you put the ads on your website, there are WordPress plugins that do this, or you can manually place it in a code, but you know, you'll kind of run those for kind of a month and then at the end of the month, Google will add up your earnings and then about 22ish days later, so like, they'll pay you on like the 22nd of the month for the previous month's earnings. So November's earnings will get paid on December 22, assuming you hit $100 in your account. And if you don't, it'll roll over to the next month. Google pays most people via ach, so they'll wire. Not wire, but they'll transfer the money into your bank account and then you'll have that money. So the real kind of meat of this video is optimizing Google AdSense. You can make a lot more money from Google AdSense if you take the time to optimize your individual ad units, the ad placement, the colors, all those different types of things you can, you know, it's not uncommon for publishers to really double the amount of revenue that they get from Google AdSense if they do a handful of things correctly. So here are kind of my tips to optimize Google AdSense. First, take the new. If you're a new publisher, take the Optimizing AdSense class. So Google has a class where they teach us some basic AdSense optimization techniques. It's a video course and it's kind of a weird URL. It's Optimizing AdSense withGoogle.com course. Or you can just Google for Optimizing AdSense course and it'll show up in the search results. So that's a good kind of beginner class to take if you want to optimize your Google AdSense account and make some more money that way. The second thing to do is to check the opportunities tab. So when you log into AdSense, there's a tab that says opportunities. They have tips that they'll have recommendations for you to do. They'll say move this ad unit, try this ad size instead of that ad size, try changing the border of this. I always go through and look at those opportunities. Obviously, Google knows what makes for a profitable ads in an account. So try to match or follow those opportunities as best as you can. You know, sometimes their opportunities aren't. I mean, the opportunities aren't always the best idea, but they're usually a pretty good idea to start with. For example, they'll often recommend that you try matched content, which is their kind of native ad offering similar to Ad Lite or Taboola or Outbrain. And frankly, their matched content stuff. I guess as of the time that I write this or record this video In December of 2016, currently their matched content stuff isn't quite as good as some of those other networks. So even though they recommend that I do that, I don't do that because these other networks over here are better. So you do have to take those recommendations with a grain of salt and say, okay, why are they making this recommendation to me? You know, is it genuinely in my best interest? Most of the time it is, but that's not always true 100% of the time. The next tip is to use the recommended ad sizes that Google recommends. So there are some ad sizes that have more inventory than others. So you can do like a 728 by 90 horizontal unit, that's a recommended unit. A 336 by 280. That's a great unit. There's a ton of inventory for that. A, you know, 300 by 250, also a good choice. Those ad units just have a ton of ad creative available. It's kind of when you get into those more esoteric ad sizes or custom ad sizes that there aren't as many ads to fit into that space. So when there's less inventory, you'll make less money. So stick with kind of the, the ad sizes Google recommends when putting together a new ad. Those will always typically work better. Next, show both text and display ads. When putting together an ad, you have the option to do text, display or both. I always recommend you do both because that opens you up to a wider inventory of ads. I recommend against blocking ads for the most part. You know, don't go in and pick and cherry pick which ads you want to show on your website. That will hurt the amount of inventory that you have and that will hurt your earnings. Next, regularly split test your ad sizes and positions. So try moving ads around and seeing if it makes you money. You can do Google's experiments kind of section, which is called AdSense experiments, which lets you change some things about your ads, like the colors, the font sizes, what kind of targeting you do. But it won't let you change actual ad sizes or positions on your website. So that tool is great for testing out an individual ad and finding the perfect colors and font and that kind of thing. But actual ad layouts, you have to find another way to do that. The way I do that is with php, it's pretty basic programming. So you, whenever a page loads, I would say, you know, it's what ad unit, which ad layout do I want to run? And then it's just like an if statement. So it's if I'm showing this layout, show this ad. If I'm showing this other layout, show this ad. And then I'll use custom channels to track between those two layouts, which One works better than the others. And there are some guides on the Internet on how to do this. I think ProBlogger has one. So if you just do a Google search for how to run an AdSense experiment, then just like if statement and php and use some of those keywords, the guide from ProBlogger will come up. The next tip is to render your highest click through ratio ads first. So the way AdSense works is if you have three AD units on a page, whichever unit is highest in the code will show the highest CPC ads. So if you have like a 728 x 90 in the top and then some 300 by 250s in the sidebar, those 300 by 250s might have a higher click through rate, then that's 728 x 90. But the 728 x 90 is showing the highest CPC ads. So really what you want to do is render those 300 by 250s in the sidebar before you render the 728 x 90 in the header so that those higher click through rate ads can generate, you know, can attract those higher cpc so that. Excuse me. So the way that, what you want to do is have the, the sidebar units have a higher click through rate, show the highest CPC ads so that you can maximize revenue. And there are some, you know, pretty much what you have to do is write some HTML so that Even though the 728x90 is lower in the code than the 300 by 250s, it'll show up where it's supposed to. And you can definitely do that. Next tip is to add some link units to your website. So in addition to your three or four AdSense units, you can have on a page, you can throw up some link units. Those are a nice incremental way to add some existing revenue. And those are just little bars with links on them that you can kind of put above or below your content. Got two more tips. The next one is to use Google custom search. So if you have a search page on your website, you can use Google Search engine to index your website and only search your website. And you can make some nice money doing that. And then finally the last tip is to use a service called Ezoic E Z O I C. It's ezoic.com and they are a certified publishing partner of Google and they offer some really neat intelligence, you know, web based intelligence stuff that allows you to, you know, dynamically test ad positions and test ad sizes and find the perfect combination of what is going to maximize revenue on your website. Neat little service. I encourage you to check it out. If you have a sizable AdSense account and are doing five figures a month in revenue at that point, it's definitely worth messing with stuff like a Zoic. So those are the tips. I hope you find them valuable. I'll see you guys in the next video.