Improving your web site AdSense revenue

Some tips that can help make more money from your site

Google AdSense advertisements on our photography web site helps pay for the site running costs by earning a small amount of money for every person that clicks on adverts (aka site monetization).

Like many web users, we sometimes find web advertising intrusive and annoying, so we initially placed them in discreet boxes, slightly out of the way. Effective ad marketing needs a bit more effort if it is going to make money... :-)

We hope that the ads on our site are not too offensive, but they are there to help pay for the 'information' parts of the site. This short note is aimed at people who might be considering such web ads for their own specialist sites and want to know a bit more. It shows how some care and experimentation led to a big increase in revenue.

If you sign up for Google AdSense, you can (and should!) check your account regularly and see how individual adverts (ad units in AdSense speak) are performing. One measure of importance is the click through rate (CTR). This gives the percentage of visitors to a page that click on an advert. At the end of 2005 this stood around 0.7% - by June 2006 this was up to 3.1% That's a better than four times improvement :-)

The key to this was experimentation and understanding what visitors were coming to specific pages for. Northlight Images' main business is commercial photography -- since adverts are dynamically allocated based on page content and viewing location, we hardly want other local Leicester photographers advertising on our site :-) That's why you will only see adverts on some pages. One of the secrets of successful advertising, is to know your audience...

Another important feature to us is that the advertising content is targeted when served via Google, it means that we have no connection with the actual advertisers. We value our independence (it's one of the reasons we don't sell colour management hardware or software) and the arrangements with Google help (see our Review Policy for more info)

Lots of AdSense publishers just place their adverts in the default boxes, with no real thought to position, colours, style and size - not a good approach.

Ad positioning

Make full use of the large amounts of tips and examples on the Google AdSense site itself.

For example this diagram (from Google) shows where people look most on a page and is colour coded to give an idea of good places to put your ads

However the important thing is to realise why your visitors are at a particular page and why they might want to click on an advert.

It's also worth remembering that some pages may never perform very well, even if they have a lot of visitors - you have to think about it :-)

Different ad formats can also perform very differently in the same place.

Remember to experiment - there is no right answer. When you think you have got it cracked, start again :-)

Ad visibility

For this site, adverts that blend in and adopt the same colour scheme as the rest of the site get considerably better response rates. There are a range of colour palettes you can choose, which you can customise for a precise match.

A simple example is making sure that any text links you use are the same colour as the rest of your site. If the only green linking text on your site is in the adverts, it helps visitors avoid them...

Try different sizes and types of ad, there are plenty of options on the AdSense site. Use custom channels, different layouts and do go back to the site regularly, since the people at AdSense are always adding new info and features (it's in their interests for you to do well!)

For example, I'm likely to put adverts at the end of reviews and articles, since that's when many people will be thinking of where to go next. Also, just after the introduction for an article, since some visitors may quickly decide that the content is not what they are looking for and want to go elsewhere.

Keep it clean

Do read the Google terms and conditions carefully - step over them and you risk having your account suspended.

Is your site worth advertising on?

Just try it, it costs nothing to join (you can use the link below). Any site with interesting content can make some money. OK it might not be too much initially, but once it starts...

You can also benefit via referrals, so if people sign up via our site, we potentially benefit in the future...

Content is king - good site content brings in visitors, and without them there is no income.

Other areas of our site that may be of interest...

NEW -- Create your own customised A3 size wall calendar from a choice of 90 of Keith's images. Choose your own images for your own custom printed calendar - 12 months starting any month of the year - many all new images not yet in our main gallery.

Digital Black and White. Keith was recently interviewed about digital black and white photography for a magazine article. We have an expanded version here covering some of his thoughts, techniques and tips for those thinking of trying black and white.

As well as our Commercial Photography services and Training there is a growing collection of photography Articles and Reviews on the site aimed at helping you get the best out of your own photography. We also have a growing collection of Photography related information and links that we hope you find useful.

New site features and some of Keith Cooper's latest work are always covered in the What's New page.

Visiting Leicester or wondering where it is? We have views from the Leicester traffic cameras.