1. Better Placement - Placement means everything in the world of online advertising. Don’t rely on banned or unethical ways to “hide” your AdSense ads into your content. Instead, let the ads be ads, but place them in a location that is conducive to the flow of your website while at the same time staring right into the eyes of your visitors.
Best online resource: Google AdSense Heatmap
2. Eggs in Multiple Baskets - I am not talking about throwing up a bunch of half-ass sites that just regurgitate has been news or worthless video clips. Make a quality site, promote, keep it up to date, and after spending a few weeks to a month on it, start all over on a new project. A few months later your first site will take off, and you will have another project waiting to do the same.
Best online resource: For those who don’t have money for hosting or a domain name (which are surprising cheap now-a-days) try Blogger or Wordpress.com
3. Quality & Quantity of Traffic - Of course you can’t make money online if no one visits your site, so traffic is the most obvious necessity. But that is easier said than done. I have found that by making quality posts in related forums discretely plugging your site or services is probably the best way to get instant traffic. Also, depending on the niche your site fills, the ability to harness the power of social networking sites could bring in exponential visitor numbers in a very short period of time. Inevitably, content is king though - and quality content will always bring in traffic regardless of how you promote it.
Best online resource: Niche Forums or social networking sites such as Digg or Del.icio.us
4. Blending & Integration - Ads don’t always have to look like ads. Also, ads don’t always have to be hidden and disguised to mimic actual content. There is a better and more ethical way to have ads and enjoy their revenue too.
Best online resource: adClustr (of course!!)
5. Enjoy your own Content - If you don’t find your own topic of conversation interesting, chances are that it will be evident to your visitors and they won’t care for it either. Be thorough, be interesting, be insightful. Don’t be boring with rehashed work such as video links, old news, free articles or off-topic posts. If you believe in what you are doing, then it will all work out in the end for your site.
Best online resource: Yourself
6. Better SEO - Content not only brings in visitors, but the AdSense bot relies on it to provide relevant ads to your site. Non-relevant ads will cause your visitors to ignore the ads completely and will hurt your bottom line. Spend at least a few minutes per page optimizing your content to be sure to get the best possible ads delivered. It’s not magic, and it’s not difficult.
Best online resource: AListApart CSS SEO & Google SEO Tips
7. Block Experimentation - AdSense offers a wide array of different advertising block sizes. What works for one site may not always work for another. Factors to watch? Demographics, Traffic Patterns, Popular Pages and Color Schemes to just name a few. Remember that when you make a change, let it go at least a month or more. This will give you the best statistics on whether your changes worked or not. There will always be spikes and lows in traffic, so testing an extended period of time is necessary.
Best online resource: Statcounter
8. Focus on Everything - Sit back and notice some of the smaller things on your page aside from the ads such as padding, margins, exact color matches and spelling/grammar. Even the slightest error in one of these areas will make you look amateur and cause your visitors to hit the back button. Take for example Techcrunch.com. The site has a simple design and is chock full of ads. Does anyone care? No. This is because Michael decided to focus on creating a clean, easily readable and very articulately written site. This isn’t easy to accomplish for many, but anything less would be selling yourself short.
Best online resource: Firefox 2.0 for it’s spell checking & CSSRemix for inspiration.
9. Stay Legal - This cannot be stressed enough. Don’t chance your one shot with AdSense to banned or unethical choices. Abide by the rules and focus your time on optimizing not staying under the AdSense radar.
Best online resource: The AdSense Support Team & their TOS
10. Try Alternatives - This is not really an AdSense tip, but more of a tip in general. Don’t just rely on AdSense for all your online revenue. There are many other avenues for creating an income online. Try selling a service, hawking affiliates or using an alternative such as Clicksor, TLA, YPN, AdBrite, AuctionAds or ReviewMe. If one doesn’t work, keep trying until you find one that does.
Best online resource: CPA Affiliates or 5StarAffiliates
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