If you are experienced in the Adsense arena, then you know that Google has now developed a new way to decide how much you earn through your Adsense ads with their new Smart Pricing formula. What is the formula? No one knows exactly. There is a theory though…
It involves their formula for the alogorithm that determines if the visitor who clicked on one of your ads is a good customer for the advertiser. This means the “clicker” should be interested in the product advertised and make a purchase from the advertiser. How does Google get this information? They don’t actually.
Avertisers who work with Google through Adwords are not required to share their conversion rates from click-to-purchase. Some advertisers do share this information since Google has a way for them to share it, while most advertisers don’t share this info. If the advertisers don’t share this information, then how does Google decide how clickers are converting to sales? Hmmmm… they must have to guess, (or use one of their famous formulas).
The new Smart Pricing equation being thrown into the Adsense income mix has a lot of web site owners upset. They have seen their sales drop dramatically even though they are showing the same amount of ads with the same amount of monthly clicks on average. Google won’t share what they are doing because then people can “beat the system” and cost Google and their advertisers money that is not actually earned through honest site optimization.
What can you do to help your site with this new change? Well one of the things that Google does is decide if the ad showing is in “theme” with the page it sits on. Your site should contain a consistant theme throughout. You can still use related keyword optimized pages AS LONG AS your site is also related to the same subject.
If you are going to do tracking, then only change ONE thing at a time. You should monitor the change and it’s results. If the change brings you a larger income, then stick with it. IF it doesn’t then change it back and change a different element. Then monitor those results. Keep doing this until you have your own perfect formula for surviving the Smart Pricing alogorithm.
Having too many different subjects on your web site can actually get your clicks penalized and you will be paid less. It’s wise to have different web sites that focus on each individual subject with different related keyword optimized pages. The more you “niche” your site the better. A niched site relating to one major theme will get you a higher payout on your Adsense income.
What part of this new Smart Pricing is unfair to publishers? My own theory is crummy landing pages. If you have an ad show up and your visitor clicks on that ad and then get sent to a crummy landing page and leaves. You have just been penalized because the customer did “not” convert to a sale and it’s not your fault.
The other down side is Adword advertisers who are buying keywords not even related to what their web site sells. This is another lost customer who didn’t convert to a sale and you might be penalized instead of the advertiser who actually gets money back from Google because of their low conversion rates.
Whether you like it or not, and even if it’s not the “smartest” of Google’s new changes, it’s already in place and you are already a participant if you serve up Google Adsense ads. It seems that the ones paying Google, (the advertisers), are going to have a little more say than the publishers naturally. If they are complaining about click fraud or bad conversion rates, then their voices combined are what makes Google change.
Since Google likes to make money, I am sure they have several bean counters going all the time to find out if the changes have hurt their bottom line, or helped it. We can probably expect these changes often. Google promises that it tries to make you the most money as an advertiser because then they make more money.
I do know this….
In April 2005 I was making over $3,000 a month with Google Adsense. In March 2006, I am making around $750 a month with Google Adsense yet my traffic has increased since last year. If I am making less, then Google is making less from me. I have a high traffic web site and yet my Adsense earnings have plummeted.
How do you fix the problem when you are not privy to the conversion rates for the ads showing on your site? How do you know which are the bummer ads compared to high converting ads. With this knowledge you COULD apply Google filters weeding out the bad advertisers who have a problem converting sales once their visitor has landed.
The only thing we can really depend on is that Smart Pricing is fairly new and maybe Google will get it all ironed out in the end. Did I say “end”. Google never ends, it just keeps on going and going and going….
As you probably already know, AdSense is revolutionizing the way many infopreneurs are creating revenue from their web site traffic. The reason for this is its simplicity. Through AdSense, revenue is generated when someone simply clicks thru the AdSense ads displayed on the webmasters web site.
In this article I want to give you a few simple ways to dramatically increase your AdSense income.
The bottom line:
To increase AdSense income all you must do is increase the number of click thrus you receive.
There are two ways for you to increase your total number of click thrus. You can either increase your website traffic or you can increase your AdSense click thru rate. Now, getting more traffic would be great, but let?s be honest increasing your web site traffic is much easier said than done. So, let?s focus on increasing your AdSense click thru rate instead.
4 Tips to Increase Click Thru:
Match your AdSense to your website:
You want your AdSense ads to appear as seamless as possible. Your goal is to match every aspect of your AdSense ads to the theme of your website. What you want to do is remove the borders from your AdSense ads and match the background color of the ad to your website. Additionally, you want to match the color of the AdSense links to the rest of the links on your website plus choose an ad format that makes the ads look seamless.
For example, if your web site has a white background and the default color of your hypertext links is blue you will want to remove the border from your AdSense, make the background white, choose either a square or a rectangle as your ad format instead of a skyscraper or banner, and yep you guessed it? make the links blue.
Placement Matters:
Where you place your AdSense ads is just as important as how they look. Luckily, there are only a few concepts that you need to worry about in order to increase your click through rate.
?The more white space around your ads the better
?The closer to the top of the page the better
?The closer the left of the page the better
Follow these concepts and I can assure you that you will see an increase in your AdSense click thru rate. (It really is that simply!)
Google Search:
Now this is one that I rarely see webmasters take advantage of. The Google AdSense program gives webmasters the ability to add a Google search box to there web site.
Why should you use this function?
Well, when a website visitor chooses to use this search box from your website your AdSense ID will be imbedded in ALL of that visitors Google searches. If that person does 1 search or 50 your AdSense ID will still be imbedded throughout process.
Why is this so great?
If that visitor clicks on any of the sponsored listings while surfing from your web site guess who makes money. YOU! If they hit the back button and click on another ad guess who makes money? YOU! This is absolutely huge. Through this function you now have the ability to earn multiple click thrus from the same visitor on the site visit. Please don?t overlook how powerful this is. Besides, most of your website traffic will just be browsing anyway, so I why help them find what there looking for and make a little coin along the way?
Tracking:
Just like any other type of marketing, you won?t know what?s working the best for you on your web site unless you track the different things that you?re experimenting with. Set up a few Google AdSense channels for the different ads that you?ll be placing on your website. Then just see which channels are working the best and stick to those.
That?s it!
Follow the tips above and I can assure you that you will absolutely double your AdSense click thru rate and your AdSense income. The best part about the four tips I?ve shared here is that you can put them into action immediately and see how they will work on your website right now. Who knows? you could be making twice as much by tomorrow by just making a few simple tweaks here and there.
Good Luck!
20 June last year, Wall Street Journal runs an article, saying Google has plans to offer PayPal-like services. At that time, the popular name among analyst was “Google Wallet”.
Google Inc. this year plans to offer an electronic-payment service that could help the Internet-search company diversify its revenue and may put it in competition with eBay Inc.’s PayPal unit, according to people familiar with the matter.
Exact details of the search company’s planned service aren’t known. But the people familiar with the matter say it could have similarities with PayPal, which allows consumers to pay for purchases by funding electronic-payment accounts from their credit cards or checking accounts.
Some consumers like PayPal for the security it offers, since it allows them to share their banking or credit-card numbers only with PayPal without having to divulge the information to merchants.
Officials of Google and PayPal declined to comment.
Gary Price of Search Engine Watch did some research and found that two months before that, Google Inc filed the paperwork with the California Secretary of State and formed the Google Payment Corporation.
One year forward, after many news and speculations, and going through two name changes (it was called Google Purchase before finally changed to GBuy), Google’s payment service is finally reaching its official launch.
According to Forbes, GBuy is set to launch on 28 June.
Consumers using GBuy, which is set for release on June 28, will be taken off the merchant’s site to complete the payment. This will enable Google to capture e-commerce transaction data, driving more precise targeting in future searches.
“If harnessed, the precision of this targeting could be revolutionary,” wrote RBC analyst Jordan Rohan in a report Friday.
Update : Apparently, the latest name for the Google payment service is Google Checkout .
Update : paikia spotted the payment service being used at Picasa Web, and the finalized name is Google Purchase.
Note: I do not condone or encourage cheating on Google AdSense or any advertiser network. This article is indeed written to show why you should NOT use clickbot. If you want to increase your earning, there are legal and easier ways. Read 100 Google AdSense Tips.
Apparently, for some reason, it is not easy to find information about clickbots from the Internet. I need to dig a bit into Google cache to get some decent information. At the time I’m writing this, even Wikipedia does not have an entry specially for “clickbot” yet. The nearest term from Wikipedia is “Internet Bot”.
A bot is common parlance on the Internet for a software program that is a software agent. A Bot interacts with other network services intended for people as if it were a real person. One typical use of bots is to gather information. The term is derived from the word “robot,” reflecting the autonomous character in the “virtual robot”-ness of the concept.
Put simply, clickbot is a specialized bot made to simulate clicking. Initially popular for gaming cheat, now clickbot has taken the highlight in pay-per-click advertisement business. In 2004, a California man created a clickbot that he claimed cannot be detected by Google. Failed to make good money selling the program, he tried to blackmail Google for $150,000 to hand over the program. He was arrested, nonetheless.
For computer savvy users, creating a clickbot is very simple and straight forward. You just need a macro to record your activities. While the macro is recoding, you visit your own site and click on the ads. Save the macro, and then let it run. Of course, you will also need a list of proxies to cover your track.
Fortunately for advertisers and honest publishers, Google is not stupid. With the huge amount of data that it has, Google can easily compile the most comprehensive proxy list on earth. In the AdSense report, clicks from proxies will add up to the number of clicks, but no money is credited to the earning. As you guess, when the proxy clicks exceed a certain number, your AdSense account is disabled.
Organised crimes handle this by having the clickbot software on many computers around the world, each with their own Internet Service Provider. Some of these software may be installed without the computer owners’ permissions or knowledge, via trojans and viruses. Or it might be installed voluntarily by the click-network members.
Beginning of this year, Greg Boser from WebGuerilla did an experiment to test the extent of click-fraud by using clickbot, with no conclusive answer. Some experts claims that click fraud accounts for up to 20% of the clicks, generating more than $1 billion in a year.
Whether or not the estimation is correct, one thing is sure. Google, Yahoo and other big players in the PPC advertising business takes click-fraud very seriously, and it will be just a matter of time when fraudsters are caught.
If you want to increase your earning, there are legal and easier ways. Read 100 Google AdSense Tips.
If you applied for AdSense account with intention to cheat and earn fast bucks, I hope by now you have understood that you shouldn’t.
Why? You say. Google is so rich, losing some pennies won’t hurt.
Well. Probably. But when I say you shouldn’t, trust me. You really shouldn’t. These are just some reasons:
1. You can’t cheat Google
Every once in while, someone will comes out with ingenious idea of how to get more money from AdSense in less than honorable ways. He will announce to the whole world, posting in every forum and tell people how smart he is. His idea is always untraceable by Google, it is always original, and it always gives easy money.
What he doesn’t know is, few months after that, he will get caught by Google, always. And his AdSense account will be disabled. Always. And he is from ever applying for AdSense account again. Always.
Google is a giant, with 2005 revenue of almost US$ 10 billions, and profits of more than US$ 1 billion. A large chunk of this comes from Adwords / AdSense advertisements.
More click fraud means less trust, less advertisers and less money, to the extent that if unsolved it will bring collapse to pay-per-click advertisement business. Now. Do you think Google will let you jeopardize their billion dollar business model?
They have money and ability to bring together many of the the smartest and brightest engineers and scientists on earth, has been doing that and will continue to do so. How smart do you think you are that you can outsmart collaborative effort of the brightest brains?
You might be able to pull through for two or three months, but eventually the fraud detection algorithm will catch up and you are caught. And you get banned from Google AdSense, among other things.
2. Cheating = stealing
No matter how you want to justify, face it, cheating is stealing. You are not only stealing from Google, but also from Adwords publishers. Majority of these are are not big companies, but small webmasters depending on Internet to make a living.
Moreover, even if your morality (or lack thereof) permits stealing from your own fellow, bear in mind that stealing is illegal. Regardless of whether it is done offline or online, a crime is a crime. You might get jailed for that.
In fact, Google has started to bring AdSense fraudsters to court a few months ago. Some were jailed, and some others were fined heavily.
3. It is just too easy to earn more, legally
Let’s say you managed to cheat AdSense undetected. You don’t use clickbot or proxy or click-ring or paid clickers. You managed to somehow get the clicks from distributed IP. You don’t use pop-ups, spyware, adware. You are careful that your CTR does not exceed 10%. Still, your earning is limited. There is a cap you can’t cross, else you will invite unwanted attention to your account.
With so much effort to cover your traces, actually you will get better result if you concentrate your effort to improve the website.
Write more contents, submit articles, improve on your search engine optimisation, improve adsense placement, and you can get the same earning or even more. Sure it will take some time, but this is legitimate.