A common mistake beginners make is adding Adsense to a brand new blog. I have talked about this before but a refresher is in order as well as an update on how I monetize with Adsense.
Most new blogs have no traffic at first so there is little point in having Adsense on it. Doing so can send out flags that the site is a made for Adsense blog and this is a no no with Google. You are not allowed to create a site for the sole purpose of making money with Adsense. By not adding Adsense in the beginning you appear to be a legit site and will find that you will rank faster and avoid the sandbox. (Getting a few authority links from others appears to be the best way to avoid the sandbox coupled with not monetizing a new site.)
You will also avoid smart pricing your whole account. A new site needs to build up targeted search traffic first. If the traffic to your site is mostly social visitors and you run Adsense and some of the un-targeted traffic clicks your ads you will likely see poor conversions for the advertiser and G will discount your clicks and pay you pennies. At the same time all your other blogs will see their earnings discounted as well.
Remember - Adsense should only be used on sites that get the majority of their traffic from the search engines. This is targeted traffic that will convert for the advertisers.
So...
How do you know when to start using Adsense?
This is my method.
Most of you know I created a new blog on Wordpress called "Make Money Online with Griz" back in July. I created the blog for a number of reasons but primarily to demonstrate my system for making money online.
At present the site is ranked pages 2 and 3 for most of the "Make Money Online" terms I've targeted. An exact search in quotes for my main keyword shows the blog ranked 10th on page 1 of the serp's. This is a highly competitive niche and this shows that you can rank well even in a competitive niche in 3 to 4 months if you accumulate quality backlinks.
It also demonstrates that you don't need a lot of posts either. I only have a half dozen posts on the site but they will give you a good idea of how "On Page SEO" works. Titles, headers and content are focused and target my keywords.
As for "Off Page SEO" (read - backlinks) the site has a few thousand links but many are from site-wide links on other blogs and this tends to confuse the issue. A site-wide link can give you hundreds of links from a single blog. This is ok but pay attention to getting unique links. The new blog really only has about 100 unique links. By this I mean there are only about 100 sites linking to me in spite of the number of total links (pages linking).
The more unique links you get the better. This should also indicate to you that you really don't need 1000's of links to do well in a niche - you just need quality links.
In this case most of my links are keyword anchored which is rare and the reason the blog ranks so well so quickly in a tough niche. Because my friends have sent me links and they understand the concept of "anchored keyword links" most of the links use my keywords - hence my quick ranking for those keywords.
I admit that this is not something most of you can obtain until you build up a network of like minded friends. I point it out simply to show you the power of getting targeted links to your site and urge you to ask your friends to provide you with the same kind of links rather than the "click here" variety or those using your name in the anchor. I'm basically trying to show you what works best whether you are able to get the links at this point in your progress or not. These are the type of links you should be aiming for eventually if you want to see better serp rankings.
To this end I have set up a few resource pages on the new blog filled with like minded people who understand the value of anchored backlinks and I urge you to visit the people and sites listed in order to help each other. Start with "Finding links for your Niche Blogs" and email people with similar niches or send anchored links in posts to the people on my "Friendz of Griz" page and you may just get a nod in return. (assuming your site is relevant to theirs. Don't spam them)
Now back to Adsense.
The new blog averages about 300 unique visitors a day. Normally I would have added Adsense a while ago as 300 visitors is enough to start making a little Adsense income. The problem in this case is that 7 out of 8 visitors are coming from social sources - bookmarks, referrals from other blogs, stumbleupon etc. Only 1 in 8 are coming from the search engines. In other words the majority of the traffic is not targeted for my keywords and won't be targeted for the Adsense ads. This means that my Adsense could be smart priced pretty quick if the social traffic decides to click the ads.
Testing the water to find out how your Adsense will perform.
Last week I added an Adsense block to the new blog. I did not let it go live though. By this I mean that while the ads are displayed on the blog I have not "Allowed" the blog to record clicks in my Adsense account. This is done by "not" adding the site URL to the list of "allowed sites" in your "Adsense Setup" Tab. The end result is that I can monitor clicks without fear of being penalized by G. The ads are being clicked but not recorded.
After two days I noticed that I was only getting 5 - 10 clicks per day which made me happy as it indicates that the social traffic is not clicking my ads or very little if they are. Based on this I added the site to my allowed list and monitored the results. Over the next few days I continued to see 5-10 clicks a day and noticed a CPC of 75 cents to $1 a click. So far so good. Then I started seeing the dreaded 5 cent clicks. At the same time I watched my CPC on my other sites and sure enough my earnings per click started dropping. Not good.
I took the new blog off of the allowed sites list and over the course of another two days my CPC is back to normal on my other sites.
This is how I find out if a new site is ready for Adsense. In this case the new blog is not yet ready and won't be until I start drawing more search traffic than social traffic. At that point I will let the ads go live again and see what happens.
In the mean time I will leave the ad block on the site and start playing around with position, number of blocks, size of blocks and finding just the right "ugly" balance (how the blog looks) needed to increase click thru rates (CTR). I can do all this while waiting for more search traffic.
On a side note: Several readers have already mentioned how much they hate the "puke" green background. lol. This is good - maybe - if it helps to drive people away. Some will just leave but some will "click" to leave - which is the goal behind the site. I didn't create the site for the benefit of readers - I created the site to make money. Readers are always welcome of course but like this blog they will have to put up with my Adsense tweaks.
Each niche is different but this should give you an idea of how I approach optimizing a site for Adsense and more importantly how I know when to use Adsense and when to let it be.
One second to last thing - I already know how this niche performs thanks to the blog you are currently reading. If you are making decent money from Adsense in your niche then create more blogs in the same niche. The guesswork has been removed. Just rinse and repeat and use the same resources you used to build the initial blog. You don't always have to keep searching for new niches.
The Asia'h Contest.
I had mentioned that I would split the money with the top three sites if no one could outrank my site. As it happens that won't be necessary as Dinesh managed to outrank me after all!
click image to enlarge
Congrats Dinesh and I will send you the $500 as soon as I get your Paypal Acct. I will be emailing you shortly.
Cheers,
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