Two Google Adsense Tips To Boost Your Earnings

Posted on April 15, 2008
Filed Under Earn money online

I’ve used these two Google Adsense tips and tricks to improve my eCPM and my earnings in the past few weeks.

First I did a lot of research on Adsense smart pricing and figured out something that worked for me.

Second, I was in a unique position to see how my Adsense earnings fluctuate since I moved my account from a personal to a business one. This showed me how much my account was affected by smart pricing and arbitrage advertisers.

But let’s get to the point…

Adsense Tip #1: Dealing with Adsense Smart Pricing

What is smart pricing? Here’s Google’s official explanation of Adsense smart pricing…

In short, Google adjusts the payout to the publisher based on the conversion of the ads.

Tons of factors affect the algorithm that Google uses to determine that, and one of these are channels.

I used to set up channels based on the ad’s position; something like “top left”, “left160×600″ and similar notations.

But if you do some research on Adsense smart pricing, you’ll find that even one poor performing website or channel can affect your whole account.

Also, Google determines the quality of the page if you use Adwords to drive traffic to it.

Based on a page’s quality, you might have to pay more or less than the normal bid for that keyword(s).

So it also makes sense that Google also determines the quality of the page for Adsense ads.

Because the only quality factor that Google shows me about my pages is pagerank, I changed the channels for ads on the homepage (I now have no Adsense ads on my homepage), which has the highest pagerank, for ads on my Tier 2 pages (one level lower pagerank), and ads on Tier 3 pages (the lowest pagerank).

I also need to mention that all my Tier 2 pages got 5.33 times more impressions (more traffic) than all my Tier 3 pages in March 2008.

So what I was saying to Google Adsense was that the majority of clicks were coming from pages with a high value.

I saw the result the next day, with a much higher PPC than before. I was no longer smart priced.

Unfortunately this happened while I still had my personal account, and I didn’t save the data. So I have no screenshots of how the PPC changed based on this change.

I also need to mention that there is no online proof of this; it is just a result of my experiments. Test this theory for yourself and see if it works.

For more info check this excellent guide to Adsense smart pricing on Masternewmedia.com, which includes links to all other important sources of information on this topic.

Adsense Tip #2: Dealing with Low Paying or Arbitrage Advertisers

When I check my Adsense earnings every day, I don’t look at the CTR much because it doesn’t change much, but I quickly calculate my average PPC.

I know roughly where it should be, and if it falls below that I start looking for reasons and solutions.

Here’s a graph of how the average PPC changed for me since I moved from a personal to a business account:

Adsense average pay per click

As you can see, I started fresh with high pay per click values and was soon affected by slight smart pricing. I checked the advertisers on my site with the Google Adsense Preview Tool and they remained the same, which means that Google had to adjust the payout for the ads.

I used Adsense Tip #1 (above) to protect myself from the tough smart pricing penalty, and watched my average PPC.

There was a huge dip on the 53rd day, and I noticed a couple of advertisers that had not shown before on my site.

The first was www.smart-review.com, and the second was www.smartguider.com. Copy and paste these URLs and check them out.

The SmartGuider website is a typical arbitrage site which attempts to drive traffic from low paying clicks on a content network and convert them into higher paying ones through its top Adsense ad and affiliate commissions.

There is basically no content, just ads and affiliate links.

The SmartReview website also drives traffic through low paying clicks, but it has a lot of original content and even some pagerank.

The very long pages must give this site a very high quality score in the Adwords bidding system, and it enjoys much lower bids than most of the other advertisers.

But these low bids also mean low payouts to the publishers!

So I removed both sites by using the Competitive Ad filter option in my Google Adsense account.

Scroll back up to the graph and check out the immediate jump in my average PPC. It’s almost at the maximum payout in my niche!

I’ve also done this in another product review based site. See the jump in PPC in the last few days?

Google Adsense PPC

Before You Implement These Two Google Adsense Tips…

These two Google Adsense tips are advanced ways of optimizing your Adsense earnings. Before you rush to implement them, ensure that you are using the basic optimization techniques for Adsense, such as:

1. Position the ads above the fold, possibly in the top left part of the content.

2. Use 300×250 or 336×280 formats in the content, and a 160×600 format in the left or right column.

3. Use a maximum of two ads per page, and possibly one link unit.

4. Blend the ads into your site’s template by matching the titles’ colors and thr ads’ text.

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Comments

22 Responses to “Two Google Adsense Tips To Boost Your Earnings”

Tony Gibson - Earn Online on April 15th, 2008 4:43 am

Hey, great post!
I’ve been experimenting with my adsense pages and found this post very interesting. I will test your tips and see what happens.

Thanks and Good Luck.
MV on April 16th, 2008 10:19 am

Another great post…
And another question from me
How can we understand if our adsense account is smart prized?
Can we consider CTR?
For example, my average CTR today is 2,33% (some channels 9,09%, others less than 0,5%)

Can I say this account is smart prized?

Thanks,
MV
Tomaz on April 16th, 2008 8:42 pm

No, the CTR can’t tell you much. It’s all about your average pay per click.

It’s earnings divided by the # of clicks. You need to know what is your maximum payout in your niche.

And if you see that you are earning only 50% of that or less, then you are very likely smart priced.
James on April 19th, 2008 9:37 am

Thanks for these tips Tomaz. I have been getting under 10 cents per click on a couple sites I run recently. They used to do much better, upwards of 30 cents per click but dropped off somewhere after Christmas. I wasn’t sure why but after reading your tips I started to look at the advertisers who showed up. Sure enough I found 5 between my 2 sites that were low quality, doing arbitrage. I put them in the competitive ad filter and the next day tripled my adsense income. Awesome tip and gives me something to look at when my per click payout goes down.
Tomaz on April 19th, 2008 7:29 pm

You’re welcome, James. Yes, we need to keep our eyes open, especially if you are an authority in your niche. The good and the bad guys are on to you…
Steve on April 20th, 2008 10:27 pm

I don’t quite understand. Are you saying you do or do not put Adsense on any of your Tier 2 and Tier 3 pages and the home page? If so, does that me you only put the ads on Tier 4 pages?

Steve
Tomaz on April 20th, 2008 11:00 pm

Hey Steve,

What I am saying is that I use channels for each tier and I don’t use channels for placement anymore.

I used to have an adsense block in top left of the content on my T2 and T3 pages. I called my channel “top left”.

Now I use a separate channel for T2 and T3 adsense ads eventhough they may have the exact same placement (in the top left of the content).
Jeremy Hier on April 27th, 2008 10:06 am

If you have one website that converts poorly,
I don’t believe it will affect your other sites,
plus that would not be fair.

Example: one of my sites has a ecpm of around 6.00
for this month, another has an ecpm of around 38.00.

Jeremy
Heidi on May 3rd, 2008 3:45 pm

Tomaz,

Really great tip! I put it into effect last night and am already seeing a big difference. Thanks!

Just one quick question, how do I learn my maximum payout in my niche? Is there a Google tool for this?

Thanks again,

Heidi
Tomaz on May 4th, 2008 1:15 am

Hi Heidi,

You can only see the maximum pay per click for the Google Adsense on the search page but not for content. Google Adwords page can show you that.
Adsense earnings on May 11th, 2008 10:10 am

webmasters can also try Youtube & adsense to boost adsense earnings. Its good for video blogger. Thanks for the great article.
The Old Vic on May 11th, 2008 7:07 pm

Thanks for the excellent advice – Adsense is a nightmare they should start giving out PhDs to people who understand it !
Yogi on October 30th, 2008 8:49 am

Hi Tomaz….I was just looking at this topic as I think my games site is being smart priced, my traffic is up but adsense earning is just what it used to be for half of that traffic.

Even if i try to check the advertisers its going to show me UK advertisers as i am in Uk, what if its some US ads that are resulting in me being smart priced…is there are way to find out?
Tomaz on November 2nd, 2008 4:15 am

Hey Yogi,

Smart pricing is not the same as having low paying advertisers. For finding those, ask a friend from US to give you screenshots of your ads and then check the sites manually to see whether they buy cheap traffic from content Adsense and try to convert into clicks again.

If you are being smart priced there is not much you can do. You can try putting ads only on quality pages where you expect good conversion. Also; don’t put Adsense on some small website that’s just starting out. Do a Google search on Adsense smart pricing and you’ll find some good ideas…
zuri on April 27th, 2009 8:09 am

Tomaz, I don’t understant when you say:

“I used to set up channels based on the ad’s position; something like “top left”, “left160×600″ and similar notations.”

I name my Adsense channels just like that, you mean I have to change the names of the Adsense channels to improve my Adsense income?

Zuri
Tomaz on April 27th, 2009 9:37 am

Zuri,

No need. The channel names have nothing to do with your income. You only use them to see which ads perform better or worse.
zuri on April 29th, 2009 8:58 am

Tomaz, I don’t understand the following on Tip #1:

“Because the only quality factor that Google shows me about my pages is pagerank, I changed the channels for ads on the homepage (I now have no Adsense ads on my homepage), which has the highest pagerank, for ads on my Tier 2 pages (one level lower pagerank), and ads on Tier 3 pages (the lowest pagerank).

I also need to mention that all my Tier 2 pages got 5.33 times more impressions (more traffic) than all my Tier 3 pages in March 2008.

So what I was saying to Google Adsense was that the majority of clicks were coming from pages with a high value.

I saw the result the next day, with a much higher PPC than before. I was no longer smart priced.”

And what’s the difference between an Adsense personal and business account?

Zuri
Tomaz on April 29th, 2009 12:51 pm

Zuri,

I experimented a little bit with channels. It looks like (I have no proof though) that if majority of impressions from a channel comes from high quality pages (which are T2 with higher pagerank), then smart pricing (Google lowering your pay per click) doesn’t affect you.

The business and personal account are almost the same, except in the business account you must enter the company name. It may have something to do also with how seriously Google considers you. Just my guess…
zuri on April 29th, 2009 5:06 pm

So you may advice that we have a special channel name for T2 pages and other for T3s?

Thanks
Zuri
Tomaz on April 29th, 2009 11:42 pm

Experiment with it if you suspect that you have been smart priced by Google Adsense…
SFaith on February 23rd, 2010 3:13 am

How can I tell if an advertiser is an arbitrage site?
Tomaz on February 23rd, 2010 6:11 am

If the first thing you see on their site is an ad sticking in your face. Then their main goal is to send cheap traffic to that ad and hopefully make more from clicks than they paid for.