Can someone put into english for me what is Google AdSense? Let me see if I understand it.... Is the program free? Does google put relavent ads on my website? Where and how often? And I get paid if they are clicked on? Will it be visually appealing? Is it worth the hassle? Will it help my site be searchable in google through various keywords? Can I put general ads for my website on other websites without being penalized? Thank you for your time.
I can try. People pay google to advertise for them, googles outlet for this advertising is people who sign up for adsense. Ads are displayed on your site based on the content of your site. In other words a horse site will generally get adsense ads that are horse related. Yes. yes, relevence is based onthe content of your pages and it takes a little while for google to asses your content and start placing relevent ads on your site. Where the ads are placed on your site is up to you, you place code provided by google on your site and you chose the shape/size/color(if its text) of the ads that appear. Ads will changte on every page load to some degree, depends on the ad itself. yes. Depends on what your opinion of visually appealing is. Once again depends on your idea of what hassle is and how much traffic you get. adsense can be very lucrative if your site has a lit of traffic. I dont beleive the ad content is factored into your site and its position in search rankings at all. You can advertise your site how ever you want.
RE Good Info - thanks. Do you happen to have a good example of a website that has Google adsense that doesn't look too gawdy? We still want our website to be nice and clean and not cluttered with advertising on the homepage. Does anyone have any personal experience with Google Adsense? Thank you for your time.
Smarty has adsense ads. You can log into google and see all the different display options yourself to se what ads look like. Google adsense ads are all over the internet and are easy to spot because the ad block says "ads by google".
One thing that I would warn you about using adsense on a classifieds website is that usually most of your google ads on the home page will be for other classifieds websites. If that doesn't bother you and you don't think it will bother your sellers then go for it. You can specify certain ads for specific sites to NOT run on your site, but because it is site specific, that gets very tedious to manage IMHO. -Mike
don't assume If someone clicks your adsense ad you get paid but you also lose that visitor. So you need to balance the visitor value vs adsense revenue. I wouldn't assume it's not worth it - you gotta go test it. If your site is new or has little traffic, then I wouldn't bother plastering adsense on it for now until you have a better idea what a visitor is worth to you.
Thats why we have 3 button mice, so you can click the center button and open link in new tab. Just cause someone clicks a link doesnt mean they are lost to you.
Good point. But some people are "happy clickers" If there is a way to have the adsense ads forced to open up in a new window no matter what button they click, let me know.
Just found this post about opening Adsense links in a new window. How can I have Google AdSense ads open in a new window? :: Free Tech Support from Ask Dave Taylor!
I am going to get howls of don't do this as it is not expected web site behavior but done subtly it works well. One technique which most adsensers use is to have certain types of pages open in completely new windows using target="blank". The original page remains open too. For example, you could code to make only ads from certain categories or types come up in their own window with adsense on it while others do not. Another technique is don't see what you want here (say an empty search results page or category) then click here to find alternatives - another page comes up with adsense on it (keep in mind this new page should have some content on it of value and not just be adsense blocks - adsense takes a dim view of that - you are adding no value they make that clear in their terms of service as well). Another technique is to put something in your main menu which attracts people. They click this link and it brings up a new page which has interesting content on it and adsense of course. A final technique which works well is that after someone has placed an advert or made a contact, show them some adsense or push some affiliates. All this relies on the ability to test for different circumstances that your visitor arrives at. With all of this though, your current advertisers if they are paying are unlikely to approve in general unless it is done in a balanced way.
I run all my advertising through my advertising server (openx), which you can set to open in a new window. This can be done on a zone by zone basis. I do it this way, because then I have my own stats and don't have to rely on what google says for the stats. I also then have stats on all ads run including the ads specific to my classifieds site. -Mike
I run sites which make considerable adsense revenues including a 68C site where it has been a success. Be subtle, use good marketing techniques, keep within terms and ALL will be well. Don't ever underestimate google ad-sense or its ability to see you are cheating. The back-end of ad-sense including their monitoring is sophisticated. Google analytics is also second to none. A module to embed and use that easily is just about to be released for that very soon. Watch this space as they say. However for those which want a really nice tool to map out where people are clicking on their sites so they can optimise adsense use this Crazy Egg – visualize your visitors . It works and will take you all of 2 minutes to implement without needing to be an expert.
balance To build on the last few posts I'm wondering if anyone has seen a connection between having adsense vs paid classifieds - i.e. as you plaster your site with more adsense/ad blocks does it p*ss off your advertisers - maybe even the free ones? Any look into this? I'm thinking that a sidebar with adsense is probably acceptable and wouldn't affect conversions of free or paid ads. But add in a header 728x90 and maybe a footer with more ads might push them over the edge and they'll just bounce. Might also affect visitors looking at the ads... Any comments?
I haven't done a lot of advertising on sites but here is what I have done before that was the most successful: 1. Use adsense in only one spot and make it look nice. 2. Use other affiliates and place them in important locations. I was running a motorcycle site so beside the price of the listing I would add an affiliate link to a finance company. Include an affiliate link to a shipping company. These two links made me way more money then adsense. I personally feel most people now how to spot ads and ignore them. So by being subtle you can make more.
right on Eric. Pick your place. What I can say is that some of my advertisers even blackmail me. I will give you 600e of advertising if you take that damm ad-sense banner of the top of my adverts. Of course I did. You can even make it a sales pitch . One type of advertiser gets adsense around his free advert and another who has paid does not. A feel a module coming on - LOL.
nice Great thread guys - thanks for the good discussion. Here's something I'm trying now: based on the idea that the only way to be successful with a classifieds site is to make your advertisers successful. I made a coupon for 100% off the premium listing. Limited it to a certain number and expiry date. I emailed the members about it and allow just 1 per member. I'm letting them use the coupons to have a taste for premium. Most of the savvy sellers who are selling new items are going for it. New members don't know about it so they carry on as normal - most get free listings. The idea is that I may not make any $ for the next few weeks, but if any of those sellers make money with their ads, then I hope they'll be back to pay for very low priced premium ads AND give me testimonials. It's like giving out the free cheese cubes at the deli - proven to work Cheers.
You're right on Eric. I was recently contacted by a company out of the UK called that actually wants to insert harmless sentences (with a link) into the content on my site. Their motive is for the sentence to seem like it belongs in the article 100%.
One other thing to mention here and I've not seen come up on any of the threads regarding Google Adsense is the simple fact that Adsense is not just text ads. I select display ads for two of my zones in rotation with other advertisers. As the display ads from Adsense dont have the look & feel of the notorious Google text ads, they blend right in with any of my other display ads. Many of the display ads don't even have the google adsense mark at the bottom of them that all of the text ads do. I do find that the display ads are much better on other pages than the home page for the classified site. -Mike
