Two Vital Lessons About AdSense I Learned This Summer
Summertime is finally over. It could not have come fast enough. I ended up having to get a real part time job because of the seasonal earnings dip.
As soon as the third week in August rolled around I noticed an immediate spike in my AdSense income.
But all was not lost! I spent most of the summer doing a lot of testing, link building and content creation. I wanted to be in prime position when Fall came around.
Here are two vital lessons that I learned this summer that I think every person looking to make money from AdSense or any other affiliate program can learn from.
Website Template
Different templates will work for different niches. You may have to test several before you find the best one.
In the past I have always preferred plain white and blue or white and black WordPress themes the best. I always preached that the more minimalistic your theme was the better it would cover.
I found that magazine themes or templates with a lot of bells and whistles just confused the visitor. You can find more information about high converting website templates here.
Most of what I said still holds true except one thing: magazine themes work well in some niches. I feel like any MMO niche or any blog where your visitors will most likely be Google power users will do well with a magazine theme.
I switched this site over to a magazine theme a month ago and my CTR went through the roof!
Why? I think websites and blogs that attract power users need to show their visitors the big picture. People who come to these sites want to be able to choose which article to read by scanning several excerpts first. They browse the Internet a lot and are a lot more ADHD and “ad blind” than other users. Throwing everything you have at them will keep their attention longer.
Product Keywords
Under no circumstances will I ever start a blog about an action word. This summer I started two websites that were built around a helpful keyword phrase.
It was related to air conditioning. I spent a lot of money paying for professional articles and researched the subject heavily myself. I made all my posts over 1,000 words and very informative. It took both sites to get to page one on Google for the phrase I was going for. Each one is getting over 150 hits per day.
You would think I would be making at least several hundred dollars off each one per month from that kind of traffic. Nope! I barely get a click a day. When I do the CPC is excellent but the CTR is terrible. Less than 1-2%. What a waste of time!
Oh well, if somebody’s AC breaks down for any reason they can find a useful answer to their problem by going to my blog.
Anyway, only make blogs or websites around products. Keyword rich products. Your click through rate will be crazy. Build a blog or website around an idea and you will waste your time.
