The concept of making money with AdSense sounds easy but when it comes down to the reality, many bloggers are left perplexed as to why their online business fails at making some real dollars from this revolutionary program!
Here are the top 5 reasons …
1. Lack of organic traffic
This is the proven and top reason why AdSense is not working for you. Adsense thrives well only on organic traffic. So if you are not getting loads of organic traffic to your website, then it is most likely that you won’t make good enough money with AdSense!
To help you get more organic traffic, make use of some of these traffic generation techniques as not only will they attract more visitors, they will also generate more “positive” signals for your site, which in turn may help you rank better on search engines.
- 5 Suggestions on Using Google Images to Increase Traffic
- Create, Optimize and Promote your Video: 15 Great Ways
- 12 Things You Should Do After Writing A Blog Post [infographic]
- The Best SEO Practices and Tips 2012
- The Best Sites For Guest Posting Opportunities
The articles above are just but a few ways you can generate organic traffic. However, don’t rely solely on search traffic. There are other methods to drive traffic to your site. You can use of local directory listings, press releases, free classified ads posting, social networks, forums, etc..
2. Not focusing on your niche
A blog with an out of focused niche will always struggle to make money with AdSense. If you are not familiar with this term then let me break it down for you…
A niche is a very specific category around which someone decides to create a blog or a website. For an example, if I am blogging about cameras and photography tips then I am in the digital photography niche. Likewise, If one is primarily writing about SEO, PPC, affiliate marketing or ways of making money online, then his blog falls in the internet marketing niche.
To be successful with Adsense, it is very important to stay focused with your niche and provide quality content. There is a solid reason for that – if you are a multi niche writer then AdSense crawler will struggle to provide targeted ads to your readers and as a result your traffic will not convert well.
3. Poor Placement and Ad format
The general rule of thumb while optimizing Adsense is to perfectly blend the ad’s appearance to match with that of your website’s color scheme. Match background color to color and link color to color in such a way that the ad seems to be an integral part of your website and complements the text surrounding it very well.
The second rule is the rule of placement. You have to make sure that the ad code is placed at a location which is most likely to get noticed by your visitors (preferably above the fold or the top most corner of left sidebar)
You have to abide by these two optimization principles if you really want this program to pay off your time and efforts.
4. Too many ads
Too many ads on your web-pages may receive a high Click Through Rate, but the Cost per Click won’t impress you for sure. At the very first place, as per Google AdSense guidelines you are allowed to use only 3 AdSense Ad units and 3 link units on any web-page that complies with their policies.
Anything more than that can invite an account termination email from Google. They are very strict!!
Secondly, too many ads, especially around the content which is anything less than 1500-2000 words may cause trouble to the AdSense bot to fill up all those ad spaces with targeted and relevant ads. As a result the cost per click will fall down eventually.
5. Low Quality Score of your website
This factor affects the cost per click for sure. While assigning the CPC rate to your ad block, the AdSense system does take the quality score of participating websites into account.
Quality score is – how relevant your website is to that of the advertiser’s? How relevant and optimized are your website’s title and keywords to that of the ads being displayed?
Suppose, there are two websites – one is a niche website solely writing about digital cameras and lenses while the other one is a general digital photography website. An advertisement about a digital camera will definitely earn the first website a better quality score than the second one, and thus better CPC.
Likewise, an advertisement about photography school will earn the second website a better quality score than the former one!
So the key point is to stay focused in your niche and optimize your content to attract better quality scores and thus flying CPC rates. Google AdSense is a worthwhile program, but it requires patience, effort and some tweaks to make it perform better.
Hey Abhishek,
More then 3 month before I embed adsense code to my blog but still didn’t get any good response with ads income blog higly optimized and page rank 2 but still I am waiting for getting impressions and views towards it.
Abhishek
Rizwan, are you getting enough organic traffic ? If still adsense is not working for you, then take a look at the appearance of your ads. Refer to point number 3 of my blog post above. I hope that helps !
I change the adsense ads position because I think sidebar are not right place for ads.
I thought it is easy to earn through adsense but by the time I realised that adsense needs tips and tricks to work well. Thanks for the suggestions, I love to read each link for organic traffic generation,.
Thomas
Adsense is used as the best way to earn money for your online work. But when you barely manage to earn profits even after using Adsense, the entire purpose comes under question. Many a times it could be the smallest things we overlook that could spell loss for the business. Many a times, we fail to realize the importance of organic traffic. If your site doesn’t focus on organic traffic, the whole thing is a huge waste! Also, two things I completely agree with- one, focusing on the niche. It is surprising how many business owners actually overlook niche details. If you’re in the wrong niche or if you have no specific niche at all, you’re sending all your efforts down the drains. Two, too many ads look nothing but spammy. And they threaten to send your users running a mile away within seconds. It is these small details that every business owner needs to keep in mind, to make the most out of Adsense.
Joe Boyle
I’m glad that you included the reason of too many ads. There is nothing worse than seeing going to a page with about 15 ads right in your face. I recall a study being done that compared blogs with one ad versus multiple, all receiving about an equal amount of traffic, and proved that blogs with just that one ad often generate more income. The problem is, is that the mutliple ads scare people. They scare me, too.
Abhishek
Joe, rightly said. Such blogs, besides loosing the revenue eventually loose the hard earned readership too ! Glad you liked my guest article 🙂
Yeah right, it is very important that we focus on your niche. If I have a blog, my content should be niche oriented. So my readers can get the targeted ads and my adsense campaign will be a successful one. Thanks for the tips Abhishek.
Ryan Biddulph
Hi Abhishek,
Stay on topic. Over time you can make money by simply remaining consistent and persistent with your ad campaign.
Thanks!
RB
Aditya
Organic traffic should be there in one’s site if to take benefit of adsense.And organic traffic comes from the quality content you are providing.
Jane
Good points Abhishek. Your #1 point is the main reason for not making enough money with Adsense. Since Adsense is mainly based on contextual advertising, search traffic will convert much better!
Hi Abhishek, Good points…I have just removed adsense from one of my sites because my users have got used to ignoring them…I have placed some relevent ads in place of adsense and it has increased the earnings….
akhilendra
Ad Positions are the most important for conversion. Ads in sidebar doesn’t convert much and they may have a negative impact on your visitor if they are too loud and scattered everywhere.
Best position in my opinion is within your content/post but that should be done delicately without making them too loud.
Cory
Google Adsense is a popular program and now it might be harder to get people to click because they are not fooled anymore. They see those ads and probably just ignore them.
Mark Brook
Organic traffic come with good and quality content and there are social media which can be help full getting traffic. As in this article Abhishek Raj mentioned in article.
As I know its start slowly you must have to wait for sometime do not get panic or do not think you start making money after 2 or 3 months but use of words and the quality of the words can help you to achieve your goals.
Enstine [email protected]
Hi Abhishek,
Adsense is an interesting source of income. After running my blog for 2 weeks, I see an increase in adsense earnings. I’ve taken note of some of your tips I neglected before. This will surely bring me more earnings.
Abhishek
Your welcome Enstine. I’m glad that the tips were useful for you 🙂
Pressa
I got almost nothing in adsense, but thaty me because I have to few visitors.
Mathew
Number 2 is not true at all. Adsense uses cookies to target advertise. These cookies are from the users searching history. For example if I just looked up a car and then went onto a website with adsense I may see an ad about the type of car I was just searching for.
Abhishek
Hi Mathew
I know, this form of ad-targeting is called interest based targeting. But deviating from your niche doesn’t make any sense at all. You will loose your readers and eventually the revenue. That’s why i have included this point in this post.
Amal Rafeeq
Thanks a lot for sharing 🙂
I think its time I must remove 1 AdUnit !
Philip
Hi,
Well I think the key to making money through Adsense, and eventually increasing your earnings is to keep testing everything.
Test the color scheme, the placement is very important also.
Probably the best thing is to make the ad blocks fit in with your site’s colors, font sizes and layout.
Awesome post, gonna try some of the things you’ve mentioned here.
Have a great day, cheers.
~Philip
Arpan Jain
Nice Points Abhishek, I think your #3 point of Ad placements tells out the story for most of the bloggers. I think the Ads should be preferably put between the posts but this should be done carefully without making it too loud.