Money Schemes - Learn How To Make Money Online

I first mentioned Peel Away Ads a little while ago when I was looking for a new form of advertising for this blog. I was first attracted to them because they look good, and yes a little bit flash! I figured if I liked the look of them enough to click then I’m sure other people would. You can see the full Peel Away Ads affect here (top left corner). Because all you bloggers are far too clever to click on ads I decided to not put it here, webmasters are quite adverse to flashy ads and Flash slowing down the page loading time!

The script on that page (that I bought by the way) cost $37, so far I’ve used it on 2 websites (away from blogging) and it’s had some success. On one of my sports websites the CTR has been just under 3% which has translated to nearly $100 of profit in just over a month. Not huge figures but still about the same as it makes in Adsense so double the money for very little work, very cool.

I was a bit sick though when I just checked my inbox and found out that I could have saved myself $37 and got the script for free.

In the past I’ve used TrialPay for making money, turns out it can also save you money.

Was just catching up yesterday after my break but had to do a double take at this:-

Looks like Adsense have come up with yet another new ad layout, that big header blends in very nicely! Of course every company is always looking at how it can improve things but I doubt that it’s coincidence that since Google altered the clickable area of their Adsense ads that they have been experimenting with many more Adsense ad layouts. Certainly the example above tends to borrow very heavily from the styling of the page, when I first saw it I thought something had gone screwy with my WordPress and part of a post was being inserted at the top. Whilst in the long run this is bound to be good news (Google will stick with what works best after testing) it does go to show what little control we have over the Google ads on our pages. If you’re one of those people that likes to have total control over the look of your pages then Google Adsense is definitely not the way to go!

I’ve been running alternating colours for my Adsense ads for a little while now, it would have easily been enough time to identify any patterns….BUT for one thing. When Google decided to change the clickable area of Adsense blocks the stats really started to swing around. It’s still early doors but there was enough of a shift to make it worth while posting about.

What Were The Best Adsense Colours
When I first started this I borrowed some colour combinations from some of my other websites just to try high and low contrast, same and mixed font colours etc. The one which I wasn’t expecting to perform at all was the yellow background with green title. I was wrong. The bright/stand out Adsense colour combo was outperforming every other combination on here. The differences were not amazing but definitely a 1-2% CTR improvement.

What Are The Best Adsense Colours
Now that Google have changed the rules my high contrast block is crap. In fact both the blocks with different background colours to the page (Yellow and Blue) have almost stopped performing completely. That leaves 2 options, the block with all black text and the standard Adsense Blue, Black and Green combination. No suprises here but the block that contains links that look like standard links (blue) are at least twice as good as the all black text block.

So the morale of the story here is that from my experience under Google’s new rules their standard Adsense colour combination works best. Now might be a good time to start experimenting with your Adsense colours again, if nothing else but to confirm that what you are using now works best with the new Adsense rules. I’m going to carry on running my different Adsense colour combinations until the end of this month but if it carries on like it is I’ll be heading back to a Google standard Adsense block.

It doesn’t take too long when looking at this blog to realise the due to the narrow template I went with I’m a bit limited when it comes to advertising. Other than a small banner at the top, a bit of Adsense and Kontera content links I’m pretty much stuffed. I don’t think there is anyway that I could fit in any direct ad sales on here as it stands without everything looking very cluttered. It’s a shame because direct ad sales are where it’s at right now, cutting out the middle man and keeping 100% of the revenue for you. I decided to have a look and see what other options were open to me.

Peel Away Ads

Not for one moment did I think of using pop-under or pop-up ads here, they are a giant pain in the ass as far as I’m concerned and would be disastrous for a blog style website. How many minutes after getting the first pop-up before you never came back here? Whilst looking to see what options were open to me I just came across something that I’d never seen before, now it might just be me but I think Peel Away Ads are cool. What it does is create a little lip in any corner of your page when then “peels away” to reveal an advert when the visitor hovers over it (You can see a demo over at Peel Away Ads top left corner). I actually don’t think that this is intrusive at all and the graphical affect is very clever. Before using them here I was wondering if anybody had any experience with this type of ad and how well they performed? Chances are am going to buy Peel Away Ads anyway because I’ve got a couple of content sites I think they’d go down a storm on but it’s always good to find out what you guys think?

According to ProBlogger Darren Rowse Google are going to change the rules for Adsense publishers by limiting what areas of an ad are clickable. Going are the days when a click anywhere within the block counted, visitors will now have to either click the ad title or the URL at the bottom in order for you to earn money.

I’ve got mixed feelings about this one, in the short term I expect to lose money. It’s not that I built MFA websites or deliberately try to mislead visitors it’s just that a certain percentage of any Adsense publishers clicks must come from accidental clicking. On the other hand if it improves the quality of the ad network as a whole then bid prices will naturally go up over time resulting in more bang for you legitimate clicks. As an Adwords publisher it’s not going to affect me at all, I experimented for a long time with the content network (Adsense) but CTR and ROI were soo bad each time that I gave up. Who knows if Google can improve this it might be worth looking at again. Also the fact that Google are still tweaking Adsense gives me hope that they are not going to phase out pay-per-click adverts quite yet.

Overall I think the biggest losers here are going to be the people who insist on churning out MFA spam websites so that’s not a bad thing for the rest of us.

Here are a couple of things to keep in mind as Google roll out the new rules:-

1. I’m assuming images will remain entirely clickable, is it worth reconsidering accepting image ads?
2. It is now even more important than ever to make sure your ad titles look like standard web links.
3. With this extra level of targeting before a click counts is it worth swapping out PPC blocks for CPA?

I was just looking for some highly competitive single keywords to start competing for (more of a personal challenge than anything) when I came across the best bit of Adsense integration I’ve ever seen! It’s my daughters birthday this week so I started with the word “birthday”, put it in Google and the first result you get is the Birthday Calculator. It’s a simple tool that tells you all about your self by the date you were born, nice idea and great link bait hence the no. 1 spot. What I did and what I’m sure most people do though is click an Adsense ad without even realising, it fits in perfectly!

Smack bang in the the middle of the page is the text “What Zodiac Sign Are you?” and a nice chart, remembering that this is a birthday calculator page it fits in perfectly and I clicked on my star sign without thinking twice. I’m quite Adsense wise and click cautious so I’d love to know just how much he does make from it, no.1 spot for a highly competitive keyword, excellent Adsense integration, that page probably makes as much as most big name bloggers do, but with zero effort.

Remembering back I’m sure this is the best bit of Adsense integration I’ve seen, I’m going to keep my eyes open from now on and I’ll let you know of any other gems I find. If you think you’ve seen anything better then please leave a comment?

Something very strange has just happened, I’ve just done a search with Google, the result I wanted to click on was one of the sponsored results but before I clicked on it I hesitated. I actually had to spend a few seconds thinking about what I was doing, the thought going through my head was “am I allowed to click on this?” Having had the time to put some thought into why this is I think it’s obvious, it’s because I’m an Adsense publisher!

The fear of being booted off Adsense is something that is deep set within most Adsense publishers, you’ve taken a vow never to click on your own adverts. What I’m beginning to realize is that I have difficulty clicking on ANY Adsense ads. It’s not so much Ad Blindness as Ad Fear, having been drilled for so many years not to click my own Adsense ads at any cost I’m now really starting to avoid any Google ads. I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person so I’ve got to ask I’ve I’m starting to feel like this then I wonder how many other Adsense publishers are “scared” of Google ads?

Since starting this blog I’ve learnt quite a lot, perhaps the most important being that Blogs are by far the least cost effective form of making money online (in terms of time) I’ve found, especially when it comes to passive ad revenue. Perhaps even more importantly “Make Money Online” blogs are the least cost effective method I’ve found! The problem as I see it is 90% of my target audience are people who are already trying to make money online and as such are running ad programs. This not only makes them aware of the ads I run but also perhaps if ad fear does exist makes them even less likely to make me some money. The people making big bucks from blogs all have something in common, selling advertising directly (removing the need for PPC) and enough of a user base to make affiliate marketing worth while. My main aim is to build the visitor numbers here enough so that I can make that switch.

The next time you’re thinking of a niche to target it might be worth keeping some of this in mind, ad blindness is one thing but ad fear could really hurt you. I know that I can say without hesitation that starting a blog about making money online has been one of the most fun things I’ve done online but in terms of actually making some money it’s also the biggest mistake!

No I’m not asking you to leave your life partner or change job, just to put some effort into the most important part of your make money website, your ads and banners!

Change Is Good
Some of the regular readers here might have noticed that I’ve changed the Text-Link-Ads banner that was at the top of the page. That one advert made me $50 last month so you might be wondering why change it? The truth is that this month has been poor, it’s showing a much lower CTR and has only made me $25 and that was right at the beginning of the month. The problem as I see it is that all the people interested in Text-Link-Ads are already signed up and if like me you’re here every day you will eventually become blind to that advert. Without huge amounts of fresh traffic I know my current visitors are 75% the same faces each day. From my own experiences that blindness can happen after as little as 3 or 4 weeks and at the point you ads become nothing more than page filler. Now I know that some people put adverts up and just leave them forever, I’ve been guilty of exactly the same thing in the past and that’s why I know how important it is to vary things. If you want to make money you are going to have to put the effort in, try different banners in different positions for different products. Always remember to use some sort of analysis tool so that you can track results. Even when you have something which is working for you DO NOT BE AFRAID TO CHANGE, remember that you can always go back to what was working later and it might be even better now that it is fresh again. In changing my banner I’ve already made 1 sale so perhaps it wasn’t that stupid an idea!

What About Adsense?
I’m glad you asked. Google has a sort of “hot spot” map of where you should put your Adsense blocks. The simple version of this is above the fold, in your content and to the left. However what they don’t tell you is that varying your ad positions, size and colours can really help you make more money. Once again it’s a simple case of monitoring your results, it’s easy to be lazy and content with how you are doing but if you don’t try different things how will you ever know? One of my favourite Adsense tricks is to find the 2 Adsense combinations (format, position, colour) that work best for a given page and rotate them every month. It keeps the page fresh and helps to prevent the inevitable lag in Adsense earnings that people experience as a page is left with exactly the same Adsense on it for months if not years.