Why My Adsense Earnings Are not Growing

After a fantastic start to adsense where I managed to earn over $10 for the month of Sept 08, my adsense earnings have slide down during the months of Oct 08 and Nov 08.

Doing a review of it, I believe that certain factors contributed to the decline in my adsense earnings:

Firstly, I blogged a lot less during the months of Oct 08 and Nov 08. This could have contributed to the poor ranking in my blogs and also lower earnings.

Secondly, I commented less on people's blogs. This could have resulted in a reduced amount of traffic coming to my sites.

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4 Types of Sites to Earn Money From Adsense

Adsense and affiliate marketing are extremely hot in the internet and marketing world right now, primarily because of the fact that you need not spend hours and hours of tedious writing to create a product to sell. This article outlines 4 different kind of sites that you can create to start earning from Google's Adsense or other affiliate programs that are available in the market.

#1- Traditional Niche Content Website
The first type of site you can create is the traditional niche content website. This method involves you building a site from scratch. You can get a domain name for a small sum per year and then host it somewhere. Next, you need to create a template, add content and implement your adsense and affiliate links. You can download free templates or pay for someone to create you one. You can collect content from free reprint articles from directories or you could use private label articles - you could even use a mixture of all three.

#2- Blog
The second type of site you could build is a blog. This "website" you are reading is in fact a blog. A blog is great because of the various levels of automation available to automate some of the tasks. Besides, blogs are also free to set up and maintain. Google's Adsense also works seamlessly with blogs. All you have ot do is edit the template to include adsense and you have a blog that is up and running to earn money for you from adsense. Once that's done you simply need to add content and you can do that like you did for the first method. Post to your blog once per day for the first month, 3 times per week for the next month and then once per week for the rest of the time and you will have a blog producing a consistent income stream from Adsense for months and years into the future. I did not really practice posting every day but I have still managed to earn quite a small and steady stream of income from adsense over the past few months.

#3- Article Directory
The third type of site you could create is an article directory. I'm sure you've seen them before and I'm sure you've used them before, but have you ever owned one before?

You can find free software to power your article directory and once it's set up and you have a regular stream of traffic, you will have tens, then hundreds, then thousands of authors submitting content to your site on a daily basis. That means thousands of new pages with your adsense ads and affiliate links being created every day.

There are thousands of article directory sites out there now however and competition is fierce. You should perhaps consider setting up a niche article directory on a particular subject, so that you can dominate that niche market.

#4- Create a Forum
The final type of site you could create also involves profiting from content your visitors submit. Welcome to Web 2.0! Look at Wikipedia, the content is basically all from visitors. Setting up a forum can be very profitable, especially as you can build a relationship with your website visitors and they are more likely to purchase or click on something you recommend.

This 4 types of sites will help one to earn a steady stream of income from adsense or affiliate marketing.

Do not expect this to start earning money online for you straightaway though. There are many other things that you must do and work hard at before a site truly becomes profitable. You still need to build your websites, promote them and tweak them for maximum earning potential from Adsense.

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Illusion that Adsense earns you Passive Income

Okay. I hate to be the party spoiler to break the news. But sad to say, for those who are looking to earn easy money online, this is perhaps not a post you should be reading. For what I am about to say here might make you disillusioned.

The fact that I have discovered is this. Adsense earnings are in no way considered passive income.

You basically have to work hard for it through blogging or improving your websites. This might take more time than you can expect, perhaps even more time than you spend on your day job. So if you are thinking of blogging as a means to passive income, think again. Earning money from Adsense is definitely not passive and definitely not easy.

Nevertheless, I have been encouraged by my daily adsense earnings which have improved quite a bit considered to the first month that I started out. I hope to improve my adsense earnings to over $10 for the month of Oct. Yes, that is not a lot but it is a realistic target that I am setting for myself.

At the problogger website, I read that almost 90% of bloggers make no money from their blogs. 9% of the average bloggers probably make $20-$50 per month and the remaining 1% are those that manage to earn probably a six figure sum from blogging (adsense, affiliate programs, etc).

I need to work hard to make adsense a viable source of passive income for me (to move from the 90% to the average 9% of bloggers. $20 to $50 a month is pathetic in terms of adsense earnings if one considers the amount of time involved. Calculated on a per hour basis, blogging would seem to be unprofitable compared to perhaps just doing part time baby sitting or tuition.

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One Simple Trick to Improve Your Adsense Earnings

I think I might have discovered a simple trick to increase my adsense earnings.

The misconception I had over the past few months was that traffic alone was the key determinant of how much one earns from adsense. How wrong was I.

Another key factor that determines one's adsense earnings is the click through rate (CTR) which in turns help to calculate the payout rate. At least for my case, it seems that the lesser the page impressions and the higher the click through rate, the higher the payout.

So how did I go about optimising my websites? Simple. I just removed adsense from those websites which had a lot of page impressions but seemed to produce little clicks (low click through rate). This trick seems to have work as I notice a much higher payout with a lesser amount of clicks.

Of course, there are days when my adsense earnings drop to zero. But on some days, it has also managed to hit above $1 which more than evens it out.

My Adsense Earnings for October currently stands at $4.44. Hopefully it will surpass the $10.28 I earned in the earlier month.

Google Adsense all the Way!

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Optimising Your Adsense Ads for Higher Clicks

As most people know by now, the placement of your adsense ads do make a difference. If you have not done so, do read the posting by Google on the heat maps and stuff on some of the optimal places to place your adsense ads.

Another way to optimise your adsense is to change the color of the ads so that it blends into the background of your website. That means you change the background color of the adsense ads and the adsense text so that it looks like it is part of your website. This ought to make your website more visually appealing to your readers and might likely increase the number of clicks that you get too.

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5 Simple Steps to Getting Paid by Adsense

The contents in this page was adapted from Google's Adsense help. I have reached step 4 of this process. I have not achieve $100 in earnings yet so I have not received any of my adsense earnings.

You must complete all the steps below to get your account set for your first AdSense payment. Keep in mind that you will need to earn $10 before you can provide your tax details, select a form of payment, and enter your PIN or phone verification number.

1. Check your address. Since payments and PINs, which we'll describe below, are sent to the mailing address in your account, it's important to confirm the accuracy of your payment address and payee name. Keep in mind, especially, that checks and Western Union payments are made out to the payee name exactly as entered in your account.

If you need to correct any information, follow the instructions in our Help Center.

2. Provide your tax information

We're required to collect tax-related information from all AdSense publishers, including publishers who are based outside of the U.S. , and we're unable to send payment to you until your information has been submitted.

You can submit your tax information within your account by clicking the Tax Information link from the My Account tab. An easy-to-use wizard interface will help guide you to the appropriate online forms. You're able to submit most forms online, and we'll give you instructions on submitting any other forms that may be required.

3. Select your form of payment

Depending on your payment address, there may be a number of payment options available to you, including checks, Electronic Funds Transfer, and Western Union Quick Cash. We suggest you review the available forms of payment to learn about each option. Once you've decided how you'd like to be paid, click the Payment Information [edit] link from the My Account tab of your AdSense account. Follow the instructions on that page to select your form of payment.

4. Enter your PIN and phone verification number

When you've earned $10 in earnings, we'll mail a Personal Identification Number to the payment address in your account. You'll need to enter this PIN into your account before we can send any payments to you. Your PIN will be sent by standard post and will take 2-3 weeks to arrive.

Depending on your location, you may also be asked to verify your phone number. As part of this process, our system will call you at a pre-arranged time, and you'll be required to dial in a verification number that appears in your AdSense account.

5. Generate $100 in earnings

When your total unpaid earnings reach $100, we'll send you a payment at the end of the next month. For example, if your total unpaid earnings reached $100 during January and you completed the 4 steps above, we would send you a payment at the end of February.

If your total unpaid earnings haven't yet reached $100, they'll roll over to the next month and accrue until they meet the $100 threshold.

Payment is disbursed within approximately 30 days of the end of the month — to see the timeline of our payment cycle, read the Payment Timelines section below.

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Adsense Ad Placements

This Article was adapted from Google's Adsense Help.

Certain locations tend to be more successful than others. Ads placed near rich content and navigational aids usually do well because users are focused on those areas of a page.While this heat map is useful as a positioning guideline, it is strongly recommend putting your users first when deciding on ad location. Think about their behavior on different pages, and what will be most useful and visible to them. You'll find that the most optimal ad position isn't always what you expect on certain pages.

For example, on pages where users are typically focused on reading an article, ads placed directly below the end of the editorial content tend to perform very well. It's almost as if users finish reading and ask themselves, "What can I do next?" Precisely targeted ads can answer that question for them.

Google has also shown an adsense heatmap (see Figure below) where the "hot" spots for ads are indicated in orange and yellow for optimising your adsense placements

Personally, I have applied some of this ad placement techniques to my various blogs and found that ad placement really does affect one's earnings. Currently, I try my best to include an ad on top of my posting, below my posting and to the right hand side of my posting. I also add link words at the top of my posting. Before I read about ad placement, I earned close to nothing from clicks. After re-arranging my layout for adsense, I noticed a significant increase in the number of clicks and earnings my blogs were generating.

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