Brian Vaughan

New Way to Manage Adsense

Posted by Brian

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A few days ago Google released a teaser of a feature that would enable you to not have to change your Adsense code everytime you made a change to the appearance of the code. This feature is not started to roll out to every publisher, and today it was enabled for my account.

I have just finished setting it up for one ad unit of mine, the 300×250 ad spot here on this blog. There seems to be a little delay before changes show up (and before the ad will initially start showing up for new ad units). All in all I have to say so far so good.

To find out whether or not it has been enabled on your blog yet. Log into Adsense then click on the Adsense Setup tab. If you see a link called “Manage Ads” it means your account has this new feature enabled.

While setting up new ads, they have added one step at the end, where you name and submit your new ad unit. It will be best to use very descriptive wordage for new ads so you know exactly where they are. That way when you need to change the appearance of ads you will be able to find which one to edit more easily.

Once you have ads setup and ready you can use the Manage Ads link to well manage your ads. This screen will list all the ads you have created with links to edit the ad, preview what it will look like, as well to get the code for the ad.

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Why Aren’t You Using Adsense Yet?

Posted by Brian

So you have been online a few months with your new amazing website. You receive a few hundred visitors a day, and a great community going on over there. However it is starting to take a toll on your bank account keeping the site online, with hosting feeds, domain registration, and some general advertising you have done for the site. So you start to wonder to yourself “Should I be using Google Adsense?”. Let me tell you right here and now, if you are wondering that, the answer is a resounding YES.

Now, you have heard that Adsense isn’t good for your site unless your receiving a bazillion visitors everyday. That simply isn’t true. Will your results be better with a bazillion visitors? Well of course they probably will be, but that doesn’t mean you won’t have success as well. Just because your site isn’t receiving a few thousand unique users every day doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a “nice” income with Adsense.

Now, yes this isn’t an amazing shot of showing a low traffic site making huge amounts of money, but I feel this is going to be more or less the average, if not even a little below it. The screenshot above is of the adsense stats for one of my mini content sites. Its a fan site for a small time band. Now is it making huge amounts of money? No, not really, but looking at the number of impressions its not doing bad. The stats are from July 1st-July17th. Thats a pretty good amount for one small site to make in that time period I feel, it pays for the domain registration and for most of the hosting costs. Isn’t that your goal at first anyways?

The site I used as my example is a site that I never even update, its totally static, so if you use it on your site with new content regularly, and with user participation your results should be much much better.

If you are not using Adsense, you are losing out on potential revenue for yourself, and your website. Think of all the new features you get ad to your site if you had the money? This is your way of making your site better. With the money, use it to make the site bigger, and better, more features for your users. As users are the most important part of any website.

So the question is now, “Why aren’t you already using website for your sites?”.

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Feeding the Cow

Posted by Brian

If you have visited the Mad Cow’s website over the past few days you might have noticed an ad running on his site, from me. Now some of you are probably thinking, “Why is he doing this?, What is the point?, Does it work?”. Well let me answer those questions for you.

1. “Why is he doing this”? — Well that is a great question, I over head the Mad Cow talking on another site, asking for ways that he could increase his AdSense earnings since the dairy ads weren’t all that great. So I thought to myself, I can help him out a little with advertising as well as bring a few visitors to mysite, So I went on over to my AdWords account and set up a site targeted ad and set it to target http://johncow.com.

If you don’t have an AdWord account sign up!

2. “What is the point”? — Well this is basically the same question as #1 I just wanted to make it a three question post. But basicly to show some appreciation for what he is doing, he is doing a bang up job. So hopefully it will encourage him to keep up the great work that he is doing.

3. “Does it work”? — Another great question, well the answer is simple.. maybe… Yes it works, Did I get a huge amount of traffic? No I didn’t, I did bring in 25 people that might otherwise not of visited my site. So was it worth it? Yes, yes it was. I killed two birds with one stone, I helped out the Mad Cow, and I got me some new visitors to my site.

All in all, it worked out great for both of us, I even picked up another link in one of his posts Blue Cow Down, so that was another added bonus for me. Here is an image of what the ad looked like on his site, I might in the future re-enable the ad when I have some new better content here, that I think his viewers might enjoy.

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June Earnings

Posted by Brian

End of June already, hard to believe it is almost the 4th of July already. June was a decent month for me, not my best, but not my worse either. Adsense was the big preformer as always. Total revenue is down across the board though, summer are slow months for me since I mainly rely on my arcade website to bring in money.


Adbrite - $4.61
YPN - $1.86
Adsense - $37.13
PurePimps - $20.00
Featured Links - $8.55
-----------------
TOTAL = $72.15

I am hoping July will prove to be a better month for me, I am hoping to start bringing in $100+ a month with just Adsense so I get a check every month from them. Starting on July 3rd Kontera ad network will start displaying ads on http://brianvaughan.com. Hopefully this will make a good amount and keep increasing as the months drag on. I know $72.15 isn’t very much money and no where near the $12,569.61 that John Chow makes in a month with just his blog, but it is a start. You never know, maybe one day I will be bringing in as much as him. One can hope.

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Google Adsense for Beginners Part One

Posted by Brian

Lots of people ask me, how do I make money with Adsense. Mind you most of the people that are asking me this are people just getting into building their own websites, and are trying to get on the internet money train to try and earn a few extra dollars.

When people ask me this, it kind of shocks me a bit, because I am no expert when it comes to making money with Adsense, I only make roughly $600 a year with it, I do however know how it works, and ways to make it work better for you, my problem has just been getting traffic to the sites so I can even have the chance to be making any of the revenue I know how to make.

Adsense is a great source of income for a lot of people, and there is still room for more people to join in and start making some extra spending money, and maybe even making enough to quit their regular job. You just have to know some basic information about the program, general marketing strategies, and be willing to put a lot of long, hard work into your projects. The last step is where most people fall short on, even I fall short on that one. You have to have the dedication to make sure your sites/blogs are updated often with new fresh content so you can continue driving traffic to your site. Because with out traffic it doesn’t matter how well you blend your ads, where you place them or anything else you do with the ads, if you don’t have traffic you can’t make money.

Steps needed to get up and running with Adsense:

First, you need to sign up with Adsense.

Once Adsense reviews your site, they will get back to you and tell you whether or not you were accepted into the program. If at first you weren’t successful in getting in, don’t fret. Make the adjustments to your site that was noted in your rejection email and then reapply. If you still don’t get it, another option is applying from a Blogger account, they almost always (always) approve those accounts.

Second Once your approved for an account, log in and grab the code given to you from Adsense and copy and paste that into your source code on your site. Depending on how you develop your site this process might change. On this blog, and others of mine I use the plug in Adsense Deluxe. It is very simple to use, a must have for any WordPress blog you are wanting to use Adsense with.

For right now, this is all I have for you, I will be making Part Two of this post shortly with more steps, tricks, and tips for you to use on your sites. Please feel free to ask me any questions.

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