Path of The Problogger – Adsense

Observing the current wave of emerging professional bloggers (probloggers) has left me nothing but envious and inspired me to write a series that isn’t at all new. However, I hope to use this series as my little notes put aside on things that I’ve learnt through my own learnings and observations of these probloggers.

To kick start the series, I’d like to make the first note about revenue gaining through Google Adsense. I’m aware that everyone already knows about this Pay-Per-Click (PPC) program that I don’t have to explain. However, if you’re new and very interested to learn more about Google’s program, please take the Google Adsense Tour.

One of the main revenue generators or is for some people, comes from the advertisement programs like Google Adsense. But many struggle to utilize their Adsense effectively due to several reasons.

These are only some of the reasons that I’ve found:

• Weak placement or positioning.
• Weak feel for colors.
• Weak discipline in content.
• Weak control over Adsense.
• Weak understanding of behaviours.
• Weak in tolerance or patience.
• And others for you to add..

I’ll run through the list of weaknesses with my explaination. But first I’d like to advise, please don’t read and digest weak as a word to be little or lower your self-esteem. Look at the word weak as a word with a sign of hope or room for improvement that’s waiting your action to be taken.

Weak Placement or Positioning
Many bloggers or website owners are weak in this perspective. They don’t realize that their ad positions are playing a vital role for them to not only be read but be clicked on by visitors mistakenly. Nope, you read that line right. Sometimes the position of your ads make it very easily clickable by your visitors that generates what I call; ‘lucky revenue’ for you. I’ve written a post not too long ago; Position Makes Everything explaining the importance of positioning whether it’s a logo or your advertisements. A shortcut or crash course of learning the best positions for advertisements can be learnt from Google’s Optimization Tips.

Weak Feel For Colors
Before you start imprinting the keyboard buttons onto your forehead, allow me to first enlighten you by saying that, “everyone is a qualified designer.” Yes, everyone has a creative mind and everyone does have a feel for colors or creative elements. It’s just that when younger, we’ve already decided to only utilize one half of our brain. That’s why you shouldn’t blame yourself and say you’re not creative, you’re just not in tune with your creative side. Now I’m going to try and give you a crash course to effectively use the colors for Adsense.

The most important things to note when changing the colors is your backgorund, your text and your links. As for the Adsense border, you don’t really need it because at the positions you’re placing your Adsense, you don’t have to box them up. It’s simple as that.

Weak Discipline for Content
If you’ve already taken the Google Adsense Tour, you’d understand that ads generated by Google to be put up are dependant on the content that you post on your website or weblog. That doesn’t mean you need to write a 5,000 page essay to get it right. All you need to do is blog with certain keywords in your blog post. If you feel you’d like to seriously include high value keywords into your post, try out the Keyword Selector Tool though note that this doesn’t have any direct relation to Google.

Another lesson that I’ve learnt myself about discipline for content is that you must have an average post timeline. This means that you need to put yourself up to posting a post a day or maybe 4 posts a week. You get the idea. The reason isn’t to generate more ads but to keep your readers entertained and giving them a reason to come over.

Weak Control Over Adsense
The Google Adsense program is really a very powerful tool for you to keep track of your earnings. Though this might not help you generate revenue but understanding and mastering the usage of the internal Adsense program allows you to keep constant and accurate track of your ads. I remember Darren at ProBlogger discussing something like this but couldn’t really find it. I’ll try to continue for searching it later.

The Channel Data is really your best friend in keeping track of the areas that your revenue generates. Because the channel data relies on URLs, you could keep track of your ads not only through several websites but through several pages. Ain’t that cool?

Weak Understanding of Behaviours
This along with positions work hand in hand. It’s important to understand the behaviour of your visitors on your website. Other than knowing the common reading is from left to right, it’s good to know other things like if you placed the ad beneath that area, what results does it bring you?

Weak in Tolerance and Patience
This doesn’t help you generate any revenue but it’s for self-improvement purposes. Though the myth of Google Adsense Stats Syndrome is only a rumour circulating around now but what if in future it turns into its own categorized medical diagnostic under Internet addiction. Therefore like Darren advised once, Adsense doesn’t just build up overnight and you’ll find out you’re earning 1,000 a day just when you started.

These are only few of the lessons that I’ve picked up observing probloggers and as long they exist, I’ll try to find room to improve and blog in this series.

Suggestions for the following series are opened. Just leave a comment on what you’d like to know regarding the path of the problogger. Cheers.