More Than Scratch The Surface » Monetization

How To Prevent Smart Pricing – Great Solution

Stephen Cronin — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:51:28 +0000

Some of my most popular posts are those in my make money online series that discuss how to avoid Adsense smart pricing by displaying Adsense only to search engine visitors. Now I’ve found the most complete solution to the problem of smart pricing, over on the Blog associated with RT’s backlinks service (more below).

What Is Smart Pricing?

I’ve explained this many times before, but here’s the short answer again:

Smart Pricing is a penalty that Google applies to Adsense accounts (yes the entire account) that don’t convert well for the advertiser. This can result in a penalty of up to 90% of what you earn for a click. Pretty significant hey!

To avoid smart pricing, you need to provide the advertisers with targeted traffic. This traffic will convert well for the advertiser and ensure that you don’t attract the smart pricing penalty. Search engine visitors provide targeted traffic (no problem). Regular readers and social networks visitors provide untargeted traffic (problem). Many bloggers are smart priced without even knowing it.

If you need any further information, see Grizzly’s authorative explanation of smart pricing. This explains the intricacies of smart pricing far better than I can. If you’re trying to make money online, then you need to understand this.

How To Prevent Smart Pricing – My Solutions

As I said, I’ve written quite a few posts about how to prevent smart pricing. These all centre around displaying Adsense to only search visitors (targeted), not to your regular visitors or social media visitors (both untargeted).

I started with a hack to the Shylock Adsense Plugin (for WordPress) so that only search engine visitors would see ads (regular visitor wouldn’t see them). This could also be used for showing Adsense directly, without using Shylock.

This solution only displayed Adsense ad units on the first page that a visitor landed on. If they navigated to another page on your site, Adsense wouldn’t appear, as they no longer came immediately from a search engine. Therefore, I followed up with an improved solution that shows ads to search traffic on subsequent pages as well (by setting a cookie).

Later, I converted this solution to work on the Blogger platform, so now you can filter out non-search visitors on Blogger as well.

The Most Complete Solution To Smart Pricing

RT’s post on filtering out non search engine visitors in WordPress is amazing. Not only does his solution filter out non-search traffic, it also filters out certain search terms that are unlikely to convert well and posts from categories and tags that are not likely to convert because they aren’t targeted for Adsense,

This is the most complete solution I’ve seen. If you follow RT’s advice, then you are very unlikely to get smart priced by Google.

The only caveats are:

It only works for the first page, not subsequent pages. I know RT will say that the vast majority of clicks come from the first page and there’s no point showing ads on subsequent pages.
It won’t work with PHP caching solutions, such as WP Super Cache (neither does mine). RT is working on a solution to this, although as he points out, the whole point is to get search traffic rather than loads of social traffic, so this may not be needed anyway.

Following this technique should ensure that you are earning the maximum amount possible via Adsense.

What Is ConnectContent?

Before wrapping up, I’ll take the chance to explain what ConnectContent is. Chances are, if you’re interested in avoiding smart pricing, then you’ll be interested in ConnectContent as it can help you earn more money online.

RT founded ConnectContent to help members get relevant links, with relevant anchor text. Getting such links is the most important thing to do if you want to improve your rankings in the search engines. If you want to dominate your niche, relevant links are essential.

More information from the ConnectContent site:

ConnectContent is a managed network, designed to promote relevancy between websites. Search engine quality guidelines are followed and reciprocal linking is discouraged while one-way linking is encouraged.

The service is not free, but is very reasonably priced: USD$12.00 per month (or USD$120.00 for a year). There is no restriction on how many links you can get, except for any self imposed limits on how many links you can give. The more you give, the more you receive.

There’s an affiliate program that pays 50 percent of subscription fees as residual referral commissions. That means if two people sign up through your affiliate link, you break even. That’s leaving aside the extra money you can earn through improved rankings! Easy AdSense money.

Final Thoughts

If you really want to make money with Adsense, then make sure you’re not smart priced. Many people are only earning a fraction of what they could be. There is no guaranteed way of avoiding smart pricing, but RT’s solution is as close to a guarantee as you’ll find.

Show Adsense To Search Visitors Only – On Blogger

Stephen Cronin — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 13:14:53 +0000

Want to make money online with Google Adsense? If so, you better make sure you don’t get smart priced! One of my most successful posts covers how to avoid smart pricing by only serving Adsense to search engine visitors. That post was written for the WordPress platform. In this post, I outline how to do the same on Blogger blogs (although there are severe limitations).

Why Only Show Adsense To Search Visitors?

First, why are we doing this? The main reason for showing Adsense to search visitors only, is to try to avoid smart pricing. I won’t go over smart pricing again (go read the above post in detail), but here’s the brief summary:

Smart Pricing is a penalty Google applies to Adsense accounts that don’t convert well for the advertiser and results in you earning only about 10% of what you’d normally earn per click. Search engine visitors provide targeted traffic for the advertiser, which converts well (no problem). Regular readers and social networks visitors provide untargeted traffic, which doesn’t covert well, increasing your chances of being smart priced (problem).

After reading Grizzly’s recent post on making money online anonymously, I learnt that it’s even more complicated than that. Grizzly, who’s a master of making money online, reveals that when he writes a post his CPC (Cost Per Click) drops for a couple of days:

Whenever I post I get a surge of traffic – the surge is un-targeted (my readers) and my CPC drops for several days until readers tail off. As long as my ad impressions stay above the 3000 barrier my CPC doesn’t drop more than 10 cents a click. If my ad impressions fall below the 3000 barrier I see a 30 cent drop in earnings per click.

Grizzly also says that his CPC dropped when he received a surge of traffic from a forum. It follows that the same would happen when you receive a surge of traffic from the social networks (ie Digg, StumbleUpon, etc).

It may be that this phenomenon is separate to smart pricing, or it may be that it’s actually a part of smart pricing and that smart pricing is far more complex than anyone has guessed.

Either way, showing Adsense to search engine visitors only should ensure that Adsense units are only served to targeted traffic, which should protect your CPC and help you make more money.

Serving Adsense Only To Search Visitors on Blogger

I’ve already covered how to display Adsense units only to search visitors for WordPress and I actively use the method on this blog. However, I also have a few Blogger blogs (and Grizzley’s site is on Blogger), so I started wondering how to show Adsense only to search traffic on Blogger.

With WordPress it’s easy. You can use PHP on the server side to detect where the visitor came from, then decide whether to include the Adsense code. If they came from a search engine, the Adsense code is added to the HTML sent to the browser. If they came from somewhere else, then it’s not.

However, with Blogger, it’s not possible to detect where the user came from on the server side. The only option is to use JavaScript, on the client side, to a) detect where the user came from and b) show the Adsense code or not.

Part A – Detecting Search Engine Visitors

Detecting search engine visitors is relatively easy. We can use JavaScript’s document.referrer to work out where the user came from. Converting the code I used for the PHP in JavaScript, we can do something like:

Note: In the document.cookie line, you must change “.scratch99.com” to your own domain!

This code detects whether the user arrived from one of a number of search engines and, if so, sets a variable called ‘sevisitor’ to true. It also creates a cookie, so these visitors can be identified if they subsequently navigate to another page (they will no longer appear to have come from a search engine).

We’ll use the variable or cookie later to decide whether we’re going to display Adsense.

So where does this code go? We only need this code once on the page, regardless of how many Adsense units we show, so we’ll put it at the top. The bad news is that it doesn’t work if you try to add it via a Blogger gadget, so we’ll have to add it to the template itself, as follows:

In Blogger, go to Layout, then choose Edit HTML
Make a backup of your template by clicking Download Full Template
Click Expand Widget Templates
Search for <data:blog.pageTitle/> (near the top somewhere)
Place the code above on the line immediately below this.
Save the template

Your blog should now be setting the variable and the cookie.

Part B – Showing Adsense To Search Visitors

Next we need to detect whether the variable and cookie are set and, if so, show the Adsense unit. To check whether they’re set, we’re going to use the following code:

var results = document.cookie.match ( '(^|;) ?sevisitor=([^;]*)(;|$)' );
if (sevisitor == true || results[2] == 1) {

Put this together with your Adsense code and it should look something like this:

You’ll have to replace the xxxx’s with the appropriate numbers from your Adsense code and you’ll have to change any other details (such as ad width and height if you’re not using a large rectangle).

There’s no need to replace special characters with HTML entities, as mentioned in my post on showing Adsense within the post body. In fact, that won’t work in this case.

What this script does is first check whether the variable or the cookie is set and if so, builds a string containing the Adsense code, then writes it. We have to build a string then write it, because there’s an external script called by the Adsense code. If there wasn’t an external script called, we could just strip the

Blogger – How To Add Adsense Inside Single Posts Only

Stephen Cronin — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 13:21:59 +0000

I was recently optimizing Adsense on one of my Blogger sites and decided I wanted to place Adsense inside the posts – but only on single posts, not on the home page or in the archives. Here’s how.

Why Blogger?

Although my primary blog platform is WordPress, I do occasionally use Blogger for some side projects. Why? Go and read everything that Grizzley’s written on his Make Money Online For Beginners site. Blogger can be an excellent option. It’s free, easy to create a site, can scale to handle massive traffic etc.

The only downside to Blogger is the limited ability to customize the site. With WordPress I can change pretty much anything I want. With Blogger I can only change things within the narrow framework that Blogger allows. In this case, I ran into the limitations with the built-in options to display Adsense ads.

Blogger’s Built In Options To Display Adsense

The easiest way to add Adsense to a Blogger blog is via the built-in gadget. I won’t go through the whole process, as it’s written about elsewhere, but you can add an Adsense gadget in the same way you can add a Profile gadget, Text gadget, Poll gadget, etc. Just go to Layout, then Page Settings, then click on Add a Gadget, select the Adsense gadget and then configure it.

The first time you use it, Blogger will ask you for your Adsense publisher number and link the blog to your Adsense account. Then you simply decide where you want the gadget to appear, what size and colour the ads should be and you’re off! You’re ready to start making money online.

You can also add Adsense between posts. To do this, click Edit on the Body gadget and turn on the Show Adsense Between Posts option. You’ll then be presented with the same options that the gadget gives you (size, colour etc).

Limitations With Built-In Options

There are several limitations to using Blogger’s built-in Adsense gadget:

1. Can’t Put Adsense Ads Within Posts

The main limitation with using the built-in Adsense gadget is that you can’t place ads within a post. You can add them before posts, after posts, between posts, in the sidebar, but not in the actual post.

It’s well known that the CTR (click through rate) is higher for ads within a post than for ads in other positions. So putting Adsense within a post will make more money for you. I cover how to do this below.

2. Can’t Use Channels

Another limitation of the built-in Adsense gadget is that you can’t use channels to track the performance of ad units.

However, this isn’t really a limitation – if you want to use channels, simply create your code on the Adsense site, then copy and paste your Adsense code into a JavaScript gadget, instead of using an Adsense gadget. In all other ways it will work the same as the Adsense gadget.

3. Blogger Only Shows Three Ad Units

The last limitation is only an issue for those people who place an Adsense unit in the sidebar. Some people choose not to do this, but I find that an Adsense unit in the sidebar performs relatively well (not as good as units at the top of the page, but better than those lower down the page).

The problem is that Google makes sure that only three ad units are displayed on a Blogger page, as per their Terms Of Service. Great in general, but it means you have less control over which ad units appear. Unfortunately the sidebar is rendered last in most templates, so it’s one of the units that disappear if there are too many units on the page.

This won’t happen on the single post page. However, if you display ads between posts (or within posts) then the sidebar ad unit will disappear on pages with multiple posts, such as the home page and archive pages. I explain how to overcome this below.

Adsense Within Posts

As I mentioned above, you can’t place Adsense ads within the post body using the built-in gadgets. To do this, we’re going to have to put our Adsense code directly into the template.

We still can’t put the ad unit in the middle of the post, but we can put it at the top of the post, below the title, with the text wrapping around it. Great! That’s proven to be the most effective placement, so that’s exactly what we want.

Now, the technique used to do this isn’t new. In fact I learned how to do it by reading Bonnie Calhoun’s Wrapping Adsense in Blog Post. You can go and read her post for the full instructions, but here are the basic steps:

Get your Adsense code from the Adsense website
Parse the code to replace special characters with HTML entities
In Blogger, go to Layout, then choose Edit HTML
Make a backup of your template by clicking Download Full Template
Click Expand Widget Templates
Search for or
Place your Adsense code on the line immediately above this
Save the template

Note 1: It’s very important to parse the code as per Bonnie’s site (ie replace < with < and > with > etc). If you do not do this, your Adsense units will not display correctly and you risk being banned by Google.

Note 2: You probably want to place your Adsense code within a floating div, so that the text wraps around it.

Here’s what the code will look like (with the publisher specific information removed). The first and last lines should already exist in the template, the rest is what you’re adding.



<script type="text/javascript"><!--
google_ad_client = "pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx";
google_ad_host = "pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx";
google_ad_slot = "xxxxxx";
google_ad_width = 336;
google_ad_height = 280;
//-->
</script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>

This solves the problem of getting Adsense to appear within the post, driving up CTR. However, the sidebar unit will still disappear on the home page, as there will be more than 3 units on the page (one embedded in each post).

Only Showing Adsense In Posts On A Single Post

To solve the problem of the sidebar unit disappearing, I decided that I only wanted to show Adsense within the post (ie solution in the previous section) on single posts. I didn’t want this ad unit to appear on the home page or on archive pages.

It would be easy enough to do this in WordPress / PHP, but I had no idea how to customize a Blogger template. I consulted Blogger’s Help facility and found a list of Layouts Data Tags, which let me see what could be done. Despite the options being fairly limited, I found the answer I needed: The pageType tag, which can have a value of ‘item’, ‘archive’ or ‘index’.

My XML coding skills are a little rusty, but thankfully it wasn’t hard to work out how to include some HTML based on the type of page:


PUT YOUR CODE HERE

This says: If it’s a single post, include the HTML (obviously you have to put it in). So single posts (pageType of item) will display the HTML, but the home page (pageType of index) and archive pages (pageType of archive) will not.

Applying this to our Adsense problem, here is the full code you need (with the publisher specific information removed). Use this instead of the code in the Adsense Within Posts section above. The first and last lines should already exist in the template, the rest is what you’re adding.




<script type="text/javascript"><!--
google_ad_client = "pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx";
google_ad_host = "pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx";
google_ad_slot = "xxxxxxxxxx";
google_ad_width = 336;
google_ad_height = 280;
//-->
</script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>

Of course, this means that only two Adsense units will be shown on the home page. If you’re doing things properly, most of your visitors should arrive on single posts, via the search engines, so this solution’s good enough for me.

Final Thoughts

If you want to make money online and you’ve decided that using Adsense on Blogger is the way to do it, then optimize it!

Hopefully this has helped you a) increase your CTR by showing you how to place Adsense units at the top of your posts and b) how to preserve income from the sidebar unit by stopping it from disappearing on multiple post pages.

Seth Godin May Be Costing You Money

Stephen Cronin — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 07:27:14 +0000

This morning I noticed an entry on Sphinn highlighting GreyWolf’s Seth Godin Wants to Cheat Advertisers with Fake Clicks post. It discusses Seth Godin’s Ads are the new online tip jar post, which suggests that readers should click ads to reward bloggers for their writing. To quote Seth:

If you like what you’re reading, click an ad to say thanks.

GreyWolf condemns Seth’s advice and rightly points out that anyone following this advice is guilty of click fraud:

If you click on an ad and your purpose is to make sure the site owner or blogger gets money from the click, and you had no intent to buy or research, that is click fraud.

As you’d expect, given they are Internet Marketing / SEO communities, comments on GreyWolf’s post and on Sphinn strongly condemn Seth’s statement. The majority of commentators agree that this is click fraud. I concur!

However, what’s intrigued me is that no-one’s mentioned the effect this may have on a blog being smart priced by Google. Seth’s advice may actually end up costing bloggers who run Google Adsense.

This post really only applies to blogs running Google Adsense. Seth doesn’t mention Adsense in his post, but there’s no doubt that if people were to follow his advice, some of the ads they’d be clicking on would be Adsense ads.

I’m not sure why no-one’s mentioned this. It may be that most members of those communities fall on the advertising, rather than publisher, side of the fence. I’m definitely on the publisher side, so I’ll go ahead and explore the impact on smart pricing.

What Is Smart Pricing?

I’m not going to go into what smart pricing is in detail. That’s been covered before, both by myself in my How To Avoid Adsense Smart Pricing On Blogs post, and by better bloggers than me.

The short description is that smart pricing is a penalty applied by Google, resulting in the amount of money you receive when someone clicks an Adsense ad (on your site) being only a fraction of what you would normally receive.

If you want to find out more about smart pricing, the best description I’ve found is Grizzly’s Optimization Tips for Adsense. Read his long article in full for a good understanding, but here’s his quick summary of smart pricing:

If you are running ads on your blog that an advertiser has bid $0.50 per click on and your traffic clicks the ads and doesn’t convert well for the advertiser then Google will not pay you the usual $0.25 per click. They will likely give you $0.01 to $0.05 per click. This means you have been smart priced. This will also mean that you will receive lower payouts on every site you have Adsense on – not just the poorly converting site. This is a penalty because you are not optimizing your Adsense pages in order to give the advertiser the most bang for his or her buck.

So basically, if clicks from your site give advertisers a low conversion rate, you get a huge penalty on what you earn.

But It’s More Complicated Than That

There’s more at play here than what I’ve described above. Admittedly, no-one but Google really knows how it works, but Grizzly knows as much as anyone else and mentions targeted traffic.

Google considers where the traffic comes from and how much value traffic is to the advertiser. Even if the visitor doesn’t buy anything from the advertiser, if it’s targeted traffic, Google considers that you’ve delivered quality traffic to the advertiser. As Grizzly explains:

My best advertiser is looking for people looking to “make money online”. The ad says “Make Easy Money Online”. Most of my traffic – about 75% find my blog searching on Google for the term “make money online” or a long tail version of that term. If one of my visitors clicks on the ad they are most likely looking for what the advertiser has to offer and even if they don’t buy, Google can charge the advertiser full price because the visitor left a “make money online” trail. They found me using the term and they found the advertiser because of the term. That is as targeted as traffic can get and Google can charge the advertiser full price. If all my traffic came from stumble upon and clicked the ads then the advertiser wont get many conversions and Google can see where the traffic originated, knows it isn’t targeted and will penalize me and give the advertiser a rebate.

So you’re more likely to be smart priced if a high percentage of the visitors clicking ads, arrived at your site from a source other than a search engine.

Seth Godin Could Cost You Money

How can you avoid smart pricing? The answer: Try to ensure you’re delivering targeted traffic (ie from search engines) to the advertisers and that a good percentage of that traffic converts for the advertiser.

If your regular readers follow Seth’s advice and click on ads to reward you, you’ll get more clicks, but you won’t be delivering targeted traffic to the advertiser and only a low percentage of people will actually buy anything.

That puts you squarely in smart pricing territory. Thanks Seth!

If you only have one site, the impact may not be so bad: There’s no guarantee you’ll be smart priced and anyway, a lot of low value clicks may equal a few high value clicks.

However, the risk is not worth it, especially if you have other sites running Adsense. If you get smart priced on your blog, you get smart priced on all your sites. That could really cost you.

Final Thoughts

I’ve got nothing against Seth Godin – he’s obviously very well respected – but I think he’s wrong on this occasion. I’m far from an expert in this, but leaving the click fraud argument aside, it seems his advice, aimed at helping bloggers, could actually hurt them if they run Google Adsense ads.

As a publisher, I don’t want my normal visitors to click ads. When people choose to click ads on my site, I want them to be highly targeted search engine visitors, who’ll lead to a higher advertiser conversion rate and won’t get me smart priced.

Oh, if you came to this post from Sphinn or StumbleUpon, or you’re one of my regulars, and you’re wondering why you can’t see Adsense on this blog, well you can’t. Only search engine visitors see Adsense ads on this blog.

Finally – The Google Slap…

Stephen Cronin — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 03:39:30 +0000

More Than Scratch The Surface has finally been penalised by Google. I noticed today that my toolbar PageRank has dropped from PR4 to PR0. It appears to only be a toolbar PR penalty – I am still in the same place in the SERPs.

I say finally, because I’ve been watching other sites get penalised, while mine remained untouched. The cause of my penalty: two sponsored posts I wrote about three months ago. Until now, Google hadn’t noticed them.

Goodbye PayPerPost

Like RT, I’ve said goodbye to PayPerPost. I only did two sponsored posts and it’s almost 3 months since the last one. I initially stopped doing them because I couldn’t find any fitting the subject of this blog. Then, as more and more blogs were penalised by Google, I decided to hold off doing any more.

I thought about adding nofollow to the links when Terence Chang recently lost his toolbar PR. I’m not sure why I didn’t. If I’m honest, I guess I thought that if Google hadn’t already penalised me, then they must have missed me. So if you are thinking about fixing any issues on your site, do it today!

I’ve now added nofollow to the links and requested reconsideration via Google’s Webmaster Tools. Now, I wait and hope my toolbar PR is restored.

Why Am I Worried About Toolbar PR?

Cynics will be asking why I’m so worried about toolbar PR, given my somewhat anti-Google stance on previous posts, such as Final Thoughts On The PageRank Debacle and I Signed Up For PayPerPost.

There are several reasons for my change of stance:

Originally, I was angry that so many fine bloggers were penalised for what was normal practice. It felt like Google was being very unfair. I’ll admit I didn’t know anything about Google’s Terms Of Service at the time. Since then, I’ve come to realise that Google had stated that the nofollow tag must be added to paid reviews and advertising. I still feel that Google should have communicated this better to the average blogger before penalising them, but in hindsight, they could have reduced real PR rather than just toolbar PR. A turning point in my attitude came when I read a well-considered defence of Google.
I originally thought, like many others, that I didn’t need Google. I’ve since come to realise that although it may be possible to have a successful site without Google search traffic, this traffic is where most of the money is. Search engine visitors are the one who are most likely to click ads or buy something (whether from Adsense or Amazon). Turning your back on Google’s search traffic has to be considered as shooting yourself in the foot. If I value the search traffic, I have to play by Google’s rules. I’m now happy to do so: In fact only 3 days ago, I turned down an approach to buy links on my site.
I was making very little from Adsense at the time and it appeared that sponsored posts were a better option. This may indeed be the case for some blogs, but I’ve come to understand Adsense much better since then. As I’ve learnt more about Adsense, it’s started performing better – and it’ll only get better as my site grows. Long term, Adsense is a better option.
Although toolbar PR is pretty much irrelevant (it’s your real PR and position in the SERPs that really matter), most people don’t realise that. Why is that important? Well, it’d important if I wanted to sell links or write sponsored posts, because they’re based on toolbar PR, but I’m not going to do that! However, I’ll be moving to Brisbane in about 3 months and I’ll be looking for a web-related job. You never know, a PR4 website may help me get such a job, a PR0 site probably won’t!

Final Thoughts

I didn’t have to post this. Google don’t care whether I make this post or not. I could have just requested reconsideration quietly without mentioning it and most people wouldn’t have noticed. But that’s not my way. If I feel I’ve made a mistake, I’ll put my hand up and admit it.

In the past I’ve said things that were anti-Google and pro-sponsored posts. At the time I believed what I said and there is an element of truth in those statements. It may be that for some people, sponsored posts are the best way to monetize their sites. It’s quick and easy money for a small blog, while Adsense won’t start working well until you’ve built your blog up and you understand how it works a little better.

However, I’ve come to realise that in the bigger picture, Google search traffic is a very important element of a successful site. It’s not something I want to lose, so I’ll play by Google’s rules. Today, I’ve only lost my toolbar PR, tomorrow it may be my real PageRank and my position in the SERPs.

How To Avoid Adsense Smart Pricing On Blogs

Stephen Cronin — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 15:42:21 +0000

In my last post, I mentioned the danger Adsense Smart Pricing poses to blogs. Blogs are particularly vulnerable because most blogs don’t work well with Adsense. In this post, I examine the issue further and look at a couple of potential solutions for WordPress users – but there’s a twist in the tale.

What Is Adsense Smart Pricing?

First, lets look at what Smart Pricing is. In my last post I said:

Not many people have heard about Adsense Smart Pricing and there’s little information about it. It appears that if you have a low CTR (under 1 or 2%), you may be penalised, so you only get about 10% of what clicks are worth.

This was based on Courtney Tuttle’s recent explanation of Adsense Smart Pricing. The theory is that having a low CTR (below 1 or 2%) will result in a penalty, so you only receive about 10% of what clicks are normally worth.

The Danger To Blogs

Simply put, the typical blog is in danger of having a low CTR because they rely heavily on regular visitors and social traffic (such as StumbleUpon). Both of these groups are unlikely to click ads, resulting in a lower CTR. In particular, a burst of traffic from StumbleUpon is likely to have disastrous effects on CTR – a large number of impressions with very few clicks.

Search engine visitors do click ads. There are many factors that go into how high your CTR is, but it’s accepted that the higher the ratio of search engine visitors, the higher the CTR. While most blogs get search engine traffic, the majority of their visitors come from other sources.

This blog’s CTR is well under 1%. That’s not surprising given the target audience and the fact that only 25% of traffic comes from search engines, but it also means this blog is in danger of being smart priced by Adsense.

What Can Blogs Do About Smart Pricing?

The solution seems simple – to me anyway. Why not just show Adsense ads to search engine visitors only? This should result in a much higher CTR. Of course, a few clicks may be lost, along with a lot of impressions – but it would be worth it, if the value of clicks were higher as result.

I went ahead and did it on this blog. You won’t see Adsense here, unless you came via a search engine. I’ll tell you more about how I did it later.

Does It work?

It’s early days yet, but I’m still getting clicks (I don’t seem to have lost any) and my CTR has moved from well below 1% to around 2 or 3%. It’s looking good, so I decided to write a post explaining how to do this.

But Here’s The Twist!

When writing this post, I went digging for some official information about Smart Pricing. There is very little to be found. The best I could come up with is The Facts About Smart Pricing from Google’s official Adsense Blog. This is more than two years old.

Importantly, it contradicts what Court says. Here’s a quote from the post (emphasis mine):

The percentage of clicks that convert for an advertiser is the most important factor in an advertiser’s ROI, so it’s not only possible, but common, to have a low CTR and a high advertiser conversion rate. It’s also possible to have a high CTR and a low conversion rate. Don’t remove the AdSense code from your site just because it has a lower CTR – it may be one of your best converting sites.

Did Court Get It Wrong?

Yes, I think so. I have the greatest respect for Court and he has a lot more experience with Adsense than I do. He’s basing his theory on what he’s personally seen, others verify it and Google’s statement is ancient.

However, it seems more likely that Google would use advertiser conversion rate, rather than CTR, to determine whether Smart Pricing is applied. After all, Smart Pricing is all about Google delivering value to the advertiser.

Does this make a difference?

Only a little. There is probably a high correlation between high CTR and high advertiser conversion rate, because both are a product of targeted traffic.

People who are searching for a solution to a problem are more likely to click ads promising a solution. They are also more likely to buy something from the advertiser than a regular visitor who wasn’t actively searching for something.

So a high CTR probably means a high advertiser conversion rate. Showing Adsense to search engine visitors only should also result in a higher advertiser conversion rate and help prevent you getting smart priced.

However, you should try to determine if you’re smart priced before taking action. Don’t just disable Adsense because you have a low CTR.

Edit: I recommend reading this post which explains Adsense smart pricing in great detail. Grizzly’s blog is a great place for learning about making money online.

Are You Smart Priced?

It’s hard to tell, as click value varies from ad to ad and from niche to niche. If your clicks are only paying 10 cents, then you are probably smart priced, but there’s no real way to know.

The only way is to experiment and see if the click value goes up. Try showing Adsense to search engine traffic only – you’ll lose some clicks, but it should result in higher CTR and higher conversion rate. It may take a week for you to see the benefits and you need to monitor how much you’re making closely.

If your earnings don’t improve, then maybe you weren’t smart priced. If that’s the case, undo the changes!

Is This Blog Smart Priced?

As I mentioned earlier, the CTR on this blog is way below 1%. In fact it’s below 0.2%. So I should be smart priced right? But I don’t think I am.

In the past, I’ve had periods where I was only getting 6 to 10 cents a click, but for the last month or so, I’ve been getting 30 to 90 cents a click. I think that’s probably about right for this niche. If someone out there can confirm this, please let me know!

Even though I think I’m not smart priced, I’m going to stick to my plan to only show Adsense to search traffic. I’m confident that search engine visitors are the ones who click my ads. I’ll use Adsense on other projects, so I want to protect myself. If this blog gets smart priced, so will all my sites.

How To Show Adsense To Search Traffic Only

I’ll mention two possible solutions for WordPress users:

1. The Who Sees Ads Plugin

One solution for WordPress users is the Who Sees Ads plugin. This has the ability to display ads for search engine traffic only. There are many other options, but this is the only one we are interested in. It works with the Adsense Deluxe plugin, which many people use, and can control ads in the sidebar as well as in the post body.

If you use Adsense Deluxe or manually insert Adsense code, then this is the solution for you. I won’t go into how to set Who Sees Ads up to display ads for search engine traffic. Just follow the instructions from the plugin’s home page. You want to set if Visitor comes from a search engine to display and turn the rest off. If anyone wants me to give detailed instructions on how to do this, leave a comment below and I’ll do this in a future post.

2. The Shylock Adsense Plugin

Personally, I prefer the Shylock Adsense plugin because it places the ads for you. Most plugins require you to manually enter a HTML comment where the ad should appear (in each post). This affords greater control on where they appear, but means they can’t be moved without editing each post! With Shylock‘s system you specify where ads should appear (eg top right of the post, middle left, etc) and Shylock adds the Adsense code to all posts.

A key feature of Shylock is that it allows you to only display ads on posts older than a certain number of days. If you set this to say 14 days, ads will not appear on new posts, meaning the majority of regular readers and social traffic won’t see them. This will certainly improve CTR and advertiser conversion rate, but there are a couple of problems:

It only works for ads in the post body. Ads in the sidebar will continue to appear to everyone.
Some regular visitors, social traffic, people following links will visit old post and be shown ads. It’s best if it appears for search traffic only.

As my sidebar ad is my highest earner, I’m not willing to give it up. Therefore, I decided to hack Shylock and the sidebar, so that ads are only shown to search engine traffic. This sounds complicated, but it’s actually quite simple. This post was supposed include instructions on how to do this, but I think I’ll leave that to a separate post, later this week.

The Final Word

Adsense Smart Pricing is something everyone wants to avoid, but the average blog is in serious danger of being smart priced. The solution may be to show ads to search engine traffic only. However, don’t assume that a blog is smart priced simply because it has a low CTR – do some testing to see if this is really the case.

Got an opinion on this? Let me know!

The Adsense Dilemma (Or How To Make Money)

Stephen Cronin — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 13:32:55 +0000

Adsense – some love it, some hate it. It doesn’t work for all sites, but there’s no denying that on the right site, it can make a lot of money.

Most beginners don’t understand what type of site it works well on. They slap Adsense on their blog and expect the cash to come rolling in. Of course, it doesn’t. Why? Because Adsense doesn’t work well on their type of site.

In this article, I explain the underlying principle of Adsense and look at the attributes of sites that are successful with Adsense.

Although Adsense is used on many different types of site, to keep it simple, I compare two main types of site:

Blogs: because that’s my target audience and what most beginners use.
Made For Adsense (MFA) niche mini sites: because that’s a common model used by people actually making money from Adsense.

The Underlying Principle Of Adsense

First, we need to understand the underlying principle of Adsense. I’ve seen people skirt around the issue, but I’ve never seen anyone actually come out and say it:

For Adsense to work well, your content should not solve the reader’s problem. If you solve their problem, they won’t need to click the ads.

If you leave the reader needing more information, you increase the chance of them clicking a contextual ad which may solve their needs.

The better your content is, the lower your click through rate (CTR) will be.

So Should I Start Writing Mediocre Content?

No! Not unless it’s for an MFA site. If you start writing mediocre content on a blog, you’ll lose your readers and your blog will start to fail on all fronts.

For a blog, you need great content. This increases readership, encourages other sites to link to you, leading to more traffic, a higher PageRank, etc. Take the great content away and your blog will fail. Blogs can make money from Adsense, but they generally have a low CTR.

For an MFA site, good content is less important. These sites don’t rely on the content to promote the site – they are more likely to use Article Marketing. They typically have mediocre content and, as a result, a high CTR.

Other Factors Affecting Adsense Success

There are many other factors affecting the success of Adsense, including:

1. Target Audience / Ad Awareness

Its well known that experienced Internet users are less likely to click ads than newer / casual Internet users. This appears to be related to visitor awareness of what’s content and what’s an ad. Experienced Internet users can spot ads a mile off and avoid clicking them.

The topic of a site determines the type of visitor it receives. Sites about web development, making money online, etc will attract visitors who are experienced Internet users and mostly Adsense blind. Sites about knitting or pets will attract visitors who are more likely to click ads.

Blogs: Depends on the niche. A Make Money Online blog will have a low CTR, but a knitting blog will do better.
MFA Sites: Once again, depends on the niche, but the niche is carefully selected to attract less technical visitors.

2. Where Do Your Visitors Come From?

Does your site cater for regular visitors or search engine visitors? What about social traffic, such as that from StumbleUpon?

Regular visitors don’t normally click ads. They come to read your content and go away happy, their goal fulfilled.

Search engine visitors do click ads. They arrive at your site seeking to address a specific need. If your content doesn’t solve the need, they’ll keep looking. If they see a related Adsense ad, they are likely to click it.

Social traffic visitors don’t normally click ads. What’s more, a surge of social traffic results in high traffic with few clicks, drastically lowering your CTR, which can result in you being Smart Priced by Google (more on this later).

Blogs: Receive search traffic, but focus is on regular visitors, then social traffic, so lower CTR.
MFA Sites: Only target search engine visitors, meaning higher CTR.

3. Niche / Value Of Clicks

Having a high CTR is great – but what if most clicks only earn you 6 cents? To make serious money from Adsense you need to target high paying niches.

Blogs: Depends on the niche. A Make Money Online blog is unlikely to get high paying clicks, but some niches will do well.
MFA Sites: The niche is normally carefully selected to result in high paying clicks.

4. Traffic

Even if you have a low CTR, decent money can still be made with high traffic. After all, 1% of 1000 is the same as 25% of 40 (it is: trust me, I checked).

However, you probably need upwards of 10,000 unique visitors a day to make serious money. At that point, you’ll be earning more from other sources, but Adsense can supplement that nicely.

Blogs: Typically have higher traffic than MFA sites, but not many reach the traffic levels needed to really do well with Adsense.
MFA Sites: Typically not high traffic, but this is offset by a high CTR.

5. Adsense Smart Pricing

Not many people have heard about Adsense Smart Pricing and there’s little information about it. It appears that if you have a low CTR (under 1 or 2%), you may be penalised, so you only get about 10% of what clicks are worth.

Blogs: Many are probably already smart priced, or in danger of being so.
MFA Sites: Normally have a high CTR, so no danger of smart pricing.

Note: If you have a WordPress blog, it may be worth using the Who Sees Ads plugin so that only search engine traffic see Adsense ads. I haven’t done this on this blog yet as I’m looking into another option at the moment.

Putting It All Together

To gauge how successful a site is likely to be with Adsense, all these factors need to be taken into account. If a site is weak in one area, it can still be successful if its strong in the other areas. That said, lets take a look at the ideal site for Adsense and the ‘Anti-Adsense’ site where it won’t work well.

The Ideal Site For Adsense should have mediocre content, be targeted at search engine traffic and be in a niche which attracts inexperienced web users and high clicks. With all that in place, the higher the traffic the better!

Adsense Won’t Work Well on sites with good content, regular readers and social traffic, especially in niches which attract experienced web users or which have low paying clicks.

Okay, if you haven’t figured it out yet:

MFA sites are very close to the ideal site for Adsense. The only struggle they have is with achieving high traffic, but the traffic they do receive is targeted traffic, resulting in a high CTR, so they make money.

Blogs are much closer to the anti-Adsense site. For a blog to be successful, they have to embrace many of the things that don’t work well with Adsense. For Adsense to work on a blog, you’ll need traffic and LOTS of it – although some niches may be moderately successful with only medium traffic. If you’re in the making money online, blogging or a technical niche, best of luck!

The Adsense Dilemma

If you really want to make money with Adsense, then you have to face up to the fact that you’re unlikely to do so with your blog. You then have a choice:

1. Persist with your blog. Try to build it into a top-of-niche, high-quality blog, with lots of traffic. This will take a long time and you won’t see much money until you’ve ‘made it’.

2. Forget your blog, at least for making money purposes. Instead look into creating MFA sites.

As Grizzly points out (in the post I linked to), it can be a little seedy. It’s up to you how far you want to go. You can always stick to trying to conquer keywords related to finance or some other non-seedy topic. Some of you may still have trouble with it, because the point is to not provide people with the solutions they need, which is counter intuitive for most bloggers. I’m not saying what you should do, just pointing out the options.

That’s the Adsense dilemma. What will you do?

The Final Word

A lot of this has been repeated in various places around the Internet. I’ve tried to pull it all together. The one thing I haven’t seen written elsewhere, is the theory:

Your content shouldn’t solve people’s problems if you want them to click Adsense ads.

That’s not to say someone, somewhere, hasn’t written about it before. Edit: I just noticed that Vic from Blogger Unleashed mentioned this two days ago in his Adsense Basics post. Vic is a true Adsense expert, so I guess that shows I’m on the right track!

If you disagree with me, tell me why! If you agree – what will you do?

Addendum

Something I’ve been thinking about recently is Adsense optimized WordPress Themes. If you’re starting multiple blogs and your goal is make money by running Adsense on them, then getting some themes already set up for Adsense may be the way to go…

Make Money Online – Don’t Forget Your Existing Skills

Stephen Cronin — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 15:15:48 +0000

A lot of my favourite blogs discuss making money online. I’ve been plotting how I can get in on the action – but I recently had a revelation. While reading about the many different strategies, I’d lost sight of what’s most likely to make me decent money online: leveraging my existing skill set.

Do I Want To Make Money Online?

Yes! When I started this blog, the purpose wasn’t to make money from it. I only wanted to cover my hosting costs. Slowly, I’ve started thinking it would be nice to make more money from it. Maybe take my family out to dinner. Maybe pay for a holiday. Maybe, just maybe, even make a living online…

Why the change in my goals? Because I read so many blogs that discuss making money. That’s right – I’m blaming you guys!

So What Ideas Have You Been Putting Into My Head?

There are a lot of great posts out there about making money online.

Some cover strategies that could generate extra income from this blog, such as Affiliate Marketing, creating and selling an ebook or information product, sponsored posts or displaying ads from WidgetBucks, TLA, Kontera, etc.

Others involve creating additional sites. For example: building niche mini sites and promoting them through article marketing or starting an online store.

All of these sound possible to me. I’m convinced I could successfully implement these strategies. In fact, I’m planning to put more than one of these into place in the near future (but that’s a story for another day).

No Magic Solutions

One thing has stood out with everything I’ve read. None of these strategies will make me rich overnight. Many people point out that making money online is not an easy business. It’s possible, but it’s hard work and slow progress.

So, let’s stop for a minute. I’m spending lots of time learning something new, which is going to be hard work and take time to pay off? That’s fine. But why not make money from what I already know? I should be able to start earning right away. I’d forgotten the simplest route.

Leveraging Your Existing Skill Set

It will be different for everyone, but I’m sure that everyone has some skill or talent that they can leverage to make money online.

Think about your skills. Are you an SEO expert? Provide a website review service. A niche marketer? Provide a consulting service for starters. An architectural assistant? Do some freelance work. Get the picture?

Of course, many people do this already, but I haven’t seen anyone writing about it as a way to make money online. I’m not sure if it’s because people think it’s obvious or whether it’s not glamorous enough. Maybe it’s because there’s not as much mileage in telling people to do what they already know!

Whatever the reason, if you’re not utilising your skills you need to think about how you may be able to do this.

Argument Against Leveraging Your Skill Set

There is an argument against offering services which use your skill set: In most cases, it won’t lead to passive income. To keep the revenue stream going, you will have to actively keep working.

It may be better to spend the time developing passive income streams, which only require minimal work to maintain.

But There Are Follow-on Benefits

In addition to the immediate monetary benefits, there are follow-on benefits of offering services based on your skill set.

Providing services can help you position yourself as an expert in your niche, driving your blog forward and leading to greater opportunities down the line. It’s likely to lead to loyal readers, higher traffic, increased advertising income, higher sales of ebooks and so on.

How I’m Going To Leverage My Skill Set

What skills do I have? I can write WordPress plugins and develop websites.

I have other skills too, but these are the ones I think will best translate into online income. When I answered a WordPress Plugin Rewrite Challenge, I realised there’s a market for custom WordPress plugins and plugin modification that I can tap into.

I’m now offering services, including custom WordPress development. I’m not expecting to make a lot of money (one plan is free!), but it’s more likely to provide an immediate revenue stream than the other strategies are. I’ll persist with those as well, but services offer better short term value for me.

The Final Word

If you don’t offer services based on your existing skill set, you need to consider what services you could offer. By all means, pursue other ways of making money online, but don’t pass up an option which may lead to easy money.

What do you think? Let me know if you agree, or if you think I’m wrong!

I Signed Up For PayPerPost

Stephen Cronin — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 03:48:11 +0000

When I started blogging five months ago, I hadn’t even considered the possibility of writing sponsored posts. To be honest, I only wanted to write original content and I was against memes, awards, sponsored posts, etc.

EDIT: Since writing this post, I’ve changed my views somewhat. Please read my post on the toolbar PageRank penalty for more information.

I’ve just signed up with payperpost, so obviously my views have changed!

Why? Mainly because of the many blogs I frequent which include sponsored posts. In general these are well done and don’t detract from the site – in fact they often add value to the site. RT at Untwisted Vortex always makes sponsored posts entertaining and informative. They are worth reading even if you don’t need the sponsored service right now. I’m guessing people will remember his posts when they do need that service.

Now, why did I choose PayPerPost? Here are some of the reasons:

I’ve read many reviews of sponsored post services and PayPerPost always seem to come first.
Most of the blogger I know that write sponsored posts are using PayPerPost.
RT from Untwisted Vortex has been an inspiration to me in many ways and he recommends PayPerPost.

PayPerPost also have a reputation for having lots of opportunities and are known for being reliable (in terms of payment), two things which are important to bloggers.

At the end of the day, PayPerPost was really the only contender.

Will I make lots of money through PayPerPost? Who knows! Probably not enough to give up my day job, although it seems there are some bloggers who come close to that.

Personally, all I want is to cover my hosting costs and to occasionally take my family out to dinner. Google Adsense definitely isn’t going to allow that. PayPerPost will.

I Got My 21 Cents…

Stephen Cronin — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 08:28:11 +0000

22 cents actually. A day or so after enabling Google Adsense, my blog generated its first income from a click. A day later, another cent appeared. I’m not sure where the extra cent came from. It’s not from a click and it can’t be from impressions. I guess Google were just feeling generous.

Not Adsense!

I’ve read many posts recently saying that Adsense doesn’t perform as well as other options. Some people are even removing Adsense from their sites. It seems that Adsense is no longer the flavour of the month.

As I’ve said elsewhere, I know that Adsense will probably not work well with this blog’s content or with my target audience. I know there’s a chance it may even drive some readers away. I know there are other ways of monetizing a site. Despite all this, I am giving Adsense a whirl. Why?

I’m starting to do a little freelance web development. Adsense does suit some sites very well and is popular with my potential client base, so I need to have first hand knowledge of working with it.

I’ll also be trying out other options as well, but don’t worry, I’ll keep the ads to a minimum on the site. Making money is not the primary aim of this blog.

Obsessive Behaviour

Of course, despite my previous statement, I fell into the very common trap of checking the Adsense site every 10 minutes to see if I was a millionaire yet. Not quite, but that first 21 cents felt almost as good!

I quickly tired of constantly checking the total, but didn’t give up. Instead I installed the AdSense Earnings Reports plugin which displays your Adsense results in the Admin area of WordPress. Unfortunately the plugin didn’t work for me (nothing happened, the stats weren’t populated, not even to say 0).

Then I read a ‘Top xx Firefox Extensions’ post (I lost the URL unfortunately), which lead me to the Adsense Notifier extension for Firefox. I spend more time in Firefox than I do on my Admin screen (in Firefox), so my obsession can be fed more easily with this! However, there is a problem with it. You must manually log in before it will work (it should log you in automatically).

My guess is that Google has changed something recently that has broken both the plugin and the extension. Then again, I can’t find any reports of other people having problems, so it may just be me.

Anyway, my obsession is fading now. I’ll just check it one last time…

Ad Placement

For the moment, I am putting one 468 x 60 Banner in the post body, one 120 x 240 Vertical Banner in the sidebar and one referral unit in the sidebar.

I have tried to blend the ads in by using similar colours to my theme. I don’t want them to stand out too much and annoy everyone. Neither do I want people to be blind to them.

However, I have placed a border around them as I don’t want them to blend in too much and have people click them by accident (although this seems to be essentially what many Adsense gurus recommend).

I’m interested in any feedback on this. As a reader, do you prefer ads to stand out clearly, or do you prefer them to blend in? If you use Adsense on your site, have you found it to be better to blend them in?

Displaying The Ads

There are quite a few WordPress plugins for displaying Adsense, but at the moment I’m using a ‘home grown’ solution for the post body. I wrote a quick plugin (took 5 minutes) that replaces a tag I enter with my Adsense code.

This is probably not the long term solution. I’ve had a quick look at the Adsense-Deluxe plugin, which seems pretty powerful. I’ve also been hearing good things about the Shylock Adsense plugin, so I may have a look at that. Any advice is welcome.

For the sidebar, I’m using the Google Adsense widget plugin by Otto. I tried text widgets at first, but I use quite a few already and after a while it’s hard to remember what Text 4 is for. Otto’s plugin gives you widgets which are basically text widgets but with Google Adsense in the widget title.

The number of Adsense widgets is restricted to 4 (the maximum number of units allowed under Google’s old Terms of Service). These days you are allowed up to 11 units when you combine ad units, link units, referrals and searches. I’m not planning to use that many, but if I do, I could always use text widgets for the extra ones!

The Final Word

I’m looking forward to seeing how Adsense works. I’ll probably play with the positioning and type of ads to see how they perform. It’s a learning experience for me.

If you have any tips for me, please leave a comment. Thanks.