Signing Up Made Easy

First though, you have to sign up. Here’s how you do it. The sign-up page asks for a relatively small amount of information, not all of which is as obvious as you might like. First, you’ll have to tell Google whether you want an “individual” account or a “company” account — whether you’re a company with more than twenty employees or practically a one-man show that’s just you and up to nineteen others. That’s important for just one reason: it tells Google where to send the money. Take a business account and the payments will be made in the name of your company; take an individual account, and they’ll be paid directly to you.You’ll also be able to choose between three different ways of receiving your money: Electronic Funds Transfer, local currency check or Secured Express Delivery. In general, it’s better to get your money by direct deposit using the Electronic Funds Transfer; Google charges for express mail checks.

The next piece of information that Google demands is your URL. There’s only room for one URL, which can be confusing if you have more than one site and want to put AdSense on all of them. Don’t worry about it. It won’t affect how you use AdSense at all, so just submit your biggest site for now. The next question is about whether you want content-based ads — the type of small text ads I’ve been discussing so far, search ads or both. (Content-based ads are better but I’ll tell you how to benefit from each so I recommend that you choose both.) Once you’re approved, you’ll just have to copy and paste a small piece of code into your website and you’re done!

Google Policies

AdSense works. I know it works because I’ve got the stats, the checks and the bank balance to prove it. And all of the methods that I used to increase my AdSense revenues were completely legitimate and in line with Google’s policies. That’s important. It is possible to cheat AdSense. But you’d have to be crazy to do it. You can make so much money working within Google’s rules that to risk getting thrown out by putting ads on pages without content or by persuading users to click on the ads is just plain crazy. I’ve put a detailed list of Google’s “do’s and don’ts” at the back of this book. The things to look out for in particular are:

Code Modification

You have to paste the AdSense code onto your site as is. And you don’t need to do anything else! Your AdSense account will let you play with colors and placements (and getting those right is what will really rocket your income) so why bother playing with Google’s HTML? It’s not necessary and it could get you a lifetime ban.

Incentives

When the ads appear on your page, you have to leave them completely alone. You might be tempted to tell your users to “click here” or support your sponsors but if Google catches you, they could well cut you off. They want people to click because they’re genuinely interested in the ad. Get your strategy right and they’ll do just that. You can encourage your users to download the products your referral buttons promote or to use your search bar, but never encourage your users to click your ads.

Content

Google is pretty picky about where the ads are displayed. They don’t want advertisers complaining to them that their services were being promoted on a site that supports gambling or is filled with profanity or contains more ads than content. If your content doesn’t come up to scratch, you’ll need a site that does.

Prohibited Clicks

And nastiest of all are the people who either click on their own ads or create programs to do it for them. The bottom line is that you don’t need any of this stuff. Maximizing your revenue within the rules is a breeze!

As Easy as 1-2-3!

The bottom line is that there are three ways to increase your AdSense revenue.

1. By Tweaking the Ads 
to make them more appealing to your visitors;

2. By Optimizing your Website 
for better AdSense targeting (or what the Google folks call 'content relevance');

And the only sure-fire way to get 1 and 2 right is by

Tracking Visitor Response.

If you don't know what works (and what doesn't work) in trying to increase your AdSense revenue… you're shooting arrows in the dark! The right tracking tools can reveal a great deal about your visitors and answer fundamental questions such as what they're looking for and what makes them 'click'. Once you've figured that out, bingo! You're on your way to big AdSense bucks! But it isn't as straightforward as it seems. If it were, there wouldn't be so many grumpy people on AdSense forums, complaining about their low AdSense earnings. It's not that they aren't doing anything about it. They simply aren't doing the right
things.

Let me assure you that in the time that I have been using AdSense, my earnings have only gone up — and so will yours, if you apply all my techniques seriously.