Here is a brainlessly simple, but highly effective strategy for AdSense publishers who specialize in travel and tourism. It’s all about LOCATION. Here are just two examples of profitable locations – Lake Tahoe (most ads are for Lake Tahoe rentals and Lake Tahoe cabins) and Aspen (Aspen, Colorado, is famous for its ski resorts). There are tons more, of course.

Travel sites can generate a lot of money … if you do it right. If you have a site about travel in Colorado or California, you’ll do OK, but not nearly as much, if you target specific niches where the money is.

And the money is in expensive resort and popular destinations. Take Colorado. Boulder is a beautiful town, but the real money is in Aspen. Aspen is expensive, it draws tons of skiers and is fairly crowded in the off season, but more importantly there are hundreds Aspen rentals, Aspen lodges, Aspen cabins and Aspen hotels (these are the keywords to go after).

If you go after Aspen, rather than Colorado, and I don’t mean your site can’t mention any other city in the state, you’ll make much more money. But if you don’t know that the Colorado travel money is in “Aspen rentals” and “Aspen lodging”, you’ll be lucky to make one fourth of what you should.

Nobody, including Google, won’t tell you which geographical niches are profitable and which aren’t, but just use your common sense. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Lake Tahoe and Aspen are popular destinations. And you probably know that tourists look for Lake Tahoe rentals or Aspen cabins online, when they plan for their trip. Put two and two together, create content that targets relevant keywords and watch your AdSense profits skyrocket.

Oh, and a word of caution – these niches may be seasonal. Don’t be a fool to expect your Aspen Colorado Ski Resort site to make you much money in May.

Have a great day and make sure to spread the word about NicheGeek.Com

In order not to violate Google TOS, I rate niches with my own star system. ** – $0.20-$0.30 per click average, *** – $0.30-$0.50 per click average, **** – $0.50-$0.70 per click average, ***** – $0.70-$1.20 per click average. While I don’t mind sharing information on ***** niches, I don’t make this information publicly available because it would quickly kill these niches or get Google pissed off at me.

All AdSense niches were tested by me personally and your results shouldn’t be very different, unless your account was smart-priced, too much time passed since my testing, MFA got a hold of the niche or your site or traffic source sucks big time.

Source: NicheGeek.com

Before picking a place you want to write about do some research and see what kind of ads are out there for the location you are picking.  Also make sure that location doesn’t have too much competition.  If there is a ton of competition for that location you are unlikely to make a huge profit because you won’t be getting the traffic you need from search engines.  Traffic from search engines is the best way to go when creating a niche website because its free and you don’t have to constantly work to get it.  Once you have it you will usually keep on getting it unless for some reason more relevant content becomes available on the subject and your rank goes down.  So try and pick a topic that is not seasonal if possible and it something that doesn’t have a ton of competition.  If you pick the right topic you will see some great success!

P.S. – if you don’t succeed with your first niche website don’t give up.  If you do you will never be successful.  Keep at it until you find something that works.  I myself have went through a couple niche websites and am now starting to see some success.  So keep at it everyone and eventually you’ll see the level of success you only dreamed about before!

“Expensive keyword” (high CPC) isn’t equal to “profitable keyword” (high earnings) due to the low volume of traffic expensive (niche) keywords produce. The best way to find really profitable keywords is to rank keywords by cost/day (cost per click X clicks/day) rather than cost per click.

Almost all AdSense publishers are looking for the most expensive keywords. Let’s have a look at the top 100 most expensive keywords. But first let’s add 2 extra columns to the list: clicks/day and cost/day by Google AdWords estimation:

Have you noticed that keyword price result in ZERO profit if there are no clicks? It’s cost/day (keyword price X clicks/day) that makes you rich, not keyword price itself.

Now let’s look at the list of the most PROFITABLE, not the most expensive AdSense keywords!

The per day list of most profitable keywords.

Source: Wisdom-of-adsense.org

So if you are wanting to make a profitable blog/website you are going to need to focus on the profitable keywords instead of the expensive keywords.  It doesn’t help to put the most expensive keywords on you website when no one will click on them.  It won’t generate any income and you will be left scratching your head wondering what happened. So take a look at the lists above and get started! Make a website about one of these keywords in mind and have good rich content that people are interested in.  Good luck with your earnings with Google Adsense.

Feel free to share you stories of success if any of the above keywords work for you!

• “AdSense Earning = Impression-count x Click-though-rate x Cost-per-click x smart-pricing-factor. Viewing your on website will not get you banned. Just make sure you don’t click on the ads.
• However, repeatedly reload your page to jack up page impressions can get you banned. Click-through-rate (CTR) is ratio of clicks per impressions. It can range from 0.1% to 30%, but most commonly around 1% to 10%.”
  [100 Google Adsense Tips]
• “First impressions count: make sure the ad unit with the highest CTR is the first ad unit in the HTML code of your page. Keep in mind that the first ad unit in the source code is not always the first ad unit that your users will see when the page finishes loading in their browser.”
  [Inside AdSense: First impressions count]
• “Ads placed near rich content and navigational aids usually do well because users are focused on those areas of a page. 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.”
  [Where should I place Google ads on my pages?]
• “Format is important for multiple ad units, display your ad units where repeat users will notice them, place a leaderboard immediately after the last post.”
  [Six AdSense optimization tips for forums]
• “The middle, above the fold location performs the best. Best performing ad format is the large rectangle, 336×280. So the wider ad formats are doing better than the other ones and the reason is that they actually take up fewer lines. And so with every additional line, you have a chance of losing that interested user.
• So the wider formats do best so specifically, the top three formats are the 336×280 that you see on the page; the 300×250 medium rectangle; and then the 160×600 wide skyscraper.
• We have a feature in the AdSense account where you are able to multi-select different color palettes that blend with your site to add some variety and freshness to the ads. And that also will help decrease ad blindness.”
  [Google AdSense Optimization Webinar]
• “The second most active placement in terms of click-throughs tends to be the right-hand rail or margin”. “Skyscrapers” and vertical banners do well when placed next to the content in the main body. Square and rectangle ads placed within the center column also do well, provided they are placed in context to the content. Ads placed below the fold tend to perform least well, although that isn’t a hard-and-fast rule.”
  [Yahoo! Publisher Network: Location, location, location...]
• “I found the most success in placing the Google Adsense medium rectangle either right in the middle of the page or in a middle right column as long as it has content above and below the ad unit. Its is fine to use Adsense Ads on a forum however expect a very low CTR.”
  [Google Adsense Tips for Webmasters]
• “Post Adsense ads on text rich pages, avoid titles like the approved ‘Sponsored Links’ and ‘Advertisements’, place Ads above the fold, Match the colors of your ads with the colour scheme of your site, Blend ads with your page – remove the borders by having a similar color as your background.”
  [How to Increase Google Adsense CTR]
• “To remove Public Service Ads (PSA) in Google Adsense develop sufficient good content with keywords, Ensure that META tags like ‘title’ & ‘description’ and the headings tags like h1, h2 etc. have content which matches the rest of your site.”
  [How to Remove Public Service Ads (PSA) in Google Adsense]
• “You can now run AdSense on the same page as other contextual ad programs.” (January 2007)
  [It's official! You can now run AdSense on the same page as other contextual ad programs]
• “Google AdSense Policy: We ask that publishers not line up images and ads in a way that suggests a relationship between the images and the ads.”
  [Inside AdSense: Ad and image placement: a policy clarification]
• “Section targeting uses certain html tweaks to force the google adsense bot to focus on specific content. Section targeting is the latest and most effective addition to AdSense”.
  [Display Relevant Adsense Ads Using Section Targeting]
• “Over the weekend, I decided to change the number of ads units on my blog based upon where the traffic is coming from. I have a small PHP function that checks to see if the referrer is a search engine, and if it is, I display and additional 2 ad units. My Adsense revenue increasing by 284% on Saturday, Sunday and Monday!”
  [Positive Adsense Experiment]
• “Never click your own adsense ads or get them clicked for whatever reason. Never change the Adsense code. Do not run competitive contextual text ad (2006) or search services on the same site. Do not mask ad elements. Avoid excessive advertising and keyword stuffing.”
  [ 15 Common Mistakes that Violate Google Adsense TOS ]
• “Putting ads on your site won’t hurt your traffic. There are 6 sorts of bloggers’ income: Google Adsense, Donations (e.g. PayPal), Text Link Ads (sold for a fixed amount per month), Chitika eMiniMalls ads (pay per click), affiliate programs like Amazon, Advertising sold to individual advertisers (three-month campaigns or longer)
  [How to Make Money From Your Blog - a VERY extensive article]
• “A number of factors come into play when AdSense tries to determine what the page is about: The URL of the page, the page title, the anchor text of links, the keywords that appear most frequently within the page, search engine queries that lead to the page or to another page that links to the page”.
  [How to Get Relevant AdSense Ads (Especially For Bloggers)]
• “Ask yourself if you are willing to compromise your blog’s layout and over-all feel by adding ads in them. Look at your traffic and see if it’s enough to draw the crowd. Make good use of the Ad Channels. Give it time.”
  [Tips on Blog Adsensification]
• “You can put upto 3 AdSense units on a page. For short articles, CTR is best when ads are placed just above the content. For long articles, CTR improves if ads are placed somewhere in middle of the content. Go Wide – the large rectangle 336×280 is the best paying adsense format.”
  [Adsense Tips, Layout Optimization Tricks for HigherCTR]
• “Google AdSense folks have unveiled another useful feature for Adsense publishers – Section Targeting. The concept is simple but the advantages and possibilities are endless.”
  [Display relevant Ads in Blogs: Just suggest Google]

Source: Smashingmagazine.com

Have you ever wondered what would make a good Niche mini-site with Google Adsense?  Here is an overview below of what a good Adsense Niche should include and what it should not be a part of:

• High Cost Per Click
• High Traffic
• Low Competition

That’s the ideal formula but there are other variations of the above.

• Low Cost Per Click
• High Traffic
• Low competition

• High Cost Per Click
• Low Traffic
• Low Competition.

All you really need to avoid is setting up a site that has:

• Low Cost Per Click
• Low Traffic
• High Competition

Source: Entrepreneurs-journey.com

Have you ever wondered how you could earn more per click with Google Adsense?  I am sure you have if you’ve ever tried using Google Adsense on your website to make some money.  There are many different techniques you can use to earn more money with Adsense.  You can optimize the ad positioning on your website.  You can change the format and color of the ads.  You can also exclude certain websites from advertising on your site.  However there is another technique that most people overlook that can definitely help you make more per click with Adsense.

I thought to myself how I could attract that kind of high paying income with Adsense and I started to do a bit of research. What I found is that since I’ve intergrated my Google Adsense account with Google Analytics I can tell where the traffic came from and what keywords got me that high payout with Adsense. So I started there and starting improving my website.

If you haven’t setup your Analytics account with Adsense yet you definitely need to do it. There should be a link at the top of your analytics account to do this. Follow the easy to follow steps and you will be glad you did! Now go into your analytics account and click on traffic and select the traffic type. Once you’ve selected the traffic type click on Adsense Revenue tab. In here you can see the keywords that paid you the most. This is key because this is something you were never able to do in the past. Google Adsense never gave you this type of information. So with this information you can write new articles are are more focused on these keywords and therefore attract more of that kind of traffic and then your payout from Adsense will be larger!  One thing to keep in mind though is that the payout on keywords can change due to geographical location, time of year, and the economy.  So you need to keep those things in mind when optimizing your blog posts, articles, etc.  This isn’t a exact science and it takes practice.  This technique is more of a general guideline to get you moving in the right direction to earning more with Google Adsense.

The last key thing that everyone knows is the placement of the Google Ads. Especially if you are writing on a blog or website that people who visit are technical in nature. These type of people notice ads more quickly and are unlikely to click them unless they are very interesting. However if they are more mixed in with the content they are harder to see and therefore more people will click on them and your CTR will go up! Try it out for yourself and you will see! I’ve changed mine multiple times and am starting to find it has help me a lot!

Anyways – hopefully this strategy helps you earn much more with Google Adsense. Good luck.

Although this blog doesn’t have Adsense ads on it I have a number of other websites that do. I posted way back about my initial Adsense earnings and promised to get back to you with how my income went after implementing some tactics I read about. Well there is LOTS of good news after I heard about a little tool that you should utilise for your sites that are monetized with Adsense. This is one of the tools for blogs that will make it into my top ten list I’m creating.

You have probably heard the saying ‘not all Adsense clicks are created equal’; damn right they’re not! I have set up a few static niche sites specifically targeting high paying Adsense keywords. Now when I heard about this new little Google tool that is designed for Adwords users I was very excited. This tool lets you in on a little secret…how much the guys and gals who use these words in their Adword campaigns are likely to be paying. The higher they pay, the more likely it is that the Adsense payout will be higher too.

Yes, there are lots of things that can affect your Adsense value but generally speaking, and yes I’ve tested it, the higher the Adwords cost the better your Adsense earning will be. So what’s this little tool? Well you can find it here. This is a Google tool and although it’s still in Beta is worth using!

Simply type in the url of one of your sites that you intend to or already have Adsense on, or any site in your niche, and include a couple of keywords in the ‘keyword/phrases’ box. Simply hit ‘find keywords’ and you will discover a list of related terms. So what? There are many keyword generating tools right…so many we often get confused by them and which ones to use. Well when you get your keywords with this tool you will see a column that specifies a $ amount, or cents in a lot of cases! Simply click on the ‘Sugg. Bid’ menu tab and you will have sorted from highest to lowest the approximate amount that advertisers are paying for those specific keyword phrases.

So I used this site as an example. Typed in the url then I added the keyword phrase ’adsense money’, the list then tells me that the term ‘make money’ could cost an advertiser $2.37 and the term ‘more money with adsense’ would only cost around .40 cents! So if this site had Adsense on it and I wrote a post around the keyword ‘make money’, using that phrase wisely in the content, then my Adsense ads would be in context to that and any clicks I received would have the potential to earn me perhaps double or even more than if I chose the ‘cheaper’ keywords.

Now this is certainly not the best way to decide on what to title your blog posts or website pages in all circumstances as you need people to be interested in your content too! That is the beauty of this Google tool, it also includes the number of monthly searches! So if a high cost phrase has very few searches then it might not be worth looking at…but when you find a phrase that can cost $18 and it also has lots of searches, let me tell you, it certainly can give your adsense earnings a boost!

So there you have another little tool that can help your blogs with Adsense to earn perhaps more than they might normally have. You can use this tool to your heart’s content right here, remember it is Beta though so be patient with the hiccups, they’re worth working through.

Source: ToolsForBlogs.com

Here is a brainlessly simple, but highly effective strategy for AdSense publishers who specialize in travel and tourism. It’s all about LOCATION. Here are just two examples of profitable locations – Lake Tahoe (most ads are for Lake Tahoe rentals and Lake Tahoe cabins) and Aspen (Aspen, Colorado, is famous for its ski resorts). There are tons more, of course.

Travel sites can generate a lot of money … if you do it right. If you have a site about travel in Colorado or California, you’ll do OK, but not nearly as much, if you target specific niches where the money is.

And the money is in expensive resort and popular destinations. Take Colorado. Boulder is a beautiful town, but the real money is in Aspen. Aspen is expensive, it draws tons of skiers and is fairly crowded in the off season, but more importantly there are hundreds Aspen rentals, Aspen lodges, Aspen cabins and Aspen hotels (these are the keywords to go after).

If you go after Aspen, rather than Colorado, and I don’t mean your site can’t mention any other city in the state, you’ll make much more money. But if you don’t know that the Colorado travel money is in “Aspen rentals” and “Aspen lodging”, you’ll be lucky to make one fourth of what you should.

Nobody, including Google, won’t tell you which geographical niches are profitable and which aren’t, but just use your common sense. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Lake Tahoe and Aspen are popular destinations. And you probably know that tourists look for Lake Tahoe rentals or Aspen cabins online, when they plan for their trip. Put two and two together, create content that targets relevant keywords and watch your AdSense profits skyrocket.

Oh, and a word of caution – these niches may be seasonal. Don’t be a fool to expect your Aspen Colorado Ski Resort site to make you much money in May.

Have a great day and make sure to spread the word about NicheGeek.Com

In order not to violate Google TOS, I rate niches with my own star system. ** – $0.20-$0.30 per click average, *** – $0.30-$0.50 per click average, **** – $0.50-$0.70 per click average, ***** – $0.70-$1.20 per click average. While I don’t mind sharing information on ***** niches, I don’t make this information publicly available because it would quickly kill these niches or get Google pissed off at me.

All AdSense niches were tested by me personally and your results shouldn’t be very different, unless your account was smart-priced, too much time passed since my testing, MFA got a hold of the niche or your site or traffic source sucks big time.

Source: NicheGeek.com

I’m amazed at how profitable the psychic readings niche is. I’ve got a spammer to thanks for that one, too. One of my site got spammed with online psychic readings offers and it started to display ads that said “Psychic Advice” Or “$10 Psychic Phone Readings” “Tarot Readings” even“ True God Gifted Psychic”. I just love that one, don’t you?

Anyhow, psychic readings are nothing new. You probably seen ads for phone psychic readings on cable stations for years. These psychics (if they are psychics indeed), charge your credit card at a rate of 3 bucks a minute of psychic babble, and it’s a great business indeed, since many women consult psychics regularly or every time they encounter a problem.

Live psychic readings (whether online or by phone) seems to me the best niche to go after. You may even create a free psychic readings site, supported by ads. Another rout to take is to create a site about famous psychics like Sylvia Browne (or Sylvia Brown) and Miss Cleo.

Whatever you chose, may the force be with you. Whatever. Don’t forget to vote for this article in RedDit, Del.Icio.Us and Digg, and make sure you e-mail your fellow AdSenser about this site right now.

Peace.

One last thing – don’t let your wife waste money on psychic readings.

In order not to violate Google TOS, I rate niches with my own star system. ** – $0.20-$0.30 per click average, *** – $0.30-$0.50 per click average, **** – $0.50-$0.70 per click average, ***** – $0.70-$1.20 per click average. While I don’t mind sharing information on ***** niches, I don’t make this information publicly available because it would quickly kill these niches or get Google pissed off at me.

All AdSense niches were tested by me personally and your results shouldn’t be very different, unless your account was smart-priced, too much time passed since my testing, MFA got a hold of the niche or your site or traffic source sucks big time.

Source: NicheGeek.com

There are many influential bloggers that I look up to and want to one day have the same level of success as they have achieved.  I strive to accomplish some of the amazing feats these bloggers have done and I thought I would share with you my Top 8 list.  I think it is important to have people to look up to so you know the direction you want to go and so that you don’t stop until you make it there.  If you have a dream I think you should go after it until you are successful at it.  So without further ado here are my Top 8 Most Influential Bloggers (note – these are in no particular order):

• Johnchow.com – He is one of the first blogs I started reading and one of the reasons why I decided to get into the business myself.  He is very successful at what he does and I strive to have some similar success.  He is also local to where I live which is interesting.  I actually when to school with a good friend of his (very small world).  I definitely recommend that you check out his blog because he has a lot of great things he talks about and he will point you in the right direction to get your blogging career started.
• Johntp.com – This is a great blog for lots of blog tips and ways on how to make money.  It looks like Johntp hasn’t updated his site since Aug 14, 08 but I still read his blog.  It has tons of content on it and is a very highly ranked site.  If you are wanting to learn more about making money online and blogging I recommend you check out his blog as well.
• Ez-onlinemoney.com/blog – This blog is run by Josh Spaulding and was recommended to me by my brother.  The first article I read on his blog was about article submission techniques.  It was very helpful and I have followed it for marketing articles of my own.  Every once in awhile I come back to check out his blog and see what new things he has written about.  He seems to know what he is talking about so I would recommend checking his blog out.
• CarlOcab.com – This kid is truly inspirational.  He started his blog at the age of 13 years old and is one of the most successful bloggers out there.  He has tons of useful blog posts and he knows what he is talking about.  I recommend you check his blog out because there is definitely a thing or two you will learn from his blog.
• DailyBlogTips.com – This blog is run by Daniel Scocco.  His blog as the URL indicates is about blog tips.  He has many very useful blog posts that are very popular such as 101 Blog Tips I learned in 2006 that can help even the most experienced bloggers learn something new.  I recommend you check it out and learn something new so you can improve your blog as well.
• QuickOnlineTips.com – The one post that drawed me to this website was the blog post 50 Best WordPress Plugins for Power Blogging.  It was very helpful because it showed me a bunch of plugins I wasn’t using with Wordpress that I really should have because it makes my blog a much better blog.  I recommend if you are wanting some new plugins to check it out and browse around the blog while you are there.
• Problogger.net – This blog is run by Darren Rowse.  It is a great blog about blogging tips and it has a ton of useful information.  It you want to learn more about blogging and get a bunch of tips on how to improve your blog I recommend you check out his blog and learn all you can from it!
• Shoemoney.com – Another great blogger out there that is run by Jeremy Schoemaker.  I heard about ShoeMoney when I was visiting JohnChow.com blog.  He mentioned his name so I had to check out his blog and I am glad I did because he is also one of the top bloggers out there.  After reading his blog he has become a very influential to myself because he is one of the few people out there who has made tons of money with Google Adsense.  One picture on his blog shows him with a Google check where he has earned $132,994.97 in 2005.  This picture is one of my motivating factors to keep my blog going and become successful.

So there you have it.  The Top 8 Most Influential Bloggers that I look up to and strive to become as successful as.  You to should have goals and people you look up to because it helps keep you motivated.  Anything is possible if you stick your mind to it.  You just need to keep at it and the sky will be the limit!

Do you use Adsense on your website?  Are you having trouble with your CTR (Click Through Rate) of your ads?  Without having relevant ads show on your page you are more likely to have a low CTR.  If it is too low there is one thing you can do to make Google show more relevant Adsense ads.

To improve the Google Adsense ads that are being displayed what you can do is suggest (or ignore) sections of a page to the Adsense bot.

To suggest a section of a page, use the following HTML tags

<!– google_ad_section_start –>
This is the page section you would like to suggest to AdSense bot
<!– google_ad_section_end –>

To ignore a page section, use the following HTML tags

<!– google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) –>
This is the page section you want AdSense bot to ignore
<!– google_ad_section_end –>

If you are writing a blog and have Adsense code on it you should be suggesting the title and content of the post and ignoring the sidebars and footers.

You can use this section targeting on your blog to make suggestions but it can take up to 2 weeks before you see the results of the section targeting.

Google suggests that you include a significant amount of content otherwise you will get PSAs (Public Service Ads).

So try this out for yourself and see if you can increase your CTR of your Google Adsense ads.