If you develop iPhone or Android applications, we’re happy to let you know about the beta launch of AdSense for mobile applications. Participants in the beta will be able to display text and image ads in their mobile applications to earn revenue. We’ve seen positive results in our trials, and we’re excited to roll this out to new developers to continue supporting the growth of mobile applications. You can visit our new microsite to learn more about AdSense for mobile applications, see our beta requirements, or sign up. If you’re selected to participate in the beta, we’ll be in touch with you shortly with next steps for getting started.You can also learn more about the program by watching the video below, in which Howard Steinberg, Director of Business Development at Urbanspoon, describes how he tested AdSense for mobile applications:Posted by Alex Kenin - AdSense for Mobile Applications Marketing
Speeding up: Retaining your visitors with great user experience
Last week, we kicked off a five-week educational series about speeding up your business in a slowdown. This week, you’ll hear tips from Ricardo Prada, a user experience researcher at Google, about designing for the user. As we continue to share tips about attracting more visitors, increasing your revenue potential, and attracting more advertiser budget, we invite you to share your own suggestions for growing your business by leaving comments on each post. You can also follow the series at www.google.com/ads/speedingup.Hi, I’m Ricardo Prada. As a user experience researcher here at Google, one of the things my colleagues and I are responsible for is making sure that Google websites are efficient and fun to use so that visitors keep coming back to them. I’d like to share three tips we think about daily as we do our jobs. Ultimately, they all fit into our guiding principle: if you focus on the user, everything else will follow. Tip #1: Design for the tasks that visitors complete on your site.Think about tasks on your website first and layouts second. It’s tempting to want a flashy design that exercises your CSS skills, but remember that vistors come to your site with specific goals in mind, like reading your essays, or checking out your collection of sports photos. Write down the top three tasks your users might want to accomplish on your site, and design to make those tasks quick and efficient.Tip #2: Use ads as potential exit paths, not interruptions.Ads should complement your site, not distract from it. The most natural place for a user to evaluate an advertisement is after they’ve completed their goals on your site. Instead of interrupting your user’s main tasks, try to offer ads as potential exit path for users who were probably ready to leave anyway by placing them at the end of completed tasks.Tip #3: SEO - only if it makes sense.Only do search engine optimizations that benefit your users. For example, page titles that are relevant to the page content make it easier for your visitors to understand what your articles are about. On the other hand, there are lots of sneaky strategies out there for improving search engine rank. Most of those don’t work anymore, and they might actually harm your site’s reputation.Additional Resources:Our Help Center has more suggestions about where to place ads.The Google Webmaster Tools team shares their design and content tips.Posted by Talia Brodecki - AdSense Product Marketing
How to Prevent and Monitor Invalid Clicks, and keep an AdSense Account in Good Standing [a Statement from AdSense]
Over the last week or two there’s been an increase amount of chatter on forums and blogs about invalid clicks and AdSense. Some of the talk has contained information that has been a little confusing and perhaps even ill-informed (and some ‘influenced’ by companies with their own agendas) - so I got in touch with AdSense and asked if they had any information to help their publishers protect themselves against invalid clicks.
The following is what they replied with - in their words it is ‘a concise guide to how to prevent and monitor invalid clicks, and keep an AdSense account in good standing.’ I hope that it is helpful to AdSense publishers everywhere:
The Google AdSense team has heard many concerns about how Google treats invalid click activity on publisher’s sites, and there have been questions on how to keep your AdSense account in good standing. The Google Ads Quality Traffic Team wants to help all publishers keep their accounts in good order, so here are some tips to keep in mind.
We understand that it’s not always possible to control the behavior of your users, but you can be proactive about monitoring your traffic, and you can take steps to ensure that your site provides a helpful and safe environment for users and advertisers. Here are some top tips for keeping your account in good standing (which you may have seen before): https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=23921
Expanding on the tip “Be aware of how your site is promoted.” we’d like to remind you that, should you purchase traffic to promote your site, you do so at your own risk. There are many site promotion services out there that appear to be legitimate PPC advertising companies or search engines, but actually may be sending artificial traffic to your site for their own gain. (For legal reasons, we’re not allowed to disclose the names of such services.)
To combat this, we highly recommend that you use channels to segment your traffic by source (e.g. a channel for your site’s Google AdWords traffic only). If one channel’s reports look particularly suspicious, you may want to consider unsubscribing from that traffic service. We also recommend using Analytics to slice and dice your traffic reports further to ensure that you’re receiving clicks from users who are genuinely interested in your ads.
Though we encourage you to be proactive about monitoring your site and ad traffic, we highly discourage the use of click tracking via third-party software or custom ad implementations. These methods may:
inadvertently disclose sensitive information about you or your site to a third-party
disrupt Google’s ad delivery or click logging in a way that violates our Terms and Conditions
In addition, click tracking may not provide you with significantly more information than you can already find in your AdSense or Analytics reports. We believe that the creative use of channels can help you gain detailed insights into your account.
If you see unusual activity on your account, feel free to submit this form to let us know: https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/request.py?contact=invalid_clicks_contact Please note that we will only respond if we find a significant issue with your account.
Invalid clicks can come from many sources, as described at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=16737. While we’re unable to go into the details of our monitoring system, you should know that invalid clicks don’t always mean clicking on your own ads or using click bots. Our Ad Traffic Quality Team looks for numerous types of activity that may inflate advertiser costs, then takes the necessary actions to protect our advertisers.
That said, we still find that many publishers are clicking on their own ads, possibly because they feel that Google is disregarding those clicks. Keep in mind that even though we filter the revenue from an invalid click, we don’t ignore it completely. If we detect significant invalid activity on your AdSense ads, we may take action on your account to protect our advertisers from inflated costs. Here are some examples of situations in which clicking your own ads is prohibited:
Clicking out of interest in the ad content
Clicking to see an ad’s destination URL, such as for filtering purposes (we recommend trying the AdSense Preview Tool, available at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=10005)
Clicking to ensure that Google is properly registering clicks on your ads (we log all ad clicks, but it can sometimes take up to 24 hours before your reports are finalized)
Clicking to test your website
For general invalid click questions, you can find more information at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/topic.py?topic=8426
For questions about AdSense accounts disabled for invalid clicks, you can find more information at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153.
Thanks to the team at AdSense team for providing this information.
Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger. 
Default font size increased
As a follow-up to last week’s launch of font size controls, we’d like to let you know that we’ve just increased the default font size for AdSense ad units. This change will affect your ad units if you haven’t yet customized your font sizes, or if your ad units are set to ‘AdSense default font size’ — you’ll notice that the text in your ad units is now the equivalent of ‘medium’ instead of ’small’. We decided to make this change based on publisher feedback and our testing, which showed that this increased font size improved performance.If you’d like to change the font size in your ad units, you can do so on an account-wide basis or by individual ad unit — just follow the instructions listed in our Help Center. Again, we recommend testing these new font size options with your existing customizations to determine which combinations perform best on your pages.Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team
Simple Changes Doubled My Adsense Revenue
In this post Todd Fratzel from Home Construction Improvement and Today’s Green Construction shares how he doubled the AdSense revenue on his blog with a few simple changes.
Several simple changes in my Adsense approach and layout have almost doubled my blog’s revenue. The results were so drastic and eye opening that I convinced a friend (www.oneprojectcloser.com) to make the same changes to his blog with even better results. The changes involve two simple ideas that can be easily incorporated into any Adsense monetized website or blog.
I’ve been blogging for over two years now and growing traffic, authority and readership slow and steady. Along with the steady increase in traffic the site has continued to increase it’s Adsense revenue at a similar pace with no sudden increases regardless of all the changes and adjustments I’ve made. That was true until I took the time to study many different published Adsense approaches. As I read all of these different approaches three distinct ideas came to the forefront.
Three Important Adsense Approaches
Less is More – This concept is really simple yet I hadn’t really given it much thought before. First off the top ad is the highest paying ad and you want that in the best possible position.
Secondly, if you’re using all three of the allotted Adsense units on a given page then there are quite a few ads all competing for attention or a click through. However, if you only use one Adsense unit then you’re limiting the number of ads served and improving the likelihood that one of those ads will get clicked. Therefore, the theory is that an advertiser will be willing to pay a higher rate for less competition.
Size Matters – If you read enough Adsense guides you’ll find that the 336 x 280 Large Rectangle is the most effective Adsense unit. It typically offers four ads and they are likely to be very related to the topic based on the position between the post title and body.
Position, Position, Position – Placing your Adsense unit above the fold is imperative for success. This makes sense to me for one reason. Every day my site (and I assume most sites) gets a majority of it’s traffic from search engines. This traffic is generated from people searching for something. So when they land on my page and they decide that it’s not the content they were looking for then I want them to see the Adsense unit right where they land so that becomes an “outclick†option.
How I Doubled My Adsense Revenue
In order to understand the approach I used to double my Adsense revenue I’ll use two graphics that show the same post before the changes and after the changes. First - the before shot:
And here’s the after shot:
My Old Adsense Layout Included:
468 x 60 Text Only Unit located in the header area of my page.
468 x 60 Text Only Unit located between the post title and the body of the post.
468 x 60 Text Only Unit located at the end of the post before the comment section.
Revised Adsense Layout Includes:
Remove the old 468 x 60 Text Only Unit completely and replaced with an affiliate banner. The idea here is to remove some of the units in order to address concept #1 of Less is More.
Replace the old 468 x 60 Text Only Unit with the 336 x 280 large rectangle unit. This unit is above the fold between the post title and body which makes it a very prominent position. This change addresses both of concept #2 and #3 for Size Matters and Position.
Remove the old 468 x 60 Text Only Unit completely. I actually replaced this with the new Chitika Jumbo unit which is also performing quite well. Again the removal helps address the Less is More concept.
Immediate Results
If you look at the graph of my Adsense revenue over the last two months you’ll see that the increased revenue was immediate. The changes were made as indicated by the Red Circle #1. As you can see my revenue went from under $150 per week to almost $300 per week. Immediate should be taken with a grain of salt, the increase happened over several days and it’s likely to take some time for Adsense to incorporate the reduced number of ads being served on your site.
Summary Of Improved Adsense Layout
While I’d be naive to think that this will double any and all Adsense revenue for any site I think the principal is worth evaluating on all sites. The concept is really simple; make one large, well positioned ad do all the work. This will make your page look cleaner and it’s likely to improve your revenue immediately. It’s also important that you follow some of the basic suggestions of blended ads that match the color and fonts of your site. So far I’ve done this on two of my sites and a friend’s site with the same result, improved Adsense revenue.
Note from Darren: I think that the key with optimizing a blog for AdSense (or other ad networks) is to experiment. The best thing that Todd did here was to try something new and to track the results. What he’s done has worked for him but it might not work for everyone - the key is to keep trying different combinations of numbers of ads, ad sizes, ad positions, ad design (color, fonts etc) and to try different ad types until you find what works best for your blog.
Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.
Simple Changes Doubled My Adsense Revenue
Speeding up: the basics and Analytics
Today, we’re kicking off a five-week educational series about speeding up your business in a slowdown. We’ll be revisiting the basics of online publishing to help you grow your business, and we’ll share tips about using AdSense and other Google products that you can apply to your business now. In the coming Thursdays, you can look forward to tips for making your site more user-friendly, bringing in more visitors, increasing your revenue potential, and attracting more advertiser budget. Along the way, we invite you to share your own suggestions for growing your business by leaving comments at the end of each post. You can also follow the campaign at www.google.com/ads/speedingup.In today’s post, you’ll hear from Avinash Kaushik, Google’s own Analytics Evangelist, about the importance of understanding your traffic, analyzing how your site performs, and using data to make decisions. Here are a few small to mid-sized ideas that — in Avinash’s own words — can add up to remarkable results for your website. They’re all things you can do today with free web analytics tools, like Google Analytics.Idea #1: Discover what content and traffic sources keep people coming to your site again and again.How many times does a visitor have to visit your site to be considered valuable? Use the Visitor Loyalty report in the Visitors section of Google Analytics to pinpoint the visitors who come to your site that many times or more. Put that data into an advanced segment and apply that segment to your core reports to understand things like where these valuable visitors come from and what content they consume. You can then use this information to optimize how you acquire new visitors and the content on your site for loyal visitors. 
Idea #2: Figure out which pages to improve on your site.Many people ask the question: “How do I know which pages on my site to improve?” Take a look at the Top Landing Pages report in the Content section of Google Analytics. This report tells you the first page people see when they enter your site. Sort this report by bounce rate. Bounce rate measures how many people come to your site, only see one page and leave right away (or as Avinash calls it: “I came, I puked, I left”). Once you identify which of your top landing pages are not able to get a single click from your visitors you know which pages need to be improved.
Idea #3: Find out where AdSense performs best on your site.If you’ve linked your AdSense and Analytics accounts, the Top AdSense Content report in the AdSense section of Google Analytics will tell you where on your website AdSense ads get the most clicks. This is a win-win for your business and your customers, as it helps you identify what type of content to produce more of based on what content people are most interested in as well as where people most often click on your AdSense ads.
If you haven’t already, link your AdSense and Analytics accounts in order to take full advantage of what Analytics can offer. If you don’t yet have an Analytics account, you can sign up today. Additional Resources:Read more from Avinash at his blog, Occam’s Razor, which has more tips like the above and additional ways to use Visitor Loyalty metrics, or on the Official Google Blog.To learn more about using Analytics on your website, visit Conversion University.See great ways to use AdSense and Analytics together by watching this video.Posted by Talia Brodecki - AdSense Product Marketing
AdSense Introduces Font Size Choice for Publishers
One of the more commonly requested features that I see AdSense publishers making is for the ability to be able to change font size in their ads.
The AdSense blog today announces this change:
“The font size you choose will be applied to the body of the ad, with the title scaled appropriately. In order to fit the ad text correctly, the actual font size will vary for each format size, font face, and user-specific settings such as browsers and operating systems. In addition, some formats sizes currently have very limited room, so the font size application will be most apparent in cases where the number of ads appearing in your ad units varies automatically in order to maximize your performance.
Your ads are currently set at the default size for AdSense, which is the equivalent of ’small’. You can select a new font size on an account-wide basis in the Ad Display Preference section of your My Account tab, or on an individual ad unit basis for new and existing ad units.
If you’re creating new ad units, you can choose between the AdSense default font size, your new account-wide font size (if you’ve selected one using the instructions above), or a separate size. To update existing ad units you’ve created using the Manage Ads feature, visit the ‘Manage Ads’ page under your AdSense Setup tab. Any font size changes you make on an individual ad unit basis will be maintained even if you change your account-wide default in the future.”
Also announced in the post is that the default size for ads will soon be automatically increased from ’small’ to ‘medium’. This is due to testing that they’ve done which shows that larger size is performing better.
Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.
AdSense Introduces Font Size Choice for Publishers
Font size matters
Since February, you’ve been able to change the font faces of your ad units. We’re now happy to announce the launch of a related feature you’ve been asking for — the ability to change the font size of the text in your ad units. You can now select from small, medium, and large font sizes for ad units on pages in Latin-character languages. Just like with the current font face options, size options appear in every account but will only be applied to ad units on pages primarily in Latin-based characters for now.The font size you choose will be applied to the body of the ad, with the title scaled appropriately. In order to fit the ad text correctly, the actual font size will vary for each format size, font face, and user-specific settings such as browsers and operating systems. In addition, some formats sizes currently have very limited room, so the font size application will be most apparent in cases where the number of ads appearing in your ad units varies automatically in order to maximize your performance.Your ads are currently set at the default size for AdSense, which is the equivalent of ’small’. You can select a new font size on an account-wide basis in the Ad Display Preference section of your My Account tab, or on an individual ad unit basis for new and existing ad units. 
If you’re creating new ad units, you can choose between the AdSense default font size, your new account-wide font size (if you’ve selected one using the instructions above), or a separate size. To update existing ad units you’ve created using the Manage Ads feature, visit the ‘Manage Ads’ page under your AdSense Setup tab. Any font size changes you make on an individual ad unit basis will be maintained even if you change your account-wide default in the future.Also, a bit of advance notice: soon, we’ll also be changing the default font size across AdSense in ad units from ’small’ to ‘medium’. We’ve heard from some of you that the current font size can be too small, and our testing also showed that slightly larger font sizes improved performance. Any ad units set to the default font size will automatically be updated to display the larger setting. If you’d prefer to stick with today’s font size, you can set your desired font size as ’small’ across your account.We encourage you to combine these new font size options with the other customization options in your account to test the optimal layout for your pages. We’re excited about this launch, and we’ll be sure to follow up with another post to let you know once the default font size has been changed.Posted by Amy Wu - AdSense Product Manager
Local currency reports for nine more countries
Following our launch of Euro reporting for publishers in five European countries, we’re happy to announce that local currency reports are now also available in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Finland, Greece, Portugal, South Africa, Switzerland, and the UK. If you’re located in one of these countries, you can now update your account to display earnings in your local currency. After you’ve updated your account, any earnings generated from advertisers paying in currencies other than your local currency will be converted daily. If you receive payments in your local currency, this means that there also won’t be any additional conversions at the end of the month. However, you can still choose to receive payments in U.S. Dollars or change your payment method at any time.Before enabling local currency reports in your account, we recommend downloading and saving copies of your past reports in U.S. Dollars for your records. You can then update your account by signing in to AdSense and clicking the link in the green prompt on your Reports Overview page. You’ll be asked to review and agree to a new set of Terms and Conditions. Unfortunately, we’re not able to interpret the meaning of changes in our legal documents for publishers — if you have questions or need legal advice on interpreting the new Terms, please don’t hesitate to contact your attorney.We’ll be requiring this change in the future, so we recommend updating your account to report earnings in your local currency soon. You can find answers to common FAQs associated with these new local currency reports in a recent Inside AdSense blog post — all references to ‘Euros’ in the post now also apply to your local currency. In addition, detailed information about these new reports can be found in our Help Center.Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team
More countries go Western Union
Good news! We’ve expanded Western Union Quick Cash as a payment method to 7 new countries: Barbados, Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nepal, Uruguay, and Vietnam. If you live in any of these locations, you can now sign up to receive your AdSense payments from your local Western Union agent. With Western Union, you’ll receive your earnings sooner, since you won’t have to wait for checks to arrive in the mail or clear at the bank. Plus, AdSense won’t charge you a fee to use this payment method. Please keep in mind these important points:Payments will continue to follow our normal payment schedule and will be available for pickup at your local Western Union agent the day after they’re issued.You’ll need to present a government-issued ID that matches your AdSense payee name when picking up your payment. If you need to update or correct the payee name listed in your account, please follow the instructions in our Help Center.Right now, only individual payee names can receive payments by Western Union, not businesses.Payments must be picked up within 60 days of issue or they’ll expire and be credited back to your account.Payments will be made in US dollars, but depending on your local Western Union agent, they may be picked up in your local currency.These instructions will help you to sign up, and our Help Center has more info about picking up your payments and other countries where Western Union payments are currently available. We’re working towards making this payment option available to publishers in additional countries, and we’ll be sure to announce any updates here on the blog.Posted by Deborah Chang - AdSense Payments Team
How to Protect Against Invalid Clicks
This is a guest post by Nick Oba from uniQlicks.
Before I get started, here’s a little sobering notice for those who might be wondering what the fuss is all about.
Hello,
While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense
account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. Since
keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage our
advertisers in the future, we’ve decided to disable your account.
Please understand that we consider this a necessary step to protect the
interests of both our advertisers and our other AdSense publishers. We
realize the inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you in advance
for your understanding and cooperation.
If you have any questions about your account or the actions we’ve taken,
please do not reply to this email. You can find more information by
visiting
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153.
The link in the email from AdSense tells you all about invalid clicks, but by that time, of course, it’s too late start learning. So any blogger generating real earnings from AdSense needs to take proactive and preemptive measures to prevent termination by invalid clicks. In an ideal world, Google would sort out the invalid clicks from the valid clicks, but since they don’t always do it, you’ve got to take charge.
What are invalid clicks?
Many people think “invalid clicks = click fraud” but it’s not quite as simple as that. There are basically three types of invalid clicks.
ToS violations Clicks from the publisher himself are of course not valid. Whether the publisher is genuinely interested in the ad running on his site, or merely trying to find out what kind of advertisements are being syndicated on his site, is irrelevant. Any click from the owner of the site is invalid, and just a small number of these can lead to the termination of your AdSense account. Also, onsite Terms of Service violations will mean that the click is invalid. For example, if you write “Please click on the ads” on your site, the clicks generated will be invalid, since the AdSense ToS forbids exhorting visitors to click on ads.
Non-human clicks Clicks from bots, crawlers, spiders, and the like are not valid. There are not many of these as AdSense ads are served via Javascript, and most bots can’t read Javascript.
That leaves invalid clicks from human visitors. Generally these are clicks that are not unique. In other words, if you get more than one click from the same person, that’s an invalid click. A more stricter definition would be that an invalid clicks is any click that’s not an intentional click from someone seriously interested in the product/service offered, but in practical terms that is pretty hard to determine. So even if someone accidentally taps the mouse button and generates a click, it’s mostly OK to consider it as valid as long as it happens only once.
Clicks from children Young adolescents and preteens may not fully understand the concept of advertising, and release a rapid series of clicks as they explore a page.
Clicks from newbies Middle-aged and elderly users coming online after a lifetime without computers often do not understand the difference between an application and an operating system, let alone ads and organic links. Once they figure out how to use a mouse they may systematically click on each and every link, or use an ad on any given website as a means of navigating to a favored site instead of bookmarking it.
Clicks from non-native speakers People who are not fluent in the language may randomly click on a large number of links and adverts when trying to find something.
Clicks from nuts Not everyone on the Internet is sober. Given the statistics for drug consumption, some people are bound to be on meth, ecstacy, or some other drug which affects rational behavior. Heaven knows what these people click on.
Malicious clicks Now this is real click fraud. Unethical operators will try to drain a competing advertiser’s budget by repeatedly clicking on their ads, often using sneaky tactics to fool Google. If you happen to own the site that carries the advertisements, you will be inadvertently aiding and abetting the invalid click activity. In addition, some of your own competitors might seek to destroy you by clicking on your AdSense ads, with the explicit aim of killing your monetization plan. After all, if you destroy its income, you effectively sink a blog.
How does Google detect invalid clicks?
They look at how long the user spends on the page before clicking on the ad, where the user came from, how many ads the user clicked on, where the user went next, and a variety of other metrics.
In addition, it seems Google rely heavily on complaints from advertisers, which are investigated by Google AdWords technicians. It is unlikely that the best brains at Google are put to work analyzing refund requests, so it’s probably easiest in many cases to refund the advertiser and shut down the publisher. That way, Google doesn’t lose any money even if the advertiser is refunded. This explains why many publishers are shut down even though they themselves did nothing wrong.
Google’s own obtuse answer is here.
Who is at risk?
Technically, everyone is at risk, but looking at the anecdotal evidence, it seems that small and medium-sized publishers are at higher risk than larger publishers. Though there have been exceptions, high-profile blogs seem to be protected, perhaps because Google values them more highly as suppliers, or because of the negative publicity a decativation might entail. For example, ProBlogger is safe because of its size and standing in the community. But if you’re not a VIP and your Alexa rank is > 10,000, you’re probably at higher risk.
Certain categories of sites seem to be at higher risk than others. Forums, social networking sites, and sites which generate a large number of impressions per user seem to be at higher risk than, say, recipe collections (which have less repeat traffic). One would think that scraper sites and MFA blogs are at higher risk, but their continued proliferation seems to indicate that these sites are not necessarily at higher risk, perhaps because repeat traffic and pageviews/user are low.
What can you do to shut out invalid clicks?
Essentially, you have three options. First, you can monitor your blog manually using tools such as StatCounter, and let Google know if you notice any anomalies. This is extremely time-consuming and you’ll never be able to go on holiday, because you need to keep an eye on your account 24/7.
Second, you can install a script. This is great if you are technically savvy and have the time to code and debug and maintain a solution. If you are not that good at coding Javascript, you could have it done for you by AdSenseClickLock. The drawbacks are that you need an environment that fits the specifications, and you still need to figure out how to install it and keep it up-to-date.
Third, you could go for a web app. There is only one, namely uniQlicks. It’s an ad manager which also has a feature called SureShield, which specifically shuts out risky impressions. The drawback is that you need to pay (about US$7/month) to upgrade to a Premium account to avail of SureShield, so it’s not worth it if your AdSense earnings are, say, twenty bucks a month.
Will invalid clicks ever cease to be a problem?
Only Google have the answer to this. Some ad networks (such as FairAdsNetwork) already tell you that you don’t need to worry about invalid clicks because they take care of it. Anything is possible, but given Google’s culture of secrecy and extreme aversion to transparency, it’s unlikely. Google have been repeated sued by advertisers, and Google will continue to take care of their advertisers in any way they see fit. For Google, that means shutting down publishers and refunding advertisers.
It is important to understand that as a business, Google isn’t a search engine. Google makes exactly zero dollars from search. Google is an advertising agency which runs a search engine to help its advertising business. And as an advertising agency, Google have never wavered from the doctrine that shutting down publishers is a good way to keep advertisers happy and the bottom line fat. It is unlikely that this policy will ever change, especially given the fact that the Google behemoth isn’t under any serious threat from the competition.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nick Oba is the founder of uniQlicks.
Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.
How to Protect Against Invalid Clicks
How I got 12,000 Pageviews for $50
Joey Daoud is a filmmaker and freelance photographer.
Put $50 towards some ads in an AdSense campaign and maybe you’ll get a few hundred click-throughs. What if that same $50 could get you over 12,000 pageviews, plus a mention in the British newspaper the Guardian. Here’s how I did it.
Photo by vinduhl
50 to 12,000
Some back-story: I’m making a documentary on life hacking (finding shortcuts in everyday life to get the boring stuff done quicker), and with that I have an accompanying blog and podcast.
A few months back I was reading a profile on the author Will Self. He made a comment about how he still enjoys using a typewriter because it forces you to write differently and not edit yourself.
I’m always trying different ways of writing, and being in Gen-Y I’ve always had a word processor to punch out essays and articles, so I’ve never had the experience of writing on a typewriter.
I figured there must be a program out there that mimics the behavior of a typewriter, something basic like WriteRoom that wouldn’t let you delete or insert words.
I did a search and came up with nothing. However, the idea of a very minimal text editor that was so archaic it wouldn’t let you delete stuck with me. I figured it was in the spirit of the film, so it would be something cool to share on the site and see what people make of it. And like the blog posts and podcasts, hopefully it would be something people would spread around and help promote the film.
I have no programing experience, so I turned to Elance, the great freelance site where you can hire anyone from virtual assistants to graphic designers to programmers.
I posted the job for a programmer to make this minimal text editor, waited around for a bid that was in my price range, and finally got the minimum $50 bid. After hiring we went back and forth with tests and notes, and about a week later I had the creatively named program Typewriter.
I posted it to the site. A few days went by and not much activity; a few mentions here and there, but nothing big. Then the hit I was hoping for came.
It was posted on Lifehacker. In one day I got 5000 pageviews, plus mentions on dozens of other blogs (it was sad to see how many would just copy the entire Lifehacker post verbatim).
This traffic boost led to more subscribers and sales, plus a greater awareness of the film and blog. And I’m still only $50 out of pocket.
Blog to Newspaper
That Saturday night I got another surprise. One of my Google alerts showed my name mentioned in an article in the Observer, a weekly paper that’s part of the Guardian. It was about the author’s first experiences with word processors, a story prompted by Typewriter the program, which was mentioned at the end (my name popped up when Will Self’s quote was misattributed to me).
At first I thought this was just some online blog on the Observer’s site, but I soon discovered that this was in the actual printed edition, distributed around the world.
It’s been a little over 2 weeks since the post went live, and the post alone has gotten over 12,000 pageviews, not to mention traffic to the rest of the site. All for just $50.
Ideas for your Ideas
Here are some ways you can use what I did to help your own blog and projects:
Ideas are cheap to make into a reality. I think the beauty in all of this is that it’s so cheap and easy to implement an idea and see if it sticks. If you have an idea that you have the slightest belief that there might be something there, just do it. Throw it out into the interweb and see what happens.
Think beyond your traditional content. As I said I have no programming experience. Plus my blog is about a movie, yet a piece of software became a hit. With Elance and other freelance networks, if you can imagine it someone can implement it (and for not that much). Make an iPhone app. Design an eBook or cool poster as a unique interpretation of your content. Read lots of stuff, related and unrelated to your blog, and keep an open mind and eye.
Offer it for free. If I didn’t offer Typewriter for free I don’t think it would have been nearly as popular. Sure, maybe I could have made a couple bucks, but I’m a filmmaker, not a software developer, and goal number one of the program was to promote the film and blog.
I hope you found something useful in this post, and hopefully it gave you some ideas of your own. Now go make them a reality.
Joey Daoud is a filmmaker and freelance photographer finishing You 2.0, a documentary on life hacking. He also writes about film and photography on his blog Coffee and Celluloid.
Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.
How I got 12,000 Pageviews for $50
Top ten myths about Google Analytics
A few weeks back, we announced that all publishers can now integrate their AdSense accounts with Google Analytics. If you’re not very familiar with Analytics yet, you might be interested in reading a recent post on the Analytics blog that addresses ten common myths about the product. For example, did you know that you can use Analytics to segment visitor data in real time, or that you can use the new Analytics API to tie your website data to your financials? Check out the post to learn more about these features and other ways you can use Analytics to better understand your site stats.If you haven’t yet linked your AdSense account with Analytics, follow these steps:Sign in to AdSense.Click the link that says “Integrate your AdSense account with Google Analytics” on your Reports Overview page.Follow the onscreen instructions, and watch our video for additional guidance.Even if you use AdSense in a language that’s not supported by Analytics, you can still link your accounts and view your Analytics reports in a different language.Posted by Sebastian Tonkin - Analytics Product Marketing
5 Tips to Boost Your Adsense Revenue
This is a guest post submitted to JMMO by lisafolder from the site Little Money Maker. The author’s email address is: lisafolder@gmail.com .
Google AdSense program has made it easier for webmasters to make money through a website. Webmasters who run an AdSense campaign will display Google’s contextual Ads relevant to the content of their sites and thus encouraging visitors to click the ads and earn money for each ad click.
However, you will earn very little AdSense revenue if you don’t know how to optimize your AdSense ads on your website. Here are some tips to increase your AdSense earning:
1. Focus on one Adsense ad format. The Large Rectangle (336X280) ad format seems to work better than other ad formats because this format tends to result in higher click through rates (CTR). Another reason is that the ads will look like normal web links that visitors use to click on them. It doesn’t matter whether the visitors know that they are clicking AdSense ads or not, as long as there are clicking, you earn AdSense commission.
2. Create a custom palette for your ads. Select a color that matches your website’s background. If your site’s background is white both, the color of ad border and background should set to be white too. Also the color of the ad title should be similar to coloe of the links in your website. This is to make your AdSense ads look like it is part of the web pages. Again, this will boost AdSense CTR.
3. Don’t place your AdSense ads at the bottom of your webpages because it is proven to be less effective. Displaying your AdSense ads at the bottom is like hiding your AdSense and thus leads to low CTR and AdSense revenue. Try to put them in the place where people can see them quickly. You will be amazed how the difference between AdSense locations can make when you see your earnings.
4. Try to place your AdSense ads near rich content as visitors main focus usually are your content. There are several ways to insert AdSense ads into your content and one of the ways is place your AdSense just after the end of your content.
5. Try to automate the insertion of your AdSense code into the webpages using SSI (or server side included). Ask your web administrator if your server supports SSI or not. How do you do it? Just save your AdSense code in a text file, name it as “AdSense textâ€, and upload it to the root directory of the web server. Then use SSI, call the code on other pages. This tip is a time saver especially for those who are using automatic page generators to generate pages on their website.
These are some of the tips that have worked well for some who want to generate hundreds and even thousands on their websites. There are other ways to optimize your AdSense that produce high CTR also. You can learn more tricks by reading in AdSense and webmaster forums.
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This post is originally from Just Make Money Online. Please respect copyright.