First, AdSense is Dead

Firstly I would like to say that Adsense is dead!  Yes you read that right, Adsense is dead.  Why do I say that?  What caused the death of Adsense?

Google did.  But webmasters are only just coming to realise that the reason that they are not making the money that they once were from putting Adsense adverts on their websites is nothing to do with the number of clicks they get, it is nothing to do with optimising their web pages or changing their keywords or getting better content for their sites.  Once upon a time all you had to do to make money with Adsense was to upload a website to a hosting company with a lot of content, optimise the website, put on quality keywords that match the content, put on a couple of Adsense adverts then get some traffic and sit back and watch the money roll in as people go to your site and decide that your content, although linked to what they were searching for did not really  give them any useful information so they clicked on one of your Adsense adverts which were linked to the content of your page - KA-CHING!

Then there were webmasters that realising that this was easy money decided to make even more by telling other webmasters about it and encouraging them to join the Adsense program (under their affiliate code of course) - KA-CHING! KA-CHING! THE TILL WAS RINGING LOUD.  Get a hundred webmasters under your affiliate code all using the same system and you could live off the earnings that they generated for you.  What about getting 300 under you??

Google Adsense adverts are provided by other websites paying Google to display their adverts on other sites.  This is called the Adwords program. 

The reason that this no longer works so well is the fact that Google changed the way that webmasters using Adwords were allowed to pay for their adverts.  Before the change advertisers paid exactly the same for someone clicking on an advert on the Google search page as they did if the advert appeared on another website as an Adsense advert.  In order to get the advert seen on the Google search network webmasters were paying anything from 40c to $40 PER CLICK!  Some keywords were very good earners.  

What changed?

Google started allowing advertisers using the Google Adwords program to set a lower amount that they would pay for content adverts, those adverts that appeared on other websites.  So an advertiser that was paying $12 a click on both the Google search pages and the content pages could now pay $12 a click on the Google search page and 50c if the advert was clicked on from another website displayed Adsense advert.

This did not happen overnight.  It took months for webmasters using Google Adwords to realise that they could do this and months more for them to change their adverts.  Why did it take this long?  Apathy partly.  They could not be bothered, or did not understand the system too well, or they just did not realise that they could do this.  Many webmasters did not read the emails from Google telling them about the changes! THEY just carried on paying maximum prices for adverts.  You can still make money from adsense but not nearly as much as before.  Most adsense users now know so the bottom has dropped out of the Adsense earnings.  Adsense is dead.  Long live Adsense!

What?

There is still a way to make money from Google but it revolves around the Adwords program and affiliate programs in conjunction with the Adsense program.  Now you are asking how can you make money from paying to advertise?  Well you need to get on over to our Adwords page to find out about that.  In the mean time here are the main mistakes that Adsense users are still making and things you should avoid.

Mistakes That Violate  AdSense Terms Of Service

1. Never click your own Adsense ads or get someone to click for you.  This is a surefire way to get your Adsense account banned. Google monitors IP addresses. Don't even think of offering incentives for clicks, using automated clicking tools, or other deceptive software. Adsense is very smart to detect fraudulent clicks. Check the ads which appear on your pages by the Google Preview tool if required.

2. Never change the Adsense code.  There are enough means of altering the Adsense adverts to change the colour, background or border to suit your needs.  Never fiddle within the ad or the search code. They know it when you do.  The search code has more limitations to colour and placement, but you should adhere to the rules.

3. Do not place more than 3 ad-units and 3 ad-links or 2 adsense search boxes on any web page.  This is the limit they set, so it is better to stick to it.

4. Do not run competitive contextual text ads or search services on the same site in which you are using Google Adsense. Never try to create link structures resembling the adsense ads. Never use other competitive search tools on the same pages which have Google search. They do allow affiliate or limited-text links.

5. Do not disclose confidential information about your account like the CTR, CPM and income derived via individual ad units or any other confidential information they may reveal to you. However, you may reveal the total money you make.

6. Label headings as “sponsored links” or “advertisements” only. Other labels are not allowed. I have seen many sites label ads with other titles. Don't entice people to click or request people to click ads or offer incentives. 

7. Never launch a New Page for clicked ads.  Adsense ads should open on the same page.

8. One Account suffices for Multiple websites. You do not need to create 6 accounts for 6 different websites. One account will do.  You can keep track of clicks by using channels with real time statistics. They will automatically detect the new site and display relevant ads.

9. Place ads only on Content Pages. Advertisers pay only for content based ads. Content drives relevant ads.

10. Do not mask ad elements or block the visibility of ads by overlapping images, pop ups, tables etc. or by changing the colors of your site to mask some of the ad.

11. Do not send your ads by email. Html emails look good and allow placement of these javascript ads. But it is not allowed as per TOS. You do not want impressions registering on their logs from any email even once. They are watching!

12. Keep track of your content. So Adsense is not allowed on non content pages, but it is also not allowed on some content pages too. Do not add it on web pages with MP3, Video, News Groups, and Image Results. Also exclude any pornographic, hate-related, violent, or illegal content.

13. Do not alter the results after ad clicks or searches - Ensure you are not in any way altering the site which the user reaches to after clicking the ads. Do not frame, minimize, remove, redirect or otherwise inhibit the full and complete display of any Advertiser Page or Search Results Page after the user clicks on any Ad or Search results.

14. Avoid excessive advertising and keyword stuffing - Although the definition of ‘excessive’ is a grey area and is subject to discretion, yet Google adsense with correct placement, focused content and high traffic will get you much more income than other programs, so excessive advertising is not required. Keyword stuffing does target better focused ads, but overdoing it is not required.

15. Ensure you Language is Supported - Adsense supports “Chinese (simplified), Japanese, Danish, Korean, Dutch, Norwegian, English, Polish, Finnish, Portuguese, French, Russian, German, Spanish, Hungarian, Swedish, Italian and Turkish”. In addition, AdSense for search is available in Czech, Slovak, and Traditional Chinese. If your web pages language is not supported, do not use the code on such pages.

Update:
16. Maximum 2 referral button per product per page - With the launch of the google adsense referral program, you are allowed to put only 2 referral buttons for adsense referral, adwords referral, Google pack and Firefox with google toolbar referral.  Google are removing the Adsense referral program in Jan 2008

17. Do not specify Google ads as your alternate ads. - Several services like Chitika eminimalls allow you to place alternate urls, when a targeted paying ad cannot be displayed. This involved creating a simple html page and putting the ad to be displayed instead. Even Adsense allows an alternate url feature instead of displaying public service ads. But never use Adsense ads as alternate urls.

18. Do not confuse with adjacent images - It was a common policy to increase CTR by placing same number of images as the number of text ads, which falsely gave the impression that the text ads represented an explanation to these images. Inserting a small space or a line between the images and ads is not allowed. Make sure that the ads and images are not arranged in a way that could easily mislead or confuse your visitors.

If you find anything on this website to which you feel you have copyright please let us know by email to our email address at the top of this home page.  Upon notification we will take immediate steps to rectify matters.