May | 23 | 2007

Who Clicks Them Anyway?

Posted by Benj as Monetization, Opinion

We all know that Google AdSense holds a huge potential that is waiting to be tapped as far as monetization goes. In Brix’s previous article, he tackled the basic game plan on how to make money off Adsense. My colleague was right in stating that the basic idea is to: 1) get visitors to go to your site and 2) make them click your ads. If you’re like most people, you would soon realize that Google Ads just don’t click themselves.When you’re just starting out, chances are, most your visitors are people who behave like average Joes - i.e. they’re the types who consciously ignore the ads while reading your blog. Since a majority of people are likely to purposely block out ads - let alone click them — have you ever stopped and wondered?

Who clicks them anyway?! 

We can safely assume that people you personally know are less likely to click your advertisements. After all, your friends and family members are visiting your blog to check on you and not to check the things that are blinking on your side bar. Clearly, they are not the demographic who click your ads. While some unscrupulous individuals may ask their relatives or friends to click their ads for extra revenue, this sort of practice defeats the purpose of the system and may put the blogger at risk for possible sanctions.

The people who are more likely to click your ads are the ones who are looking for things other than you. They are probably strangers who are banging at the search engines for new information, products and services related to the niche you’re in. If you’ve been reading the comprehensive SEO write-ups of Philip and Ia, you would know by now that you can put yourself at a better position by making sure that your website comes up as one of the first few search results for the relevant key words in your blog. Needless to say, individuals who are trying to look for certain information and products are more likely to be more observant and keen towards advertisements related to their concerns. They are your demographic and that’s why SEO matters a lot if you really want to drive your AdSense profits through the roof.

The people you already know have little use for Google as far as finding your site goes - hell, they already know your URL! It’s one thing to be popular to the people you know, but being relevant even to people that you haven’t even met yet is a bigger factor when it comes to making sure you get your precious ad clicks. That being said, learn to play to the crowd that is more likely to click your ads while still keeping your baseline in check.

While playing to your clicking crowd, make sure that you follow Google’s policy to ensure that you won’t be sanctioned or barred from further participation. You may not encourage clicking and you may not deface or place images that may mislead the readers into thinking that the ads are a part of the actual layout of the site.

Now that you know who’s clicking, it will be easier to focus your efforts to a more efficient SEO strategy.

That’s all for now! See you next time!

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3 Responses

  1. ia

    24|May|2007

    The people you already know have little use for Google as far as finding your site goes - hell, they already know your URL! It’s one thing to be popular to the people you know, but being relevant even to people that you haven’t even met yet is a bigger factor when it comes to making sure you get your precious ad clicks - Now that’s a good point.

    We have to stress, though, that any explicit form of getting people to click on the ads is illegal under the AdSense Terms of Service and could get people banned.

    Google just bought FeedBurner *and* Google is testing AdSense on video (via YouTube I guess). So we’ll be seeing more ads on feeds and videos very soon.

    Also, I just read a post on Ars Technica about the psychology of banner ads: link. Insightful.

  2. Brix

    24|May|2007

    Five years ago, you could put an arrow image beside your Adsense ad. Now, try to do it and you get banned. Yes, you aren’t allowed to entice. Just make sure that the ads are seen.

  3.   Selling Out On Your Blog? by Blog Tutorials

    30|May|2007

    [...] display advertisements relevant to your blog’s content. Unfortunately, like what I said on a previous column, the Google AdSense system is only beneficial for bloggers who get heaps of hits a day or those who [...]


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