Adsense is a great platform for publishers to make money from, but find out how you could be making more!

Google Adsense is a major source of revenue for many publishers. However, most set up a Google Adsense and forget it, not giving a lot of thought into the details to display ads. You can make easy changes to your Adsense ads within minutes, without any development assistant from others.

For this tutorial, we assume that you have already set up your Adsense account; if you have not, you can sign up for Google Adsense (it’s free), and read this post on 3 easy ways to make more buck with Adsense.

Related article: – How to Create Your Own Website and Make Money

Twist #1: – Text ads vs. image/rich media ads

In display advertising, there are two major types of ad types: a) text based ads and b) image/ rich media ad display. The difference is self-explanatory, but the following screenshot show these two types of ads in action.

Example of a text based ads:

And, here is how rich media (image) ad looks like:

With Google Adsense, you can select which ad type will display in your website – text based ads only, or image/rich-media ads only.

Text based ads: –

The Problem: Usually, text-based ads generate more clicks, and hence, more revenue for your site than image/rich-media ads. However, each site is different and hence an image/ media-rich ads may work better for some than others. Alternately, if your site is set to “image/rich media” ads only, you can mix things up with text ads and generate even more revenue. The only drawback is that text ads are plain and simple, and lot less “clean”, which can lower the quality impression your site could make.

Solution: The best way is the allow Google the flexibility to optimize your earnings for you; allow Google to display both text as well as image ads, instead of one ad type only, and you will get the highest profitable ads no matter how your site looks.

How to Get That: Go to Adsense Home/My Ads/Click on Ad Unit Name/Select “Ad type” Dropdown

Twist #2: Play around with The Color Scheme

If you do include text ads as your display ads into your site, make sure to spend some time customizing ads by twisting its fonts and colors. By default, Google will set a black text with a blue link when you set up an account. However, you should try to experiment with different font and color settings to give unique look and feel to your ads.

Each site is unique, having its own color scheme. Most often, a color scheme that blends the ad units to the rest of the site is more likely to generate highest ad impression than text ads that have odd color scheme. However, in many cases, creating a sharp contrast – for instance, red links in a yellow colored scheme – will result in the click through rate and earnings.

How to Get That: Go to Adsense Home/Ad Units/Click on Ad Unit Name/Find “Ad style” Field/Select Desired Setting.

Twist #3: Create some custom layouts

Above, we showed you several settings for your text ad look and feel. However, Google offers tons of other options as well; for example, the ‘custom’ option gives you an option to bring wide range of variations on your ad units. You have the option to customize the background color, border color, link color, text color, font type, URL color, font size, and corner styling.

Again, you will have to experiment a little bit here with the appearance of your ads units. Include a combination of visually pleasing ad appearance with ads having more contrast while perhaps not looking aesthetically incredible. Just changing your color scheme is no guarantee to bring you revenue; you will have to experiment enough so that you come across some winning combinations.

How to Get That: Go to Adsense Home/ Ad Units/ Click on the Ad Unit Name/ Find “Ad Style” Field/ Click “Use Custom Settings/ and play around…

Twist #4: Pick your targets

Google is always trying to put ads on your site that they think will generate clicks and earn you (and them) revenue in the process. It does this by matching up ads with the content of your site. However, you can also narrow down and select which types of ads will appear on your site.

Usually, the more relevant the material on your site and the ads, the higher the CTR and higher your earnings. That means Google will usually display ads for products and services that are at least related to your site’s topic. You can help Google here by telling them to avoid certain types of ads that might be irrelevant to the content of your site.

How to Do That: Go to Adsense Home/ Allow & Block Ads/ General Categories

Not that you can be very detailed, going down in the very specific sub-categories.

Twist #5: Pick your categories

If you decide to do this, make sure to use two helpful stats that Google Adsense offers – “% Ad Impressions” and “% Earnings”. You can compare the stats of these two fields to know what is working. For example, if you notice the “% Ad Impressions” is smaller than the “% Earnings”, you should know those types of ads are doing really well.

There are other variations of this process that you can benefit from as well, such as:

Banning sensitive categories: – Make sure to check the “sensitive categories” options, which lets you disable or approve certain ads that you (publisher) may be uncomfortable displaying on your site (for example, pharmaceutical ads or “get rich quick” ads).

Banning specific advertisers: – You can also have an option to prevent certain unwanted (or competitive) ads from displaying on your site by selecting “Advertiser URLs”.

Conclusion

The above tips are just the tip of the iceberg. You can utilize many different options/settings to optimize your Adsense configuration and boost online earnings. However, these minor changes are a good place to get started; they are all easy to deploy and they all can have a significant impact on your earnings.

Before going, we encourage you to be creative and experiment! That means you should constantly changing and optimizing your Adsense design and layout. Of course, not every changes will be a win-win situation, but if you stick to the experiments, you will definitely come up with some combinations that could lead you to higher earnings.