Income from AdSense

A common question people ask about AdSense is how much income from Adsense can I earn from my website or blog and what is the average income from AdSense. Giving a figure for the average income from AdSense would be misleading because of the wide range of types of sites but working out the potential income for a site once you know the typical number of visitors and the niche that the website or blog is in isn't difficult.

Let's look first at how you might work out what potential income from AdSense that a site might get.  The most important measure first of all is knowing what the typical number of visitors per day is to the site.

So let's assume for the moment that your blog or website attracts 100 visitors a day and that each visitor only views one page. This makes the maths very simple - we can now work out that the number of impressions per day is 100. ( Note that you can do this the other way round as well - if you know the impressions and the number of unique visitors then it is easy to work out the typical page views per visitor).

Ok so we are now at stage one in working out our typical income from AdSense for this site. 

The second step is to know how many of these impressions will typically result in a click on an AdSense advertisement. Advertisers used to get clickthrough rates ( CTR) on their ads of 3% and beyond but these rates have been dropping for some years as visitors have become ad-blind and ad-averse.  If we assume that you site isn't all ads but that it is fairly well optimised re ad placement then let's assume you get a click through rate of 1%.

So in working out your income from AdSense we now know that for every 100 page impressions you can expect about 1 click on a AdSense advert.

All we need now is to work out how much we get per click and we know what the income from AdSense will be for the website - right? Well yes and no. Three are  so many different niches and they don't all cost advertisers the same for their ads and as a result the money you get per click can vary widely between differentt niches.
Lets assume for the moment that you are in a niche were you are attracting ads that pay on average 10 cents per click.

If you serve 100 page impressions you can therefore expect an income of around 10 cents per day based on these figures.

This gives us pointers to key things that you need to do to improve your income from AdSense.

Increase the number of visitors to your site
Increase the number of pages seen per visitor
Find ways to increase the likelihood that people will click the ads ( increase click through rate or CTR)
Make sure your blog or niche is attracting well paying ads - by using content that triggers the best paying ads
Find a good niche

None of this is rocket science but it does take dedication and hard work to increase your income from AdSense to levels where you are getting a substantial income. It can be done though - thousands of webmasters and bloggers have made a great income from AdSense and there is no reason that you cant do it to.



One more thing - Many people stumble with Adsense and either earn very little or end up getting banned. If this happens to you then try one of the many other programs available for earning income from advertising. Look out some of the other posts on this blog where you will find information about different programs.

Building an eBay business

eBay is a tried and trusted route to building an online business. Wordlwide eBay operates in more than 40 countries and has more than 200 million members, Almost 200,000 UK registered UK businesses buy and sell on eBay. It's a massive worldwide marketplace that offers incredible opportunities for anyone looking to build either an Internet only business or to enhance a more traditional business with a web presence.

One of the best guides to building a business on eBay is "Make Serious Money on eBay UK" by Dan Wilson.  This 300 page book with 33 chapters is an extensive and  complete guide to starting up a business using eBay It gives the full low down on both buying and selling on eBay and a wide range of other important information about building an online business.

 "Make Serious Money on eBay UK " gives the complete lowdown on how best to list items that you are selling, advice on sourcing products to sell, opening an eBay shop and how to really become a power seller.

Most of the advice in the book applies to people using eBay anywhere in the world but for UK readers it covers extra material such as how to register a business in the UK and matters such as business plans and accounts.

despite the books title it also contains a lot of advice on selling using amazon and information on using Google, and even advice about building and managing your own website.

This is a very comprehensive book which I would strongly recommend to anyone thinking of using eBay to start an online business. If you are already buying or selling on eBay then it is likely that there will be things in this book that will help you greatly improve how you are using eBay.

Viglink is Affiliate Programs made easy

Using Affiliate programs to monetize a blog or website can give you a greater return than Advertising programs such as AdSense - if you manage you affiliate programs  well.
With an affiliate program, such as for example the Amazon Affiliate program, you sign up with the individual merchant as an affiliate and then as you write your blog posts or website content you link back to that merchants products - usually using specially created links provided by the affiliate program. In this way the merchant is able to track your affiliate commissions.

One problem with Affiliate Programs though is that you will often want a fairly wide range of products and if you sign up to a lot of affiliate programs it can be difficult to manage all those programs and different types of links.


Rather than sign up to each merchant separately as an affiliate you can sign up for affiliate programs such a Pepperjam or Affiliate Windows which act as an intermediary between you and the merchants.  Even here though there are issues. There are a number of these types of programs so you will still have to manage a number of programs and different link types.

Viglink is a fairly new program which simplifies managing affiliate programs. You don't need to worry about finding and posting special links or even signing up to individual merchant's affiliate programs.  Viglink provides a simple code snippet that you post once on your webpage. From there on it converts all product and website links into affiliate program links behind the scenes for you. They are linked to a very large number of the best merchant and affiliate programs. This means that you don't need to go finding and joining separate affiliate programs and worrying about tracking your progress on each of them separately - Viglink does all the work for you.

I strongly recommend Viglink. If you want to monetize your website or blog but want the process to be as simple and quick as possible then Viglink is the program for you. Doing your Affiliate programs the Viglink way means that you can spend far more time creating content and improving your website. As any experienced blogger or website owner knows it's good, relevant and up to date content that drives traffic so that is where you need to be spending your time.  Viglink  means that you no longer waste time managing your affiliate links - you let Viglink worry about that and you are free to concentrate on the things that get people coming to your site.

Adwords Unacceptable practices

Practices Leading To Adwords Account Life Bans.

Recently I wrote about Google Adwords users getting banned by Google. This is an important signal from Google; it is affirming a business model built around the "user experience".

Google wants users to have a good user experience and that means it will control the quality of the Ads that it displays on it's advertising network.

There is little doubt that Google has suffered from becoming associated with poor quality sites that sometimes put visitors at risk.

It's latest act, driving undesirable Adwords users over the cliff, like a flock of diseased stock, is Google asserting that it is sticking to it's core commitment.

They are not going to state exactly their method but they will disable Adwords User Accounts ( for life) by identifying;

"unacceptable business practices and policy violations for poor-quality landing pages ,,,"

They say that these include but are not limited to :

• Data collection sites that offer free items, etc., in order to collect private information
• Arbitrage sites without relevant and original content that are designed for the purpose of showing ads
• Affiliate sites without relevant and original content that are designed to drive traffic to another site with a different domain
• "Get-rich quick" sites
• Malware sites that install software on a visitor's computer
• Poor comparison shopping or travel sites whose primary purpose is to send users to other shopping/travel comparison sites, rather than to provide useful content or additional search functionality.

Let's take an overview of these unacceptable practices;

Data Collection Sites
Google here is concerned with sites that exist simply to collect information from users - usually solely to support later marketing efforts. You may have seen sites that are basically offer you a free e-book or something to try to get your email or other ID information. They usually offer no other information of any value because that's all they are trying to do. They use this information solely for marketing purposes. Google says - "BAD" and they're out.

Arbitrage sites:
Ever been to a site where the top half of the page is simply Adsense advertising? Yes? Well the chances are that these are arbitrage sites. They use Adwords to buy cheap click traffic and aim to get you to click on their Ads at a higher click price paid to them. They pocket the difference between what they buy a click for on Adwords and what they are paid for a click by Adsense. Google says "NO LIKEY!" and they are banished.

Affiliate Sites without relevant and informative content.
People who use the Internet are looking for things but they are not always looking to be sold to. They want sites that have some interest such as opinion and information. Affiliate sites with no relevant and informative content add nothing but another click and web page between the person and their goal. They add nothing on the way of any value. Affiliates can play a reasonable role in the ecology of the Internet but on Google's patch they must add value of some sort.

Get rich quick sites
Check out on line adverts on sites which cover running an Internet hobby business and you will find Adverts for get rich quick schemes. These schemes almost never get you rich quick. The best will give you an income, even a reasonable one, if you work hard at them. The poorest may cost you money for no result. Thankfully advert servers such as Google are getting better at squeezing out those who make false promises about getting rich quickly.

Malware Sites
There is no defending people who would stoop to intentionally delivering malware or spyware to peoples sites. Google has been actively trying to remove such sites from the search results and it is rightly making sure that such sites can't exposed themselves to visitors by using Adwords. Few will mourn their passing.

Poor Comparison Shopping or travel sites
While some sites offer useful search and comparison features there are some sites which offer little real value for the user. They add nothing to the user experience. Google expects that such sites will add useful content or additional search functionality. Trying to use Adwords to promote "thin" sites will result in the Adwords account being banned.

Remember that Google applies it's rules algorithmically. In basic terms it writes a program that applies rules that test if a site fits one ( or more ) of these types. This type of programmed identification may not always be 100% accurate so if you are an Adwords user, or thinking of becoming one, then make sure you do not advertise any site that might risk being categorised as one of these types.

There are plenty of ways to make money from the Internet which give visitors value - if you do that then you will have earned your Internet income.
Google Adwords: About Disabled Accounts