New Year's Resolutions for AdSense Publishers

The dawn of 2006. It's traditional in many cultures to make resolutions for the new year. These resolutions often revolve (at least in North America) around losing weight and exercising more, but there are other resolutions you can make. Here's my list of possible resolutions for AdSense publishers to make. If you want to increase your AdSense earnings, here are the kinds of things you should resolve to do in the new year:

1. I resolve to use channels effectively. Google gives AdSense publishers a simple tool to gather and analyze statistics, the concept of channels. If you have one or two small sites, for example, there's no reason why you can't go and create a URL channel for each page on your site. The time to do this would be now, at the beginning of a new month. Then watch those statistics and see which pages are the ones that are really making you money. You can also use custom channels to great effect, for example to gather stats on which ad formats work best for you. Smart publishers include the format name in the channel name so that they know exactly what's what when they're looking through the list of channels.
2. I resolve to try out horizontal ad link units. When ad link units were first introduced, they didn't seem like an obvious winner to me. That changed, though, when Google introduced the horizontal format. I find that a well-placed horizontal link unit near the top of the page works well on most of my sites. Try it!
3. I resolve to implement alternate URLs. The AdSense alternate URL feature lets you tell Google what to display when there are no ads available. If there's no alternate URL specified, Google displays a public service announcement. You might as well display an ad for something that either generates you more publicity, makes you money, or promotes a specific cause/site that you support. Creating an alternate URL isn't that hard, there are good instructions in the AdSense support center. You can even go so far as to make your own text ads, just like the ones you see here on this site (they're labeled “Ads by Eric”).
4. I resolve to get more traffic to my site/blog. As I described it in The AdSense Formula, if you want more money you need to get more clicks. One way to get more clicks is to get more traffic coming to your site. And I don't mean using one of those “we'll send you 1000 visitors” schemes — they won't make you any money. You need qualified traffic, traffic that's interested in what your site/blog has to offer. So are you doing everything you can to promote your site/blog? Is the URL in your email and forum signatures? Have you written free articles? Have you done proper search engine optimization? I've listed a number of traffic tips in the past few months — have you followed any of them?
5. I resolve to create a second site/blog. At some point, you'll hit a limit on the amount of traffic you can get to your site or blog. The next step, then, is to create a second site. Don't abandon your first site — unless, of course, it's something that can run on auto-pilot — but spend most of your time and energy on establishing the second site. You'll find the small, niche site strategy can work exceptionally well as a passive income generation tool. Some people create a new site every week. It's the shampoo principle: rinse, wash, and repeat.
6. I resolve to try different ad formats. This is very basic, yes, but trying different ad formats is always a useful experiment. For one thing, if you have regular visitors (repeat visitors who don't click ads much) you may find it shakes them out of their banner blindness. Experiment — what works for you doesn't always work for other sites.
7. I resolve to write original content. This is something I've always expounded. Write something original, don't just repost other people's material. Give people a reason to come to your site/blog. But you need to set aside time to do it.

Well, that's a good start at least. More resolutions tomorrow, perhaps? In any case, I wish everyone reading this a happy and healthy new year!

Eric Giguere is the AdSense expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google. Subscribe to his AdSense newsletter for more tips and advice on AdSense and content monetization.

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