Follow me to $100 a day in Adsense in 3 months from 1 blog

[Merlinthecat]

A good idea therefore to have separate adsense accounts if you have such polarized adsense sites?

Nigel

[wellsgar]

Mike,

Please let us know your UAW results. They've been around for awhile and would be interesting to hear current results.

GaryW

Originally Posted by Mike Long

For what it's worth, and without trying to intrude on Steve's thread or promote myself, I'll be giving Unique Article Wizard a run-through on my blog over the next 90 days.

UAW approaches things a bit differently, and isn't for those who wish to take shortcuts, as you need three different versions of the same article for it to work effectively.

I have a friend who swears by it, but I'd like to see for myself.

[Nick.A]

Be careful, you could lose all your accounts! Publishers are only allowed one account, except under certain circustances e.g. adding a business account with a different payee name. Sorry, I can't provide the relevant link as my post count is not high enough, but if you search Google AdSense help using the phrase "Can I sign up for more than one account?" you will find it.

Hope that helps.

Originally Posted by Merlinthecat

A good idea therefore to have separate adsense accounts if you have such polarized adsense sites?

Nigel

[Julia Andersson]

Hi bgmacaw

You've mentioned the smart pricing issue a couple of times. Do you know of any way to get google to review if a person thinks they may have had smart pricing applied to their adsense account?

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

Smart pricing is one of those things that you won't always notice unless you've found a good high paying niche.

For example, let's say you found a good legal niche with a few 100 unique search visitors a day where you were getting $7-15 a click with around 5 clicks a day. Now you put Adsense on your social personal blog where you get a lot of 'helpful', non-converting, traffic. Your Adsense there gets 1 or 2 cents a click. Suddenly, you notice that your once profitable legal blog has also gone from $7+ a click to 25 cents a click. Ouch! That's because Google will smart price your whole account, not just the site with lousy traffic.

Now, if you flip that around and you have a personal blog that gets cheap clicks already you may think your legal blog is doing great with 25 to 50 cent clicks but, in reality, you're leaving a lot of money in Google's pocket.

[Steve Crooks]

Hi Julia,

It's a bit old but it is from the horses mouth about smart pricing..
Inside AdSense: The facts about smart pricing

I think so long as you provide good quality user oriented content you shouldn't get hit by smart pricing.

Originally Posted by Julia Andersson

Hi bgmacaw

You've mentioned the smart pricing issue a couple of times. Do you know of any way to get google to review if a person thinks they may have had smart pricing applied to their adsense account?

[Steve Crooks]

I have just updated the 100 bucks challenge blog with the latest news and screensots of my challenge. Traffic is starting to trickle in with 15 articles posted and indexed in google. I have also listed all the promotion techniques that I have undertaken and about to take.

[mfurlong]

Originally Posted by Steve Crooks

I have just updated the 100 bucks challenge blog with the latest news and screensots of my challenge. Traffic is starting to trickle in with 15 articles posted and indexed in google. I have also listed all the promotion techniques that I have undertaken and about to take.

Steve,

Gave your blog post a read. Are you using any software for social bookmarking and/or RSS feed submissions?

Thanks! >>> Mike

[Steve Crooks]

Yes, I am using bookmarking demon and rss submit respectively.

Originally Posted by mfurlong

Steve,

Gave your blog post a read. Are you using any software for social bookmarking and/or RSS feed submissions?

Thanks! >>> Mike

[SaSeoPete]

Hey Steve, looks like you are doing well!

I have been following and submitting 3 articles a day. Most are now indexed by Google and I am using Big Mikes Rss and social bookmarking software for promotion.

Yesterday I got 8 uniques from Google. The same as you, they were variations of the longtail keyowrds that I am targeting. I am up to 15 articles too.

I submitted my sitemap.

I need to now write a presales landing page for the clickbank product that I am promoting. I will also submit 5 articles to Ezine this evening to drive traffic.

Just an update!

[Mrs S]

Originally Posted by Oscar D

Ok, my wordpress blog is live, but it still needs some work. I am going to change it a little but I do understand that adding content is vital.

I just wanna add that the blog is not being made with the intention to make money with Adsense as their is basically no ads on this niche. Instead I will try to make money selling and promoting Clickbank info products regarding the niche.

Thanks

Oscar if there are limited/no ads in your niche try an adsense link unit. I have a single post that pulls in a lot of traffic but has little or no related ads - so I added a link unit and now that single post is my top adsense earner!

[Steve Crooks]

Awesome mate, Love it!! The race is on..

Originally Posted by SaSeoPete

Hey Steve, looks like you are doing well!

I have been following and submitting 3 articles a day. Most are now indexed by Google and I am using Big Mikes Rss and social bookmarking software for promotion.

Yesterday I got 8 uniques from Google. The same as you, they were variations of the longtail keyowrds that I am targeting. I am up to 15 articles too.

I submitted my sitemap.

I need to now write a presales landing page for the clickbank product that I am promoting. I will also submit 5 articles to Ezine this evening to drive traffic.

Just an update!

[SaSeoPete]

Originally Posted by Steve Crooks

Awesome mate, Love it!! The race is on..

HAHA!

It sure is!

[viewsource]

Hi Steve,
thanks a lot for this public project!

Me like many other readers love this success stories, where we can see other marketers making real money.... For me it's a real inspiration!

I have a question about how much can we make with our sites.... I think not every site can make 100$ a day .... So there is a average that we can consider?
At this moment my personal blog make only 10$-15$ money, but I'm still improving it

Can you tell us how many sites do you developed and manage? And how much you can earn monthly from them?

Example:
site 1 -> 50000 monthly visitis -> 1000$
site 2 -> 5000 monthly visitis -> 100$
site 3 -> 5000 monthly visitis -> 200$
ecc ecc

Thanks!

[Steve Crooks]

It's dependent on so many factors that there really isn't a stock answer to this question. The one overriding factor is of course how lucrative the niche you are in is with regard to advertiser spend.

If you follow the three criteria of a good adsense niche you can very very generally estimate that for every 2000 visitors you should aim to earn between $80 and $100. Like I say this is dependent on many things.

Originally Posted by viewsource

Hi Steve,
thanks a lot for this public project!

Me like many other readers love this success stories, where we can see other marketers making real money.... For me it's a real inspiration!

I have a question about how much can we make with our sites.... I think not every site can make 100$ a day .... So there is a average that we can consider?
At this moment my personal blog make only 10$-15$ money, but I'm still improving it

Can you tell us how many sites do you developed and manage? And how much you can earn monthly from them?

Example:
site 1 -> 50000 monthly visitis -> 1000$
site 2 -> 5000 monthly visitis -> 100$
site 3 -> 5000 monthly visitis -> 200$
ecc ecc

Thanks!

[krishananda]

Hi Steve,

Wow I'm really amazed by this thread, you really create a buzz!!! Congratulations to you, I hope you achieve your goal, this could inspire others to not give up in blogging.

Truly a thread about a challenge has turn into a thread for general talking about blogging and adsense.

Perhaps the mods should make this a sticky then?

Cheers

[viewsource]

Hi Steve,
Thanks for your fast reply

2000 daily visitors -> 80$-100$ are really great numbers to me
I hope I'll get the same with your tips

I understand very well that there are many different factors in this "job": niche, contents, site age, links, seo.... etc etc
So my question was very "difficult" to have a real answer

For this reasons I was asking for real life examples .... I suppose you have many sites and some are better than other. .... But I'd like to know monthly how much I can imagine to earn working hard.

With 4 sites with 2000 daily visitors, can I get this kind of numbers?
2000 * 4 = 8000 -> 80$ * 4 -> 320$ Daily

It's a dream .... but I think that in this discussion there are many readers that do it right now

[peter gibson]

Originally Posted by viewsource

Hi Steve,
Thanks for your fast reply

2000 daily visitors -> 80$-100$ are really great numbers to me
I hope I'll get the same with your tips

I understand very well that there are many different factors in this "job": niche, contents, site age, links, seo.... etc etc
So my question was very "difficult" to have a real answer

For this reasons I was asking for real life examples .... I suppose you have many sites and some are better than other. .... But I'd like to know monthly how much I can imagine to earn working hard.

With 4 sites with 2000 daily visitors, can I get this kind of numbers?
2000 * 4 = 8000 -> 80$ * 4 -> 320$ Daily

It's a dream .... but I think that in this discussion there are many readers that do it right now

This is an excellent question, and I hope Steve can answer in kind. My opinion is that yes, your numbers are realistic, if you are working smart and hard on the blogs.

Somewhat off topic, but I have to say that of anyone here posting a challenge, I have already learned more fro Steve than all others combined. His hints, tips and tricks here and over at his 100 Buck challenge blog already made my work much easier. Steve, another kudos from me.

[Steve Crooks]

Thanks for the kind words Peter.

Originally Posted by peter gibson

This is an excellent question, and I hope Steve can answer in kind. My opinion is that yes, your numbers are realistic, if you are working smart and hard on the blogs.

Somewhat off topic, but I have to say that of anyone here posting a challenge, I have already learned more fro Steve than all others combined. His hints, tips and tricks here and over at his 100 Buck challenge blog already made my work much easier. Steve, another kudos from me.

[Steve Crooks]

The truth is that your earning potential is only limited to exactly how much time, energy and maybe money you are prepared to invest. You can choose to do everything yourself of which the cost is your time and energy or you can choose to spend money and save time and energy.

The 2000 visitors = $100 is just a rough guide like I said earlier and it all boils down to how you get those 2000 GENUINE visitors a day. I emphsise the "genuine" because there are some unscrupulous methods of generating traffic which are at best a waste of time and at worst can lead to an adsense ban. so don't be fooled by these traffic schemes and dodgy arbritrage tactics.

The techniques I show will get you genuine traffic and it is up to you how much you want to scale up or down depending on your goals and time. I haven't even started yet though, once you start thinking about how to make your blog sticky (returning visitors) by using forums, picture galleries, user reviews, videos and many more things you can really start to ramp up the monetization techniques.

Talking of monetization I have deliberately not started on that yet and I have been asked by many why I don't add adsense from the start? The simple reason is I just want to concentrate on getting the content up and traffic in beforehand. This may be a bit misguided but it's a brand new domain and I am not sure how google really treats new domains. There are a lot of theories out there so I decide to just play it safe.

Originally Posted by viewsource

Hi Steve,
Thanks for your fast reply

2000 daily visitors -> 80$-100$ are really great numbers to me
I hope I'll get the same with your tips

I understand very well that there are many different factors in this "job": niche, contents, site age, links, seo.... etc etc
So my question was very "difficult" to have a real answer

For this reasons I was asking for real life examples .... I suppose you have many sites and some are better than other. .... But I'd like to know monthly how much I can imagine to earn working hard.

With 4 sites with 2000 daily visitors, can I get this kind of numbers?
2000 * 4 = 8000 -> 80$ * 4 -> 320$ Daily

It's a dream .... but I think that in this discussion there are many readers that do it right now

[ElaineBaker]

Great thread Steve - have already subscribed to it.

I have only found this thread today and am amazed at the following you have for it.

It's a great challenge and I'm sure you will succeed - the only thing is - how on earth do you get the time to do everything - building the blog, writing articles, posting articles, posting to this forum - you must be one organised man...

Anyway will be following you to the end - I have learnt so much from you today.

Keep up the good work.

Elaine

[Steve Crooks]

Can I print this and show my wife? She will laugh..

Originally Posted by ElaineBaker

the only thing is - how on earth do you get the time to do everything - building the blog, writing articles, posting articles, posting to this forum - you must be one organised man...

[Oling]

This is by far the greatest thread i have seen on this forum for a longest while ... since I joined Warrior forum..

Thanks a whole lot Steve for this extermely informative follow me thru type thing..

Thanks Agian,
Oing

[Hyaku_Man]

I've decided to follow along with this challenge in parallel with you Steve (though I'm a bit behind and just got started a couple days ago).

I've actually made some blogs that do really well in terms of visitors and clicks, using methods similar to what you're outlining here. The problem is that I've always chosen low-paying niches without really knowing it, so the most I make from a single blog is about $25/day. Not bad, but that's for around 450 clicks, so only 5 or 6 cents per click.

So I'm going to make another one and make it the best one yet.

Thanks for the inspiration.

[meadow.c]

Another question Steve, in your experience up to what kind of bounce rate is expected before looking for reasons?

[Steve Crooks]

Can you elaborate a bit more please? I don't really understand the question..

Originally Posted by meadow.c

Another question Steve, in your experience up to what kind of bounce rate is expected before looking for reasons?

[meadow.c]

Actually I use Google analytics and it shows also the bounce rate i.e. the visitors left from the first page itself.
So just wondering do you take this into account i.e. if that rate is too high (what is high?) then why - may be we are targeting wrong keywords and may be website is not appealing etc.

Originally Posted by Steve Crooks

Can you elaborate a bit more please? I don't really understand the question..

[Mr. Armsey]

Nice information here. I'll be using it soon, myself!!! Thanks

[Steve Crooks]

Well this brings up an interesting conundrum because on the one hand we want our bounce rate to remain reasonably low because there is an unproven theory that google penalises sites with a high bounce rate. On the other hand we are deliberately not putting too many exit points on our blogs other than link partners, the close button and of course adsense. We actually want people to exit our blogs via the adsense ads rather than any other link.

How do we achieve this? We want our visitors to spend some time surfing around our blog before they exit so include plenty of contextual links to other pages within our blog. This way we will hopefully get our visitors to take a good look around before eventually leaving via an adsense ad. This will keep our bounce rate low and our income high.

You need to ensure that your articles are readable as this is the only way they will navigate around your blog to other posts.

Originally Posted by meadow.c

Actually I use Google analytics and it shows also the bounce rate i.e. the visitors left from the first page itself.
So just wondering do you take this into account i.e. if that rate is too high (what is high?) then why - may be we are targeting wrong keywords and may be website is not appealing etc.

[Oling]

Steve,
I just bought your ebook - Unlock the secrets to adsense success. do I get the free blogs installed? Am I still part of the first 50? I also subscribe to the "100 dollar a day challenge"

Thanks
Oling

[Steve Crooks]

Yes you certainly are, if you email or PM me the niche you want to target and any images you want included on the header graphic, you will get your free theme.

Originally Posted by Oling

Steve,
I just bought your ebook - Unlock the secrets to adsense success. do I get the free blogs installed? Am I still part of the first 50? I also subscribe to the "100 dollar a day challenge"

Thanks
Oling

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Steve Crooks

Well this brings up an interesting conundrum because on the one hand we want our bounce rate to remain reasonably low because there is an unproven theory that google penalises sites with a high bounce rate.

I've never seen this happen. Very high CTR, over about 30%, will probably draw a visual inspection by the Adsense team but bounce rate doesn't seem to be a consideration. Almost all of my Adsense and eBay/EPN sites have a bounce rate of over 85% with very decent, but not excessive, CTR. For example, this applies to my review site in my sig where I have a core of about 200 regular readers but between 800-2000 unique search visitors daily.

Originally Posted by Steve Crooks

We want our visitors to spend some time surfing around our blog before they exit

I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree with you there Steve. Every page they surf to on your blog decreases your CTR and thus lowers your potential earnings. You want the majority of them to leave in less than a minute, preferably through an ad about 20% of the time. You want the McDonalds drive-thru, not Chotchkie's (neighborhood pub in case you haven't seen the movie Office Space).

[Steve Crooks]

Like I said it is not proven that bounce rate makes a difference but in case it does or will do isn't a good idea to keep our visitors on our blogs for as long as possible anyway? To me it is a better idea to have them enjoy the blog, bookmark it and hopefully return regularly. I also said exit points from our blogs need to be kept to a minimum so that hopefully they will leave via an adsense ad but I want them to look around the blog first.

So long as I hit my 10% CTR on adsense I stay under the radar from google hopefully. Any more than that, common sense tells me that google might suspect an MFA site. Only speculation I admit but why risk it?

I haven't seen the movie unfortunately but I think we will have to agree to disagree on this one. I aim for 10% CTR, if I don't hit that I will adjust and tinker until I do.

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

I've never seen this happen. Very high CTR, over about 30%, will probably draw a visual inspection by the Adsense team but bounce rate doesn't seem to be a consideration. Almost all of my Adsense and eBay/EPN sites have a bounce rate of over 85% with very decent, but not excessive, CTR. For example, this applies to my review site in my sig where I have a core of about 200 regular readers but between 800-2000 unique search visitors daily.



I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree with you there Steve. Every page they surf to on your blog decreases your CTR and thus lowers your potential earnings. You want the majority of them to leave in less than a minute, preferably through an ad about 20% of the time. You want the McDonalds drive-thru, not Chotchkie's (neighborhood pub in case you haven't seen the movie Office Space).

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Steve Crooks

To me it is a better idea to have them enjoy the blog, bookmark it and hopefully return regularly. I also said exit points from our blogs need to be kept to a minimum so that hopefully they will leave via an adsense ad but I want them to look around the blog first.

Unfortunately, return readers are poor quality ad clickers while fresh visitors from the search engines are good clickers, provided they arrive on the site via a buying keyword. You can create a blog for both but I find it more difficult to achieve results as compared to the "fire and forget" model I use more often.

My thinking is that if you have a passion for something that you probably ought to do a flagship blog on it, maybe even more than one on different passions, and get regular readers as well as search visitors. But, if your goal is to make money online using a profitable topic that you don't care that much about, such as "Ohio DUI Lawyers" or "Laser Hair Removal NYC", then go 'ugly' and concentrate on one time search traffic entirely.

Originally Posted by Steve Crooks

So long as I hit my 10% CTR on adsense I stay under the radar from google hopefully. Any more than that, common sense tells me that google might suspect an MFA site. Only speculation I admit but why risk it?

I've heard 30% CTR more often but only the Big G knows for sure. Overall, I think if your site provides some degree of value you're unlikely to have a problem. I use established affiliate sites in competitive niches, like creditcards.com, as kind of a measuring stick as to what Google thinks is acceptable. If Google didn't think they were providing value they would be penalized for sure.

[Steve Crooks]

As I said right from the start of this thread if you have a passion for something then that will be a better topic for a blog than the high paying niches anyway, so I guess we agree on that.

We all have our own experiences and you obviously are doing well with what you do, doing it your way. However, this challenge is about building up a blog from scratch within 3 months to $100 a day. It is also about trying to demonstrate the right way to build quality blogs that will last.

I don't agree that return visitors are bad clickers. Return visitors are people that love your blog and will hopefully return again and again. If they see an ad that interests them why wouldn't they click it just because they had already clicked on an ad a week ago? An ad is an ad at the end of the day, if it is appealing, then people will click.

I don't particularly have a passion about European cruises but after some research I know how I will build a good blog on the subject. I have tried building "ugly" blogs before and did quite well from adsense but they never lasted in the indexes and a couple of them ended up with warnings from google. All of them had CTR of around 20% but the content was poor. I got lucky that I got away with just a warning from google to be honest.

I respect your experiences though and I wish you good luck with what you do.

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

Unfortunately, return readers are poor quality ad clickers while fresh visitors from the search engines are good clickers, provided they arrive on the site via a buying keyword. You can create a blog for both but I find it more difficult to achieve results as compared to the "fire and forget" model I use more often.

My thinking is that if you have a passion for something that you probably ought to do a flagship blog on it, maybe even more than one on different passions, and get regular readers as well as search visitors. But, if your goal is to make money online using a profitable topic that you don't care that much about, such as "Ohio DUI Lawyers" or "Laser Hair Removal NYC", then go 'ugly' and concentrate on one time search traffic entirely.



I've heard 30% CTR more often but only the Big G knows for sure. Overall, I think if your site provides some degree of value you're unlikely to have a problem. I use established affiliate sites in competitive niches, like creditcards.com, as kind of a measuring stick as to what Google thinks is acceptable. If Google didn't think they were providing value they would be penalized for sure.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Steve Crooks

I don't agree that return visitors are bad clickers. Return visitors are people that love your blog and will hopefully return again and again. If they see an ad that interests them why wouldn't they click it just because they had already clicked on an ad a week ago?

This is great for affiliate programs like eBay/EPN or Commission Junction ads. Unfortunately, my experience with Adsense is that having regular readers who think they're doing you a favor by clicking on ads risks smart pricing. It gets even worse if the people at the same IP address or geo-location click the same ads over and over again.

Originally Posted by Steve Crooks

I have tried building "ugly" blogs before and did quite well from adsense but they never lasted in the indexes and a couple of them ended up with warnings from google. All of them had CTR of around 20% but the content was poor. I got lucky that I got away with just a warning from google to be honest.

It is a very subtle thing, making a site 'ugly' without it being a 'made for Adsense' site. Perhaps a better word would be dull, plain, generic or boring rather than ugly. The content will be good, but not great, and reasonably keyword targeted. It will also be on the long winded side. No pictures, except maybe for a logo, and poor, but readable, font and color choices. Only one ad block but a large one. I also go for less competitive terms so that they can hold a good position in search results without heavy duty link building and with less risk of competitor interference.

Anyway, there are several different strategies one can use to build successful sites and it's always good to discuss them and share ideas and experiences.

[Steve Crooks]

I haven't experienced the problems you mention with repeat visitors myself but I take on board what you are saying.

Like you say, there are many strategies for building sites and this one I am advocating works really well for me and I know it can work for others to.

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

This is great for affiliate programs like eBay/EPN or Commission Junction ads. Unfortunately, my experience with Adsense is that having regular readers who think they're doing you a favor by clicking on ads risks smart pricing. It gets even worse if the people at the same IP address or geo-location click the same ads over and over again.



It is a very subtle thing, making a site 'ugly' without it being a 'made for Adsense' site. Perhaps a better word would be dull, plain, generic or boring rather than ugly. The content will be good, but not great, and reasonably keyword targeted. It will also be on the long winded side. No pictures, except maybe for a logo, and poor, but readable, font and color choices. Only one ad block but a large one. I also go for less competitive terms so that they can hold a good position in search results without heavy duty link building and with less risk of competitor interference.

Anyway, there are several different strategies one can use to build successful sites and it's always good to discuss them and share ideas and experiences.

[F1SEO]

I reactivated my account so that I could just post on this. What an awesome thread!

I was wondering how you were going to decide on colour of the ads? It sounds a bit trivial, but I reckon it's quite important. To blend, to contrast, or blue .. what do you think Steve?

[Mrs S]

Makes sense - so how do you get away from smart pricing if it has already happened? Remove the ads from the low converting sites and wait it out?

[Steve Crooks]

Yes, do that and just ensure that every site you put adsense on adheres to google's TOS. Attract some good targeted traffic by writing good content and don't use any silly gimmicks to artificially inflate CTR (images near ads, arrows pointing to ads, "read more..." text just above ad block).

Originally Posted by Mrs S

Makes sense - so how do you get away from smart pricing if it has already happened? Remove the ads from the low converting sites and wait it out?

[Steve Crooks]

No, it's not trivial and I will go over what I do when I add some adsense blocks to my blog but it involves testing and tracking different combinations.

Originally Posted by F1SEO

I reactivated my account so that I could just post on this. What an awesome thread!

I was wondering how you were going to decide on colour of the ads? It sounds a bit trivial, but I reckon it's quite important. To blend, to contrast, or blue .. what do you think Steve?

[DeanJames]

Originally Posted by Julia Andersson

You've mentioned the smart pricing issue a couple of times. Do you know of any way to get google to review if a person thinks they may have had smart pricing applied to their adsense account?

If you think your account has been smart priced, look at the blogs/sites you have which have a very low CTR. If you suspect one of them remove the ads for at least 1 week on that particular site and see if things are back to normal 1-2 weeks later. If they are not, remove the ads off all the sites with low CTR in your portfolio and repeat this process. If things are back to normal 1-2 weeks later you know that one of 'x' sites is the offending site. Gradually add sites back in with ads on and monitor. Allow enough time between each one until you find the site/s causing smart pricing to kick in. Once you have established that, use those sites for something else monetization wise.

Dean

[Julia Andersson]

Thanks Dean

Thankfully I haven't been smart priced. The one site that has adsense earns anything from $0.01-$1.50 per click (average being about $0.30). The reason I asked the question was for the benefit of others who may have been hit with smart pricing... and also in case I ever suspected that smart pricing had been applied to my account.

Quick question though... does anybody have any idea what percentage of adwords revenue is passed on to adsense publishers? In other words, if a keyword has a CPC of $9.59 for advertisers and their link is displayed on my page... approximately how much of that amount would I earn if someone clicked the link.

Originally Posted by DeanJames

If you think your account has been smart priced, look at the blogs/sites you have which have a very low CTR. If you suspect one of them remove the ads for at least 1 week on that particular site and see if things are back to normal 1-2 weeks later. If they are not, remove the ads off all the sites with low CTR in your portfolio and repeat this process. If things are back to normal 1-2 weeks later you know that one of 'x' sites is the offending site. Gradually add sites back in with ads on and monitor. Allow enough time between each one until you find the site/s causing smart pricing to kick in. Once you have established that, use those sites for something else monetization wise.

Dean

[Steve Crooks]

Google don't disclose such information but personally I see anywhere around 20 to 50% of the exact CPC according to google's keyword tool.

Originally Posted by Julia Andersson

Thanks Dean

Thankfully I haven't been smart priced. The one site that has adsense earns anything from $0.01-$1.50 per click (average being about $0.30). The reason I asked the question was for the benefit of others who may have been hit with smart pricing... and also in case I ever suspected that smart pricing had been applied to my account.

Quick question though... does anybody have any idea what percentage of adwords revenue is passed on to adsense publishers? In other words, if a keyword has a CPC of $9.59 for advertisers and their link is displayed on my page... approximately how much of that amount would I earn if someone clicked the link.

[Ph0ny]

Great thread, great challenge, great information!

One question, how long are the articles you post? Should I look at ezine size? 400 word or more?

Best of luck! Im sure you will make it

[Steve Crooks]

Yes, around 400 - 600 words is good.

Originally Posted by Ph0ny

Great thread, great challenge, great information!

One question, how long are the articles you post? Should I look at ezine size? 400 word or more?

Best of luck! Im sure you will make it

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Mrs S

Makes sense - so how do you get away from smart pricing if it has already happened? Remove the ads from the low converting sites and wait it out?

Yes, although it can be hard sometimes to figure out which site is the problem site if you have a lot of them. You have to look at both the CTR and traffic sources to figure it out. It takes, on average, about 10-14 days for an account to start earning again.

I had this happen when I added Entrecard to the review blog in my sig and 'helpful' Entrecarders started clicking my ads but not converting. They probably were not even looking at the landing pages. I pulled Adsense from the blog and my other blogs went back to their normal earnings within 2 weeks.

This does go back to bounce rates that Steve mentioned earlier, bounce rate is more important to the merchant page than it is your pages. If your traffic to a merchant page has a high bounce rate then the merchant, who's paying good money to advertise on Adsense, won't be happy and this might lead to you being smart priced. That's why the quality of the traffic you send to merchant sites is so important. You want it to be a win/win for both you and the merchant.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Ph0ny

One question, how long are the articles you post? Should I look at ezine size? 400 word or more?

I agree with Steve, 400-600 words is usually good enough. Shorter articles may not trigger the ads correctly and you may get the dreaded PSA's (public service announcements) or lower paying ads. Sometimes I use longer articles in the 1000 word range to explore new keyword combinations for SEO purposes but this is already after the site is seeing good search traffic for its primary keyword combos.

[winy925]

is this system working out or no

[Ph0ny]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

I agree with Steve, 400-600 words is usually good enough. Shorter articles may not trigger the ads correctly and you may get the dreaded PSA's (public service announcements) or lower paying ads. Sometimes I use longer articles in the 1000 word range to explore new keyword combinations for SEO purposes but this is already after the site is seeing good search traffic for its primary keyword combos.

Thank you very much for that info! Appreciate it!

You mention new keyword combinations, and I have thought about that. For now I have keyword-density around 2.5, 3 % title included, per article/post for my main phrase. Is that sufficient? Or should I add a few more combinations, pushing the percentage even higher to, say 4?

Best regards / Mike

[meadow.c]

Steve, you mentioned earlier that you are looking for 20/33 visitors per article.
Just wondering what kind of search volume per month that keyword should have to get that many visitors from that article, any approx numbers/guide?