What does it take to get Adsense to work? Any ideas??

i hear the most effective thing to do is have either the 300x250 or 250x250 smack dab in the middle of each blog post. Like somewhere half-way thru the article. It certainly doesn't look pretty since that ad size doesn't really fit well there aesthetically, but I hear from many people that its those ads that get the most clicks. Also the sidebar tower, the wide one seems to also get a lot.

u can also scrap the text ads entirely, no one clicks on them. I mean, do u ever click on the text ads? probably not. but we ALL click on those image ads every now and then

1. The right niche
2. Good CPC
3. Correct landing page
4. Real and consistent traffic

I took a look at your site and I think your site looks TOO good/pretty. I have found (along with others who do Adsense sites) that the uglier the site the better. Now, that doesn't mean to go destroying the look of your site, but you could start by putting a large banner across the top of your site right below the menu bar and make it blend well. Brighter or stronger background colors seem to do well, and match the banner background color with it while making the link color on your ads the standard blue to show well (looks like you might know that already).

I have found that the largest banner ad does 10 times better for me. Move a lot more of your main content lower on the page and your click through should improve.

Be sure to not limit the types of ads on your site too much too.

I have some of the ugliest sites on the internet, but they are SEOed well and they convert super high. I've always hated the way they look until I found out I get better click through ratios than most people. I found out its because its ugly and people don't expect it to look like that so they start clicking on things sooner than later. It was all by accident, but it sure works.

All of my sites that are built on better/nicer CMS platforms don't perform nearly as well.

Nice website. I was interested in one of your ads and I clicked it.

Chad

You have some code wrong, probably a tag that's not closed properly.
That's the bad thing about WP. Go messing with the html and
it may cost you.

The site is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too busy.

If you really want some good tips on adsense, from me, they are not
for the WP faint of heart.

Plain, old fashioned black text white background, one article
per page, simple html-php-etc. is pretty darn good.

Putting ads within, to the side, are probably best.

Your ads are muddled up with pics, boxes, etc.

Nobody sees a clear ad to click. Way too many pictures.
Just way too much for a user to navigate through, very
hard on the eyes. I'd surf in and out real quick.

This site was my guide, although for some reason the site
no longer exists. You can view it by the wayback machine.
Black boxes were adsense ad blocks.
School Grants, College Scholarships, Student Financial Aid And Scholarship Information
(It may take a while to load)
That site is the epitome of how to make an adsense site, as well as internal
linking. They had used default ad colors, all text.

If you insist on all those pics, at least change your ads to all text.

Paul

blend in your adds,add sky scrapper next to categories and see what articles people read the most. Add after read more/in the end/or after comments. I check which adds convert more,leave them,change 2-3 others,see if its making me more.You must collect data to know your setup and collors that will work better. and yeah,too much of everything in once place

You need a good niche and good traffic, or just a massive site with millions of visitors.

Folk here are often too obsessed with traffic quantity. If you're using AdSense then you need traffic QUALITY. If your site has too much poor quality traffic then you'll not make AdWords advertisers any money and Google will close your account.

Bad traffic includes traffic bought from those ads you see when you're trying to download warez, social traffic, or people who are looking for "red toaster photos", not "buy red toaster".

Don't be too aggressive with ad placement. If your users don't want to click, don't make them click. This can also lead to a ban.

Adsense is fairly simple:

*Good keyword research is the main thing, you need to be able to rank, and once ranking, you need enough traffic to make the effort of ranking worthwhile. Check for a high competition keyword which has a decent CPC and that the exact match searches make it worth the effort.
*Don't place too many ads, i've found it's better to simply use 1 or 2 ads. Go with the 336x280 ad unit. Also, use text ads only, i don't know what the other guy was talking about image ads, but i've found image ads to convert terribly compared to text.

And thats pretty much it. Have a site which has a decent amount of traffic, which is a high competiton keyword where there are many advertisers, paying a high CPC. Have your theme set up correctly, and you're good to go.

Just from a quick look, your title is too long. It scrolls off the side in your banner image and pushes your tagline where it cannot be read (Firefox). You should fix that. Now, as a site for children, you are going to get visits from parents. Try replacing the homepage with a single welcome article and some recommendations of what they should do next. Tell them what to do, and where the information is. The way the site's laid out, most people will get to the site, not know what to do or what to click on next and just leave. To see if I'm right, check your bounce rate in your server logs. So, in short, fix the title and as was pointed out above, simplify the home page. The ad should be a large rectangle that's right justified so it is closest to the middle of the page. I like a simple small horizontal banner above the content for the homepage and a sidebar ad block (just one). Good luck.