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Google Adsense
Explained
Copyright © 2004, Sharon Housley
NotePage, Inc.
http://www.notepage.net
The Rise
and Fall of Affiliate Programs
Affiliate programs were once a great
source of online revenue, a
savvy webmaster with an eye for marketing could
easily parley a
site into a money making machine with a little luck and
effort.
However, the evolution and growth of the Internet has hampered
the
growth of fortune making affiliate programs. Constant search
engine algorithm
changes, along with the search engine's clear
distaste for sites
participating in affiliate programs; have made it a little more difficult to
earn a healthy affiliate revenue. An influx in the use of software programs
that terminate cookie tracking and privacy programs that
prevent webmasters from tracking referrers, have also hindered
the affiliate sales channel. While it is still possible to make money
through affiliate marketing, other alternatives ought to be
considered.
A Healthy Alternative or Supplement
Google's
Adsense program allows approved websites to dynamically serve Google's
pay-per-click Adword results. This has become a popular alternative and an
effective revenue sharing program for webmasters. Google's spider parses the
adserving website and serves ads that relate to the website's content. While
the Google's Adsense program still has some issues, they are
making efforts to improve it.
The website maintenance related to
Adsense is very easy and
requires very little effort. Webmasters need only to
insert javascript into the webpage or website template. The
javascript calls the ad from Google and will ensure that ads are
served each time a visitor goes to the webpage. If the visitor clicks one
of the Adsense ads served to the website, the website owner is credited for
the referral.
The implementation, while simple, has its drawbacks.
Google
dictates the format of the ads. Webmasters can select from
a
handful of preformatted text boxes that lack creativity. A recent
improvement allows webmasters to modify the ad boxes to resemble the
website's color scheme. Still, a far cry from some of the creative ads
webmasters are accustom to.
The example below reflects how the color
scheme can be modified
to match the look of the website, but the ads
physically don't fit well into the overall website design.
sample
modified to match sites color scheme:
http://www.hospital-software.com (scroll to the bottom)
Google determines the content of the ads that are
shown/ Sometimes the ads are poorly targeted, and of no interest
to the
website visitors.
sample of poorly targeted
ads:
http://www.real-estate-supply.com Adwords can be a great addition
to a website, and when well matched to the content the revenue stream from
Google is consistent and effortless.
sample of effective Adsense
program:
http://www.police-supplies.com (scroll to the
bottom)
http://www.small-business-software.net (scroll to the
bottom)
Not that the Google Adsense program is not without its
problems,
as the reporting provided by Google is lacking. Google has
only
recently implemented channels as a way to track multiple sites
that
serve ads. The general reporting simply shows the number of
ads served, the
percentage of clicks received, and the revenue
earned each day. Google does
not disclose the amount of the
revenue they share, what percentage of the
revenue they earn and
what someone can expect to receive for each click.
Webmasters
with multiple sites will have difficulty determining
which websites are producing the money in the Adsense program.
With
affiliate programs many webmasters implement a new browser launch with each
click off the site, Adsense removes the visitor from the website and there is
not currently an option to launch the visitor into another
browser.
Early on Google implemented a filtering system that
allowed
webmasters to prevent a specific domain's ads from being served
on
the website. Ad blocking meant that webmasters could prevent
their
competitors ads from being dynamically served on
their
website.
Overall, adwords are great supplements to websites
where affiliate programs are either not performing or when
affiliate programs don't exist that target the sites content.
Give
it a Try
Implementing and maintaing Google Adsense program on a
content site requires very little effort and can often bring a
steady stream of additional revenue for webmasters. Consider
supplementing
content and see what happens.
Resource
Box:
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Sharon
Housley manages marketing for NotePage, Inc.
http://www.notepage.net a
company specializing in alphanumeric paging, SMS and wireless messaging
software solutions. Other sites by Sharon can be found at http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com,
and http://www.small-business-software.net
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