Because one purpose of advertising on Google AdWords is to build “brand” awareness for your web address!

Imagine watching a commercial on TV for a cool new product that you would like to buy. But whoops, the advertiser didn’t tell you the name of the product. So the advertiser misses out on a sale.

So what you say. With AdWords, people can just click on the ad and see what it is you are selling. Not so fast. Not everyone will click on your advertisement. Perhaps less than 5% of your page impressions will be converted to clicks. But if you place your URL on your ad, you’ll build “brand” awareness in your web address. Thus, when a potential customer is ready to use your service, they would hopefully remember your URL and type it directly in the address bar rather than having to happen upon your ad while surfing.

And Because AdSense Publishers cannot click on the advertisements

Here’s another reason. Google AdSense publishers get paid a portion from advertisements placed on their web pages. They cannot however click on those advertisements. Because if they do, they could be banned by Google for click fraud. And no one wants that. But what’s an ethical AdSense Publisher to do if he sees an intriguing AdWords ad? He can’t click it. But he can type the address into the address bar. But only if the URL is displayed.

Want to see what I mean? Take a look at this screen shot from my blog Instantly Iconic:

The ads on the right contain the URL of the advertisers. The ones on the left do not.

If I were in the market for K-Swiss shoes, I could go directly to Amazon or Dicks Sporting Goods by typing in the web address. I would totally bypass the two advertisers on the left. Which would be a shame for them because they missed out on a possible sale. And it may be a shame for me if one of those two offered the lowest price on K-Swiss shoes.

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Well if so, you may be leaving money on the table.

Why?

Because, Google AdSense links that match the colors of your blog’s link tend to perform better than those that don’t match. While I don’t have scientific evidence to back this up, there tends to be a consensus out there regarding this advice.

Great you say. So what differentiates this particular post with those of the multitude of other similar posts. Here, I’ll show you how to match colors.

Let’s take my blog Instantly Iconic as an example. There, my blog links and AdSense links are orange.

As with my other blogs, I use WordPress as the platform to run the site. So this example will be WordPress centric. The directions for other platforms should be similar.

The first thing you should do is determine the color code for your blog’s links. To do so, goto your WordPress Dashboard and select the Presentation > Theme Editor tabs.

Next, look for a file called style.css. In your list, it may be displayed as something different such as “stylesheet”, but the actual name of the file should be style.css.

I usually search for the word “hover” or “visited” because these words are typically associated with hyperlinks. [Note: I am not a programmer by any means, I'm just a simple attorney. So please forgive the lack of precise technical jargon. But if you're reading this, that might be a good thing.] Once you find one of those words, you should be close to the link color code section.

In my blog, I found it associated with the following code:

/*—:[ global elements ]:—*/

a { color: #e1771e; text-decoration: underline; }

a:visited { color: #e1771e; text-decoration: underline; }

a:hover { color: #0060ff; text-decoration: underline; }

a img { border: none; }

When you look at the code, look for the word “color” followed by a six character alphanumeric code. In this case, it is e1771e. The other code, 0060ff, is the color when your pointer hovers over the hyperlink.

Now that you have the code, go into your AdSense account. Type in the code in the “title” and “URL” fields.

As you type in the information, Google AdSense will display the color that you typed in. Hopefully, if you got the code right, the AdSense link color and your blog’s link color will match.

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photo credit: helmet13

I used to be of the opinion that I should start at least a hundred websites with the goal of making a buck or two a day from each one. That would gross me a hundie or two hundie a day which would be nice. And, of course, I was caught up in the adsense goldrush (I’m going to claim credit for coining that phrase) and thought I could make all my coin through adsense alone. A year or so later, I’ve settled on the opposite approach with maybe one caveat. You are better off focusing on a just a few websites and scrapping plans for the 97 others.

A friend and I started www.ohiolandlordtenant.com back in late 1999 or early 2000. I wish we had started a couple more at that time. Actually, I also used to own ohioemploymentlaw.com but gave up that domain. Stupid move! Anyways, with some work over the next several years, we get some very decent traffic stats. It’s no espn.com or cnn.com by any means, but for a two man show, ’tain’t bad!

With the relatively recent success of that site, we thought we could translate that success into several other sites. Not so fast, skippy! For the most part, website development is a lot like investing in the stock market. Invest for the long term and you’ll be better off. Some people have the more immediate winners but most of us need a good long run before we see more than just chump change. Now, if you want to invest several grand into marketing your site, you might be able to quickly parlay that into a fat profit. But most people who blog want to pan for adsense gold in the river and not invest in the heavy mining equipment.

Now you might say that if website development is like the stock market then why not diversify with several sites. Here’s why I wouldn’t:

1. Most of you have real day jobs. So you are left blogging in your rare spare. Good luck trying to continually update 8 dozen sites.
2. Quality content is a large factor in the success of your blog. You will be lucky to generate QC for a few blogs let alone scores more.
3. We are only passionate about so much in life. Stick to what you are passionate about and you will eventually find success.
4. This may be the biggest point – The math is against you. You may think that it’s easy to generate a buck or so from each site each day but it’s much harder than you think.

Let’s say you average 5 cents a click from google adsense. And let’s say you have a pretty decent CTR (Click-Thru-Rate) of 10% of your visitors. You need 20 clicks a day to get a buck. And you would need 200 unique visitors a day to get those clicks from because only 20 or 10% of them are clicking on your google ads. 200 visitors a day is small potatoes in the world of web traffic, but, if you are trying to generate all 200 from no cost providers (i.e., search engines, incoming links, bookmarks, word of mouth), you’re in for a surprise. Add in the fact that your website is brand new and will find itself in the Google Sandbox for a good year or so and you’ll start to understand why this is a long term venture. Now you see why I wish I had a couple other domains that were a decade or so old.

I think you are far better off focusing on your three most successful sites rather than trying to keep several dozen on life support when it comes to making money on the web. And, for that matter, don’t put all your eggs in the adsense basket either. What was my one caveat? Sometimes in starting several websites you accidentally stumble onto a niche that is still wide open for the taking. If you happen to find such a niche, focus your efforts there.

* Andy runs a profitable online empire with a mix of legal, foodie and web business sites. Notably, Andy runs Ohio Landlord Tenant, the FMLA Law Reporter, Fine Repast and e-Book Now.

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