If you are anything like me you probably check your Google Adsense earnings page 20 times a day. I got sick of having to going to the Adsense page, logging in just to look for 2 seconds.

So i did some searching and found these handy little tools for checking your Adsense earnings. One is a desktop application and the other is an addon for Firefox.

Please Note: i cannot validate the security of these, so please take the usual precautions.

The first is a free tool called SynSense which is more of an AdSense monitoring tool. This sits in the tray and offers actualized AdSense stats as you hover your mouse over its icon. It’s a very nice tool for those which like to be informed on how their AdSense is doing at all times of the day. Once setup and running just right click on the icon in your tray, click accounts and your Adsense earnings page will be displayed.

Download SynSense here

If, however, you’re browsing content most of the time, and your tool of choice is the Firefox Internet browser, there’s an extension for this program that allows you to view the stats in your status bar.

Adsense Notifier displays your Adsense earnings on your Firefox status bar. It allows you to easily see your earnings at a glance instead of logging into the Adsense website multiple times a day. Again, this software is aware of Google’s 15 minute rule and enforces its usage, 15 minutes being the minimum time between updates.

The Google AdSense notifier for Firefox can be obtained from here.

Hopefully these tools will help with your Adsense addiction.

In this series I’m examining tactics that can be used to increase AdSense earnings immediately. Read the introduction to this series here.

Today I want to talk about positioning your AdSense ads - something that has a very significant impact upon the amount of money that they are able to earn.

I learned this lesson after I’d been using AdSense for some time - I often wish I’d discovered it earlier - because not thinking it through earlier cost me a significant amount of money!

My Story of Learning about AdSense Positioning

I remember clearly the time that my AdSense earnings almost doubled over night through me simply moving them from one part of my blog to another.

Up until the point where I made this discovery my AdSense ads had been largely in a banner position on my blog. I don’t remember my exact reasoning for putting it there but it was probably because that’s where I saw all the big sites doing. My blog’s post pages looked like the diagram to the right.

Performance with this positioning was OK - but then again, I didn’t know any different so while I was earning enough on my blog at this point to make a day or two a week of earnings I was blissfully unaware of the potential that my blog had to take me a step closer to going full time as a blogger.

I’m not sure of why I decided to experiment with my ad positioning but after a while of positioning my AdSense ads this way I decided to have a ‘play’ with other positions. I began to think about where on my page my readers would give their full attention and decided at the top left hand side of the content area would probably be the most logical position for people to look at a web page (as that’s where they start reading). This was at a time before AdSense brought out their ‘heatmap’ which confirmed that this was a wise move.

So late one afternoon I decided to move my ad unit from the banner position to this spot at the top left hand side of my post area.

My ads now looked like the diagram to the left.

I was actually a little nervous about making this move. What if my earnings went down and I started going backwards?

I decided to give the new position a couple of days testing. I could afford to lose earnings for two days but if they didn’t at least match the previous positioning I’d switch it back.

That night just before I went to bed I decided to log into AdSense to see what the results were like after a few hours.

Imagine my surprise when I saw my CTR 40%!

40% more readers were clicking my ads and this was obviously already impacting my overall earnings!

I didn’t sleep too well that night as I realized the power of what I’d discovered. I could potentially see a 40% increase in my earnings with a simple move of my ads.

The next morning I awoke earlier and logged into AdSense and found that the CTR was now up by just under 50%.

That day I’d increased my earnings enough to dedicate at least another day a week to blogging by simply changing the position of an ad unit!

Tips on Ad Positioning

Ad positioning is vitally important to the performance of ad units like AdSense.

In general - the positions that are ‘hot’ can be seen on the heatmap to the right (this is the official AdSense heatmap which they put together from their own research and observations of where ads work best. You can see how anywhere at the top of content can work best (the brightest orange area) but that in general above the fold and to the left seems to be the ‘hotter areas’.

This does vary from blog to blog and there are some specific spots that work best on blogs (I’ll show them below). The key is to try different things and to find what works best on your blog.

Further Reading on Ad Positioning:

• Previously on ProBlogger - Introduction to Advertising Optimization - Ad Position
• AdSense Help Page - Where should I place Google ads on my pages?

Next week I’ll continue this series of tips for increasing your AdSense earnings overnight with the continuation of my own story of learning to use AdSense and some more tactics that took my earnings to even higher levels!

Note : Articel from problogger

Are you one of those millions of people who are struggling just to earn a few dollars on Google AdSense? Do you want to know some simple yet effective tips on how you can maximize your AdSense earnings? Then read on. Below are 6 tips which will explode your AdSense earnings instantly.

1. Blending the Ads with Your Website

This is probably the most important tip when putting your google ads on your website. You must blend in your ads with your website. So if you have a white background for your website, use white background for your google ads. You need to steer away from using the standard formats, as they result in a low number of clicks. If you do that, you will find your click through rate jump instantly. This is due to the fact that you will make the visitors think that your ads are part of your content, and don't seem to look like ads, so they will most likely to click on the ads.

2. Use the full quota of your ads.

It's as simple as that. Use the full quota of your ads. Put as much ads on your website as you can, without breaking Google's terms.

3. Put your ads near the top of the page

Put your ads near the top of the page. Why? So that when people come to your site, they will be able to see the ads. Not all of them will be willing to scroll down to the bottom of the page. Also, put your ads on the left hand side, rather on the right hand side, because we read from left to right. Simple? Yes, it's that simple.

4. Use Text Links Ads, they generate a higher income.

I don't know why, but somehow, text links ads, especially the horizontal ones, generate a very high click through rate and revenue. I have experimented on many sites and text links ads usually perform very well.

5. Read Newspapers.

Newspaper? You may be wondering how newspapers relate to AdSense, but in fact, newspaper is the best place to learn ad positioning. Just by copying the ad positioning of newspaper, you will realise that your AdSense revenue will dramatically jump.

6. My Adsense Revenue almost tripled when I applied this technique

What is it? It is very simple. Put pictures on top or very close to your ads. By doing that, you will attract more attention and people will be more likely to click on your ads. However, please do be careful that you don't get random pictures off Google, as many pictures are protected by copyright laws. Please use only pictures that are royalty free.

While many people may tell you that they knew these tips long time ago, you will realize that only 0.1% of the people apply these techniques to their website.

Written by Stanley Tang is an online business man!

We always hear that Google has a sophisticated system to detect the invalid clicks, and result in termination of the cheaters' account. But, how can Google do that? In this post, I summarize those ways that Google depends on to detect whether the clicks on your site are invalid or not. Google will not first ban your account immediately. Rather, they will first flag your account and Google will keep a closer eye to your account. In some occasion, they may send you a warning letter to notify your situation; but sometimes not.

1. IP Address

It is the easist and must be recognized by everyone. If those clicks on your ads are originated from the same IP Address as the one used for accessing your AdSense account, your account is flagged.

2. Click Through Rate (CTR)

Normally, Click thru Rate should not excees 10%. Otherwise, Google will flag your account. For your information, normal CTR should ranges from 0.5% - 10%.

3. Physical Location

Google has good tracing software and technology.They can trace traffics origin down to the small town. So, using different computers with different IP address does not secure anything. So, don't try to click your ads in various internet cafes. That will kill you.

4. Cookies

Most home users do not use static IP Address for Internet connection. In most cases just disconnect and reconnect will give you a new IP Address. But don't forget, Google has set cookies on your computer. They can trace these cookies and see whether they originate from the same computer.


5. Click Pattern 1

It is also suspicious when people click on their clicks and then run away immediately (hit-and-run). But normally, people will surf for a while inside your pages and then click on the ads they want.


6. Click Pattern 2

why this computer / IP address / person is so trigger-click-happy on this particular website but never click on the ads on other sites?


7. Click Pattern 3

And why is it that people accessing these sites direct (type-in URL or from bookmark) tend to be very active ad-clickers compared with those referred from search engine or other sites?

8.Other Google Services

Apart from Google Adsense, Google also provide a series of services to us. Don't just think that it is safe if you do not log in your adsense account and click on your ads. What other Google services do they provide to us? Here are some: Gmail (most poeple are using it), Google Earth, Google Calendar, Google Search, Google Toolbar, Google Talk, Google Sitemap, Google Desktop, Blogger, or even Youtube (coz Google has just recently acquired it).

10. Search Engine Ranking
Your website is not indexed on any search engine, not linked by any prominent website, but get consistently high traffic? How come people can access your website and click your ads? That will make Google to smell a rat.


11. Webpage design
How about the "Please click a link below" or "donate us by clicking the ads"? These kinds of encouragement is not in line with Google's TOS. Google can use their winning search engine, or even human eyes to check your sites from time to time.


12. Advertisers conversion rate

Ad click is one thing. But does it bring value to the advertisers? If none of the clicks on your site translate to conversion to the advertiser, you are in trouble. First the Smart-Pricing hits, then your AdSense account disabled.