The Extra Money Blog

A Proven Practical Tip to Mega Boost Your Google Adsense CTR & Earnings

I know that relying on Google Adsense is not the most secure revenue stream, but if you are making money through the Google Adsense program then you might as well maximize your earning potential.

Many who work online have been earning very well from this program for years, with numerous stories of individual entrepreneurs earning well over $100,000 a year from Adsense all over the internet.

I have been earning passive income using Google Adsense and some other contextual ad programs for a few years now. If you are new to this blog, here is an example of my Adsense earnings if you are curious how much this income stream contributes to my online earnings.

Basically, the main revenue drivers of your Adsense earnings are the cost-per-impression (CPM), click-through rate (CTR) and page views. While I have discussed increasing traffic and thus page views quite a bit on this blog (you can search for articles in the archives), in this post I want to discuss one way to significantly increase both your CTR and overall earnings from Adsense.

But before getting into this tip, there are some basic fundamental ways to increase your Adsense earnings by improving your CPM and CTR. These are “gimmes” that you should consider and implement immediately. You can read about those in my notes from my meeting with the Google Adsense team.

Once you have optimized your existing Adsense earnings, consider the following strategy, which has boosted my Google Adsense CTR and earnings significantly.

The Silent Sales Machine Embedded in My WebSites

If you have been following my journey on the Extra Money Blog, you likely already know that I generate a significant portion of my passive income from a portfolio of static websites. Many of these static websites also have a relevant eBook that is sold on each, which is why I have a large portfolio of eBooks as well on various eBook distribution platforms such as Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Not to get on a long segway here, but eBooks are one of the best and most turn key ways to generate passive income without having your own blog or website. You can read why here. If you are interested in profiting from eBooks, you can read my 25,000+ word comprehensive series on eBooks here.

The reason I mention this is because many of my static websites have in them an email opt in form that I use to collect the email addresses of my site’s readers and visitors. Once I have their email addresses, I can communicate with them using a pre written series of auto-responders (automatic personalized email messages) scheduled to reach their email inboxes after various increments of time (for example, weekly).

This process works on auto pilot once set up. If you are not familiar with how this works, you can read more about how I use email auto-responders here.

In addition to building rapport and delivering high value for free, one of the uses of these auto-responders is to “subtly” promote the eBook that is sold on the website. Needless to say that because the value delivered in the emails is of high quality, the conversion percentage (number of readers who end of purchasing the book) of buyers is also very high.

But there is one more way that I utilize my email auto-responder tool, and that’s to significantly boost my Adsense CTR and earnings. How? Let’s go over this.

Embedding Invisible WebPages in Your Email Auto Responder Tool

In my automated email newsletter series, I usually have a few emails that are very brief in nature but point my readers to a link where they can get more information. For example, I may send an email that reads like this:

Hi (Reader),

I wasn’t able to email last week because I was busy working on a new webpage on my site, where I have compiled a list of the top 10 (fill in the blanks) where you will learn how to (fill in the blanks). This is already proving to be one of the most visited pages of my site. You can visit this page here: (link).

I will be back with more tips next week

Notice the brevity. The goal is to get the reader to quickly get through the email and click the link. Not surprisingly, these emails also have the highest click through rate for me, which means the number of readers who are clicking through the links embedded within the email such as the one above.

When they click on this link, it takes them to a “Adsense heavy” webpage that exists outside of my website. What do I mean?

Basically, imagine one webpage that is not physically linked to your website, but exists in the cyberspace on your host. This webpage has a URL like any other webpage of your website. What I’ve done to this webpage is taken all the links and navigation options out. I have embedded a couple YouTube videos on the page, and large ad unit blocks right next to the videos.

You don’t have to embed videos. I have similar webpages where I have a bullet point list of key tips. The point is to take readers to a page with lots of quality info and no other links to distract them.

When readers are done reading the material or viewing the video, they can either click the X on the top right and shut down the page or click on an ad that is blatantly apparent. As you can imagine, my click through rates on these pages is very high. Here is an example of what one of those pages looks like.

That’s all the page is. Lots of white, big Google Adsense ad units, and no links. There is a link to this webpage below.

This Strategy Works and Does Not Violate the Google Adsense TOS

This strategy works great. Why?

First off, the webpage you send your readers to is very inviting in the sense that there is a lot of white space – breathing room for the eyes. The reader will likely take time to either read the material on the webpage or watch the videos you have embedded.

Once done, normal user behavior is to look for something to click on to move on. Because there are no navigation links on this page, the reader can either shut the browser down or click on an ad. Many users don’t like to shut the internet browser.

Although I had some inclination that this strategy is compliant with Adsense policy, I confirmed my understanding by asking a Google Adsense rep directly when I met with them. I was told this strategy is fine and doesn’t break any of Google’s rules.

I was ecstatic to know this and since then have created several other similar pages for several of my websites, resulting in higher Adsense earnings. You can read my detailed notes from my meeting with Google here.

Concluding Thoughts

I first learned about this strategy from Adam Short, whose training course I have taken in the past and currently am an affiliate off. Though many of his instructional material need updates, a lot of the core concepts in his training still work today.

Because Google’s rules doesn’t allow me to share specific CTR details, I can’t do that here, but I can tell you that it has increased significantly where I have applied this strategy. This obviously has led to higher earnings from Adsense. I currently have this strategy working on several websites.

You are welcome to see how this strategy works exactly by visiting one of my websites that has the auto-responder feature. If you sign up for the emails, you can get a feel for how I market my eBooks. You can visit one of my website’s here. You will notice the sign up for immediately to the right hand side. This is also a strategy I picked up from Adam when I was going through his training.

Although I have highlighted a couple uses in this post, there are several other uses for an email auto-responder tool as well. You can read about how I utilize this tool in different types of businesses, including a brick and mortar store that I own here.

I have been using the Aweber email auto-responder tool ever since they started in business and am an affiliate of their product which I love and fully stand behind. If you are interested in this email auto-responder tool and have questions or need some help, please feel free to reach out to me.

Alternatively, they have a very helpful tutorial that walks your through the entire process of getting started, as well as a very helpful support staff that you can talk to online via chat, email or through phone.

So what do you think about this strategy to boost your Google Adsense CTR? What are other creative and effective uses of an email auto-responder tool that you are familiar and/or experienced with?

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Multiple Uses of Email Autoresponders Like Aweber. Niche Site, Blog, Ecommerce, Brick & Mortar

No, certainly not another “the money is in the list” token email marketing post on Aweber.  Don’t worry this is not that. In this post I want to focus on the multiple uses of email autoresponders for various types of businesses.

What I want to demonstrate is that no matter what business you are in, you can and should leverage email marketing to improve your sales, customer satisfaction and overall business results.

Email marketing is the most cost efficient and effective way to promote your business, hone and maintain customer relationships as well as track results to know what is working and what isn’t, something traditional media like TV and radio ads cannot tell you.

When executed manually, email marketing is free because it doesn’t cost money to send an email. However, businesses prefer to use email autoresponders as an email marketing tool because they are cheap, very effective and most of all save businesses gobs of time in executing their email marketing campaigns.

What is Email Newsletter Marketing? What are Email Autoresponders?

Much of this can be self explanatory, and may be something you already know about. But just in case you don’t, email marketing is the use of people’s email addresses to communicate and build a relationship with them in conjunction with promoting your business at the same time. It is an increasingly popular marketing method because businesses, large and small, are realizing how effective this marketing method is.

Why is it much more effective? Email marketing is the more preferred method of marketing because it is more effective than traditional and social media.  A person’s email address is very personal and people guard their emails with their lives. Think about your own email ID. Would you just hand it to anyone just like that? Communicating with someone over email is more personal and repeatedly proven to be much more effective.

An email autoresponder is a tool used by businesses through which they conduct email newsletter marketing. Email autoresponder programs are web based programs that enable businesses to capture customer email addresses electronically or manually, correspond with them seamlessly and automatically, track various statistics such as email open rates, clickthrough rates (readers clicking on links embedded in the email newsletter) and various other analytical attributes.

The business intelligence you get with an email autoresponder is invaluable. You can use the data to split test different approaches and continue to optimize your marketing campaigns to achieve your business objectives. This is particularly important if you are trying to sell through your emails or bring customers and clients in your business.

You can set up email autoresponders to “auto respond” to your customer list, scheduling newsletters way out in advance to go out at a particular time now or in the future.  You can also send a broadcast email message to your list anytime you’d like.

So the next time you get an email message from one of the email lists you are subscribed to, it could be a message that was written months and years ago to be scheduled the day you received it. It likely also went out to several others – but it certainly doesn’t look and feel that way does it? Not when it addresses you with your name at least.

You can segregate your email list in various ways so that certain messages only go to certain people, and similarly perform various tasks that allow you to slice and dice the information you have to better target your customers and clients and customize your communication approach and method depending on who you are reaching out to.

If this sounds somewhat confusing and overwhelming right now, a quick read about email marketing and email autoresponders can further help explain this marketing method and the program used to execute it.

Why am I writing about this today? Because understanding how email autoresponders work and its various applications can help you tremendously with your business. It will not only help you make more money, but more importantly automate the customer relationship and marketing aspects for you, saving you tons of valuable time in the process.

Whether you are solely operating online, offline or a combination of both, email marketing utilizing email autoresponders will enable your business to flourish. That is exactly what this website is about, to help you expedite wealth building without adding much incremental demand on your day to day life.

The Various Uses of Email Autoresponders

Here are just a handful of ways email autoresponders can be used in a variety of businesses. I have personally used these methods in the businesses that I am involved with.

Freelancers – Freelancers like tax accountants and wealth managers can leverage email autoresponders by scheduling out email distributions during critical times of the year such as tax deadlines.

They can also use the system to pre schedule value added messages such as tax saving and wealth management tips on a monthly or quarterly basis. Wealth managers can send out quarterly reminders to rebalance portfolios to their email list. The possibilities are endless.

Niche sites – If you own niche sites and have either your own or affiliate products to sell, you can use an email autoresponder series to automatically engage with your readership as they subscribe to your email list.  I use email autoresponders to promote various affiliate products and my own ebooks on several niche sites that I own. Here is an example:

Sales – If you are in sales and you want to gather customer feedback to see how you are doing and what you should do to improve your business, you can send out an email blast with a link to a survey, or simply ask the survey questions within the email blast itself. Want to know what products and services your clients want?  Send an email to the entire list and find out. This is exactly how I obtain feedback from my readership.

E-commerce websites – Keep your customers in the loop of new product launches, special offers, discounts and important company news. Use your email list to send out coupons, or seasonal reminders relevant to your business. I heavily used an email autoresponder when I was operating my e-commerce business.

Blogging – The use of email autoresponders is very much prevalent in the blogging industry. Many internet marketing bloggers will tell you that the “money is in the list”. In other words, in order to make money, you need an audience to sell to. An email autoresponder is a great way to seamlessly build an email list of potential customers and clients. This is how I use email autoresponders on my blog:

Brick and Mortar Businesses – This is where I see email autoresponders way too underutilized. I have done several consulting engagements for small local businesses and one of the quickest ways I add value is by setting them up on email autoresponders to start building their email list.

For example, hair cut salons can set up the system so that it automatically emails male clients to come in each month for a hair cut, or it can help dentists send out bi annual reminders for teeth cleaning. My dentist sends me a postcard. Can you imagine the time and resources, not to mention the cost, it takes to do that for each and every patient? God forbid the temp forgets? A computer certainly wouldn’t.

An oil change garage can send out automated emails every three months reminding folks to come in for an oil change. People have busy lives, both consumers and service providers/business owners. Why not leverage technology to better streamline everyone’s lives and operate more efficiently?

I also use an email autoresponder in my Dry Cleaning business, for example, having automated reminders going out to each customer right before winter to remind them to bring in their jackets and blankets. Similarly, one message at the end of winter to remind them to do the same before they stash the winter stuff away in a box.

Personal – Heck, you can leverage email autoresponders to send out an email to your entire list / email database wishing them a Happy New Year! Saves the manual process of having to remember who to send what to.

The beauty of email autoresponders is that it automatically plugs in the name of the person you are sending it to. So although one pre scheduled autoresponder email may go out to 10,000 people, each of those will feel you had sent it to them individually. How thoughtful.  It’s magic 🙂

Concluding Thoughts

As you can see, there are many uses of email autoresponders, and this post merely scratches the surface. There is so much you can do with an effective email newsletter system, all within your fingertips and without incurring significant costs.

Aside from tremendous cost savings, there are several other advantages to using email autoresponders. You save a ton of time in marketing your business, you stay fully organized and for website owners you diversify your traffic resources.

Search engines are fickle and can turn their backs on your at any time. With an email newsletter system, you can ensure a certain amount of repeat traffic coming straight from your email list.

And perhaps the biggest advantages of all are that you get to build an email database or list of all your customers and gather business intelligence to understand what they like and dislike, and how they interact with your emails.

People guard their email addresses closer than anything else today.  When you have someone’s email ID, you can develop a closer and more effective personal relationship with them. You can also ensure that you can stay in touch with them, with or without the existence of your business, website or search engines.

I personally use Aweber, a very user friendly system that you can get for only $20 per month. It is the cheapest and the most effective email marketing tool I have utilized in my businesses. If you don’t know much about email autoresponders and what they can do for you, I highly encourage checking Aweber’s website out and going through the material. It can be an eye opening experience.

So as promised, not a token post on creating an email newsletter with Aweber.  That said, is there a need for one? What information would you like to read more about? I am an affiliate of Aweber and would be happy to answer any questions if you are contemplating using it in your business.

What are some other uses of email autoresponders? How are you using email marketing in your business? If you aren’t, why?