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When Amit Kumar co-founded MegaGames Forum in 1998, Google Inc. was being run from a Menlo Park garage and AdSense didn’t even exist yet. Fast-forward 9 years to 2007: Amit still runs MegaGames Forum just as a hobby, but he earns enough revenue through the AdSense program to run a dedicated server and continue growing his site. Amit wasn't so successful with AdSense right from the start. When he first started using the program in 2005, his earnings were nothing to write home about, and it was largely because he chose his ad placement, formats, and colors at random. After recently optimizing his ads, however, Amit was able to more than double his AdSense revenue and even improve the user experience on his site. Results may vary since every site is unique, but here are some tips that any forum site, large or small, can also try out to increase revenue. The welcome box ad Many forums have a message above the fold on their pages welcoming users to the site and encouraging them to re...

Note: Google does not sell or endorse any registration kits or CDs for the AdSense program. If you have reached this page after being asked to purchase a registration kit or CD, please know that Google is not affiliated with any offers of this nature. To sign-up for a free AdSense account, please visit www.google.com/adsense. Mid-day.com is a newspaper website for readers in Mumbai, India which has been in the AdSense program since 2005. According to Gauri Daswani, who was the Mid-day.com Assistant Manager at the time, 50% of the site's revenue is generated through AdSense. "Monetization has become much easier with the AdSense model," she says. "To ensure good results from AdSense, it is imperative that we create compelling content which in turn accounts for a good user experience and definitely benefits Google's advertisers." Initially, Gauri and her team relied on fixed ad colors and placements. They noticed that the site was earning a similar amount of r...

When the Internet first boomed in India, many people proceeded with caution -- adoption was fairly slow compared to the U.S. But a few adventurous spirits jumped right in and have stuck with it for the long haul. Among them is Babychen Mathew, who left a career in journalism to start his own website, dancewithshadows.com . This site offers readers the latest headline news and feature stories on various topics. Babychen started this site as a hobby, and perhaps as an extension of his profession. Very soon after launching, he discovered Google and the AdSense program through various web development forums on the Internet. And the rest is history, he says. “After exploring every bit of this Google product, with a few trial and errors along the way, I’ve discovered on my own the best ad formats and colors that suit my webpages,” he reports. Having tried almost every AdSense format and feature as they were offered, he settled for a vertical wide skyscraper (160X600) on the left sidebar and ...

Imineo.com is a French video-on-demand site offering a wide variety of videos in different formats. In 2005, the site's owners decided to use Google AdWords to drive qualified traffic to their site. After setting up their first campaigns, they implemented conversion tracking to evaluate their overall return on investment. More recently, the company added AdSense to their site. As co-owner Jean-Baptiste Sers told us, "Our business model is not based on advertising revenue -- but in order to increase our AdWords spend, we wanted to use AdSense." For an e-commerce advertiser, this might seem risky. Some might think that integrating AdSense could have resulted in a sales drop because of users clicking on the ads instead of buying one of the videos. But as Imineo team implemented AdSense, they noticed that qualified visitors came to the site with the intention to buy the videos and did not click on the sponsored links, while other visitors usually clicked on one of the releva...

We recently caught up with Peter Clee, a publisher who has seen success with both AdSense and AdWords. Peter's main site, LondonNet.co.uk , was launched in the summer of 1996 and offers a guide to arts, entertainment, city info, and news about London. Peter also runs www.hotelgenie.com and www.myflatincannes.com . We'd like to share some of Peter's insights with you about monetising his sites with AdSense and his experience using AdWords to attract visitors. Inside AdSense: How does AdSense impact your business? Peter Clee: It has reinforced our view that creating good, relevant content is what we, as publishers, should be all about. AdSense is a stress-free and rapid way to support new sections and features on your site, ensuring you have a degree of monetisation before you even consider additional revenue streams. If a section works well with AdSense you quickly learn it is worth investing more time and energy into expanding its content. Additionally, with future redesig...

If you visit www.the-gadgeteer.com , you’re likely to find a review of the newest, hippest gadget. For nearly a decade, Julie Strietelmeier has taken her fascination with consumer electronics to the masses, offering her opinions on the latest gadget accessories for readers to enjoy. Recently, Julie experimented with optimizing her link unit ad placement. She removed the existing 120x90 link unit from the uppermost right corner of her pages, and instead placed a 468x15 link unit at the top of her articles. In doing so, Julie found a convenient, unobtrusive location and saw her readers naturally gravitating towards the link unit. Her efforts led to an immediate doubling of her revenue -- an increase that has been sustained since the move. Before After With the nice bump in her earnings, Julie has found the extra pocket change handy. As she says, “Now I can go out and buy the newest gadgets and review them immediately” -- much to the relief of her gadget-happy audience. Posted by Alton L...

While you're busy gearing up for the holiday season, let us tell you the stories of three new publishers featured on our Success Stories page. Well, maybe not the full stories, as we doubt we can keep you away from your holiday to-do list for very long, but allow us to give you just a taste ... The Tale of Jeremy Bencken and ApartmentRatings.com What started as a sideline for Jeremy Bencken has grown into the largest independent apartment-hunting site on the web. Jeremy found the 300 x 250 rectangle and 160 x 600 wide skyscraper formats -- both with colors that blend well with the site -- to be particularly effective. In addition, he placed ads at the end of apartment reviews to give visitors a useful next step once they finished perusing a review. With just these minor ad format and ad placement changes, he was able to improve his CPM by 45% and his clickthrough rate by 91% all the while maintaining a great user experience. An Account of Scot Hall and Swapalease.com Swapalease.co...

Many of you might remember our April post featuring Ivan Heneghan , a member of the AdSense UK Optimisation Team. Ivan discussed a science website that was able to dramatically increase AdSense earnings through a few simple changes. Well, Ivan's back to share more details about that story with you: When UK-based WebElements.com started using AdSense in late 2003, their earnings averaged out at a low daily rate. In January 2005, WebElements began to focus on optimisation , experimenting with different ad colors, ad styles, and page locations. They found success by adding link units to each page of their site, placing Large Rectangles directly before and after their content, and adding a Wide Skycraper to their left sidebar. In the week following the optimisation, WebElements saw revenue increase by 500%. They then made other small placement changes to the site, which resulted in a spike doubling the revenue yet again -- as a result, the site was earning over 1000% its original ear...

To continue the Australian theme from last week's post, we'd like to share a recent case study which focuses on an Australian publisher. Craig Davis, General Manager of TakeABreak.com.au , saw an increase of 30% in his AdSense revenue after he changed his layouts and introduced image ads. Now, AdSense revenue makes up about 10% of his company's overall revenue. Craig noted that AdSense was "a key element that helped us to move quickly from just another start-up to a leader in the online accommodation industry." Read more about Craig's story here . Posted by Julian Sonego - Country Marketing Manager for Australia

We hope you've gained insight into the various tools and products Google has to offer for increasing the visibility of your site. As Boyar promised , we’ll close out this week's theme a little differently, by sharing with you the story of a publisher who used a number of Google products to increase his site's audience 50-fold in just two months. Ryan, webmaster for TropicalYarns.com , had been using AdSense for content and AdSense for search to monetize his pages. However, he noticed that his site’s visitors consisted mainly of existing customers. Using Analytics , he was able to better understand his new and returning visitors. After pinpointing the most popular page on his site in June, he added an email newsletter sign-up form to that page and saw the subscription list grow by 20%. In just one month, he watched new visitors grow to 75% of his audience. At the same time, Ryan used AdWords to advertise his site’s offerings. After experimenting for three weeks to optimize ...