Yesterday I asked Do AdSense Referrals converted well for me? Today I’d like to turn our attention to some tips on how to make the referral program convert better.
How do you get more readers to click through and sign up to referrals?
Here are five tips that I’ve used:
1. Give a Recommendation
One of the differences between the AdSense referral program and their normal advertising program is that you can actively promote and encourage readers to click your referral links. This is because you don’t get paid per click but only when the reader meets the required action. So no one is out of pocket if you encourage your readers to click or label the buttons as recommendations. In fact if you do recommend the product (genuinely) you’ll increase your chances of conversion as you’re really pre-selling the product (and all affiliate or CPA programs work best with some pre-selling).
2.Relevancy is Key
The only reason that AdWords and AdSense referrals work reasonably for me is that my blog is on the topic of making money online. If I were to put them on any of the other blogs I’m involved with the conversion would be terrible. I’d steer clear of the program altogether unless you have readers who would naturally be interested in the topic.
3. Use Your Allowance of Two Referrals a Page
Google recently changed the rules to allow publishers to use two referral links per page instead of the previously allowed single link. I have one text link positioned at the bottom of individual posts and one in my sidebar (for AdSense). I find that the ones at the bottom of posts work best.
4. Use a Pre-Sell page
One of the problems with the AdSense referrals program is that the text links are difficult to incorporate into a post. They are not html but are a script and you are hampered in changing the wording of how the link appears. Also if you’re already using your two links on the one page (like I am) you can’t put a third link into your post. The way I get around this is to have an AdSense ‘pre-sell’ page. On this page I simply explain what AdSense is, share how it works for me and include a button to sign up for it. I can’t tell you the exact CTR on this page but it’s over 400 times better than the CTR on either of the other links appearing on my blog! Whether this converts to signups I’m unsure as AdSense don’t allow us to track signups on a channel by channel basis (and I’ve only used this pre-sell page for a month now so it’s too early to tell if it leads to readers getting to the threshold at a higher rate than the other buttons).
5. Help Your Readers Meet Thresholds
Lastly, consider how you might help those who do click through to meet the conversion thresholds. This is why on my Pre-Sell page I also have a link to my AdSense Tips pages which will help those starting out with AdSense to perform better (earning both them and me more money).
Excellent tips Darren. I read many of your posts with interest, and based on your analysis of AuctionAds I decided to give them a shot.
Not sure about the AdSense referrals though, have to read a bit more about it.
What about other adprograms, May I ask why you don’t write about those?
Thanks for the tips I’m going to apply them in my other sites.
[…] I never used any AdSense Referal before, I thought I’m not good persuading visitors to do what I have done. Beside, it looks more complicated to fill forms with one and other thing than just to click a banner or link. Today, ProBlogger.net, wrote 5 Tips for Improving AdSense Referrals Earnings, and in one point he said that referal earning at the bottom of his page works best. In my case, the best earning ever is ads on top of the pages, followed by ads inside contents. Eventhough maybe I’ll try to put AdSense referal in this blog, bottom of the page is my last chance. […]
Thanks for the tips. Your blog has become like a book to me.
About Ad sense referrals I had commented on yesterday’s post (somehow not accepted) that these are actually quite useful to me since, I want the users to get firefox for best results. With your tips I guess more people will get referred to firefox and/or google.
I think these are actually the best ads from users’ point of view because they are 100% relevant if used properly and user is actually getting the best softwares (for me Google and Firefox).
The last point about “ensuring users meet threshhold” is a tricky one and I didnt get how it can be done. I would be glad if someone can enlighten me on this.
I have some problems with adwords. My site is 2 months old and I do not have the traffic to make any money. My goal with the site isn’t to earn income but I would like to get enough clicks in one year to reach the minimum payout threshold. Not a lofty goal at all.
The ads that google shows on my site are so completely off-topic that I can’t imagine anyone ever clicking through them.
I mean, I write ONE post about scientific evidence that fat men are more jolly and all of a sudden I have ads for anorexia treatment that will probably keep showing up. I’m sure there’s a way to tweak this. I’ll have to dig deeper into the realm of adwords lore.
I have not done any referral advertising on my blog yet, but would definitely like to. Thanks for the tips, I will try to add them at the bottom of my posts as well. My problem is that my site it more generic, but I do have a section with a number of articles on blogging for money where the Adsense referall links would fit in well.
First I’d like to say I LOVE your blog! My husband visits almost daily and now I see why. Great job! We’ve run into a serious problem and was wondering if you could give me a litte insight on the matter. I started blogging in July and, just like everybody else, pretty much learned as I went along. I’m finding it very hard to achieve links and can’t help but think that I’m doing something wrong. I follow the the general ethics upon requesting the links, but apparently never actually recieve one.(checked Google today and the count was 0!) I desperately need someone to give me an honest opinion about the blog, no bullcrap, ya know? Is it really THAT bad? If you have the time, Thank You!
Thanks for the tips, I really need to make sure to use all the ads I can – the 2 ads per page thing. And I am glad to know that the ones on the bottom of the page give you the best outcome. I will have to do that!
Some good advice here, and good motivation for putting back those referral links on my blog.
Awesome article, thank you so much for writing it.
thanks for the great tips darren, I read this blog everyday, it’s really great.
and oh yea I think adsense referral has very low conversion based on my experience. I only use other affiliate products instead of google’s.
carl
[…] Adsense team put up an explanation on PIN; you will receive a PIN from Google if you reached $50 for the first time. Problogger Daren Rowse put up an entry on How you can improve your Adsense Referrals Earnings. […]
Pre-sell pages definetely are the way to go!
The pre-sell page is something new. Good tips
Here’s a sixth tip I just dreamt up whilst thinking about this:
Based on the What Would Seth Godin Do plugin, what about a plugin that detects if new visitors are coming in using Internet Explorer, and if so, offer them the chance to upgrade to Google Pack?
Here’s what that plugin would look like:
http://whatjapanthinks.com/recommend-google-pack-wordpress-plugin/
A tip for you.
You could have put the AdSense Referal image right at the end of this post, rather than at the left side.
Ooops.. I Missed the referal link that you put… People are now blind to the links now… put that image there, it would be better
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Thank’s for good tips. I really need every piece of help that is avalable to increase my adsense income. My site is suffering low traffic rates, so I would have to somehow get people to visit there.
thanks for the tip.. i only use google adsense for content.. i will try with referrals
Darren
Thanks for another great post. One thing that set some alarm bells going for me: you say there’s a limit of 2 referral links per page. But that limit does apply to each of the four products offered ,right? i.e. two referrals per product max. are permitted. So having four on one page (whatever the merits of doing so or not) – one for each product, would still be permissible.
Cheers
Nice observation John. I believe if we can put these many links its moe than enough otherwise the page would become an ad site.
I just found your blog while looking for adsense tips and I thought this was some great advice. Once I have some more posts on my blog that are more related to making money online I will follow these tips and see how I get on.
Great idea doing Pre-Selling i would have never of though of that
thanks
Excellent tips Darren ! Earlier i’d visited so many forums for each and every thing, but to my surprise…all at one blog…is seen here. I’ve bookmarked the blog.
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I like that pre-sell page idea. I’m going to try that. Thanks for the tip!
[…] of Adsense, so I turned to one of my inspirers, Darren Rowse. He wrote a great article entitled: 5 Tips for Improving Adsense Referral Earnings, and this is what I am going to write […]
[…] a discussion on ProBlogger about 5 Tips for Improving AdSense Referrals Earnings, I wondered if there wasn’t a sixth tip. As I’d recently installed the What Would Seth Godin Do […]
I’ve bee building landing pages for adsense referral, but I do not know, whether few promote or too much blogger who have landing pages too, I still can not get money from referral.
hi Darren,
Though I am not an AdSense guru, but with my common sense I have mentioned some more tips to improve AdSense referral earning. Please check it out at:-
http://fundubytes.blogspot.com/2007/11/tips-tricks-to-earn-more-through.html especially targeting referral ads using a javascript from the content of your post.
comments and criticism invited.
I’ve been using adsense for cotent sometime now and it is starting to look good. Now I think I must use referrels too. So I just added the Firefox referel to my sidebar with a small explanation. But I’m not sure of other referrels converting well because mine is a general blog. Any tips for such blogs? thanks
Well was about to give up on referrals but I would take a step back and see these suggestions work!!!
Thanks for your tips!
Maybe its time for me to earn from referral program now. Great tips.
Thanx
Thank you for the advices.
My CTR is 4.6% but more is never enough :)
All the tips are very much applicable/doable in my opinion. Great and interesting tips you have. I will try some of it and see the effect on my blog.
Cheers!