A lot of site owners that have Google AdSense ads on their site debate with themselves whether or not they should put AdSense ads above the fold on their sites. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, “above the fold”, it refers to the portion of your webpage that a user first sees after landing on your site, before scrolling.

This portion of your website is extremely valuable since many first time visitors to your site will take one look at this portion of your site and take one of three actions. Either they will scroll down further, click on a link, or leave the site.

Because of the chance that a new site visitor will never see any of the content below the fold many site owners decide to place AdSense ads in this portion of their site. Taking such action will often have the effect of increasing your site’s click-through rate (the percentage of viewers that click on an ad).

When deciding for yourself where to place your AdSense ads, it is helpful to ask yourself a couple of questions. First, is your site content driven? When I say “content driven” I don’t mean do you have content on your site? If the primary reason that you have content on your site, is so that you can host AdSense ads, then your site is not content driven.

If your site is not content driven, then I would definitely advise placing some of your AdSense ads above the fold.

If your site is content driven then I would suggest asking yourself three more, related questions. Is building an opt-in email list important to you? Are you interested in creating brand recognition for your website? Do you want your website to be viewed as an expert source of knowledge on a particular topic?

If you answered yes to any of these three questions then you may want to think twice before placing any AdSense ads above the fold on your site. One of the best places to place an email list opt-in form on your site is… you guessed it, above the fold. Putting advertisements of any kind in this space causes competition between the ads and your opt-in form.

Visitors who opt-in for your email list have the potential of becoming life long customers. If a new visitor lands on your website and clicks off your website by following an ad, you may have permanently lost a long term customer in exchange for a little money today.

If you are trying to build your website into a brand or to have your website viewed as an expert source of knowledge you should seriously consider not putting AdSense ads at the top of your site. Sites with AdSense above the fold can be perceived as “spamy”, therefore run the risk of visitors taking your site less seriously as either a respectable brand or a valuable source of knowledge.

If you are interested in this subject you may enjoy our post on how web traffic can be monetized.

Tags: AdSense, Email Opt-In, Above the Fold, Internet Marketing, Email Marketing

In our post, “How to Make a Dollar Online”, we mentioned using “article marketing and SEO” as a technique to drive traffic to a website. That post was all about Squidoo Lenses however the above mentioned technique would work for any type of website regardless of it was a blog, static page, mini-page, “lens” etc.

The first step in using article marketing to improve your search engine optimization is to find a profitable niche. If your main method of monetizing traffic is some form of Pay-Per-Click advertising, such as Google AdSense then the first factor you should consider is how much each keyword pays per-click on average.

The problem is that there is usually a good deal of search engine competition for the highest paying keywords. If you are using a method such as blog commenting, then competition on the search engines doesn’t really affect you. If however you are planning to use SEO to drive traffic to your site, then search engine competition is a huge factor. More…

In our article, “How to Get Indexed Fast” we talked about placing Google AdSense ads on your website in order to potentially increase the speed with which Google would find and index your site. In this post we will examine yet another potent method for increasing the speed with which your site get’s indexed.

If you are just concerned with Google, then the previously mentioned Google AdSense method is still my number one pick. This next method will most likely help you to get indexed by more than one engine. Please keep in mind that combining different methods to encourage indexing is usually a good idea, so you don’t need to stick to just one technique.

So the second step that I would advise after placing Google AdSense ads on your site is for you to submit a page from your website to Digg.com. In order to submit a page you will have to register for Digg. The registration process is quick, painless, and free. Once you register, you can log into your account and then click on the tab at the top of the page that says “Submit New”. More…

No, this is not the formula to turn lead into gold… then again maybe it is. There is a simple formula that everyone in internet marketing should know regarding how to monetize web traffic. Making money online all starts with web traffic. If you have any questions regarding how important web traffic is to your online business check out Myth #1 of our free ebook, “The eBay Myth”.

The traffic that you direct to your site is usually filtered through a “conversion piece” that exists on your website. This conversion piece could be “buy now” button on your site that allows them to purchase your own product or an affiliate product that you market. This product could be a physical product that gets shipped to your customer or it could be an electronic product such as an ebook that requires no physical shipping.

As an alternative to a physical or electronic product your chosen monetization channel might be ad-based. While there are many advertising networks as well as self managed web ads, Google AdSense is by far the most popular of the advertising networks. If you choose to go the ad-based route then a simple click on of your ads is a successful conversion. More…

Two posts ago we spoke about “The Four Horsemen of Web Traffic,” namely Paid Advertising, Organic Search, Social Networking, and Viral Marketing. In that post we hinted at a “Hidden Source of Web Traffic“. So what could this source possibly be, and what benefit could it be to your online business? Let’s start with the benefits.

Imagine for a moment that you have just invested serious time and money developing a first class ebook. Regardless of your chosen niche, you face an enormous problem when it comes to monetizing your product. In this day and age of file sharing services, websites, bit-torrent, and so forth, ebooks are especially susceptible to being copied illicitly. Given the nature of this technological disadvantage inherent to ebooks it would be extremely valuable to drive large amounts of targeted web-traffic to a specific conversion piece, the moment your product is released. If you assume that eventually your work will be pirated, it makes sense to sell as many copies “out of the gate” as possible.

Let’s say that you have just invented the world’s greatest course for making money with Blogs, AdSense, Mini-Sites, Affiliate Marketing, whatever. It would help to be able to make some sort of outrageous claim as a hook for the Sales Letter. For example “Discover how I made $10,000, in one Month with [Fill in the Blank].” Of course people will be skeptical of your claim so you will want screen shots to prove your earnings over a one month period. If you are the type that has no reservations about glossing over some the inherent advantages you had in accomplishing this feet, you may want to drive some instant traffic to your money making site in order to increase sales.

Business is of a time sensitive nature and a product that is a hit today, may well have turned out as a flop if brought to market a year later. If you have a product to bring to market and you just don’t have time to wait for traffic to trickle in order to test various versions of your sales letter, what should you do? Once again it would be great to be able to send a thousand or so unique visitors to each version of your letter to drastically increase the speed of your testing process.
The “Hidden Source of Web Traffic” that might allow you to duplicate the above mentioned feats of marketing magic, is a well crafted email list. We mentioned in our post “Lead Me to It” about the incredible value of a list of pre-qualified physical addresses. Building an email list of targeted leads is yet another way to fabricate your own gold mine. Indeed a large and well built list can mean instant traffic, however building such a list is not an overnight assignment. In some cases it could take years to build such a list, and even after the list is built, constant maintenance is required to keep your leads from dropping out or losing interest in your promotions.
Email lists are not a cure-all for your online business, they have there own pitfalls and dangers like any other online business technique. So I wouldn’t swear by them, but I would suggest you check them out.

If you liked this post, chances are that you’ll enjoy our post on monetizing web traffic.