The reality of it is, most people end up somewhere in between. Having 100 websites leaves you with maintenance, management and content issues. Having one website leaves you open to all sort of fluctuations (search engines algorithms, market trends, etc). You can adapt your plan on the way, but youll have an easier time if you start out going in the direction of where you want to end up.
General or Niche
You can build your website around general topics or niche ones. Generally speaking niche websites work better with adsense. First off the ad targeting is much better. Secondly as you have a narrow focus your writing naturally becomes more expert in nature. Hopefully this makes you more authority in your field.
If this is your first try at building an adsense website, make it about something you enjoy. It will make the process much easier and less painful to accomplish. You should however make sure that your topic has enough of an ad inventory and the payout is at a level you are comfortable with. You may love medieval folk dancing, but the pool of advertisers for that subject is very small (in fact its currently zero).
Once youve gotten the hang of how Adsense works on a website, you are going to want to dabble in some high paying keywords, you may even be tempted to buy a high paying keyword list. This does come with some dangers. First off the level of fraud is much higher on the big money terms. Secondly there is a distortion of the supply and demand relationship for these terms. Everyone wants ads on their website that make $35 or more a click, however the number of advertisers who are willing to pay that much is pretty limited. Additionally the competition for that traffic is going to be stiff. So, dont try to run with the big dogs if you cant keep up. If you have to ask if youre a big dog, then chances are, youre not.
Using Images
One of the latest secrets to make the rounds is using images placed directly above or below an adsense leaderboard. This has been used for a while but came out in a digital point forum thread where a member talked about quadrupling their CTR. Basically you set up the adsense code in a table with four images that line up directly with the ads. Whether or not this is deceptive is fuzzy and very subjective. Obviously four blinking arrows would be enticing people to click and be against the adsense TOS. However placing pictures of 4 laptops over laptops ads isnt, so use your best judgment here and look at it from the advertiser or Googles perspective. If you have a question as to your implementation being over the line write to adsense and ask them to take a look.
As far as using the images, Ive done it and can tell you it definitely works. You get the best results when the images complete the story the ads are telling. For example if you have ads about apple pies, use pictures of freshly baked apple pies, instead of granny smith, Macintosh, pink lady, and braeburn apples. TIP: Dont limit yourself to using images only on that size ad unit, it works just as well with the other sizes, like the 336 rectangle.
Multiple Ad Units
Another way to increase ad revenue is to use multiple ad units. According to Googles TOS you are allowed to post up to three ad units per page. Similar to standard search results the highest paying ad units will be served first and the lowest being served last. If there is enough of an ad inventory, place all three ad units. However you should pay attention to the payouts. Current assumption is you get 60% of the revenue (on a $0.05 click you get $0.03). So if a click from the third ad unit is only paying between 3 to 5 cents you may want to omit it from your page. This is one are where giving your ad units channels does have value. If one ad unit is getting a higher percentage of click throughs youll want to make sure the highest paying ads are being served there. TIP:Use CSS positioning to get your highest paying ads serving in the location with the highest CTR.
Affiliate Sites
Placing Adsense on affiliate sites is tricky. Are you giving up a $10, $20, or $30 sale for a $1 click? This is something you have to test on your own to figure out. If you arent converting now its definitely worth a try. I like to use adsense on my article pages. For example lets say you had an affiliate website where you sold shoes. Youre going to need some related articles to flesh out the site. Things like getting a shoe shine or finding a shoe repair shop these are excellent spots for adsense. While you wont get rich, they will usually provide a small steady income and cover things like hosting costs.TIP: If you find you have pages getting more than 50 clicks per month add more pages about this topic, and link the pages together. Mine you logs for the search terms used.
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