Surfing Smart

[sunshine]

One of the best things about earning big revenues with AdSense is that it gives me a perfect excuse to surf the Internet all day. While other people have to squeeze their news-watching and blog-reading into coffee breaks and weekends, I can stay online all day and tell myself that I’m working.

But who am I kidding?

Surfing the Web is a huge amount of fun. I enjoyed it before I got into AdSense and I enjoy it now. But I have to admit that since I started using AdSense, I’ve started looking at websites in a whole new way.

Before, I never really paid much attention to the ads. If one were to catch my eye and look interesting, I might click. But I never really paid much attention to the way they were laid out or what the webmaster did to get me to look.

Now I do it all the time. I can’t look at a page with AdSense and not start wondering whether the webmaster wouldn’t have earned more money if he’d just changed the color of his font, eliminated the border or moved his ad unit into a more prominent position on the page. I see missed opportunities everywhere… and so should you.

Critiquing sites that you come across on the Web is a great exercise, and as all of you who have been using AdSense for a while know, it’s something that comes naturally.

Why is it a great exercise?

Because it helps you to spot the flaws in your own website. If you can see that a color or a format or a layout is costing the owner money, you can’t help but wonder if you aren’t losing money in a similar way.

But the reverse is true too. Whenever I find myself looking at the ads on a website instead of the content, I always ask myself what the webmaster did to get me looking at something that I didn’t come to the site to see. The Internet might be packed with lost opportunities but it’s also filled with valuable lessons that have helped me to increase my AdSense earnings.

The bottom line is that you don’t have to go as far as the Google blog to find the latest AdSense case studies. Just keep your eyes — and your mind — open as you’re surfing the Web and see what you can learn that will help your revenues.