pilkster.com » Adsense

New AdSense WordPress Theme

pilkster — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 12:24:26 +0000

I’ve got a little bored of the theme on pilkster.com now so I’m preparing to release it (for free of course) to the public. I don’t really like to run ads on my personal blog, but this theme was originally designed with Google’s AdSense and other advertising networks in mind, in fact it was created for TechPuddle.com, an advertising supported tech blog.

TechPuddle is a site I purchased last year from an online friend of mine. I have several blogs that I run with paid writers – I don’t have too much time for blogging these days. TechPuddle doesn’t make me a fortune, but it pays the bloggers and buys me a few beers each month

When designing a site there is no need to reinvent the wheel – sometimes it is easier to follow the leader. If you are a reader of tech blogs you will see that TechPuddle is basically emulating what Engadget.com and other popular tech blogs do – and obviously these bigger guys have done a lot of work on ad placement and site design to optimize their income.

The theme I created for TechPuddle is similar to Engadget in that it has variable width (it stretches in width to fit large screen resolutions and shrinks in width on small screen resolutions so that it still shows all the ads in the right hand sidebars- many themes with right hand sidebars lose revenue on low resolution screens as the ads are ‘cut off’ the screen!) Other features that are similar to Engadget are the double sidebar with industry-standard widths (the sidebars are optimized to fit standard size adunits and banners) and inline advertisements after every post or two. In addition, there is a header advertisement (although this doesn’t get much traffic – I’ve been thinking of incorporating a site-relevant headline above it to draw the readers eye).

One tip I picked up from Zac (the previous owner of TechPuddle) was to include a break in most blog posts – this means that the reader has to view two pages to read the entire story and then reload the previous page to continue reading down the news stories. More pageviews = more revenue from advertisements (even if the number of clicks are the same many advertisers such as valueclick pay per pageview). More importantly, contextual advertising such as AdSense becomes more tightly targeted when on a single post page as the content and tags are all related to one topic, rather than the topics of all posts on the index page.

As with most of the things I do, this theme is a work in progress. I’m going to release it as soon as I make it a little more user friendly. Before I do release it I would love some feedback – any views on ad placement, features etc. Save me doing it twice

Please also leave a comment below to be notified as soon as the theme is released. (BTW, I’m going to turn on my dofollow as soon as I get through the comment backlog). Chow fer now…

Adsense Theme for WordPress

pilkster — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 04:00:37 +0000

I’m testing a new WordPress theme incorporating industry-standard size adverts ~ I have currently filled all the slots with Adsense. I have also replaced the WordPress search function with Adsense for search.

Once I have cleaned up the stylesheet I’m going to use this theme as the basis for a bunch of themes, so please let me know if something looks out of place

This is a blockquote

Ordered list
WordPress
Adsense

Adsense down?

pilkster — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 18:45:41 +0000

Looks like adsense is down at the moment… never seen this page before!

Adsense blending – another example

pilkster — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 21:37:39 +0000

This simple little site about heartburn is another great example of adsense blending. The ads and navigation are blended together in a similar way to this example.

Increasing adsense earnings with blending

pilkster — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 12:16:37 +0000

Some of my older adsense sites have what I consider to be a low CTR(and these are informational type sites, not games or myspace type sites where I might expect that kind of adsense CTR). These sites receive a fair amount of traffic so I have been thinking of updating the look of some of them with better adsense blending.

Blending is the art of tuning the adsense colors and borders etc. to be similar to you page (or vice versa). I have come across a few great adsense implementations & thought I should share them with the readers of my blog.

This implementation of adsense is a large rectangular block providing site navigation blended with adverts. Pretty neat huh? Click the image for a full size snapshot. This code is being used on myspace layout sites using Greg’s myspace script.

Understanding Adsense

pilkster — Sat, 05 Aug 2006 16:21:28 +0000

Google’s Adsense program is one of my main online income streams. It is really simple to use (which is great for newbies) and doesn’t require much monitoring or modification when you have added it to your site.

Many of my friends have asked me how to get a start making an income online, and my recommendation to them is always the same; blog about something that you are interested in, and add Google Adsense to the blog.

This is easy to do with Google’s own blogging software (blogger), although I strongly advise buying your own domain (which can cost as little as $0.60) and using WordPress. There are many reasons for this, but my main ones are that:

Your blog belongs to you. You are creating value in your domain which you own (and are free to sell if you wish). If you use blogger and a blogspot subdomain Google own your website address.
WordPress is customisable and upgradable; checkout some Adsense ready WordPress themes.

Read more about making money with adsense.

More adsense themes for wordpress

pilkster — Sun, 05 Feb 2006 15:17:49 +0000

I’ve been continuing my quest to source the ultimate adsense theme for wordpress. There’s some interesting comments made here – but I think I’m going to go it alone. The theme I am using on this site at the moment (problogger clean) does a great job, but it is just too cluttered for my liking. Riki Tiki Tavi made a couple of mods for me on the kubrick template sidebar at my new childrens health blog – think I might build a three column with these sidebar mods.

‘made for adsense’

pilkster — Sun, 05 Feb 2006 15:01:49 +0000

Searching google for ‘made for adsense‘ provides sponsored links to sites such as AdsenseReady.com which sell spammy adsense ready sites. Surely this can’t be good? Whatever happened to the ‘made for adsense’ clause in the t&c’s?

WordPress themes for adsense

pilkster — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 12:39:45 +0000

Continuing my quest for adsense friendly themes for wordpress, I have found a couple more suitable for simple modification.

I’m looking for something similar to the movable type theme used here.

Rampart would be ideal for ZX81kit
Zig-zag (similar to Squares) is easy to modify, put a link unit in the sidebar (maybe with a G! searchbox).
Tropical breeze could be modified in the same way, and would be good for a gardening site.
Tech-Bytes would be a good base for a theme if you had the inclination to modify the header image.

Google xmas gift

pilkster — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 11:37:02 +0000

Got a gift from G! today… well chuffed! See the pics – read more.