It’s a fact, you aren’t making nearly enough money as you should with Adsense. Why is it that some people can rake in hundreds of dollars in earnings a day while others struggle to make more than a few pennies?

I’ve worked with Adsense long enough to understand the pitfalls that most people fall into. I know what mistakes people make because I have done the same things myself!

The secret to earning with Adsense is to stop wasting your time on the things that don’t matter. And spend more of your time on the things do.

Whether you are an expert or are just getting started with Adsense for the first time, there is much to be learned through these five common mistakes made with Adsense…

1. Worrying Too Much About Your Earnings

I know how you feel. You spend hours and hours working on your site. And what does it get you? A measly two or three dollars a day!

It’s completely understandable. But frowning upon it isn’t going to help you earn any more! Here is the best way to stay motivated when it comes to Adsense…

Set a monthly goal that you want to earn. A goal that you can realistically achieve. For most people, your first goal should probably be to earn $100 a month that way you can receive a new paycheck each month. Here is how to do that…

I promise that if you build 150-200 great content pages for your website, there is a 99.9% chance that you will earn at least $100 in one month and achieve your goal.

That is where your focus should be. Writing as many high quality articles as you can. Realize that with each page that you finish writing, the odds of you reaching your goal go up! Write like crazy on a daily basis until you reach your $100 goal. Don’t worry about anything else except writing quality pages.

Once you reach your goal, make it your goal to earn $200 in one month. You don’t have to earn $200 each month. Just have one month where you achieve at least $200.

This is where most people get upset with their Adsense earnings. They have a good month where they earn $100. But then the next 2-3 months they go backwards. This can very likely happen! Even if you are working to make your site better on a daily basis. That’s just the way it is with Adsense. So just get used to it!

The important thing is to never lose site of your goal. Remember that with each page you write, the more likely you will achieve that next goal of $200. Nothing will help you reach your goal more than writing a new page that solves your visitors problems and needs. I will say this…

It will take much less time to get to your $200 goal than it took to get to your $100 goal. Your $100 goal will be the toughest because you are just starting to get the snowball rolling.

If you keep applying the same amount of effort with your site, your $200 goal will turn to $300. Then you might have a month where you make $500. You just keep building from there. Once the snowball gets rolling, you really start making more money than you ever thought possible!

Don’t get down if you fall backwards a month or two. Set a goal. Write as much as possible to further increase your chances of reaching that goal. And eventually, you are going to reach that goal. I guarantee it!

2. Checking Your Adsense Stats Daily

I know that this is a habit that everyone first gets into when they get started with Adsense. I was the same way. I realize how exciting it is when you first realize that this stuff actually works.

But there comes a time when you need to put all of that aside. Checking your stats is unproductive. It doesn’t make your site any better. You need to spend more time doing productive things and as little time doing unproductive things as possible.

When I first started, I checked my Adsense stats daily. Then I gained more experience and only checked them about once a week. Now, I’m at the point where I only check them once or twice a month when I get bored.

The thing you have to realize is this, watching your earnings is not going to help you make any more money. Your Adsense earnings will take care of itself. You need to be so driven about building a great site that it doesn’t matter what your Adsense earnings are. I promise you this…

“If your site keeps getting better on a daily basis, your Adsense earnings will eventually reflect that improvement.”

You might write ten great articles and see no increase in Adsense earnings in the next couple of weeks or even months. But eventually, your earnings are going to increase. Those articles are going to find there way to readers and slowly move higher up the search engine rankings.

3. Spending Too Much Time With High Paying Keywords

By far the biggest waste of time done by site builders is keyword research on high paying keywords. There thinking goes something like this…

1. find keywords that are being paid highly for on Google
2. collect several dollars for each click for that page

Nothing could be farther from the truth with this strategy! If you have spent so much as a penny on any keyword research company, I’m afraid to tell you, you have wasted your money and time. Here’s why…

Google is much smarter then you could ever imagine. Just because your crummy site talks about “california auto insurance quotes “ doesn’t mean you are going to be paid much of anything for ads that are on that page.

Google Adsense would only be profitable for that keyword on a page from a well established and quality site. So if Geico or some other big-time insurance company had a page about California Auto Insurance and had an Adsense ad on that page, they would probably make a nice profit if someone clicked on that ad.

On the other hand, if dumb-keyword-guy-blog.com put up a page about auto insurance, he probably would get very low paying ads on his site. Google doesn’t want to risk their top advertiser’s trust by sending them traffic from crummy sites. So they only allow quality pages to have the best ads.

The best way to go about this is to create as high quality site as you possibly can. If you do this, Google is going to start paying you more and more because you will be sending the type of traffic that it wants sent to its high-paying advertisers.

4. Only Building Sites Around Profitable Niches

Many people when they first decide to build a site centered around Adsense choose a theme that they believe to be highly profitable.

For example, they might decide to build a site about computers as opposed to writing a site about books.

This is the wrong way of thinking if your passion is stronger for books than it is computers. I have been working with Adsense for years and can tell you first-hand that it doesn’t make much difference.

I have written a site about laptops and I have also written a site about motivation and the cost per click from Adsense was nearly identical!

Build a site around whatever it is you are most knowledgeable about and can give the greatest help to your visitors. The magic formula has always been..

great content = high traffic = cash!

If the only site you can create with great content is about something that doesn’t have highly profitable keywords then so be it! It’s going to make you more money in the long run. Here’s why…

1. you are going to be more passionate about writing on that subject

2. you are going to be less likely to quit when you aren’t seeing immediate results

3. your higher quality content is going to be linked to more often and will receive much higher traffic

Build a website around the #1 thing you are most passionate about. When you do that, your Adsense earnings will pretty much take care of itself.

5. Worrying Too Much About Ad Placement

This is an absolutely huge problem with so many people and Adsense. I understand why rookies fall into this trap. But even people who should know better worry about ad placement way more than what they should.

Here’s the scoop on ad placement. Yes, positioning your ads in a certain spot can certainly increase your CTR (click through rate.) And it doesn’t take rocket science to realize that a higher CTR means more cash from Adsense. However…

It’s not something that you should obsess about and tweak a thousand times to get it just right! Your time is way too important. And it should be used on more productive things like building great content.

Spending ten hours writing new pages is far more profitable than spending ten hours going through and maximizing yours ads positioning. Don’t get me wrong, ad positioning is important. You should have some general understanding of where they should be and what they should look like. Adsense ads should at least have these two things…

1. Look like ordinary links as much as possible. So make sure that they are at least the same color as the other links on your site
2. Be placed in areas where they are most likely to be seen, such as towards the top left area of your content.

By following those two guidelines, common sense should be able to take over as far as what to do with them. Once you have your ads following those two rules, forget about them! Work on creating better content. If you only learn one thing from this page then learn this…

“Spend more time on the things that will make your site better (such as building great content) and less time on all of the other stuff related to Adsense.”

If you can do this, you will have a huge advantage over 99% of the other people that are trying to earn a living through Adsense.

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