Despite what you may hear, the Google AdSense program is not for everyone. There are some types of web sites that do poorly no matter how hard the owners try, and there are others that should be doing well but the webmaster simply isn't putting in the effort to make things happen.

Here are some tips to make AdSense work better for you. If you do them all and you're still not having any luck, then you just might be running one of those sites that don't make money.
1. Determine if your visitors are "in the mood"

Like I mentioned at the top of this article, some web sites just don't work with pay-per-click programs.
The best performing sites fall into one of these categories:

• Sites where users go and expect to buy something while they are there. E-commerce sites fit the bill here..
• Sites where users go to find specific information on something that they want to buy now. Music and video review sites, vacation information sites, resume building sites, etc. You don't have to actually be selling these types of things; your site can just be a mecca for information pertaining to these things. Then, when the visitor comes to read your content, they are more likely to click on your ads.

• Sites where people who have disposable income and a credit card like to visit. This includes sites with money management, investing and lifestyle content.

• Sites that draw a large amount of new users every day. Free coupon sites and "How to" sites are good examples.
• Sites where people go who expect to read ads. Classified ads and shopping comparison sites fit into this category.

2. Make sure that your visitors don't feel that you just want to grab their money

Give them plenty of relevant and well-written content. If writing isn't your best skill then hire someone to do it for you. Good content brings steady traffic and steady traffic pays the bills.

3. Play by the rules

Google has some very specific Terms of Service
https://www.google.com/adsense/policies for participating in their AdSense program. Learn those rules and follow them so you don't lose all of your investment by getting shut out.

4. Use the tools that Google gives you

Google gives you tools for determining the best keywords for your site, measuring ad performance, and setting up different ad "channels" for fine-tuning ad results. These guys and girls are the 800 lb. Gorillas in the Pay-Per-Click market. They didn't build these tools just to keep their programmers busy. Take advantage of their knowledge for they are very big and you are not!

5. Tweak, fine-tune and then tweak again

You should never be happy with your AdSense performance. If it's good, then you need to make it great. If it's great then you need to make it amazing. If it's amazing then you need to take it to the UPS club. The UPS club? Google sends all checks over $10,000 per month to the webmaster via UPS overnight delivery. Now there's a club that I wouldn't mind belonging to.

6. Get more traffic

No matter how much traffic you have, you need more. More eyeballs translate to more clicks. Even if you're only pulling a 2% click-through. That's a lot of clicks when you have thousands of visitors each day.

7. Experiment with new keywords

New keywords can bring new ads and new eyeballs along with it. Set up some new pages on your site and experiment with different content. Once you get something that's working then refer back to Tip # 5.

Reasons why RSS is good for Users:
- Users benefit from better information control and efficiency.
- Permission based.
- Easy opt-in, and opt-out process.
- No inbox clutter.
- Enhances productivity.
- Enhances organization of files
- RSS is spam/virus proof.
- No more clogged email servers (or harddrives).
- No more duplicate messages (for the most part).

With the current state of what Google did to my listing in the SERPs, I am relying much more on traffic from my RSS feed , and other bloggers who link to me from within their posts to generate traffic to my blog. I'm forced to look to other ways to generate "free" website traffic, because Google has essentially been the traffic killer for all my clicksthroughs on the Google domain.

Fortunately, I'm still getting traffic from Y!, MSN, Ask, and other referrers. So, more than ever before, I'd very much appreciate subscribers to my RSS feed.

Google is also waging war on honest sites that add value to their readership by selling relevant textlinks. Google's most recent PageRank update could also potentially decrease many advertisers natural traffic.

If you mouse over the green PR pixels, you'll see Google says, "PageRank is Google's view of the importance of this page". So, all of a sudden, your network of sites drops in "importance", then your rankings ( and traffic) will most likely drop also. This is another unnecessary Google slap at the entire Search industry.

So, if you've found some blogs you like to read, if only occasionally, then I encourage you to subscribe to their RSS Feed.

Some good RSS readers are:
FeedDemon
Bloglines
My Yahoo
Google Reader

More Visibility, a two time INC. 500 Company (and the only firm in their industry to have received such an honor), often releases free reports and whitepapers to their targeted audience and subscribers (distributed through various channels).

The one I was reading today was a little remedial, but a good primer for new website owners or netpreneurs who haven't yet considered that there is more to the traffic equation than buying links from other websites.

"Marketing Strategies Beyond Traditional Search" is a tidy 13 page PDF file that discusses contextual advertising, local search, vertical search, affiliate marketing, display advertising, broadband advertising, rich media, and more. If you've been marketing online for any amount of time you will not learn anything new from this report, but it might be worth your while to read some of their other free white papers.

The kicker is in the conclusion of "…Beyond Traditional Search," copied partially below. Remember this is a search engine optimization company (companies whose income depended solely on their ability to achieve top search engine positions for their clients) writing this.

"In order to have an effective online marketing mix, a marketer must first realize the importance of testing different channels. Sponsored listings on Google, Yahoo, and MSN are a great way to start, but don't have to be the only options. Marketers should take the time to learn who their targets are. What are their activities online? What…"

"Every website is different and so is every visitor. In order to effectively market a product or service online, a prospect has to be interested or engaged…"

Such is the evolution of SEO companies.

If the 'on the pulse' SEO and SEM (search engine optimization and search engine marketing) experts know that marketing online doesn't end with Google, (in fact your market might not even start there), isn't it time you, too, began investigating your target market's activities and alternatives to website traffic?

You may be overlooking a free source of targeted traffic and not know it. Leaving comments on blogs can bring you great free targeted traffic. Not just from the back link that you can leave which helps with your ranking in the search engines but also from people clicking on that link.

There is a strategy that you'll have to employ though. I'm not talking about spamming blogs though. Don't ever do that. Spamming sucks. If you have a blog you'll know what I'm talking about. Spamming is wrong so don't do it. Now I got that out of the way, let's see how we can get that fee targeted traffic.

If you don't already have blogs that you subscribe to, go to Google or your favorite search engine and type in your niche. Be sure to include the word blog or blogs (example: cat blogs). You can do a search for each of your keywords as well. If you have a cat web site you could do searches for cat blog, cat lover blog, cat toys blog, cat food blog etc. This way any traffic is going to be automatically targeted to your niche.

So how is that traffic going to get to your site? Most blog comments allow you to create a link to a web site. The usual comment form will include your name, email, web site and comment areas. When you type in a web site your name will be made into a link to your web site in that comment. It's a beautiful thing.

The important thing when finding a blog to comment on is to find one you really want to comment on. You can't write a comment like "Good post. Enjoyed it." That is not going to get you traffic. In order to get someone to click on your link you have to give them a reason. This is done by writing good relevant content in your comment. You don't have to write a whole article but a creative short paragraph about the blog post will cause people to want to read more of what you have to say.

Most people have a hard time of writing anything so the best way is if you have an opinion that can add to the authors post then write it. Even if you disagree with what the author has written don't be afraid to write that. Be careful that you don't get nasty or rude if you disagree. That could turn readers off. That means no traffic. Make your comment relevant to the post and interesting to the reader and they will click your link.

Something else you want to look at when posting comments is how old the post is. If the post is more than a couple months old don't worry about it. Most times if they are that old they are lost underneath the more recent posts. Focus on the posts that are on the first or second page of the blog. These posts will get the most views over time.

Get in the habit of posting comments on blogs everyday. The more links you have out there the better. Also try to post on the same blogs. This will grow a relationship with the author of the blog as well as the visitors to that blog. The more people see you the more comfortable they will be with you and see you as an expert thus clicking on that link all the more.

There is a great piece of software that can help you find blogs in your niche. It's called Comment Hut. I use this to find blogs to comment on. It searches Google for blogs with the keyword you choose and looks to see if they accept comments. Then it will also look up what the Google Page Rank is. This has been an invaluable asset for me to find new blogs to comment on. You can watch the video and download a free version here:

http://www.roberteilers.com/recommended/CommentHut