I got an email a week ago from Google Adsense asking me to place more 300X250 size ads, text and image enabled, on one of my sites.

Apparently, this is the size most preferred by large advertisers, and they’ll pay a higher price for above-the-fold ads in this size format on quality sites.

So, I’m changing large rectangles that are text only to medium text and image ad units to see how things work out.

The email also recommended using the “ad placements feature” to define the new slots, so I made new channels for each, even though I’ve got no idea how this is supposed to work.

Has anyone else tried this? Am I shooting myself in the foot by changing ad unit sizes from one that has been a cash cow till this point?
Below is an excerpt from the email I received…

After a recent review of your site, we would like to include xxxxxxx.com in our custom placement packs program.  Custom placement packs are selections of individually-reviewed sites designed for our largest brand advertisers.   

 We would like to feature your site more frequently in these advertiser packages, but to do so, we need you to place more image and text-enabled medium rectangle ad units (300×250) on your site. Visit https://www.google.com/adsense/adformats to see a sample of the medium rectangle unit.

 The medium rectangle is the most demanded size among our brand advertisers that utilize these packages for both text and image ads. These advertisers want to ensure they reach visitors on high quality sites like yours, and are willing to bid more for ads prominently displayed on these sites.  They require that the units be placed “above the fold” on a page so that the ads are immediately visible to your site’s visitors without scrolling down.

 If you decide to add medium rectangle units to your site, please notify us by replying to this email so that we can begin featuring your site in more of our advertiser packages.

I was skeptical, to say the least.

In fact, I was convinced these sites wouldn’t bring in more than a few pennies a day in Adsense revenues.

But I put a bunch of them online anyway.

The stats below show a domain where I placed 23 of Joel Comm’s Instant Adsense Templates. The domain, just to reveal all, has been around for many years, and has a Google PR of 4, so I wasn’t starting from scratch. Still, this surprised me:

I took this screenshot just after noon on Tuesday, and I see I’ve broken the $100 mark on those 23 sites.

So…. to what do I owe this success?

1) The pre-existing domain, and choosing subfolders instead of subdomains.
It would have taken much longer to get in Google’s SERPs if I had chosen a new domain for each site, or a subdomain which also would have gotten sandboxed.

2) The sites I chose were all tech/computer/gadget related, which make the best candidates for Tag and Ping traffic. I have been bookmarking one page from each site per day with 22 bookmarking services (the lesser known services providing the best traffic… but that’s a post for another day).

3) I was wrong, and these sites are particularly well designed to encourage AdSense clicks.

So, now that I’ve learned something, I’m going to apply it. The next few sites I build are going to :

• Be on tech topics
• Be hosted in folders of established and indexed domains
• Be tag and pinged regularly.
• Be modeled after these dorky looking templates.

Earlier this month, if you recall, there was a bit of a scuffle between the owners of Private Label Montly and Joel Comm about his Instant Adsense Templates.

The resolution involved giving a copy of the $200 adsense package to every PLM member. So, I decided to bite the bullet and renew my defunct membership in PLM for two months to get the template packs for sixty some odd bucks.

On Thursday I uploaded 23 of the adsense sites, completely unedited, to an unused PR4 domain, and worked some tag and ping magic, and roughly 48 hours later I’ve made $30 and change from those sites.

Not at all bad. It looks like I’ll easily make back my investment.

What I was wrong about, though was this:

I didn’t buy Instant Adsense Templates because I read that they use tables instead of CSS, making their claims of being perfectly optimized false

While this may just be an anomoly, my CTR for those sites is well over 30%, which makes them pretty darn well optimized for Adsense.

And I don’t know how much better I’d be doing for SEO with a pure CSS site, but I do know, thanks to my existing PR4 domain, I’m already ranking in the first page of Google’s SERPS for several work at home type terms, which is also bringing me traffic.

AdSense Helpers

1) Adsense Deluxe : I don’t use it on this blog, but on others, it’s indispensible. It adds an Adsense block inside your posts with just a click.

2) Adsense Beautifier: This one is visible on the single posts page of this blog. It automatically ads images to adsense ad blocks to increase clickthrough

Tags and Bookmarking

3) Bunny’s Technorati Tags: Easily add Technorati keyword tags to your posts. See the tags beneath all of the posts on this blog for an example.
4) Sociable: Add links to all the best social bookmarking sites under your posts.

Keep Visitors Longer

5) WordPress Related Entries: Keep people clicking by showing posts related to the one they’re reading.

6) Adhesive: Makes some posts “sticky” so they stay at the top of the category page no matter what date they were posted.

Encourage Return Visits

7) Subscribe2 : Lets users subscribe to different blog categories to receive alerts when you post in topics of interest to them.

Subscribe To Comments : Another way to bring back past visitors. Once someone has commented, they can receive notification when that comment thread is updated for potential replies.

Make Search Engines Happy

9) Google Sitemap Generator: create an updated Google Sitemap everytime you post.

10) Add Meta Keyword Tag: Turn your Bunny’s Technorati Tags into Meta Keyword Tags.

I’ve just finished my third, and coolest yet, WordPress theme with WP Themerator.

This one took a lot more editing after creation, since Themerator doesn’t deal with with black or dark backgrounds with light text, but I think it turned out pretty good in the end.

I even took the time to add a graphic to the footer to make it extra special.

You can see the screenshot below, and it’ll be in my Themes tab in a few hours.