If you’re trying to make money online you’re probably using Adsense. If you have been using Adsense for a while, I hope that you have wondered whether you can get more out of it.

By running a few simple tests with Adsense, you could easily double or triple your site’s Adsense income. Optimizing Adsense can lead to a lot more clicks and it’s a lot easier to optimize your Adsense than it is to double your traffic.

If you’re not using Adsense channels to track your ad performance, you’re probably losing money. Relying on raw luck to optimize Adsense ads doesn’t make any sense at all! Thinking that the Adsense fairies will double our clicks without any change being made on our part is wishful thinking.

Why We Absolutely Must Use Adsense Channels

If we don’t use Adsense channels, how are we going to know if an ad unit is getting clicked on at all? You might have ad units that have never been clicked on. There’s only one way to find out…

Each ad unit you use should have its own channel. You should know exactly how many times the ad unit in your sidebar was clicked on, how many times the ‘medium rectangle’ unit was clicked on, etc. If you don’t know the exact click-through rate of each unit you’re not going to get any better!

Creating The Ad Channels

1. Login to your Adsense account.

2. Click the ‘Adsense Setup’ link:

3. Click the ‘Channels’ link:

4. Click the ‘Add new custom channels’ link:

5. Type in the name you want to use for the new channel you want to add:

When you name a channel, I would highly recommend using a name that describes both your site and the ad unit your naming. If I was going to name the sidebar ad unit on HowToMobile.com, I would use something like this: htm-sidebar. When I named the in-post unit on CourtneyTuttle.com, I used this: ct-postunit.

6. Click ‘Add Channel’.

That’s it! You now have a new channel! The next step is to setup an ad unit that is attached to the channel.

Selecting The Ad Channel When You Configure Ads

If you use Adsense, you have probably set ads up before. If not, this will walk you through the process.

1. Login to your Adsense account.

2. Click the ‘Adsense Setup’ link:

3. Click the ‘Adsense for Content’ link:

4. Select the type of ad unit you need.

5. Stop when you get to this screen:

I had you stop here so you wouldn’t miss an important step. This is where you choose which channel you want to use for this ad unit. Can you see the ‘add’ link in the picture above? If I clicked it at this point it would select htm-postbox for my channel

6. Click ‘Continue’ and you can then copy your code and paste it into your site in the proper place.

Now that you have setup an ad channel, your ‘Reports’ screen in Adsense will look different. You will now be able to see exactly how many clicks you got with that ad channel, the click-through rate, and the earnings for that channel.

Do that for all of your ad units, and you’ll know exactly how you’re making your money (or, more importantly, how you’re not making your money).