Google's AdSense program is an outstanding way to add a secondary stream of income to your existing web site. Secondary? Did I say secondary? For a lot of people AdSense is the ONLY reason to have a web site! There are documented cases of people earning $500 a day and more solely from their AdSense traffic.

While we can't guarantee that you'll make that kind of money, we can say with a high degree of confidence that you'll see your AdSense revenue increase if you follow these simple tips and tricks.

Tip #1: Basic rules for keeping your Google AdSense account open.

AdSense is a great way to make money, but only if you follow the rules. If you get caught doing otherwise, Google can shut your account down in seconds. Here are some basic rules to keep in mind:

1. Do not use fake information when opening your Google AdSense account.

2. Do not hack or modify Google AdSense code other than to change the parameters that Google authorizes you to change.

3. Keep AdSense ads off of your registration confirmation and all "thank you" pages.

4. Do not display AdSense ads and a competitor's ads (like Overture's) on the same page at the same time.

5. Don't "beg for clicks" or provide any incentive for clicking on your Google AdSense ads.

6. Never click on the ads yourself, even if you are genuinely interested in the product or service and are thinking of buying it!

Tip #2: How to disguise your ads to look like content

Experts agree that click-through rates go up when ads are made to look like relevant content instead of blatant advertising. No, it's not dishonest or immoral and it's not too hard to do either. Here's what you need to know:

1. Choose one of the "Text Ads" options in your Google AdSense Panel. Many successful web masters say that the 336x280 text ad performs best. My own tests prove this to be true.

2. Change your settings to allow 4 or 5 ads to be shown, your choice.

3. Change the default black text on a white background with an aqua border to a text color that matches the rest of the text on your page, a background color that matches your page, and no border.

Here's a trick that direct mail marketers have known for years: Blue is a great color for a call to action. In your case, the call to action is the link that you want clicked. Set your URL link color to blue and you'll see better results.

Although you can use the Google control panel to make these changes, you can also edit the AdSense code right on your page. Here are the variables:

google_color_border = "B4D0DC"; google_color_bg = "ECF8FF"; google_color_link = "0000CC"; google_color_url = "008000"; google_color_text = "6F6F6F";

Each color is represented as a hexadecimal value. If you aren't conversant with hexadecimal, just use this color chart.

Now, design your page so that your ads appear better integrated into the content. Ads that are placed on the right side of the screen tend to get clicked more often, but that fact really depends on how your page is "read" by your visitors.

There's a lot of psychology to determining how a reader will follow the text on a page and, thankfully, Google has done the research for you. Take a look at their Organization Tips page for help.

Tip #3: How to pull highly-targeted ads to your site.

Very often you see AdSense ads appearing on pages that have absolutely no relation to the content or purpose of the site. Not only does that make you look silly, but it's costing you a lot of revenue as well. Here are some quick ways to make sure that your ads are relevant.

1. Try changing the name of the page to a more relevant word. If you are selling replacement parts for classic cars, for example, but you're pulling ads from auto dealers, try changing the page name to "classic-car-auto-parts.html" and see what happens. Note the hyphens (-) between each word in the page name. Google's robots can parse words that contain hyphens much better than they can words that are all run together like this: "ClassicCarAutoParts.html"

2. Use the H1 and H2 tags to draw attention to key phrases. Google's AdSense robots tend to notice those tags when they encounter them.

3. Make sure that you are using the correct keywords in your copy and that you're not confusing the poor Google robots by having too many words that "act" as if they're keywords but really aren't. Words that are bolded, for example, are usually interpreted as being relevant by Google.

4. Check your keyword "density" which is the number of times your keywords appear in your copy. What's the rule? No one knows for sure. Just experiment until you are getting the results you want.

4. Make sure that the content between the <title> </title> tags is keyword rich. A title tag containing "Where to get hard to find classic car parts" leaves no doubt about what is important on that page.

5. Keyword placement plays a strong role in determining which ads will be displayed. Try to put the most relevant keywords directly below your Google AdSense code whenever possible.

6. Once you have made your changes, post your new page and refresh it in your browser every 5 minutes or so until the new ads appear. It takes a few minutes for Google to notice that you changed your content.

Tip #4: Replacing the "Public Service" ads

If Google doesn't have a relevant ad to display on your site, it will pull a public service ad (PSA) from its inventory. When visitors click on these PSAs you don't earn a penny. Google invites you to avoid running PSAs by letting you fill in an "alternate URL?in the control panel. If Google is about to run a PSA, and it finds that you have an alternate URL set, it will pull and display content from that URL instead. This is a great way to earn revenue from other affiliate programs and advertising co-ops that you belong to.