If you look around at a large sampling of WordPress blogs, chances are you’ll find a majority of them monetize their blog in some form using Google AdSense.   Even this blog adds a single AdSense block to the top-right corner of our homepage and posts that are at least 3 days old.

If you employ an AdSense strategy like this, it is more than likely that at some point you will have certain posts that you don’t want to display advertisements on.  This could be for a number of reasons, including posts where you have a sales strategy and don’t want readers clicking off the page for any reason other than by using your product/affiliate link.

If you’d like to prevent AdSense or other ads from showing up on certain post ID’s, our friend Keith has posted over at Weblog Tools Collection an easy to follow guide on how to skip advertisements on single posts of your choice.  You just need to know the post ID’s and add a small PHP snippet around the advertisement code.

If you prefer not to get your hands dirty by messing with the code, you can try the Who Sees Ads WordPress plugin.

In case it has been awhile since you’ve visited my WordPress Themes page, I just wanted to write a quick post and let you know that they have received a very significant update in the past two weeks. I’ve been scouring the blogosphere looking for the best free WordPress themes and found a lot of incredible ones that I didn’t know existed!  As always, I have managed to get a screen shot of them added, along with the the download and demo links whenever possible.

The posts that have seen the most significant upgrades are the following:

• Best 2-Column WordPress Themes
• Best 3-Column WordPress Themes
• Best Google AdSense Optimized WordPress Themes

If you think you may be in need of a WordPress theme in the next few months, you may want to bookmark these pages for future reference.  They will continue to be updated as I run across themes that I feel are worthy of a spot on the list.

If you have any questions or want to recommend something, please leave a comment below or let me know!

For most people that set up a new blog or are looking for a new WordPress theme, one goal these people have in common is usually to make money online. One easy way to achieve this is to actually look a WordPress theme you can use that is already optimized for Google AdSense advertisements. What this means is that the theme focuses on integrating Google AdSense advertisements around your content.

With that in mind, I decided to throw together a post that is designed to showcase a bunch of Google AdSense optimized WordPress themes that are currently available for anyone to download. Included you will find a screen shot of each theme, as well as a link to the author’s page and a link to download the theme.

2-Column Google AdSense Optimized Themes

Slick Blue Theme (Advertising Ready, SEO Friendly)

Source | Download

Black and White Theme

Source | Download | Demo

AdsPress Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Blix Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Note: Newer version available, but is not free.

Silver Sense Theme

Source | Download | (No Demo Found)

Connections Theme

Source | Download | Demo

MW Theme

Source / Demo | Download

Merah Putih Theme

Source | Download | Demo

3-Column Google AdSense Optimized Themes

Tigopedia Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Ads Minded Theme

Source | Download | Demo

ProSense Theme

Source | Download (Orange, Blue, and Gray) | Demo

ProBlogger Clean Theme

Source | Download | (No Demo Found)

Mezzo Theme

Source | Download | Demo

WP Colors Theme

Source | Download (Author request you visit page to download) | Demo (Select this theme in sidebar)

Note: Available in 4 colors and 2 sizes (fluid width and fixed width)

BlueSense Theme

Source | Download | (No Demo Found)

Know of a theme that you feel belongs on this list? Feel free to comment with a link below and I’ll check it out!

If you aren’t good with manually editing the code for your blog, you may have experienced some frustration with trying to place Google AdSense advertisements on your WordPress blog. It can be even more difficult to wrap the ads properly so that your post content wraps around it.

If any of this sounds like you, then let me tell you about an amazing WordPress plugin called Shylock AdSense plugin. First thing you’ll want to do is download the plugin from the authors website. Once this done, the plugin activates like normal by simply uploading it, then activating it from the plugins folder.

After successfully activating the plugin, the first thing you want to do is head over to the Options panel and click on Shylock AdSense. You’ll be greeted with an easy to navigate menu that allows you to set up 10 different customized AdSense codes (you can use different block sizes or different colors) for use on your site. You can get this code generated from Google AdSense.

Once this is done, you can scroll down and view a series of drop-down menus that allow you to control where these ads will be placed on your homepage, your individual pages, and your individual posts (you can pick top right, top left, middle, bottom, etc.). Once you’ve pasted your code that Google AdSense gives you, there is no additional coding involved. Everything is actually controlled from right within this menu by selecting the advertisement block and then selecting where to display it.

While this stuff is all useful, what really separates this plugin from the other AdSense plugins that are available is the ability to designate a number of days before your advertisements will appear on your single page posts. This allows you to avoid displaying ads within your homepage posts where your regular readers will see them, but will allow you to start displaying them on your archived individual posts so search engine traffic will see them.

At this point, this plugin is currently in its early stages with version 1.1 and is already very useful. It also has a lot of potential for continued improvement. The main thing I would like to see is some form of the AdSense-Deluxe plugin integrated, giving you the ability to manually add individual AdSense ads only in designated spots (such as really long posts) by placing some code in your post when you want to do display an advertisement (such as <–Code 1–> or something similar). I would also like the ability to name the AdSense code blocks that are pasted in (such as 468×60 Blue or something similar).