adsense

Free Blogger Templates

2008-05-22T23:54:00.000-07:00

Where do I find Free Blogger Templates?”

I’m regularly asked by bloggers using different blog platforms where they can get nice designs for their blogs, usually for free. I’m a WordPress User and therefore know a few good spots for WP templates (here, here, here, here, here, here and here for starters) but one of the platforms I’m less familiar with that many blogs use is Blogger.com.

Gecko and Fly have a nice list of well designed Blogger Templates that I think I’ll be sending people to from now on. Most are designs imported in from WP designs that are quite unlike Blogger.com default designs.

Share your Free Blogger Templates below if you’ve got any good sources.

this is the list of site

http://www.crazykinux.com

http://psyc.horm.org/

http://drupal.org/node/34324

Free Blogger Templates I (tags: wordpress templates)

two great sites that offers free blogger templates are,

Caz Templates
and
pannasmontata templates

beautifully desined and very cool!

http://www.thestylecontest.com

http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/styles/library

http://www.carlgalloway.com/categories/22-Blogger-Templates

http://www.DiCaprioBengals.com

http://blogger-templates-directory.blogspot.com

http://freeglobe.blogpsot.com

http://clean3columnadsenseready.blogspot.com/

http://freebloggerdesigns.blogspot.com/

http://www.tothepc.com/archives/download-new-blogger-templates/

http://www.suckmylolly.com

http://blogandweb.com/category/plantillas-blogger/

http://www.giselejaquenod.com/blog/

http://adsensefacile.free.fr

http://delang-d.blogspot.com/2007/11/free-my-template-to-give-away.html

http://morefreethings.blogspot.com/2007/11/blogger-templates.html

http://www.articles2u.com

http://best-voip-service.info

http://jackbook.com/

http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp

http://www.webmonkey.com/

http://www.pyzam.com/bloggerlayouts

http://www.scribbledthought.com

http://www.suckmylolly.com

http://www.eblogtemplates.com/

http://www.techsagar.com/2008/02/free-blogger-templates.html

http://bloggerblogtemplates.blogspot.com/

http://parandroid.com/gallery/index.php?s=template

http://www.compassdesigns.net/joomla-library/free-joomla-templates/

http://www.eblogtemplates.com

http://www.gosublogger.com

How to Write Your “About Me” Page

2008-05-22T23:53:00.001-07:00

How do you write an About Me page?

There are four main questions that readers want answered on your About Me page:

who you are…
your expertise and how it addresses…
their problem or goal, and how they can…
contact you
Here is a sample “About Me” page that answers these questions:

Hi, I’m Jane Smith and I write TransitionMomBlog (who Jane is) to help women make the transition from full-time mom to successful entrepreneur (the reader’s problem or goal). I started TransitionMomBlog in 2004 (Jane’s expertise – shows she has been blogging for two years) to help other women deal with the sometimes overwhelming prospect of starting a new business while still running a household (how Jane helps them overcome their problem or achieve their goal). Prior to raising my family, I spent over ten years as a teacher, corporate trainer and workshop leader (Jane’s expertise, both as a mom and a business person). To contact me, please email XXX (how to contact Jane).

Other posts on About Me Pages include:
Adding an About Page to your Site
The problem of Default About Pages
Also check out our popular Blogging Tips for Beginners page.

This reader quick tip was submitted by Barbra Sundquist from Home Business Wiz.

How Bloggers Make Money from Blogs

2008-05-22T23:52:00.000-07:00

My Personal Income Streams
As an update to this post I’ve more recently written one on How I make Money Blogging which highlights the most profitable ways that I use blogs to generate income. I’ve also written extensively on how bloggers make money in ProBlogger the Book.

How do bloggers make money from blogs?
I’ve been reflecting this week about the amazing diversity of opportunities that are opening up for bloggers to make money from blogging.

I’ve long advised that bloggers seeking to make money from blogging spread their interests across multiple revenue streams so as not to put all their eggs in one basket.

The wonderful thing is that this is becoming easier and easier to do 2005 has seen many options opening up. I thought I’d take a look at some of the methods that bloggers are currently using to make money through blogs.

Income Streams for Bloggers - How to Make Money Blogging
Advertising Programs - Perhaps the most obvious changes in the past few months have been with the addition of a variety of viable advertising options for bloggers looking to make money from their blogs. The most common way bloggers seem to earn money online is via the contextual ad program from Google - Adsense. A more recent addition that many are using successfully are Chitika’s eMiniMalls and WidgetBucks, Text Link Ads.

Azoogle Ads, Intelli Txt, DoubleClick, Tribal Fusion, Adbrite, Clicksor, AdHearUs, Kanoodle, Pheedo, TextAds, Bidvertiser, Fastclick and Value Click (to name just some of the options) and there is a smorgasbord of options. Of course there is more to come with MSN Adcenter and YPN both in beta testing and with a variety of other advertising system currently in development (YPN is only available to US publishers).

Lastly there’s BlogAds - one of the first blog specific ad networks.

RSS Advertising - The past 12 months have seen some advances in RSS Advertising also. I’m yet to hear of any bloggers making big money blogging through it to this point - but as improvements are made to the ad programs exploring this I’m sure we’ll start to see examples of it being profitable.

Sponsorship - In addition to the array of advertising programs that are available to join there is a growing awareness in the business of the value and opportunity that exists for them to advertise directly on blogs. I’m hearing more and more examples of this and have been fortunately to have a couple of ad campaigns of my own in the past month - one with Adobe a couple of weeks ago and another just completed with Ricoh for a new digicam over at my Digital Camera Blog. These are not isolated cases - as I say I know of many blogs exploring sponsorship with advertisers at present and suspect we’ll see more of it in the year ahead. Sponsorship is also happening on a post by post basis with some bloggers being paid to write on certain topics by companies - either in one off or a regular fashion - and they are able to make big money from their blogs doing so.

Affiliate Programs - There are larger affiliate programs like Amazon, Linkshare, Clickbank and Commission Junction but also literally thousands of others from the large to the very small.

Digital Assets - Increasing numbers of bloggers have been developing other digital assets to support and add revenue streams to their blogs. By this I mean that I’m increasingly seeing e-books, courses and tele-seminars being run by bloggers. My recent foray into this with the first series of the six figure blogging course that Andy and I ran a few weeks ago and have just released the study version of. This type of activity will only increase in future - in fact this week I’ve seen numerous examples of bloggers running courses.

Blog Network Opportunities - with the rise in popularity of Blog Networks - bloggers are also being presented with more places to earn an income from their blogging - by writing for and with others. While it might be difficult to get a writing gig with one of the bigger networks - there are plenty who are always asking for new bloggers to join and who are willing to pay bloggers using a variety of payment models. While there are distinct advantages of blogging for yourself - blogging for an established network who will handle a lot of the set up/promotion/admin/SEO etc has it’s advantages also. More and more bloggers are combining writing for themselves on their own blogs with taking on blog network blogs as additional income streams.

Business Blog Writing Opportunities - as blogging has risen in it’s profile as a medium more and more businesses are starting blogs. Many of these companies have internal staff take on blogging duties - but an increasing number of them are hiring specialist bloggers to come on and run their blogs. I know of a number of bloggers who in the past month or two have been approached for such paid work. Check out Bloggers for Hire if you’re looking for this type of work.

Non Blogging Writing Opportunities - Also becoming more common are bloggers being hired to write in non blogging mediums. Manolo’s recent coup of a column in the Washington Post is just one example of this as bloggers are increasingly being approached to write for newspapers, magazines and other non blog websites. Along side this is the rise of bloggers as published book authors - this is to the extent that one blogger I spoke with this week complained to me that they were one of the few bloggers than they knew who didn’t have a book deal!

Donations - Tip Jars and donation buttons have been a part of blogging for years now but this last year saw a number of bloggers go full time after fund raising drives. Perhaps the most high profile of these was Jason Kottke of kottke.org who through the generosity of his readership was able to quit his job and become a full time blogger.

Flipping Blogs - Also more common in 2005 was the practice of ‘Blog Flipping’ - or selling of blogs. This has happened both on an individual blog level (I can think of about 20 blogs that sold this year) but also on a network level (the most obvious of these being the 8 figure sale of Weblogs Inc to AOL).

Merchandising - My recent attempt to sell ProBlogger.net T-shirts wasn’t a raging success, but it is an example of how an increasing number of bloggers are attempting to make a few extra dollars from their blogs by selling branded products through programs like Cafepress. While I didn’t have a lot of success with merchandising - quite a few larger blogs are seeing significant sales - especially blogs with a cult following. I’m not at liberty to discuss details - but I know of one largish blog which will see sales over $20,000 in merchandise for the calendar year of 2005.

Consulting and Speaking - While it has been popular for established consultants to add blogs to their businesses we’re also starting to see bloggers with no consulting background able to make money by charging readers for their time in consulting scenarios BECAUSE of the profile that their blogs have built them. Blogging has the ability to establish people as experts on niche topics and we all know the value of being perceived as an expert. I spoke to one blogger last month who charges himself out at over $200 an hour for speaking and consulting work - his area of expertise was something that he knew little about 18 months ago - but through his blog he’s become a leader in his field and a minor celebrity in his industry.

As time rolls on there are more and more ways that bloggers make money from their blogs opening up. Feel free to suggest your own ideas and experiences in comments below.

Update: Looking for more information on how to make money blogging? Here’s a post I wrote talking about my own experience - particularly looking at the top ways that I make money from blogs.

Also check out ProBlogger the Book for a comprehensive guide to making money from blogs.

How To Market Your Blog in 2007

2008-05-22T23:51:00.000-07:00

It breaks my heart to see blogs with great content languish in utter anonymity, devoid of comments, saddled with a seven-figure alexa traffic ranking, and rotting in pagerank purgatory.

Well, no more, I say!

For those bloggers out there who have decided to start their blogs, or launch their blogging careers, in 2007 I salute you — and present to you with 41 ways to kickstart your marketing efforts. Kick back, grab a cold one, and check it out. And if, in a year’s time, you’ve cracked the Technorati 1000, don’t forget where it all began! :)

Get Your Own House In Order

Write well, write consistently, don’t give up: All the marketing in the world won’t help you if you have a lame-duck blog. In your search for more traffic, more promotion, and more publicity, never forget it starts with great content — and needs to continue with great content on a regular schedule. There’s no question that maintaining quality and regularity is difficult while you’re starting out, particularly if you’re time strapped … but hang in there, because if you sacrifice this, all of your marketing efforts will be for naught.
Become an expert on something: Develop a keen interest, continue to read and write intelligently, and after a while, your experience will grant you this informal title; bloggers will seek you out, your reknown will grow, and it will be easier to be noticed, linked to, and get cross promoted (see below)
Design is more important than you think: Your mother’s right — first impressions count, and they can count for cash money. If you’re serious about blogging, don’t stick with a n unaltered top10 Wordpress theme no matter how cool you think it is. You want to separate and elevate yourself from the blogging masses, and its impossible to do if you look exactly the same as them. Easy to say, hard to do, but absolutely necessary if you don’t have the money to pay for a private ground-up theme: learn CSS and a photoeditor of choice, and learn to tweak your theme yourself, so that your blog looks professional, stands out, and screams “yes, I am worthy of your attention!”.
Get Your SEO On: An entire post in and of itself — get your own domain name, host your own blogging software, enable permalinks, create keyword rich headlines, create unique title tags, enable trackback and ping functionality, ensure your blog pings pinging-services.
Publish full feeds: A controversial topic. Publishing full feeds puts you at the mercy for content scrapers who will scrape your RSS feeds and repost your content, create traffic, and reap adsense bucks. On the other hand, some data suggests that it can also increase your traffic, and a few pundits swear by it. Feed subscriptions are critical; get your feeds burned through Feedburner so you can track how many are subscribing. People who subscribe to feeds rarely unsubscribe, and every single feed subscriber is a potential source of traffic to your blog.
Do interviews with other bloggers: Score interviews with newsworthy individuals (who may be linked to newsworthy content), to create link worthy content, but more importantly, create news on THEIR blog to get back to YOUR blog.
Break important stories: See the post on how to find news. Long story short: if you have an interest in an area, it is still possible to do this as long as you’re willing to put in the time and energy to find stuff. Benefit: being picked up by A-list blogs, mainstream news outlets and more.
Have a contest: Or, have regular contests, which encourage participation and buzz in your corner of the blogosphere.
Publish original research: If you’ve got the time, start with a question, try and figure it out with the data available, and “publish it”. For fun, I asked myself “How many of the Top 30 Diggers actually blog?” And I just went through their profiles and created a table of how many blogged. I then talked about what it meant, and tried to answer the question “why?” [answer: not many do blog, its because being a top 30 digger requires a huge time investment]
Put out Press Releases: Particularly if you have something new, unique, or particularly important to say (such as an important story, or research)
Work your long tail: A tip based on your SEO efforts; there is a free service called Hit Tail that will analyze the search terms leading to your blog traffic, and yank out high quality key words you should be focusing on that you might not immediately think of. This can help you focus your future posts as you are already getting traffic for those key words.
Answer your comments, in your comments, and off blog: Of course you have enabled comments on every post, right? So, when you do get comments, answer as many as humanly possible, and if its an interesting enough issue or question, contact the poster directly for a friendly follow up. Treat every potential poster as a potential subscriber to your feed, and a future friend and contact.
Spend time to create links and trackbacks: In every post spend as much time as you can to create outbound links to relevant and high linking blogs; many blogs automatically have trackbacks enabled, so in their comments section they will have a link back to your blog. If its a highly trafficked and ranked blog, this can mean traffic BACK to your blog, and it can draw notice from the author themselves — because, let’s face it, we’re all vain in a fashion, even A-listers, and we’re all interested in who is linking to us.
Get Your MyBlogLog widget and work it, work it, work it (in a nice way): MyBlogLog — know it, love it, and embrace it. Since its been acquired by Yahoo, it has the potential to explode all over the blogosphere. The two sentence run down is that it offers a free widget that enables you to build a free community around your blog, and to easily see which other bloggers have been to your blog. You can “add” friends, and generate traffic, but more importantly, your own network of like-minded blogging colleagues in a way that is relatively easy and efficient. Just go easy on the unsolicited messages. I wrote a complete review over here.
Getting the Word Out

Join a blog carnival: Where every blogger who joins one blogs about a topic, then each blog gets promoted. Here’s an index of blog carnivals to get you started.
Join blog network: Between 9rules, b5media, and others, there is networking potential, income potential, and a link-a-palooza waiting for you (through the linkroll as every member may have to link to every other member) if you’re able to get into one. Goes back to tip #1 — don’t forget to keep up your blog.
Participate in forums: Forums with tons of pages, huge lists of members, and a responsive community are an easy way to not only connect with other individuals, but an opportunity to tastefully demonstrate your expertise and a link back to your blog
Participate on larger blogs in comments: Like number three, except that by participating directly in another blogger’s comments you a) get their recognition and b) get the recognition of the blogging community. Also, here’s a tip: try and be one of the first few commenters on heavily trafficked sites to get recognized — most people won’t read past the first 10-20 comments. Here’s another tip for traffic: IF (and ONLY IF) you have posted something relevant that is pursuant to the ongoing conversation and IF the blog has a commenting policy that will allow you to do so, post a link back to a post on your own site (”hey guys, I wrote about how we can solve this problem! — check out the link over here, but let me summarize it for you … “). Sometimes you’ll be surprised at how much traffic comes back.
Join Blogburst: Blogburst is a type of “blog network”, which syndicates content across American newspaper’s websites, such as USA Today and Reuters. That’s right, you could get a post syndicated on Reuters. Trust me — it can happen . Highly ranked inbound links + traffic + bragging rights to your mom that your post got featured in a newspaper. Not too shabby. Also on the upside, they have a new revenue sharing scheme. The bad: read their terms of service carefully — you give up certain rights when they republish your content, and the revenue sharing works on the top100 publishers only.
Participate in Darren’s contests: He has enough of them, and often publishes links to all of the participants.
Submit to blog directories: So people can find your blog.
Submit to Google sitemaps: Really part of “get your house in order”, but when you do, Google will be able to find you so much easier; translation — more Google juice, more traffic, higher rankings faster. Tip: for Wordpress fans, this plugin is particularly useful.
Submit to article directories: You might want to submit your favourite posts to article directories, where they will enable you to have a biobox / blurb with a link back to your own blog. Again, demonstrating your expertise, and moreover, the article might get picked up in a ezine or another blog, leading to more traffic and more inbound links.
Get interviewed: If you’ve demonstrated your expertise, or have done something newsworthy, or reported on something newsworthy, try and get interviewed. As long as its done in a fair way (doesn’t need to be a completely puffpiece) by a site or blogger with some reknown, its more traffic for you.
Get listed on a news aggregator, or blog aggregator: Like Techmeme for technews, or Tailrank for blogging news. Hint: some news aggregators will actually accept submissions if you ask them nicely; double hint: try and get listed by linking to a top story within your first 100 words.
Create free stuff for yourself and give it away: Like ebooks, digests of your favourite posts, pdfs, and so on. Make sure to include a link back in the document, back to your site.
Create free stuff for other people: the same, let them distribute it, get a link back.
Pay for pub: Efficient means of using your cash is to buy targeted Adwords, or keywords in Yahoo’s advertising network; you could get other bloggers to write about you using PayPerPost or ReviewMe; or you purchase text link ads through Text-Link-Ads.com
Connect, Connect, Connect

Make friends with other bloggers: Ridiculously simple, but its true. Benefits of “networking” (making friends) include more mentions on other blogs, more requests for interviews, more partnerships in future deals, more “adds” into their MyBlogLog network, more “ads” into someone else’s blogroll (and therefore links back to your blog) — it goes on and on.
Guest blog: Offer to do it for free, and you’ll be able to demonstrate what you know to an entirely new audience. Gives you great credibility, and of course, most will allow a courtesy link back to your own blog. A free foot-in-the-door to some communities as well.
Volunteer, intern, scut-monkey your way into a blogger’s graces: Maintaining a highly trafficked site is a lot of work. Offer to volunteer your time with menial behind the scenes stuff (moderating posts, acting as a bird dog for news) for free and with a smile, and you’ll get a foot-in-the-door with the blogger, their network, and future opportunities.
Get hired: You never know which blog organizations are looking to hire new bloggers; again, an opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge, meet new bloggers, and open tons of professional “doors” … because now that you’re getting paid? You’re a “pro-blogger”, mate!
Network in person: Find other local bloggers using services like Meetup, and see if they’re literally getting together to commiserate about blogging or their topic of blogging. If you’ve got the time, there’s nothing that makes an impression as actually meeting someone in person. Tip: bring a business card; Another tip: if you don’t have any, make some; yet another tip: if important people are going to be there, really — try and go. Remember, you didn’t know me before Problogger, but I met Darren in person at a function in Toronto that played a part in me writing this. Think about that.
Join virtual groups: Through Yahoo Groups, Usenet, and more; then bring the conversation off the group with emails and instant messages. Be friendly, be helpful, and it will pay dividends.
Cross promote: Once you’ve gotten to know people, you can kindly remind them to promote posts that you’re particularly proud of; or, vote for your submissions on Digg or your social bookmarking site of choice. Reciprocate.
Make Social Media Work For You

Facebook: Its a social network that has opened its doors behind its college beginnings. Anyone can sign up. Start connecting with old friends and colleagues, like any other social network. But, unlike other social networks (as far as I know), you can import your own blog’s RSS feed, so that your connections can see what you’re blogging. Who knows where that might lead? Update: Myspace also allows this function, i believe.
Join Helium: Helium is a new site that is actively looking people to head new categories of content. Think a paid “about.com” — for its authors. If you have a particular interest that isn’t yet served on Helium you might want to check it out; besides giving you cash for content, it’ll also demonstrate your authority in a topic, and you’ll be able to leverage Helium’s own traffic for your own blog through a linkback on your profile.
Yahoo Answers! A similar idea; but this time, you’re answering questions that people are posting. Yahoo! is quite careful about spam, however, and including a “signature” is a dicey proposition at times. There is a fairly sophisticated registry and voting system that tries to prevent “gaming”, but given how much traffic yahoo! answers gets, AND its inclusion as a separate result area in Yahoo SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) it might be something worth looking into.
Create a Squidoo Page Lens: On a given related topic to your blog; participate in the Squidoo community; Squidoo has a ton of traffic, and you could funnel traffic and tastefully include links to other relevant sites and perhaps your own blog.
Use MySpace Marketing: Far beyond the confines of this post, but in a similar fashion to Squidoo, the idea is to capitalize on the HUGE amount of traffic MySpace gets (some interesting thoughts over here). Create a profile, create relevant content and links back. Start adding friends. Comment on your friends space. Join groups. Start enjoying the trickle back traffic.
Get Dugg / Netscaped / Reddited / Stumbled upon: Whole articles (and sites) are written about the intricacies of socially bookmarking. Here’s a tip: focus on creating great content, make friends on these sites if they allow you to, and submit your stories judiciously. ‘Nuff said (for now).
[Yes, I excluded “create viral videos”, because I thought that extended beyond blogging and into video casting — which, I’ll admit isn’t tremendously different, but hey … gotta draw the line somewhere. ]

And at this point, we open the floor to comments, questions, cheers and jeers. If you have any further tips, share’em so we can all learn together! :)

12 Traits of Successful Bloggers

2008-05-22T23:34:00.000-07:00

I was just doing an interview on an Aussie radio station and was asked to name some traits of successful bloggers. My initial reaction was to giggle - because no two successful bloggers are the same - however as I began to answer I realized that there are some common traits among bloggers who gain popularity. Here’s a list, presented in no particular order, of some of the traits of successful bloggers that I observe:

1. Creative and Playful

One of the things I love about blogging is that it can be a very playful space. Bloggers who find new ways to communicate old truths and that have the ability to surprise their readers with fresh perspectives and means of communication often find themselves on a fast track to a wide readership. Also, in the midst of ‘playful’ experimentation new discoveries come that help a blogger to develop in maturity and influence in their niche.

Image by Yelnoc

“There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns.” - Edward de Bono

2. Innovative

Often ‘innovative’ is used to describe a blogger’s use of technology - but it goes well beyond this. Innovative bloggers are those that are able to extend and explore their topic in ways that others are not. They are thought leaders and forge into new ground not only in the way that they present in what they say.

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” - Steve Jobs

3. Connectors

Most successful bloggers that I’ve interacted with have an insatiable desire to connect with as many people as they can. They have an ability to connect not only with their readers but other bloggers and key people in both the online and offline world. Their networks are often far reaching - enabling them to draw on all kinds of relationships when needed.

“It’s not what you know but who you know that makes the difference.” - Anonymous

4. Community Enablers

There are many blogs with great information - but it’s those that are able to draw in and build up a community of passionate and energetic people that often go to the next level. Readers are no longer satisfied just to consume content - they want to participate and belong online. Successful bloggers don’t always actively participate in or lead the community aspect of their blogs but they do have an ability to attract other community builders and to empower them to build a community around the content on the blog.

“Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family: Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.” - Jane Howard

5. Information Mavens

Successful bloggers are often quite addicted to the gathering of information. What sets them apart from other information gatherers is their ability to filter the vast quantities of information that they collect and to identify and communicate that which applies to others.

Image by dsevilla

“What sets Mavens apart, though, is not so much what they know but how they pass it along. The fact that Mavens want to help, for no other reason than because they like to help, turns out to be an awfully effective way of getting someone’s attention.” Malcolm Gladwell (Tipping Point).

6. Communicators

Some might think that this point is all about bloggers having the ability to write well - but that is only part of being a good communicator. Successful bloggers have a knack of knowing connecting with readers that goes beyond the way they use words. Good communication has more to do with knowing your audience and connecting with their needs and desires. Successful bloggers have the ability to trigger some sort of response in their reader.

“The two words ‘Information’ and ‘Communication’ are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out; communication is getting through.” - Sydney J. Harris

7. Interest

Bloggers know how to be interesting - but being interesting starts with being interested. Most successful bloggers that I’ve met would blog on their chosen topic for free - because they have some kind of passion or interest in it themselves. This energy that they have for their topic shines through and is infectious to others. It’s one of the main reasons that readers are drawn to them.

“There are two levers for moving men: interest and fear.” - Napoleon Bonaparte

8. Entrepreneurs

Successful bloggers are always on the look out for opportunities to go to the next level. They leverage what they currently have to grow something more. They don’t just rely upon others to make their dreams a reality but are self starters and ‘doers’ that go and get what they want.

“The entrepreneur in us sees opportunities everywhere we look, but many people see only problems everywhere they look. The entrepreneur in us is more concerned with discriminating between opportunities than he or she is with failing to see the opportunities.” - Michael Gerber

9. Originality

It is difficult to be unique in the blogging space but successful bloggers find ways to make what they do stand out from the crowd. They develop a distinct voice, use media in different ways and develop their own unique spin on life that sets them apart from the rest.

“Eveyone is a genius at least once a year. A real genius has his original ideas closer together.” - Georg C. Lichtenberg

10. Perseverance

Successful bloggers know that it takes time to grow a blog and look past those initial awkward months (and longer) after a blog is launched to motivate them to persevere. They do know when to give up when something isn’t working but also have an ability to develop their blog’s with focus and discipline and unswerving conviction over the long haul.

“If at first you don’t succeed, get a bigger hammer.” - Alan Lewis

11. Focus

What strikes me about many of the most successful blogs out there is that in a time where there’s an incredible development of new technology happening that many of them don’t allow themselves to get distracted by it. Yes they experiment and play with new ways of delivering content to readers but they don’t become distracted from their core task of producing useful and engaging content for readers. Being able to identify what matters most and sticking to it is so important - particularly in a medium with so many time sucking distractions.

“Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life - think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success.” - Swami Vivekananda

12. Curiosity

Lastly, one of the traits that I see in many great bloggers is a restlessness and a dissatisfaction with the current state of play in their world/blog/industry. They are not content to sit comfortably but are always exploring, pushing boundaries and experimenting. They are curious people who are always asking ‘what if….?’ - a question that leads to all kinds of discoveries and possibilities that the rest of us could only dream of discovering.

“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” - Walt Disney

David Peralty Shares His Blog’s Tipping Point

2008-05-22T23:33:00.001-07:00

Today David Peralty from xfep.com shares the Tipping Point of His Blog.

For me, the biggest tipping point on my blog wasn’t actually anything I did, but instead what others were doing. During the first few months of my latest endeavor, Xfep.com, I wasn’t linked often, I worked hard to create amazing content, and the growth was nothing but tiny baby steps. I had a few people who were basically my friends and family reading the site, but it wasn’t anything major.

After a while, certain posts started being noticed, and when they were, they were linked to, and for me that was the tipping point. My blog was no longer being promoted just by me and my friends, but instead by people that actually found value in my content. That changed the community, and the power of the site, and because of others extending the reach of my content, it grew it beyond just a one way conversation with a few interactions via a comment form into a vibrant, helpful and fun community.

Without those people taking the time to link to me, to give me kudos on my articles, expand on a thought I had, or write a rebuttal, my blog would not be half as successful as it is today. This is even more apparent to me recently, with the current hardships my wife and I are dealing with. So many people have chimed in wishing us well, and reminding me that they will support me and my site as I sit back, take a small break and contemplate my life and future.

Make Money Blogging

2008-05-22T23:21:00.002-07:00

Do you want to make money blogging? If you do - you’re not alone. More and more bloggers are finding that blogging is a profitable medium. Whether it be to earn a few extra dollars a week to feed their coffee habit, or making enough money to stop them having to get a part time job to get through college, or whether they’ve got it to a point where they are able to make a full time living from their blogging - there are tens of thousands of bloggers making money from blogging.

In this page I want to share some information for beginners on making money from their blogs.

I will start by sharing my own top Money Making Methods (updated regularly) but below that point you to some great resources and teaching on how to increase your income from blogging.

What follows is a quick summary of my main income streams from blogging. Before you read it though - keep in mind that every blog is unique in how it can make money. Some of the following income streams will work on some blogs a lot better than others - the key is to experiment with as many as possible and see what works best for you.

The following income streams (from a number of blogs) have helped me to earn a six figure income each year for the last three years from blogging. I’ve ranked them from highest to lowest.

I hope you find it useful to see the mix and variety of ways that I earn a living from blogging.

1. AdSense

Despite not using it here at ProBlogger any more I continue to use AdSense with real effect on my other blogs. While I do use AdSense Referrals and their search feature it is their normal ads that work best for me. I have them all set to show image and text based ads and find that 250×300 pixel ads work best (usually with a blended design).

2. Chitika

Last time I did this sort of summary Chitika ranked #1. This time around it has been overtaken by AdSense - not because Chitika slipped in how much it earned but because AdSense went up and because I also replaced a few Chitika ad units with WidgetBucks ones. Chitika offers a range of ad units that I experiment with. I find their eMiniMalls work best and that Related Product Units are also good. Their Shoplincs product isn’t performing as well as it once did for me - mainly because I’ve been promoting it less and have driven less traffic to it. Over the time I’ve been using Chitika they’ve now earned me over a quarter of a million dollars!

3. Amazon Associates

This has been one of my big movers in the last 12 months. I used to make a few odd dollars from it - however in recent times it has become a significant earner for me (as I’ve shared previously). This quarter it overtook TLA as my third biggest earner - largely on the back of me directing traffic to Amazon from my product related sites - mainly digital cameras. While the commission on cameras is only 4% this adds up when those that you refer buy higher ticket items.

4. Private Ad Sales/Sponsorships

This includes ad sales of the 125 x 125 ads here at ProBlogger as well as a couple of private ad deals that I did with sponsors on my camera blog (including sponsorships with Canon, Kodak and Adobe). This area has jumped up since last time also as a result of the new design here at ProBlogger and our expanded sales team at b5 who now sell ProBlogger’s ads for me.

5. Text Link Ads

The income from TLA has dipped slightly over the last few months simply because I took the decision to stop selling them here at ProBlogger and most of my other blogs. This was because I wanted to focus more upon selling the 125 pixel ads instead and felt that the ads I was attracting were not as relevant to this site as they could have been. As it turns out this might have been a good move because it seems Google has been penalizing blogs that run them lately.

6. ProBlogger Job Boards

The job boards here at ProBlogger continue to grow each month in the number of advertisements that are being bought. This enabled me to invest most of the money that they’d earned a while back into getting a new back end for the boards and to redesign them. It hit me today that the boards are now bringing in around $1000 a month in revenue which is pretty nice considering that they are now so low maintenance to run! I’ve just given a development team a new brief to expand the job boards in the coming month so stay tuned for some new features coming soon which could see this revenue increase and more importantly for it to become an even more useful resource to readers.

7. Miscellaneous Affiliate Programs

I run a variety of affiliate programs on my blogs - most of which bring in smaller amounts of money that don’t really justify a category of their own. These include - - Digital Photography Secrets (a camera technique series), Pro Photo Secrets (a great photoshop product) , Yaro’s Blog Mastermind Mentoring Program, SEO Book (Aaron’s legendary resource). This area is set to continue to grow in the current quarter with me having had reasonable conversions from the promotion of the excellent Teaching Sells course.

8. Miscellaneous Advertising Programs

I also play with a number of other ad networks. Some I run as tests to see if I should review them here - and some are just advertising that run in the background on some of my smaller blogs. These include AuctionAds, Feedburner RSS ads, Vizu (a poll advertising system), Kontera and Bidvertiser. Together these don’t add up to major earnings for me - not because they are not good, but because I don’t use them heavily (a blog can only run so many ads on it).

I think that that covers most of it. Since last quarter I’ve also been experimenting with WidgetBucks as well as one other ad system that is still in a closed beta test. I’m certain that WidgetBucks will feature in next quarter’s list because I am getting good returns on that so far. In fact at it’s current earnings it’ll debut at at least number 4 on the list and perhaps even at number 3.

Useful Resources for Bloggers Wanting to Make Money Blogging
A lot has been written on the topic of making money online from blogs. There is a lot of wonderful information out there - but also a lot of hype and sometimes dangerous information.

Below are a number of articles that I’ve written exploring some of the different ways that bloggers make money.

Subscribe to My RSS Feed - everything that I know about making money from blogging is here on ProBlogger in my archives. I don’t hold back information and write about what I’m learning as I learn it. To get future updates subscribe to my RSS feed or add your email address below to get daily updates via email.

Adsense Tips for Bloggers 1

2008-05-22T23:21:00.001-07:00

How do you make money from the Google Adsense Program? What AdSense Tips can you share with us?

I have been asked this question so many times in the past few weeks that I thought I should write something on the topic. It seems increasingly bloggers want to try to cover their hosting and ISP costs with some revenue from their blog - and increasingly they’re doing it and are able to make a few (or quite a lot) dollars on the side. Many are turning to Google’s Adsense program.

Covering costs of my Digital Photography Blog is why I originally signed up with Google Adsense - blogging can get expensive when you have high levels of traffic and a lot of pages.

Whilst the agreement you sign with Google stresses that you are not allowed to give specific information about your earnings from the program I can say that I’m glad I’ve signed up because its well and truly covered my costs - and then some. In fact I think its quite feasible to expect that Adsense coupled with other strategies for making money from Blogging could quite easily generate a decent living. It takes time and hard work, but I think its very doable. (Update: Since writing this series I’ve revealed that I am now looking at making over a six figure income this year in 2005 from blogging).

So how do I make money from Google Adsense? Let me share some AdSense Tips that heve helped me.

This will be the first in a series of posts on this topic. Let me say up front I’m no expert - there are a lot of people out there making a lot more money than I am using Adsense - however most of them are not telling their secrets - well not for free anyway. I’ve got no secrets to hide and am willing to share what I’ve learnt since I signed up for the program 8 months ago. If you want a REAL expert’s opinion on Adsense I’d recommend buying Joel Comm’s What Google Never Told You About Making Money with Adsense E-Book. Joel earns $15,000 per month from Adsense and has some good things to share.

I know some bloggers are put off or offended by the idea of making money from blogging so I’ll try not to let these posts dominate my blog - however if you are not interested in the topic, simply skip over these posts.

I am going to assume a few things in this series to cut down the amount of introductory comments I have to make. Here is what I am assuming:

You have a blog. Whilst most of the following tips will apply to other types of websites I run Adsense on blogs and will speak from that experience.
You have (or will) read a basic overview of Adsense and have some understanding of what it is.
You have(or will) read the program policies as outlined by Google. These give details of site eligibility, ad placements and other requirements for using the system.
Enough introductory comments - lets get stuck into the Adsense Tips for Bloggers!

Adsense Tips for Bloggers 2 - Is Your Blog Suitable for Adsense?

2008-05-22T23:19:00.002-07:00

Is your blog suitable for Adsense? - Before you rush into signing up for Adsense expecting it to earn you a million dollars it is worth asking the question of whether Adsense is the right revenue strategy for your blog. By no means is it the only option - you might like to check out this tip on other ways of making money from blogging.

Whilst there are some amazing success stories about earning big dollars with Adsense out there, it is worth taking a realistic look at some cold hard truths about the Adsense program.

Google does not accept every site that applies to the Adsense program.
Google Adsense Program Policies indicate that the content of sites must not contain things like excessive profanity, pornography, illicit drugs etc. Basically your blog needs to have content that is reasonably ‘family friendly’.
Also in their policy document is a reference to them not normally accepting pages of a personal nature. This is the topic of discussion in many Adsense forums and is obviously open to different interpretations. Many (if not most) blogs are personal in nature - however to maximize your chances of approval by Adsense a blog should be targeted on a particular topic/s. For example whilst this blog is often personal in nature - most of my individual posts (pages) focus on very specific themes which are repeated throughout the blog. update - this may have changed recently with Blogger now allowing blogger blogs to use Adsense.
Sites accepted into the Adsense program are also required to be easily navigable, have an adequate quantity of text based content (don’t apply if you’ve been blogging a week) and be written in English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Japanese, or Spanish. They may not to have excessive advertising or other contextual/competing advertising.
Whilst not stated in the Adsense Policy document, many also believe that sites accepted into the program also need to have reasonable levels of traffic. If your blog is new, it may be worth waiting a few weeks or months before applying to build up traffic and content levels. Others speculate that a professionally designed, well-organized and privately hosted blog has a better chance of being accepted. The more professional and successful your blog appears the more likely it is to be accepted by Adsense.
If still in doubt after reading Google Adsense Program Policies you can email Google for clarification or just apply and see how you go.

Of course, acceptance by Google into the Adsense program does not guarantee your success. The fact remains that certain blogs will always be more successful than others at generating income.

Future posts in this series will focus upon strategies and tips for increasing your revenue but it should be stated here that the most successful sites are generally sites with very high traffic levels and/or content that is directly related to a particular product or service (the more targeted and niche-like the better).

It is also worth saying that Adsense works best on pages with lots of text content. It only reads text in determining ads, not images so make sure you have enough relevant content.

The next posts in this series will expand upon these aspects of successful blogging with Adsense with our Adsense Equation.

Share This

Adsense Tips for Bloggers 3 - An Equation for Success

2008-05-22T23:19:00.001-07:00

There are many factors that impact the level of revenue generated from a blog using the Google Adsense program. Books have been written explaining expert strategies for Adsense - However for the purposes of this series we’ve boiled it all down into four elements that we believe impact your Adsense earning capacity the most. Speaking in general terms here is a simple equation that illustrates how the factors each contribute to Adsense Revenue.

Adsense Revenue = Traffic Levels + High Paying Ads + Relevant Ads + Optimally Positioned and Designed Ads

Its not Rocket Science. Each of the above four elements contribute directly to the total revenue that your Adsense Ads will produce. Don’t just work on one of them though because if any one is weak it will hold your potential earnings back. Lets break each factor down….

Traffic Levels - The more people that see you Adsense Ads, the more likelihood there is that someone will click on them. As I examine the statistics provided by Adsense that report my daily earnings I notice that my earnings in the past 8 months have increased considerably as my total page impressions have increased. For example earlier in the week when Slashdot linked up to this post I had an influx of 50,000 visitors in 24 hours to my blog - it doesn’t take a genius to work out what this did to my Adsense earnings that day! Work on increasing your traffic levels and you should see an increase in your Adsense Revenue.

High Paying Ads - Once again I’m stating the obvious, but if the content you provide on your blog attracts high paying ads you’re going to do significantly better. For example it has been documented that the PVR Blog is doing pretty well when it comes to high Adsense earnings - the secret of its success is partly due to it being served with ads that are high paying. The topic of the PVR blog is, as you’d expect, PVR technology including TiVo, Replay TV etc. This is cutting edge technology and therefore advertisers are willing to pay top dollar to get their products and services out there! In comparison if a person was to start a blog on ‘toothpicks’ I suspect the ads are not likely to pay very much. It would take very high traffic levels to earn as much from a toothpick blog as it would the PVR blog.

Relevant Ads - A second reason the PVR Blog is successful is that it servers relevant ads. To put it simply people looking for information on PVR technology are confronted by Adsense ads for PVR technology. I recently visited a blog that was having trouble getting relevant ads - they had a blog on Tourist destinations in Australia - but unfortunately they were getting Adsense ads for remote control cars. You can guess what their revenue was like. Increase the relevancy of your Ads to your content and you are one step closer to increasing your Adsense revenue.

Optimally Positioned and Designed Ads - One of the coolest things about the Adsense program is that they give you freedom in choosing the best position and color scheme for your ads. Just like in the wider world of advertising - positioning is a key element to an ads success. A Billboard positioned on a road where no one drives is not likely to get the same results as one positioned on a busy intersection. The position and design of your Adsense Ads is critical - if they are out of site they’ll never get clicked on.

Bringing them Together - The above four elements are in many ways pretty obvious when spelt out like this - the challenge comes to improving each to optimize Adsense revenue.

Your revenue will only grow as high as the weakest one of these factors on your blog. For example if you have high paying, relevant, well designed and positioned ads but no traffic you’ll not do well. Likewise if you have high traffic, high paying and relevant ads but they are poorly designed an in a position where they’ll never be seen - you’ll waste all your other hard work. Its not enough to work on one element.

How do we improve each? In the next four posts we’ll examine each area in turn and suggest a number of ways that you might try tweaking them to increase your revenue.

Adsense Tips for Bloggers 4 - Increasing Traffic

2008-05-22T23:18:00.002-07:00

I have argued the case for our equation for increasing Adsense Revenue

Adsense Revenue = Traffic Levels + High Paying Ads + Relevant Ads + Optimally Positioned and Designed Ads

I now will turn my attention to each of the four elements of good Adsense revenue in turn and give some practical easy to implement tips to improve each from my experience.

Increasing Traffic Levels is a key component to increasing Adsense revenue. As I wrote previously, ‘The more people that see you Adsense Ads, the more likelihood there is that someone will click on them.’

Increasing the readership of your blog is not as simple as it sounds, it takes time, patience and hard work (and sometimes a bit of luck) Having said that there are many things you can do to get your blog in front of a wider audience and there exposing the adsense messages on your site to more potential ‘clickers’. Here are a few tips…

Quality, Interesting, Useful and Original Content - What are the blogs that you read the most? If you’re anything like me they are blogs that have quality content that ’scratches me where I itch’. This is essential to increasing your readership unless you have a pretty amazing ‘gimmick’ to bring readers in.
Good Blog Design is really important if you want your blog to create a good first impression. With millions of other blogs and sites out there its worth some effort to make yours stand out. Also worth a read is Good Weblog Design and Layout.
Link to others - be generous with your links to other bloggers big and small. You’ll be surprised how many links come back your way. This not only brings traffic from their sites but doesn’t hurt your ranking in Google.
Comment on others blogs - Some of my most loyal readers came to my blog because I genuinely interacted with them on their blogs through comments. Hear me now, I say genuinely because its easy to spam in comments, but this will have the opposite effect of generating readers to your blog.
Update Frequently - There is nothing that turns me off a blog faster than seeing that it hasn’t been updated for a month or more. Keep it rolling over with interesting content.
Interact with Readers - Having an interactive blog that invites the involvement of readers is one way of generating repeat visitors. I’ve written a tip on Interactive Blogging including a number of interactive tools that you can use on your blog. Also check out this tip on using comments effectively to increase interactivity on your blog.
Optimise for Search Engines - I can’t stress enough how important Search Engines are to increasing traffic, especially traffic that will click on your ads. I find that 95% of my traffic comes from Google and have found that anecdotal evidence suggests this traffic clicks through on Adsense ads at a higher rate than traffic from links on other blogs and sites. So work hard at getting listed and highly ranked on Search Engines.
Add a signature to your outgoing email - Learn a lesson from Hotmail who have used signatures on the bottom of their users emails for years to promote their home page and generate interest in their product. Be careful though if you don’t want your worlds to collide!
Web Rings - There are literally thousands of webrings that you can sign up for. I’m not sure how effective they are these days, but some people still swear by them.
Add an RSS feed to your blog - more and more people are reading blogs without ever visiting them through News Aggregators that pick up information using RSS. Whilst this does not guarantee those reading through aggregators will visit your blog (and therefore see your Adsense Ads) it certainly increases the chances of them dropping by, especially if you invite comments and have internal links on your posts.
List your site on Portals - There are a growing number of sites which exclusively list blogs. If you want people to find you its worth submitting your blog to be listed on them. Some focus on specific topics while others list blogs on a wide variety of topics (like Eaton Web and Globe of Blogs). Other portals like BlogShares and Blog Street also list a lot of blogs in different ways which might increase your blogs profile.
Blog Search Engines and Indexes - Get yourself registered on sites like Blogdex, Technorati, Popdex and Daypop (they require RSS I think). These sites have features that allow people to search for blog entries via topic and keywords. They also list the most popular recent topics and each have other interesting features which can enhance your blogging experience.
Start a Newsletter - Offer your readers a newsletter service to keep them up to date with your latest posts. I’ve found since adding a free weekly newsletter to my digicam blog that hundreds of readers have signed up for regular updates of my latest posts. Think about this - hundreds of people have given me permission to invite them to come back to my blog - every week!
Get Involved in Blog Projects and Memes - From time to time other bloggers will invite your participation in a blog project of theirs. Get involved, support their project and you might find it pays off. On the flip side start your own blogging project or meme. Do something that is of service to other bloggers. I tried something like this with Underblogs and Blogger Idol.
Get involved in other web forums - Genuinely participate in web forums and discussion pages on topics related to your blog. Many of these allow you to add a signature to your posts which raise your blogs profile.
Promote your Posts - If you think you’ve written something worthwhile spend a few minutes letting others know about it. I regularly shoot other bloggers to notify them of what I’ve written if I think it will interest them. Think about it before you send the email and don’t bombard the same people constantly with every topic you write on - be selective, concise, polite and helpful with your emails but don’t be afraid to promote yourself.
Add a ‘Email a Friend’ Option to your posts - make it easy for your readers to tell others about what you’ve written. I know this function gets used regularly on my blog and brings in new readers that I would never otherwise have been able to reach.
These are just some of the ideas that I’ve used and seen others use to increase the readership of a blog and thereby increase the exposure of Adsense ads to a wider audience.Many of the above tips were taken from my Blog Tips Series including the ‘Finding Readers’ Series.

What methods have your found to be effective at increasing the readership of your blog? What works for your and what doesn’t? What tips would you add to this collection?

Of course increasing traffic alone won’t greatly increase your Adsense revenue, but it can help! In our next Adsense Tip for Bloggers we will explore ways to generate High Paying Ads - the second component in our Adsense Revenue Equation.

Adsense Tips for Bloggers 5 - High Paying Ads

2008-05-22T23:18:00.001-07:00

Adsense Revenue = Traffic Levels + High Paying Ads + Relevant Ads + Optimally Positioned and Designed Ads

The next element of this Adsense equation to be examined is how to get high paying Adsense Ads running on your site. Obviously in any business one way to get higher profits is to charge more for your product - whilst you have no direct say in how much is charged for ads run on your site - there are ways of targeting types of ads that might bring in a higher return than others.

As we mentioned in our initial explanation of the equation, the PVR Blog is one example of a blog that targets a well paying ad type - ads for PVR technology. Whilst I do not know specifics of earnings I would suspect blogs like Gizmodo who run Adsense ads would also be generating a higher paying ad, due to their focus on technology.

The lesson we can learn from blogs such as these is that they attract specific ads (that presumably are well paying) by keeping their content targeted on the same topics. To over simplify what we’re saying - if you want ads about Camera Phones blog about Camera Phones.

Finding High Paying Ads is not as easy as it sounds (is anything?). Do a search for Google on High Paying Adsense Ads and you won’t find too many sites listing the best keywords for Adsense. The top Adsense users in Adsense discussion forums tend to be pretty secretive about not only what keywords they focus on, but also what sites they run. I don’t blame them either - its good business sense really.

Having said this there are a number of strategies and tools that you might like to employ to help find high paying keywords.

Buy them - Finding high paying keywords for your blog is possible by yourself for free - but as with everything a few entrepreneurial types are willing to do the leg work for you to save you some time and give you a comprehensive result. One service that you might like to try to find good keywords is Top Paying Keywords.
Trial and Error - I know this will frustrate some of you who want a nice and easy quick fix but overall it is one of the best pieces of advice I can give. Try writing on a topic - track the results - if it pays off do it again….lots. Adsense allows you to track specific pages or sections of your blog using its ‘channels’ feature - if you’re smart you’ll watch which sections of your blog are generating the highest ads by dividing your overall earnings by the number of clicks and comparing it to other channels. Keep trying new topics until you strike gold and then dig in like crazy!
Are there Any Ads? - This is a good first question. Despite the many thousands of advertisers using Adsense there are some topics where the answer to this question is no. A simple way to check is to head to Google and do a search for the key words you’re wanting to blog about. The results page will bring up not only a list of other sites writing about that key word (they are you competitors) but on the right hand side there will be a list of ads - these are the same sorts of ads you’ll get on your site if you write on the topic. If there are ads there, it is a good sign. If there are not - maybe its worth finding another topic to write on if you’re hoping to attract ads.
7 Search has a list of the 100 of the top paying keywords (in their advertising program - not Adsense) at the moment. Its a bit depressing actually to see a list like this because you’d have to sell your soul somewhat in order to go with many of them. Its an interesting site to check out though.
Also from 7 Search (and more useful) is their Keyword Suggestion Tool which gives you an idea of what people are paying per click on different tools (again this is not specifically for Adsense but it will give you an idea of what the going rates are). Find What also has a similar service.
Google Adsense’s biggest competitor are Overture (they run the ads on Yahoo) - they offer a service where you can enter your keywords and they will not only tell you how much advertisers are paying for the words but also how many people are searching for the term. This is a very useful tool.
Sign up for Adwords - One way of getting a feel for how much people are willing to pay per click is to sign up with Google as an advertiser yourself. It doesn’t cost much to start a mini campaign and do some research this way. You’ll get a feel for what people are bidding on different words very quickly this way.
Word Tracker is the best tool I’ve seen to help in finding keywords that people are searching for in the major search engines. The excellent thing about Word Tracker is that they also tell you how many other sites out there are targeting the same words! This is very handy as it will stop you targeting ‘Britney Spears’ as a Keyword phrase even though its one of the most searched for keywords on the web because literally hundreds of thousands of other sites have beaten you to the punch. Word Tracker has a free version to trial it and their paying version is even better - well worth the investment.
Targeting High Paying Adsense Ads is an important aspect of generating an income from Adsense. It is not enough in and of itself however. You can have $10 per click ads (I’ve not found any of these yet) but without generating any traffic your research into the right ads will be useless. Likewise it is one thing to identify which ads you want to target - but it is another thing to actually get these relevant ads showing on your site. It is to this topic which our next post in this series will head - Finding Relevant Adsense Ads

Adsense Tips for Bloggers 6 - Relevant Ads

2008-05-22T23:17:00.001-07:00

Revenue = high readership + high paying ads + relevant ads + well placed and designed ads

The third element of our Adsense equation is that of relevant Adsense ads. It is all very well to rank high in search engines to generate high levels of traffic, but without relevant ads that relate to the content of your blog you are not likely to generate much in the way of click throughs.

Let me give you an example. Recently I was asked to help a fellow blogger who has struggling with his Adsense ads because whilst his content largely focused upon the topic of ‘health care’ - most of the ads being served to his blog were focused upon ‘blogging’. He was getting quite reasonable traffic levels and had a reasonably high paying topic (there are some good health care ads out there) but as you’d expect, people coming to a blog about health care did not click on ads for blogging software and services at a very high rate. The challenge was to get his ads reflecting the content of his blog.

Another fellow blogger had the problem of not getting ANY ads being served to his site. Instead of paying ads all he was getting was the public service ads that Adsense serves when they couldn’t find any relevant paying ads (these pay nothing).

How do you get relevant ads? Here are a few things to try.

Make sure there are ads available - My friend who didn’t get any paying ads served was focusing on a key word for which there was no or very few ads. A simple way of checking this is to do a search on Google for the key word you are targeting. If they don’t serve ads on their own search results page its an indication that such ads are scarce - if not non existent. They way we got ads on my friends blog was to experiment with other related keywords. He didn’t have to change the focus of his blog - just the way he described his topics. For example if there are no ads for ‘bed linen’ try ‘blankets’, ’sheets’, ‘quilts’ etc. Experiment with different combinations until you find something that works.

Increase your Keyword density - The more you use your keywords the more likely you are to get ads on those topics. Its not common knowledge exactly how the Adsense bot decides what ads suit your content best (if someone knows feel free to post it in comments below) but it’s a pretty safe bet that if you put you keyword in your title, at least once in your first paragraph and then scatter it throughout the rest of your page that you’ll convince the Adsense bot of what your topic is. It MAY also be helpful to include your keywords in the URL of your page (Moveable type can let you do this - ie look at the URL of this page - it incorporates my title and therefore some keywords). It MAY also be worth putting your keywords in outward links, bold, italics etc. All of these strategies also help optimise yor blog for search engines which won’t hurt either.

Examine your Sidebars, menus, header and footer - It is not just your main content that the Adsense bot searches to find the topic of your page, but also your other areas. When I looked at the healthcare blog that was getting ‘blogging’ ads I noticed that he had the word ‘blog’ in his title, three times on his sidebar and once in his footer. It was also in his URL and he also used the word quite often in his content. My recommendation was to remove the word from as many of those places as possible and to increase his health care keywords. The ads improved their relevancy almost immediately.

Stick to one topic per page - Obviously this may not be feasible on your front page - but attempt to keep each individual blog entry/post as highly targeted as possible. I’ve noticed that some people often include two or three topics in one entry - this will confuse Adsense’s bot so split them up into two entries.

Block irrelevant Ads - Sometimes despite your best intentions Google just gets it wrong and serves your ads that have nothing to do with what you write. If you’re getting some repeating irrelevant ads block them. Adsense lets you do this to quite a few sites and its easy to do. I have a number of ads blocked, some because they are philosophically not consistent with what I write about, but mainly because they just are not relevant to the topic of my blogs.

Ask Adsense - If all else fails notify Google Adsense of your issue. Of course they are busy people - but Google prides itself on being responsive to its users. I’ve emailed with queries a number of times, once on an issue of irrelevant ads, and every time I’ve had positive results from my query. You’ve got nothing to loose - shoot them an email!

If you do all of the above you SHOULD find Adsense serves you with relevant ads. In conjunction with the other elements in our equation this will contribute to increased click throughs and hopefully higher Adsense revenue. Next in this series on maximizing Adsense revenue is a post on Well Placed and Designed Adsense Ads.

Adsense Tips for Bloggers 7 - Well Placed and Designed Ads

2008-05-22T23:16:00.000-07:00

Revenue = high readership + high paying ads + relevant ads + well placed and designed ads

The forth element of our Adsense Equation is that of having well designed and optimally placed Adsense Ads. I’ve found that ad positioning is incredibly important. I remember shifting the ads on one of my blogs a while back and being over the moon to discover the next morning that the move had doubled the click through rates that I’d had over night! Its worth doing some tweaking.

Adsense Ad placement and design is an issue that is often hotly debated in Adsense discussion forums. It seems that each Adsense user has their own strategy - some like ads that blend in, others like ads that stand out from the rest of the page. Some like ads in banner positions, others in skyscrapers, others like to put them right in the middle of content. In my experience, different strategies work on different blogs at different times. The key tip I’ll give you is to experiment. Try new positions and design and track your results. One of the best ways you can do this is by using Adsense Tracker which is an amazing tracking package for adsense which gives you much more control over what and how you track your adsense performance. It does cost to purchase the tracker but in my experience you’ll make your money back pretty quickly by using it to adapt your Adsense strategies.

Let me also share a few other tips that you might like to experiment with.

Blend - Most successful Adsense users seem to be taking the approach of blending their ads into the overall theme of their page. This often means making the ad’s background (and often border) the same (or similar) colour to the background of the page and making the title and URL the same as links of the rest of the page. In this way the ad does not stand out as being ‘ad-like’. Having said this I know of a few bloggers who take the opposite approach and make their ads as bright and ugly as possible in the hope of attracting the attention of their readers. I don’t subscribe to this because I think it cheapens the overall feel and look of a page.

In Content - More and more bloggers (and webmasters) are putting their ads inside the main body of their posts. In this way the ads are prominent and more likely to be seen by readers as they read your content. If your text wraps around the ads this can be quite effective. On the flipside of this argument is that you may run the risk of frustrating your readers with dominant ads. People reading content online are a fickle bunch and get easily turned off by blatant advertising.

Above the Fold - it is generally accepted that your Adsense ads should be placed towards the top of your page and be visable without your reader having to scroll down. Studies show that blog visitors stay on average for only 60 or so seconds, many without scrolling down. If you ads are hidden towards the bottom of your page you decrease the likelihood of them ever being seen let alone clicked.

Left is Best - Google has put together a ‘heat map’ which is probably the best thing that you can look at when thinking about the positioning of your ads. You’ll see from it that they have found that ads on the left hand side of the page do much better than those on the right hand side.

Too Dominent? - The position and design of your Adsense ads needs to be balanced with the overall purposes and design of your blog. What is the priority of your blog - is it to make money or is it something else. I have a number of blogs - and place ads differently on each depending upon their purposes. For example this blog is not a commercial blog - I’m more interested in building relationships, sharing and hearing others ideas and updating those interested in what I’m doing with my life. As a result my Adsense Ads are in a less prominent banner position and are designed to fit with the overall theme of the blog. However on my Digital Photography Blog there is obviously a more commercial intent (as well as it being something of a passion and hobby). As a result I experiment with more prominent Adsense ads (usually skyscraper and within content).

I cannot stress enough how useful it is to experiment. What works on one blog doesn’t always work on another. I’ve also noticed that if you have a blog with regular and loyal readers that it is good to keep things changing as your readers tend to get used to the way your blog is and become blind to things like Adsense Ads. I notice that when I move my ads around that it often creates higher click throughs for a few days - until the blindness kicks in again. Joel Comm’s What Google Never Told You About Making Money with Adsense is an excellent E-book written with lots of good tips on positioning your adsense ads if you’re wanting to get another person’s opinion on this topic.

Adsense Tips for Bloggers 8 - Miscellaneous Adsense Tips

2008-05-22T23:14:00.000-07:00

We have unpacked our Adsense Equation in detail and have given numerous tips for maximising Adsense Revenue. Whilst there are occasions that Adsense doesn’t perform as well on some websites for no particular reason as others we can safely predict that if you work on each of the four areas you should see an increase in the amount of the cheque that Adsense sends you at the end of each month. Remember though that your revenue will only be as high as your weakest link - work on all elements of the equation - not just one or two.

As well as the proceeding tips there are a number of other things that might be helpful to know in using Adsense that we couldn’t find a place for in previous posts.

Outgoing Links - One theory going around is that pages with fewer outgoing links result in higher click-throughs. Give your readers fewer options of links to click on and they are more likely to click on your ads. This MAY be true, but don’t let it determine your content. My Digicam site has many outward links because it is a page that acts as a hub of information from around the web. I’ve not noticed that this makes my revenue levels suffer - in fact I suspect its because of these helpful links that people come to my site.

Using Frames - If your site uses frames I’m told you should make sure your ads are placed in the frame where you content is or else it will not provide relevant ads for your content. Thanks Greg for this tip.

Don’t click your own ads. - It might be an obvious way to get a few click throughs and increase your Adsense revenue - but Google is very clever at working out if your clicks are genuine or not. Its not hard to track IP addresses and to see patterns emerging between where clicks are coming from. It is not worth the risk of being banned from the program for a few cents per click. Especially don’t click ads from the same IP address that you check your stats from - this is asking for trouble.

Don’t encourage your readers to click on your ads. Its against the agreement that you enter into with Google. Once again they will track you down if you break these rules. I’ve seen a number of people who have been banned from Adsense for this. Let your ads speak for themselves.

Monitor your Statistics. Many adsense users check their stats all day everyday. Whilst this might be overkill (its like watching grass grow) it is useful to track what is happening at this end of your campaign. Use channels to monitor which pages are doing well and which are not. Tweak pages that are not doing well and make more pages similar to those that do.

Alternative Ads - Use alternative ads for when Adsense cannot serve ads to your page. When they cannot find a suitable ad for your page Adsense will serve you with a ‘Public Service Announcement’ (PSA). These ads may be for a good cause, but they will not relate to the content of your page and will not earn you any money. Instead Adsense allows you to nominated an alternative ad that they will serve into the position instead of the PSA. I use Amazon for this, but also have experimented with affiliate alternative ads Affiliate Sensor which I find works really well as it lets you choose from a wide range of affiliate products and still target them to your site.

That is the end of our Adsense tips for Bloggers series. Feel free to submit your own Adsense tips and strategies in comments below. You also might like to check out some of the following alternative Adsense Tips pages for more tips from around the web. You might also like to check out the the Chitika eMiniMall Ad system which I make most of my income off these days. I reviewed it here and have a series of tips for getting the most out of your eMiniMalls.

High Paying Keywords and adsense tricks

2008-05-22T23:11:00.000-07:00

I opened this site today hope you like it all, if you have any suggestions let me know.

The site has a free searchable database of over 15,000 high paying keywords for google adsense

http://www.adsenseheaven.com

I have responded there as well. Does the guy in the picture look like P.V. Unnikrishnan? I think not. This has fraud written all over it.

The disclaimer listed above has been COPIED verbatim from one of my Google information pages at www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/ (thank you, Bernard).

BUT IT SURE AIN'T MY PAGE, and I have nothing to do with it.

I may scrutinize Google with a fine tooth comb, but
I have no interest in breaking the rules, "pushing the limits", or
or doing anything "black hat".

This a$$-hole has copied my entire page at
http:www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-adsense-penalties.htm
to
http://hackadsense.info/adsense-penalties.htm

I just submitted a full report to Google, referencing this post. Digitalpoint rules!
HackAdsense.info has a PR=3, with only 4 incoming links, ALL from a free hosting site, hostmatrix.org. Plenty of scraped content. Yeah, real great site. Collecting money from Google by stealing content from the hard work of others.

IP: 69.50.177.114
Domain ID7754989-LRMS
Domain Name:HACKADSENSE.INFO
Created On:16-Oct-2004 17:23:30 UTC
Last Updated On:16-Oct-2004 17:23:33 UTC
Expiration Date:16-Oct-2005 17:23:30 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:R162-LRMS
Status:ACTIVE
Status:OK
Registrant ID:C7041827-LRMS
Registrant Name:Unnikrishnan P V
Registrant Street1:Shreyas, Railway Station Road, Edappally, Cochin
Registrant City:cochin
Registrant State/Province:Kerala
Registrant Postal Code:682017
Registrant Country:IN
Registrant Phone:+91.098475276611
Registrant Email:treevalence@yahoo.com
Admin ID:C7041828-LRMS
Admin Name:Unnikrishnan P V
Admin Street1:Shreyas, Railway Station Road, Edappally, Cochin
Admin City:cochin
Admin State/Province:Kerala
Admin Postal Code:682017
Admin Country:IN
Admin Phone:+91.098475276611
Admin Email:treevalence@yahoo.com
Billing ID:C7041829-LRMS
Billing Name:Unnikrishnan P V
Billing Street1:Shreyas, Railway Station Road, Edappally, Cochin
Billing City:cochin
Billing State/Province:Kerala
Billing Postal Code:682017
Billing Country:IN
Billing Phone:+91.098475276611
Billing Email:treevalence@yahoo.com
Tech ID:C7041830-LRMS
Tech Name:Unnikrishnan P V
Tech Street1:Shreyas, Railway Station Road, Edappally, Cochin
Tech City:cochin
Tech State/Province:Kerala
Tech Postal Code:682017
Tech Country:IN
Tech Phone:+91.098475276611
Tech Email:treevalence@yahoo.com
Name Server:NS2.UNIXBSD.INFO
Name Server:NS3.UNIXBSD.INFO

I beg to differ. He copied his disclaimer from my page,
http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-adsense-penalties.htm
at the bottom of the page
the text reads -
"This is NOT A Google, Inc. Site
This page is the speculation of one individual.
In no way, did this data come directly from Google, Inc.
This page consists of a compilation of public information, commonly available on the internet, at multiple sites, as well as public webmaster forums, and simple manual tests.
The opinions stated above are merely the personal opinions of the author.
I am not privy to any inside information.
This information is continually changing, and may not be relevant when you read it.
Although the author makes every effort to verify the information on this page, no information on this page is guaranteed to be correct, and any data contained herein may be erroneous."

If you click on the "Disclaimer" link at the bottom of the page -
http://hackadsense.info/hackadsense-disclaimer.htm

the copied text reads -
"Hack Adsense is NOT A Google, Inc. Site
Google is a trademark of Google Inc. (added)
This site is the speculation of one individual.
In no way, did this data come directly from Google, Inc.
This page consists of a compilation of public information, commonly available on the internet, at multiple sites, as well as public webmaster forums, and simple manual tests.
The opinions stated above are merely the personal opinions of the author.
Hack Adsense is not privy to any inside information.
This information is continually changing, and may not be relevant when you read it.
Although Hack Adsense makes every effort to verify the information on this site, no information on this site is guaranteed to be correct, and any data contained herein may be erroneous."

He copied my page, and reformatted it, and he copied the Disclaimer as well.
Almost Word-for-word.
Professing "innocent ignorance" doesn't cut it for me.
A software engineer who has never heard of US Copyright Law?
Yeah, right.

Highest Paying Google AdSense Keywords Hoax

2008-05-22T23:10:00.000-07:00

Description
Is it possible to find out what google adwords pay the most? I've decided to research the topic and my findings so far show that many sites claiming that they know the most paid keywords are a hoax (usually the free ones). Read on for details.

Highest Paying Google AdSense Keywords Hoax

A friend sent me a list of supposedly highest paying keywords for contextual advertising. I wonder is this true or whether this is just a gimmick to make other people believe so... and me supporting the hype by reproducing it here? For your amusement the partial list is at the end of this article. (and don't be surprised if google actually serves you those ads matching those keywords.)

Assuming that whoever produced this list is correct, by looking at the data one can tell that NY and Chicago lawyers are willing to pay a lot of money to get a potential customer via online ads.

But can someone explain why mesothelioma is in the top rank? Is it because people are afraid to get it? Or is it because many people have it already?

Luckily Google doesn't allow porn ads, otherwise we would have been drowning in nasty ads, which probably would have had the highest click rate ever.

The list

Here is a partial list:

$78.30 chicago personal injury lawyer
$73.01 chicago personal injury attorney
$69.17 lasik new york city
$64.27 new york personal injury lawyer
$64.17 new jersey car insurance
$63.10 new york personal injury attorney
$61.64 chicago personal injury lawyers
$61.17 mesothelioma lawyers
$60.74 atlanta personal injury lawyer
$60.29 new york personal injury lawyers
$59.00 lasik dallas
$58.68 new york personal injury lawyers
$58.38 miami personal injury attorney
$58.25 what is mesothelioma
$58.08 best equity loan
$57.95 lasik new york
$56.88 whole life insurance quote
$56.75 new york car insurance
[...]
$53.46 whole life insurance quotes
$53.42 car insurance in new jersey
$53.12 las vegas personal injury lawyer
$53.12 term life insurance quotes
$52.57 mesothelioma treatments
$52.41 equity loan rate
$51.78 equity loan
$51.50 new york personal injury lawyer
$51.29 equity loan rates
$51.15 fixed rate equity loan
$50.54 causes of mesothelioma
[...]
$45.33 los angeles botox
$45.07 new lasik
$44.86 fixed equity loan
$44.51 san diego personal injury attorney
$44.19 125 equity loans
$43.58 mesothelioma cases
$43.57 car insurance in new york
$42.97 equity refinance
$42.70 asbestos and mesothelioma
$42.52 auto insurance quote
[...]
$40.47 [cosmetic surgery los angeles]
$40.04 personal injury attorney atlanta
$39.67 car insurance california
$39.66 oregon personal injury lawyer
$39.43 auto insurance
$39.35 albany personal injury lawyer
$39.21 fixed equity loans
$39.11 personal injury lawyers
$38.84 ameriquest mortgage
$38.31 auto insurance quotes
$38.19 mortgage refinance
$38.17 lump sum settlement
$37.43 cause of mesothelioma
[...]
I wonder whether I should research topics about lawyers and mesothelioma :)

Hoax Revealed

After receiving this list, I've googled for "Highest Paying Google AdSense Keywords" and apparently there is a lot of sites out there suggesting those words, most seem to concentrate on mesothelioma and lawyers but the prices seem to vary. I'm still puzzled how did they find out that information?

OK, I think I've figured it out: many of those sites seem to be a hoax. The source seem to be coming from: hxxp://www.cwire.org/highest-paying-search-terms/, but it will just trick you into clicking on some auto-generated content. Bad boy. No cookie.

Further search reveals more sites advertising similar hoaxes. Oh well, the nature of the internet -- you get both: the good and the less good.

One forum (http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=2301) has suggested something that may give you an idea on the subject of keywords, but this thread is very dated. For example it suggests to go to http://www.google.com/adwords and try bidding at words and see which one come with a high price tag. Another user suggested to use Overture http://uv.bidtool.overture.com/d/USm/search/tools/bidtool/.

But even that thread concludes that those techniques don't really work and suggests:

You shouldn't be building pages for
AdSense. You should be putting
AdSense ads on pages with lots of good content. Build the pages for
the reader, optimize them for the Search Engines, then you will get
visitors who are interested in the content and will be interested in
the AdSense ads. That is how you get a good CTR and that is how you
make money with AdSense.
and I totally agree with that

AdSense for search now powered by Custom Search

2008-05-22T23:08:00.001-07:00

We're happy to let you know that AdSense for search is now powered by Custom Search. We're happy to let you know that AdSense for search is now powered by Custom Search. If you've used Custom Search Engine (CSE) before, you know that Custom Search offers advanced customization options to help improve the accuracy of your search results and tailor them to what users are looking for. If you've used Custom Search Engine (CSE) before, you know that Custom Search offers advanced customization options to help improve the accuracy of your search results and tailor them to what users are looking for. With the integration of Custom Search into AdSense for search, you can take advantage of CSE's most popular features without having to leave your AdSense account. With the integration of Custom Search into AdSense for search, you can take advantage of CSE's most popular features without having to leave your AdSense account.

Here are some of the new features: Here are some of the new features:

Site Search: You've worked hard to attract users to your site, so it's understandable that you'd be concerned about those users leaving through web search. Site Search: You've worked hard to attract users to your site, so it's understandable that you'd be concerned about leaving those users through web search. Now you can choose to provide just site search so users can find all the information they're looking for on your site, and you can host the search results on your own pages so that they can find that information without leaving your site. Now you can choose to provide just site search so users can find all the information they're looking for on your site, and you can host the search results on your own pages so that they can find that information without leaving your site.

Improved indexing of your pages: We've recently improved our indexing technology so that you can provide a more enhanced Site Search experience for your users. Improved indexing of your pages: We've recently improved our indexing technology so that you can provide a more enhanced Site Search experience for your users. AdSense for search will now index even more pages of your site, as long as we’re able to crawl them, so that your users will see more results from your site in your AdSense for search results. AdSense for search index will now even more pages of your site, as long as we're able to crawl them, so that your users will see more results from your site in your AdSense for search results. Stay tuned for more updates on future crawl and indexing improvements! Stay tuned for more updates on future crawl and indexing improvements!

Vertical search: You can also allow your users to search across multiple sites - this could be a network of sites that you own or other related sites that you think your users might find useful. Vertical search: You can also allow your users to search across multiple sites - this could be a network of sites that you own or other related sites that you think your users might find useful. If you write book reviews on your blog, for example, you can use vertical search to specify a list of online bookstores for users to search through. If you write book reviews on your blog, for example, you can use vertical search to specify a list of online bookstores for users to search through. Other examples of vertical searches include computer forums, travel blogs, political sites you endorse, etc. Other examples of vertical searches include computer forums, travel blogs, political sites you endorse, and so on.

Tuning search results and ads with keywords: Search terms can have different meanings in different contexts, so you can now configure your search engine with relevant keywords. Tuning search results and ads with keywords: Search terms can have different meanings in different contexts, so you can now configure your search engine with relevant keywords. Let's say you manage a site about yoga - you can enter keywords such as 'yoga,' 'exercise,' and 'meditation' so that when a user searches for 'mat,' the search results and ads will be more related to yoga mats and less to commercial floor mats. Let's say you manage a site about yoga - you can enter keywords such as' yoga, '' exercise, 'and' meditation 'so that when a user searches for' mat, 'the search results and ads will be more related to yoga mats and less to commercial floor mats. (You can see an example of this in the video below). (You can see an example of this in the video below). In experiments, we've found that this tuning has led to an increase in earnings for publishers. In experiments, we've found that this tuning has led to an increase in earnings for publishers.

Selecting ad location: Do you want ads to appear at the top and bottom of your search results? Selecting ad location: Do you want ads to appear at the top and bottom of your search results? Or along the right sidebar as well, just like on Google.com? Or along the right sidebar as well, just like on Google.com? Now you can make the call on where ads are placed. Now you can make the call on where ads are placed. (Here's a tip: we've found that placing ads at the top and right monetizes the best for publishers.) (Here's a tip: we've found that placing ads at the top and right monetization the best for publishers.)

Quick and easy updates: Just as you use our ad management feature to quickly change the settings for your ad and referral units, you'll be able to do the same for your search engine within your AdSense account. Quick and easy updates: Just as you use our ad management feature to quickly change the settings for your ad and referral units, you'll be able to do the same for your search engine within your AdSense account. Your settings will be saved in your account, so you won't need to generate new search code for each change. Your settings will be saved in your account, so you will not need to generate new search code for each change.

We recommend getting started with the features above by visiting your AdSense Setup tab and selecting 'AdSense for Search' as your product. We recommend getting started with the above features by visiting your AdSense Setup tab and selecting 'AdSense for Search' as your product. Once you've set up your search box, you may wish to explore more advanced features such as site exclusion, labels, and collaboration. Once you've set up your search box, you may wish to explore more advanced features such as site exclusion, labels, and collaboration. Please note that these new features will only be available to you if you've migrated your account to a Google Account. Please note that these new features will only be available to you if you've migrated your account to a Google Account.

Ready to learn more about the new features available for AdSense for search? Ready to learn more about the new features available for AdSense for search? Just visit our Help Center . Just visit our Help Center. (You might also notice that we've just implemented Custom Search there too.) (You might also notice that we've just implemented Custom Search there too.)

Site maintenance on May 17 at 10am PDT

2008-05-22T23:06:00.002-07:00

Tomorrow, May 17th, our engineers will be performing routine site maintenance beginning at 10am PDT. Tomorrow, May 17th, our engineers will be performing routine maintenance site beginning at 10am PDT. While you won't be able to access your account for 4 hours, your ad serving will not be affected and we'll continue to track your earnings as usual. While you will not be able to access your account for 4 hours, your ad serving will not be affected and we'll continue to track your earnings as usual.

We've converted the maintenance start time for a few cities around the world: We've converted the maintenance start time for a few cities around the world:

London - 6 pm Saturday London - 6 pm Saturday
Dubai - 9 pm Saturday Dubai - 9 pm Saturday
Mumbai - 10:30 pm Saturday Mumbai - 10:30 pm Saturday
Jakarta - 12 am Sunday Jakarta - 12 am Sunday
Melbourne - 3 am Sunday Melbourne - 3 am Sunday

Thanks for your patience, and enjoy the weekend! Thanks for your patience, and enjoy the weekend!

Introducing party ads on the Google content network

2008-05-22T23:06:00.001-07:00

The Google content network now accepts display ads served from qualified third-party vendors. The Google content network now accepts display ads served from qualified third-party vendors. Third-party ad serving has been a longstanding request from top brand AdWords advertisers who use third parties to create and manage their online campaigns. Third-party ad serving has been a longstanding request from top brand AdWords advertisers who use third parties to create and manage their online campaigns. Initially, we will be only accepting third-party ads in English, but we hope to expand to other languages soon. Initially, we will be accepting only party ads in English, but we hope to expand to other languages soon.

Making the Google content network more accessible to large brand advertisers also benefits AdSense publishers and end users. Making the Google content network more accessible to large brand advertisers also benefits AdSense publishers and end users. Third-party ad serving will introduce a greater variety of advertising into the Google content network, increase the inventory of quality display ads competing to show on AdSense publisher sites, and offer more engaging ads for end users. Third-party ad serving will introduce a greater variety of advertising into the Google content network, increase the inventory of quality display ads competing to show on AdSense publisher sites, and offer more engaging ads for end users. In the long run, we believe the increased inventory and ad competition will result in increased revenue for many AdSense publishers. In the long run, we believe the ad inventory and increased competition will result in increased revenue for many AdSense publishers.

Rest assured that ad quality on the content network will remain one of our highest priorities. Rest assured that ad quality on the content network will remain one of our highest priorities. Only advertisers with whom we have proven relationships and who've clearly demonstrated commitments to our quality standards may participate in this program. Only advertisers with whom we have proven relationships and who've clearly demonstrated our commitments to quality standards may participate in this program. And our policies governing ad content and formatting are unchanged. And our policies governing ad content and formatting are unchanged.

How to control third-party ads shown on your site How to control party ads shown on your site
The same ad management features for Google ads also apply to third-party ads. The same ad management features for Google ads also apply to party ads. You can use the Ad Review Center to filter specific placement-targeted ads from appearing on your site. You can use the Ad Review Center to filter specific placement-targeted ads from appearing on your site. To block contextually-targeted ads from a given advertiser, you can use the Competitive Ad Filter . To block contextually-targeted ads from a given advertiser, you can use the Competitive Ad Filter. (The Ad Review Center currently only shows placement-targeted ads, not contextually-targeted ads.) (The Ad Review Center currently only shows placement-targeted ads, not contextually-targeted ads.)

Optimizing your site to allow third-party ads Optimizing your site to allow third-party ads
To allow third-party ads on your site: To allow third-party ads on your site:

Opt into image ads - Currently, third-party ads are only available in image or Flash, so they won't appear in text-only ad units. Opt into image ads - Currently, party ads are only available in image or Flash, so they will not appear in text-only ad units.

Enable advertisers to target your AdSense channels - Most advertisers who use third-party ads are brand-conscious. Enable advertisers to target your AdSense channels - Most advertisers who use third-party ads are brand-conscious. They prefer to specify websites where their ads will appear in order to optimize the targeting and effectiveness of their campaigns. They prefer to specify websites where their ads will appear in order to optimize the targeting and effectiveness of their campaigns.

Opt into placement targeting - Placement targeting will allow advertisers to target their ads specifically to your site. Opt into placement targeting - targeting Placement will allow advertisers to target their ads specifically to your site.

Following these steps will enable your site to accept third-party ads. Following these steps will enable your site to accept third-party ads. However, we can't guarantee where or when third-party ads will appear on your site. However, we can not guarantee where or when party ads will appear on your site.

Want to learn more about third-party ads? Want to learn more about party ads? Visit our FAQ . Visit our FAQ.

AdSense earnings can help you and others too

2008-05-22T23:05:00.001-07:00

We're always delighted to hear how your AdSense payments have made a difference in your life, whether it's covering your web hosting costs, supplementing your school tuition, or helping you quit your day job. We're always delighted to hear how your AdSense payments have made a difference in your life, whether it's covering your web hosting costs, supplementing your school tuition, or helping you quit your day job.

This month, we hope that you'll consider making a difference for others by contributing a portion of your AdSense revenue to the cyclone relief efforts in Myanmar (Burma) and in China . This month, we hope that you'll consider making a difference for others by contributing a portion of your AdSense revenue to the cyclone relief efforts in Myanmar (Burma) and in China. Google.org is donating more than $1.5 million to assist in the relief and rebuilding efforts. Google.org is donating more than $ 1.5 million to assist in the relief and rebuilding efforts.

We especially encourage our US and UK publishers to use Google Checkout to donate: We especially encourage our U.S. and UK publishers to use Google Checkout to donate:

http://www.google.com/myanmarcyclone http://www.google.com/myanmarcyclone
http://www.google.com/chinaearthquake http://www.google.com/chinaearthquake

In addition to monetary contributions, the affected areas may also need tents, medicine, or other items. In addition to monetary contributions, the affected areas may also need tents, medicine, or other items. We encourage you to contact your local Red Cross to find out how to donate these items. We encourage you to contact your local Red Cross to find out how to donate these items.

If you'd like to help out even more, you can add a gadget for China or Myanmar (Burma) to your website to encourage your visitors to make their own donations. If you'd like to help out even more, you can add a gadget for China or Myanmar (Burma) to your website to encourage your visitors to make their own donations.

Make the move to Google Accounts ...

2008-05-22T23:04:00.000-07:00

As you may remember, we started asking publishers to update your AdSense accounts to Google Accounts last May . As you may remember, we started asking publishers to update your accounts to Google AdSense Accounts last May. When you do that, you can manage all of your Google products using one login and password, and also take advantage of new features like Site Authentication and the recently improved AdSense for search . When you do that, you can manage all of your Google products using one login and password, and also take advantage of new features like Site Authentication and the recently improved AdSense for search.

In the next few weeks, we'll soon be requiring all publishers to update to a Google Account. In the next few weeks, we'll soon be requiring all publishers to update to a Google Account. If you haven't yet updated your account, we recommend doing so as soon as possible to avoid any issues with account access later. If you have not yet updated your account, we recommend doing so as soon as possible to avoid any issues with account access later. Just sign in and follow the instructions in the wizard that will automatically appear. Just sign in and follow the instructions in the wizard that will automatically appear. If you don't see the wizard, it means that your info has already moved to Google Accounts. If you do not see the wizard, it means that your info has already moved to Google Accounts.

In messages to us and in the Help Forum, we've heard a number of concerns about moving to Google Accounts. In messages to us and in the Help Forum, we've heard a number of concerns about moving to Google Accounts. We'd like to take a moment to address them. We'd like to take a moment to address them.

I don't want to update my AdSense account to the Google Account I use for all of my other products. I do not want to update my account to the Google AdSense Account I use for all of my other products. I'd prefer to keep them separate. I'd prefer to keep them separate.

That's okay -- you can maintain multiple Google Accounts, so you're welcome to migrate your AdSense account to a different Google Account than the one you use for other products. That's okay - you can maintain multiple Google Accounts, so you're welcome to migrate your AdSense account to a different Google Account than the one you use for other products. For example, you could maintain your 'publisher@gmail.com' account for services like Gmail and Webmaster Tools, but create a new Google Account associated with 'publisher@yoursite.com' just to use for your AdSense account. For example, you could maintain your 'publisher@gmail.com' account for services like Gmail and Webmaster Tools, but create a new Google Account associated with 'publisher@yoursite.com' just to use for your AdSense account. When prompted to pick the radio button that best describes you, select 'I have an email address and password (Google Account) I already use with Google services like Gmail, Orkut, or the personalized home page.' , and then 'I'd like to choose a new login name and password just for AdSense'. When prompted to pick the radio button that best describes you, select 'I have an email address and password (Google Account) I already use with Google services like Gmail, Orkut, or the personalized home page.' And then 'I'd like to choose a new login name and password just for AdSense '.

Is this secure? Is this Secure? I already gave AdWords with my credit card information and AdSense with my bank account info. I already gave AdWords with my credit card information and AdSense with my bank account info. I don't trust this. I do not trust this.

Please be assured that we take the security of AdSense accounts very seriously, and your AdSense information will never be shared across products. Please be assured that we take the security of AdSense very seriously accounts, and AdSense your information will never be shared across products. We don't have access to your AdWords credit card from our end, and AdWords doesn't have access to your bank account information (if you've set up EFT). We do not have access to your AdWords credit card from our end, and AdWords does not have access to your bank account information (if you've set up EFT). Again, if you'd prefer to keep your two accounts separate, just follow the instructions above. Again, if you'd prefer to keep your two separate accounts, just follow the instructions above.

I tried to update my account in the past, but I saw this error message: 'The Google Account you've selected is associated with another user.' I tried to update my account in the past, but I saw this error message: 'The Google Account you've selected is associated with another user. " What do I do? What do I do?

It means that the email address you chose had previously been used to apply for an AdSense account (which may or may not have been approved). It means that the email address you chose had previously been used to apply for an AdSense account (which may or may not have been approved). However, we've just clarified the messaging in our wizard to help you understand which situation applies to you. However, we've just clarified the messaging in our wizard to help you understand which situation applies to you. In most cases, we've found that publishers are attempting to update their login to an email address associated with an unapproved application. In most cases, we've found that publishers are attempting to update their login to an email address associated with an unapproved application. We've just made it possible to continue with the update process from within the wizard in this situation. We've just made it possible to continue with the update process from within the wizard in this situation. If you're attempting to update to an email address being used for a different approved AdSense account, you'll receive further options and instructions. If you're attempting to update to an email address being used for a different approved AdSense account, you'll receive further options and instructions.

What happens if I don't update? What happens if I do not update?

If you choose not to update your account after the requirement change, you'll no longer be able to sign in to your account. If you choose not to update your account after the requirement change, you'll no longer be able to sign in to your account. As a result, we encourage you to begin updating your accounts as soon as possible. As a result, we encourage you to begin updating your accounts as soon as possible.

Finally, we recommend looking through our Help Center for more information about updating your account to Google Accounts. Finally, we recommend looking through our Help Center for more information about updating your account to Google Accounts.

What is the AdSense API?

2008-05-22T23:00:00.000-07:00

The AdSense API is Google's ad sharing solution for sites with user generated content.
The AdSense API is ideal for web site developers whose users create their own web content through applications like web hosting, web publishing, blogging, or social networking.

Monetize user content, providing revenue for your users, and for you.
Through the AdSense API, you can allow your users to create their own AdSense accounts on your site and display Google Ads alongside the content that they have created. Plus, users can manage their accounts and view ad performance and earnings reports - all on your site. Each user's AdSense account generates revenue for the user, and for you, the site owner.

Minimum Traffic for Launch - As of Sep 13, 2007 only websites with over 100,000 daily page views across user pages are eligible to participate in the AdSense API program. If you have fewer than 100,000 page views per day, you are welcome to develop an implementation -- you can apply to go live once your users' pages reach an aggregate 100,000 daily page views. Or, you can monetize your site without the AdSense API, with Google AdSense. For additional information, please see What does the page view requirement mean to me?.
Learn More about the AdSense API
Learn how the AdSense API makes money for users while strengthening your product—and making money for you.
Read more about the AdSense API's key features and benefits like the Revenue Sharing and Referral Bonuses programs. Or, check out some case studies of developers who have implemented the AdSense API on their sites and shared ads with their users.

Have a couple more questions before jumping in?
Check out the Developer's Guide, browse the FAQ or join the discussion in the Developer Forum.

WEB SITE MARKETINGS..

2008-05-22T22:57:00.000-07:00

Web Site Marketing, SEO Marketing,Improving Google Ranking

How SEO WATCH conducts online marketing for web sites:SEO WATCH first analyzes the current traffic of a web site and develops a strategy how this can be improved if traffic is lacking or the wrong target group is reached. Search engine optimization is not just to rank in search engines but mainly to achieve a good click through rate from the targeted visitors. This means that your web site should come up in the search results of the search-engines with targeted keywords that are related to your content or theme of your site. SEO Traffic Analysis SEO WATCH applies different kind of marketing strategies to create more quality traffic to a web site, depending on the requirements the strategy is chosen, which fits best to achieve the goal. For example: best is to create an informational web site with the effect that users will come back and visit your site again. Also to offer variety, entertainment and action is one good way to go. Users want to be engaged and informed. Google AdWords is a tool, web site owners can use on the side but it is not recommended as the main focus and only channel for online marketing. To manage a successful Google Adwords campaign our team will create different landing pages, from which users will enter the web site, after having clicked on the ad in Google’s AdWords boxes. This will certainly help to measure the success-rate of the advertisement campaign the client is running at Google. Using Google Analytics as the only information of the campaigns effect can create a distorted and incorrect picture of what really is taking place. The Urchin software, that is used by Google for their Analytics program, is stripped of many features, the output is delayed and as in forums of webmasters widely discussed full of flaws. Most well known draw-back is the slowing down of the web site, because the JavaScript offered by Google is connecting each time to the Google Server. Well, it is for free, so no claims can be made. So when you have performance problems check also this fact. The landing pages are monitored by SEO WATCH and traffic is measured with a professional analytics tool and this will deliver either a positive or a negative result of the running campaign but the result will be correct at least and this is most important. This provides our customers with real control! The strategies we use depend very much on the budget and in which industry the client is operating and how strong and active the competition is. Please notice that SEO WATCH only offers professional search engine optimization services.

WEB MASTERS AND SEARCH ENGINES

2008-05-22T22:56:00.000-07:00

Webmasters and search engines
By 1997 search engines recognized that some webmasters were making efforts to rank well in their search engines, and even manipulating the page rankings in search results. Early search engines, such as Infoseek, adjusted their algorithms to prevent webmasters from manipulating rankings by stuffing pages with excessive or irrelevant keywords.Due to the high marketing value of targeted search results, there is potential for an adversarial relationship between search engines and SEOs. In 2005, an annual conference, AIRWeb, Adversarial Information Retrieval on the Web, was created to discuss and minimize the damaging effects of aggressive web content providers.SEO companies that employ overly aggressive techniques can get their client websites banned from the search results. In 2005, the Wall Street Journal profiled a company, Traffic Power, which allegedly used high-risk techniques and failed to disclose those risks to its clients. Wired magazine reported that the same company sued blogger Aaron Wall for writing about the ban. Google’s Matt Cutts later confirmed that Google did in fact ban Traffic Power and some of its clients.Some search engines have also reached out to the SEO industry, and are frequent sponsors and guests at SEO conferences and seminars. In fact, with the advent of paid inclusion, some search engines now have a vested interest in the health of the optimization community. Major search engines provide information and guidelines to help with site optimization. Google has a Sitemaps program to help webmasters learn if Google is having any problems indexing their website and also provides data on Google traffic to the website. Yahoo! Site Explorer provides a way for webmasters to submit URLs, determine how many pages are in the Yahoo! index and view link information.

Getting indexed
The leading search engines, Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft, use crawlers to find pages for their algorithmic search results. Pages that are linked from other search engine indexed pages do not need to be submitted because they are found automatically. Some search engines, notably Yahoo!, operate a paid submission service that guarantee crawling for either a set fee or cost per click. Such programs usually guarantee inclusion in the database, but do not guarantee specific ranking within the search results. Yahoo’s paid inclusion program has drawn criticism from advertisers and competitors. Two major directories, the Yahoo Directory and the Open Directory Project both require manual submission and human editorial review. Google offers Google Webmaster Tools, for which an XML Sitemap feed can be created and submitted for free to ensure that all pages are found, especially pages that aren’t discoverable by automatically following links.Search engine crawlers may look at a number of different factors when crawling a site. Not every page is indexed by the search engines. Distance of pages from the root directory of a site may also be a factor in whether or not pages get crawled.

Preventing indexing
To avoid undesirable content in the search indexes, webmasters can instruct spiders not to crawl certain files or directories through the standard robots.txt file in the root directory of the domain. Additionally, a page can be explicitly excluded from a search engine’s database by using a meta tag specific to robots. When a search engine visits a site, the robots.txt located in the root directory is the first file crawled. The robots.txt file is then parsed, and will instruct the robot as to which pages are not to be crawled. As a search engine crawler may keep a cached copy of this file, it may on occasion crawl pages a webmaster does not wish crawled. Pages typically prevented from being crawled include login specific pages such as shopping carts and user-specific content such as search results from internal searches. In March 2007, Google warned webmasters that they should prevent indexing of internal search results because those pages are considered search spam.

TITLE TAG OPTIMISATION

2008-05-22T22:54:00.000-07:00

What Is a Title Tag?
The title tag has been — and probably will always be — one of the most important factors in achieving high search engine rankings.

In fact, fixing just the title tags of your pages can often generate quick and appreciable differences to your rankings. And because the words in the title tag are what appear in the clickable link on the search engine results page (SERP), changing them may result in more clickthroughs.

Search Engines and Title Tags

Title tags are definitely one of the “big three” as far as the algorithmic weight given to them by search engines; they are equally as important as your visible text copy and the links pointing to your pages — perhaps even more so.

Do Company Names Belong in the Title Tag?

This is one of the most common questions asked about titles. The answer is a resounding YES! I’ve found that it’s fine to place your company name in the title, and *gasp*, even to place it at the beginning of the tag! In fact, if your company is already a well-known brand, I’d say that it’s essential. Even if you’re not a well-known brand yet, chances are you’d like to eventually be one. The title tag gives you a great opportunity to further this cause.

This doesn’t mean that you should put *just* your company name in the title tag. Even the most well-known brands will benefit from a good descriptive phrase or two added, as it will serve to enhance your brand as well as your search engine rankings. The people who already know your company and seek it out by name will be able to find you in the engines, and so will those who have never heard of you but seek the products or services you sell.

Title Tags Should Contain Specific Keyword Phrases

For example, if your company is “Johnson and Smith Inc.,” a tax accounting firm in Texas, you shouldn’t place only the words “Johnson and Smith Inc.” in your title tag, but instead use something like “Johnson and Smith Inc. Tax Accountants in Texas.”

As a Texas tax accountant, you would want your company’s site to appear in the search engine results for searches on phrases such as “Texas tax accountants” and “CPAs in Texas.” (Be sure to do your keyword research to find the best phrases!) You would need to be even more specific if you prefer to work with people only in the Dallas area. In that case, use keywords such as “Dallas tax accountants” in your site’s title tags.

Using our Dallas accountant’s example, you might create a title tag as follows:

Johnson and Smith Tax Accountants in Dallas

or you might try something like this:

Johnson and Smith Dallas CPAs

However, there’s more than enough space in the title tag to include both of these important keyword phrases. (I like to use about 10-12 words in my title tags.)

One way to do it would be like this:

Johnson and Smith - Dallas Tax Accountants - CPAs in Dallas, TX

I’ve always liked the method of separating phrases with a hyphen; however, in today’s competitive marketplace, how your listing appears in the SERPs is a critical aspect of your SEO campaign. After all, if you have high search engine rankings but your targeted buyers aren’t clicking through, it won’t do you much good.

These days I try to write compelling titles as opposed to simply factual ones, if I can. But it also depends on the page, the type of business, the targeted keyword phrases, and many other factors. There’s nothing wrong with the title tag in my above example. If you were looking for a tax accountant in Dallas and saw that listing at Google, you’d probably click on it.

Still, you could make it a readable sentence like this:

Johnson and Smith are Tax Accountants and CPAs in Dallas, TX

I’m not as thrilled with that one because I had to remove the exact phrase “Dallas Tax Accountants,” as it wouldn’t read as well if it said:

Johnson and Smith are Dallas Tax Accountants and CPAs in Dallas, TX

It sounds redundant that way, as if it were written only for the search engines.

In the end, it’s really a personal preference. Don’t make yourself crazy trying to create the perfect title tag, as there’s just no such thing. Most likely, either of my examples would work fine. The best thing to do would be to test different ones and see which rank higher and which convert better. It may very well be that the second version doesn’t rank as well, but gets clicked on more, effectively making up the difference.

Use Your Visible Text Copy As Your Guide

I prefer not to create my title tags until the copy on the page has been written and optimized. I need to see how the copywriter integrated the keyword phrases into the text to know where to begin. If you’ve done a good job with your writing (or better yet, hired a professional SEO copywriter), you should find all the information you need right there on your page. Simply choose the most relevant keyword phrases that the copy was based on, and write a compelling title tag accordingly. If you’re having trouble with this and can’t seem to get a handle on what the most important phrases are for any given page, you probably need to rewrite the copy.

I recommend that you *don’t* use an exact sentence pulled from your copy as your title tag. It’s much better to have a unique sentence or a compelling string of words in this tag. This is why you have to watch out for certain development tools. Some content management systems (CMS) and blog software such as WordPress automatically generate the title tag from information you provide elsewhere. In WordPress, for example, the default is to use your blog name, plus whatever you named the page. The problem is that this same info is also used as the headline, plus in the navigational link to the page. Depending on your setup, it could also be the URL for that page. Very rarely would you want all those to be the same.

The good news is that most of today’s CMS and blog software have workarounds so that you can customize your title tags. For WordPress, I recommend installing the “SEO Title Tag” plug-in developed by Stephan Spencer. It works like a charm on all my WordPress sites.

TIPS AND TRICKS FOR SEO

2008-05-22T22:53:00.002-07:00

General SEO Basics
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a proven way to improve the number of targeted visitors to your web site through the natural process of finding your web site on the Internet through the search engines. There is some difference of opinion among the experts as to what is acceptable and what is not, but the search engines are clear on what they will accept and what they will not accept.

The search engines are clear that they will accept anything that provides relevant content to the searcher and the search engine. There is no doubt that a well-designed web site with relevant, unique, and fresh content will rank well against its peers. As your web site gains relevant links, both inbound and outbound, it will rank even higher.

Ranking well with the search engines is a science. As such, it follows a well-established formula. With the appropriate amount of time and effort, any web site can rank well. If the web site owner does not want to invest the time, they can hire someone to do the work for them. Whether hired, or designed by yourself, there are some things that will make your web site rank high with the search engines.

Content Must be Relevant

First and foremost, search engines look for relevant content. This is the single most important aspect of a high ranking web site. Having a web site that is well designed is wonderful, but it will not help with ranking. Good content is content that is grammatically correct as well as free of spelling and factual errors. As important as the grammar, spelling, and facts are in your content, never lose sight of the fact that your content should be unique. “Borrowing” content is illegal as well as unethical.

Not only should your content be factual and original, it should also be fresh, which means it must be updated regularly. Search engines are drawn to fresh content the way children are drawn to cookies. Not only are the search engines drawn to it, but so are your visitors and in many cases with money in hand ready to be spent.

Design Elements That Matter

You might consider adding a glossary or similar feature to your web site, to include words that are commonly misspelled, that have multiple spellings, or that might be spelled differently in different languages. This is especially important when you consider the differences between British English to American English.

Write simple, descriptive page titles that include your keyword or keyword phrase for specific pages. This makes pages easier for both human and robot visitors. This page title is what will be linked to from the search engine results page as well so you want to make sure it says it all in the least amount of words possible. Make sure that each page has its own title, even if you include some basic elements commonly. One example of this could be keyword, company name, or even keyword, section name, and company name.

Break up your text with headings. This makes it easier for visitors to scan your text, but it also makes it easier for the search engines as well. Make your headings relevant and use the correct text size for the headings. Search engines look for h1 through h6 elements for headings, and it is commonly believed that the substitution of graphics simply does not work the same even if you utilize the “alt” tags.

When your content includes images, follow the law and help yourself as well. U.S. law says that you must use “alt” tags. This allows the handicapped visitor to access your site and know what the image is; it also allows you to descriptively describe what the image is to portray to your visitor. The “alt” tag is an ideal place to insert keywords if it is appropriate.

Choose your page titles carefully. Avoid the use of dynamically generated page titles. These make it hard for the search engine robots to crawl your site. In fact, since these titles often include a “?” or question mark, they may even stop the search engine robot. Rather than this use static relevant titles, this will result in higher rankings as well as happier human visitors.

Build a quality links system. Not only do quality links help with your page rankings, they will also get you listed faster in some cases. Search engines crawl much like a spider does and, as such, they constantly follow links from other web sites. The trick is to make sure they are relevant links, links from so-called link farms will not help a great deal as the search engines will not count them. They are looking for links from web sites that rank well on their own as well as being complimentary to your web site.

When building your web site, use code that is clean and up to the industry standards. Code that is broken stops the search engines from crawling your web site correctly and will cause you to rank much lower as the search engines will not have all of your content in their indexes. Additionally, code that is incorrect or broken will cause some of your visitors to not see all of your information, or for it to be displayed incorrectly so that it cannot be ready by the human visitor either.

Also consider, when building your web site, that you must, as required by law, make your web site accessible to the disabled. This is not something that will hurt you as it makes your web site easy to navigate, and that helps you in the “eyes” of the search engine.

Java scripts and Flash elements are wonderful additions to your web site, but they should not be allowed to contain your content or impede access to your content. If the content is contained within Java script or Flash, the search engines cannot read it.

One other thing to be careful of when building your web site is frames. While it’s possible to provide a work-around for the search engines to crawl your web site, that does not completely solve the frames issue. Search engines display page results. When a searcher clicks on the link for a page using a frames layout they encounter an orphaned page as they will not be entering the site the “normal” way - at the index page, hence, your visitors will be without the important parts of the web site, such as the navigation system etc. Note that many templates are built using the frames model so, if possible, don’t use templates.

The last step to preparing your page correctly is to add your meta tags. Now, know that the jury is out on these. Some SEO experts say they are not worth your time while others will tell you they are the most important part. Even if you take the middle of that road, you want to ensure that the title tag, the keyword tag, and the description tag are present and contain your keyword for that page. Some search engines actually use them, if for no other reason than to pull the description and title for your page.

When considering your title tag, you should include the title of that page, and make it unique to fit the content. The description tag should also contain your keyword, but it should also describe the page. It should be a relatively short description, containing about 120 characters. Your keyword tag is the most important of the tags, save the title tag. The keyword tag is also the most abused of the meta tags. It should contain only keywords for that page and each of the keywords or keyword phrases should be repeated only once in this tag.

Submit Your Web Site To Directories and Search Engines

With these things done, you are ready to submit your web site to the search engines and the directories. Now, here is another place where the road splits. Again, take the middle and submit at least to Google, the Open Directory Project, or DMOZ, and Yahoo. You, of course, can submit to other search engines and directories, but the jury is out on the benefits. This is a case where less can be more but more does not hurt. Nevertheless, the two above-mentioned directories and Google will get you a head start on getting your web site listed where it needs to be. With directory submission, the trick is to be patient. It often takes several weeks before your web site is listed.

Beware of Bad Advice

Be careful of taking advice from anyone who advises the use of questionable tactics. Things like cloaking - showing the search engines one version of the page and showing human visitors something different - keyword stuffing, and “alt” text spamming will work for a short time. When the search engines catch it, which they will, your web site will likely be banned completely. If you question the ethical use of a technique, avoid it. It is always better to be honest with the search engines.

Follow the Formula and You’ll Will Do Well

If this formula is followed, any web site can rank well with the search engines. If the web site owner chooses not to do the work by themselves, he should ensure that the company he hires follows the same formula. Deviation from the established formulas can and has resulted with the banning of web sites from the search engine indexes.

Search engines are looking for a few very specific things. These include fresh, relevant content, relevant links and, accessibility. By providing these things, the search engines will rank your web site well and your human visitors will enjoy the visit and return to your web site many times.

SEO for Beginners - Part 2

2008-05-22T22:53:00.001-07:00

Lets take a look at the various aspects involved in SEO.

Keyword Optimization: As the title is self explanatory, keyword optimization deals with optimizing your site based on the keyword relevance. For example, if you have a site that deals with flower delivery, then the keywords to be used would be flowers, delivery, free shipping, etc. Now the obvious question that arises is “how do I know if my site is optimized?”
There are various resources on the Internet which provide you with free optimization tools. One such example would be overture or wordtracker. When you enter a keyword, it gives you a list of the most searched keywords in terms of the %age. This willshed enough light into the kind of competition you are heading into.
Search engines are smart. If you were thinking of just typing out the word “flowers” a hundred times, to increase the density of keywords, search engines would simply not index your site. Make sure that your keywords are repeated and most important at relevant. Also keep in mind the keyword weight. By weight, I mean to say that your keyword prominence has to be atleast 9-10% in a single page. In order words, out of every 100 words on your page, ensure you have your keyword repeated atleast 9 times.

SEO for Beginners - Part 3

2008-05-22T22:52:00.001-07:00

Meta Tags: Meta tags and descriptions that is read by the robots which spider the websites. These tags are not visible in the webpage but only in the coding of the page. You will find the meta tags enclosed within the section of your HTML coding. Meta tags can have the following. keywords, description, content, etc.
When a search engine spiders your site, the way it reads the site is completly different. Consider this example: If you had a site dealing with flowers and had the first visible text as “Welcome to ABC Florists” while the meta tags have the description as “Flowers for sale” the visitor view the “Welcome to ABC Florists” in the browser, while a spider will see the content as “flowers for sale”
Most of you might have noticed that when you type in a keyword or phrase in any of the search engines, you would see the URL and a short description. This description is taken from the Meta Tag’s tag.
Instead of targetting a highly competitive keyword, try to broaden your reach by targetting smaller keywords and phrases as well. This way, although you might not rank good on one keyword, chances of your site showing up for the other keywords related to florists are pretty good.

SEO for Beginners - Part 4

2008-05-22T22:51:00.000-07:00

Robots: Robots, or Bots as they are usually called are scripts which are programmed to “crawl” websites and collect information from the site’s meta description tags. These bots then store the information on their servers and index according to the keywords. Consider this example: If you had a site dealing with flower delivery, and your keywords were related to just “roses” and “lillies” then chances of your site showing up for roses or lillies are much higher than showing up for keywords “florists” Keep in mind that you have different kinds of people using the search engines. Some may type in the word roses to research on that flower, showing up your site for this keyword under this scenario might not be what you intended it to be. The catch phrase here is to target your keywords appropriately.
The bots are smart but not intelligent. You would not want your contactus.html page to show up on the search engine. Or any other private page which only you have access to. Or you would not want a page which is under development to show up. By setting up the robots.txt file you can specify what directories within your root directory to be indexed. This way you can hide your other pages from showing up on the search engine.

SEO FOR BEGINNERS

2008-05-22T22:50:00.000-07:00

SEO for Beginners - Part 5

Link popularity: I came across this very cool definition of Page Rank, or Link Polularity. Conside a community of people. Let’s say you have a person A who knows B. B introduces A to C and it goes on upto Z. During this process what happens is that the popularity of A increases giving A a higher link polularity or a page rank.
Similarly, you need to link your site to other sites. What happens is that a search engine will promote your site within the listing if you have a higher page rank, or in other words, higher popularity. While you might be thinking that you can get this done by linking your site to every other site you come across, keep in mind the fact that some search engines actually give you a rank only from relevant sites. So if you are a florist, then dont entertain the idea of linking to sites dealing with medical or healthcare. It would be sensible if you went a step further and linked to sites dealing with stationery, gifts, chocolates, etc.
SEO is a field that is gaining recognition. Companies have been built solely relying on SEO by offering its services. Instead of spending money and let someone else do the work at which you have absolutely no clue, it is always good to start it on your own and then if the need arises call in for a professional. This way you will exactly know the strategy and you would be in control rather than being taken for a walk.

SEO

2008-05-22T22:49:00.000-07:00

HTML web content

Even though we may embed various protocols within web pages, the “web page” composed of “html” (or some variation) content is still the dominant way whereby we share content. And while there are many web pages with localized proprietary structure (most usually, business websites), many millions of websites abound that are structured according to a common core idea.

Blogs are a type of website that contains mainly web pages authored in html (although the blogger may be totally unaware that the web pages are composed using html due to the blogging tool that may be in use). Millions of people use blogs online; a blog is now the new “Home Page”, that is, a place where a persona can reveal personal information, and/or build a concept as to who this persona is. Even though a blog may be written for other purposes, such as promoting a business, the core of a blog is the fact that it is written by a “person” and that person reveals information from her/his perspective.

Search engine sites are composed mainly of html content, but also has a typically structured approach to revealing information. A Search Engine Results Page (SERP) displays a heading, usually the name of the Search Engine, and then a list of Websites and their addresses. What is being listed are the results from a query that may be defined as keywords. The results page lists webpages that are connected in some way with those keywords used in the query.

Discussion boards are sites composed of “textual” content organized by html or some variation that can be viewed in a web browser. The driving mechanism of a discussion board is the fact that users are registered and once registered can write posts. Often a discussion board is made up of posts asking some type of question to which other users may provide answers to those questions.

Ecommerce sites are largely composed of textual material and embedded with graphics displaying a picture of the item(s) for sale. However, there are extremely few sites that are composed page-by-page using some variant of HTML. Generally, webpages are composed as they are being served from a database to a customer using a web browser. However, the user sees the mainly text document arriving as a webpage to be viewed in a web browser. Ecommerce sites are usually organized by software we identify as a “shopping cart”.

Archive for the ‘Keywords choosing’ Category

2008-05-22T22:48:00.000-07:00

Choosing keywords

Initially choosing keywords

Choosing keywords should be your first step when constructing a site. You should have the keyword list available to incorporate into your site text before you start composing it. To define your site keywords, you should use seo services offered by search engines in the first instance. Sites such as www.wordtracker.com and inventory.overture.com are good starting places for English language sites. Note that the data they provide may sometimes differ significantly from what keywords are actually the best for your site. You should also note that the Google search engine does not give information about frequency of search queries.

After you have defined your approximate list of initial keywords, you can analyze your competitor’s sites and try to find out what keywords they are using. You may discover some further relevant keywords that are suitable for your own site.

Frequent and rare keywords

There are two distinct strategies – optimize for a small number of highly popular keywords or optimize for a large number of less popular words. In practice, both strategies are often combined.

The disadvantage of keywords that attract frequent queries is that the competition rate is high for them. It is often not possible for a new site to get anywhere near the top of search result listings for these queries.

For keywords associated with rare queries, it is often sufficient just to mention the necessary word combination on a web page or to perform minimum text optimization. Under certain circumstances, rare queries can supply quite a large amount of search traffic.

The aim of most commercial sites is to sell some product or service or to make money in some way from their visitors. This should be kept in mind during your seo (search engine optimization) work and keyword selection. If you are optimizing a commercial site then you should try to attract targeted visitors (those who are ready to pay for the offered product or service) to your site rather than concentrating on sheer numbers of visitors.

Example. The query “monitor” is much more popular and competitive than the query “monitor Samsung 710N” (the exact name of the model). However, the second query is much more valuable for a seller of monitors. It is also easier to get traffic from it because its competition rate is low; there are not many other sites owned by sellers of Samsung 710N monitors. This example highlights another possible difference between frequent and rare search queries that should be taken into account – rare search queries may provide you with less visitors overall, but more targeted visitors.

Evaluating the competition rates of search queries
When you have finalized your keywords list, you should identify the core keywords for which you will optimize your pages. A suggested technique for this follows.

Rare queries are discarded at once (for the time being). In the previous section, we described the usefulness of such rare queries but they do not require special optimization. They are likely to occur naturally in your website text.

As a rule, the competition rate is very high for the most popular phrases. This is why you need to get a realistic idea of the competitiveness of your site. To evaluate the competition rate you should estimate a number of parameters for the first 10 sites displayed in search results:
- The average PageRank of the pages in the search results.
- The average number of links to these sites. Check this using a variety of search engines.
Additional parameters:
- The number of pages on the Internet that contain the particular search term, the total number of search results for that search term.
- The number of pages on the Internet that contain exact matches to the keyword phrase. The search for the phrase is bracketed by quotation marks to obtain this number.

These additional parameters allow you to indirectly evaluate how difficult it will be to get your site near the top of the list for this particular phrase. As well as the parameters described, you can also check the number of sites present in your search results in the main directories, such as DMOZ and Yahoo.

The analysis of the parameters mentioned above and their comparison with those of your own site will allow you to predict with reasonable certainty the chances of getting your site to the top of the list for a particular phrase.

Having evaluated the competition rate for all of your keyword phrases, you can now select a number of moderately popular key phrases with an acceptable competition rate, which you can use to promote and optimize your site.

Refining your keyword phrases
As mentioned above, search engine services often give inaccurate keyword information. This means that it is unusual to obtain an optimum set of site keywords at your first attempt. After your site is up and running and you have carried out some initial promotion, you can obtain additional keyword statistics, which will facilitate some fine-tuning. For example, you will be able to obtain the search results rating of your site for particular phrases and you will also have the number of visits to your site for these phrases.

With this information, you can clearly define the good and bad keyword phrases. Often there is no need to wait until your site gets near the top of all search engines for the phrases you are evaluating – one or two search engines are enough.

Example. Suppose your site occupies first place in the Yahoo search engine for a particular phrase. At the same time, this site is not yet listed in MSN, or Google search results for this phrase. However, if you know the percentage of visits to your site from various search engines (for instance, Google – 70%, Yahoo – 20%, MSN search – 10%), you can predict the approximate amount of traffic for this phrase from these other searches engines and decide whether it is suitable.

As well as detecting bad phrases, you may find some new good ones. For example, you may see that a keyword phrase you did not optimize your site for brings useful traffic despite the fact that your site is on the second or third page in search results for this phrase.

Using these methods, you will arrive at a new refined set of keyword phrases. You should now start reconstructing your site: Change the text to include more of the good phrases, create new pages for new phrases, etc.

You can repeat this seo exercise several times and, after a while, you will have an optimum set of key phrases for your site and considerably increased search traffic.
Here are some more tips. According to statistics, the main page takes up to 30%-50% of all search traffic. It has the highest visibility in search engines and it has the largest number of inbound links. That is why you should optimize the main page of your site to match the most popular and competitive queries. Each site page should be optimized for one or two main word combinations and, possibly for a number of rare queries. This will increase the chances for the page get to the top of search engine lists for particular phrases.

SUBMIT YOUR SITE 1st STEP TOWADS SUCESS…

2008-05-22T22:44:00.000-07:00

Now a days there are lot of ways to promote site there are many softwares that do promote site by just summitting into one link only but reliability that matters most.

So keep promoting your site by your own by submitting in following links.

I recomend u not to submit more than 15 or 20 sites daily so that crowlers not catch you and you can save time by dividing it.

as soon as you submit your site in search engine it takes 2 or 3 week( maximum ) to get displayed so just submitt and watch for traffic and keep posting regularly.

one more thing you requere is the article sutaible to your site you have to write it by yor own because no one knows your site more than you.

Submitting website to one engine doesnt take more than 2 min so daily 15 or 20 min you have to invest .

After submitting it you have gurrenty that your site is submitted….

LIST OF SITES ACCORDING TO RANKINGS ARE AS FOLLOWS

1) GOOGLE BEST SEARCH ENGINE

2)YAHOO
3)MSN

4)OPEN DICTIONARY5) LIST TO BIZ 6)HOME TO DIRECTORY7)RioDirectory.com8)SureDirectory.com9)Apexoo.com

10)Ads2ShopBuy.net

11)Search-Group.com

12)OnSeek.com

13)Search-O-Rama.com

14)SonicQuest.com

15)SearchRamp.com

16)Click4Choice.com

17)Listto Websites

18)ListTo.us Websites

19)List2.org Websites

20)List2.ws Websites

21)Indexfor.com Webs

22)Indexfor.net Webs

23)Indexfor.org Webs

24)Webs411.biz Directory

25)Webs411.org Directory

26)Webs411.us Directory

27)Webs411.ws Directory

28)ListToDirectory.com

29)ListToDirectory.net

30)ListToDirectory.org

31)ListToDirectory.biz

32)ListToo.com Directory

33)ListToo.net Directory

34)ListToo.org Directory
35)ListToo.info Directory

36)HMWC Directory

37)Maps2.org Directory

38)ShopPet Directory

39)Solditlive.net Directory

40)mylinkhelper.com

41)click2directory.com

42)cyankee.com

43)Exalead.com

44)Jdgo.com

45)Walhello.info

46)Sahfor.com

47)Susysearch.com

48)Freeemail123.net

49)Abacho.com

50)Beamed.com

51)ExactSeek.com

52)Aesop.com

53)TowerSearch.com

54)LSBlogs.com

55)Aurumtech.com

56)e-Articles.info

57)AtlasTravelDirectory.com

58)MediSearch International

59)LinksPortfolio.com

60)OneThousandWebsites

61)Enterprise-Search.us

62)JustMichigan.com

63)MPS-Travel.com

64)WebSpaceReport.com

65)Ads2ShopBuyServices.com

66)WomensAppeal.com

67)MySistersCellar.com

68)amwart.com

69)dir365.org

70)simplybobs.com

71)place-info.org

72)graydirectory.com

73)neonlinks.com

74)makingmoneylibrary.com
75)addurl.co.in

76)3no.org

77)freeonlinedirectory.info

78)ipsarion.com

79)bonuslab.com

80)hopunloppu.fi/

81)hlnk.com

82)helpedia.com

83)avissoft.net

84)onemilliondirectory.com

85)addtopsites.com

86)start.topsitelists.com

87)diggeek.com

88)addlink

89)superlinkdirectory

90)addpro.com

91)WebTrafficPromotions

92)OnlineSearchCenter.com

93)Iconnic.com

94)FyberSearch.com

95)MegaSearchQuick.com

96)Zingtastic.com

97)ArcSpider.com

98)Velnet Search Directory

99)AllTheWebSites

100)MySearcharoo

101)CherryDir.com

102)NativeDirectory.com

103)SeekerDirectory.com

HERES YOUR GOOGLE ADSENSE

2008-05-22T22:38:00.000-07:00

Google AdSense
Google Adsense is the best program on the internet. Google Adsense displays advertisements on your site relevant to the content of the page you placed the Adsense code on. You are paid according to the number of clicks the ads (PPC - pay per click) on your page receive. It also provides you the ability to filter out competitors’ ads and eliminate advertisements that are inappropriate on your site.

Google Adsense Tutorial
In this lesson I will show your how you can setup Google Adsense Account for your web site and start earning money from your web site. Google Adsense is top program that helps the web sites to earn extra money. In fact it is the excellent way to make money online.

(Steps to earn money from Google Adsense program:)
1. Obtain and Activate Google Adsense Account for your web site.
Obtaining the Google Adsense Account for your website is the first step towards earning money from Google Adsense. Before applying for the Google Adsense make sure that your website is working properly and there in no dead links. To apply for Google Adsense account visit http://www.google.com/adsense and fill out the application form and confirm an email that Google will send you. If you own several sites you need to apply only once. After this Google will evaluate your site and follow-up with you email within 2-3 days. If your application is accepted you will be able to login to your ad sense account.

(2. Placing Google Adsense Ads on your web site)
The next step is to place adds on your website. Logon to your Adsense account and select the appropriate ads for your web site. Then copy the ads code and paste on your web pages. Once you pasted the code on your web pages, next step is to upload your web pages. Now you upload the web pages and then browse your web site. You will notice that Google ads appears on you web site.Placing the Ads correctly is very import for good earnings. The best placement for Google Adsense ads varies from page to page, depending on the content. The best place to place Google Adsense Ads is wherever the web site visitor will be looking.

(Ads on the Top of the Page)
Advertisements at the top of the page perform well. Chose the ads format which mixes with your page color and style. For example if your web page has a white background color and default color of your links is blue, then you remove the border from Adsense, make the ads background color white.(Ads on the bottom of the Page)

Ads on the bottom of page do not perform well. So, don’t concentrate on the bottom page ads

Ads on the right bar:
Usually the right bar is for web site navigation, usually right side ads performs best.

Ads on the left bar:
The left bar ads performance is also good.

You can learn about this from https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html&gsessionid=HyRs2QlabOI.

3. Monitor You Earning:
Now your web site is earning for you. Your web site will earn while you are sleeping. You can logon to the Google Adsense account and check your earnings.

Adsense Tips - Tips to boost your adsense income

Increase Your Targeted Traffic to your website

In short here are some of the best ways to increase targeted traffic to your web pages:

· More web pages mean more traffic. So, create more web pages, with relevant, laser focused content.

· Increase the link popularity for your web site.

· List your website/s under relevant categories in more directories

· Set up a directory of relevant sites on your website and accept relevant reciprocal links.

· Write articles relevant to your web site and submit in the article directories.

Don’t Put Ads on the Empty page
Never put ads on the empty page. In case of empty page Google will have to guess as what your page is about. It may guess wrong, and so the ads that it displays may not be relevant. And the same ads will keep on displaying until Google re-crawls the site for the ads to correct themselves.

Check your keyword density to target specific type of ads

Your key word density plays an important for any appearing particular type of ads on your website. Google does not release exact details as to how they determine the as to sever on the web site, but the keyword density will give you some idea.

You can use the keyword density checker available at http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html

Write Quality content for your web site

Quality content will help you increasing more visitors to your web site, so you will start earning more from Google adsense program.

Tricks To Earn Huge money from Adsense ads

Here are few adsense tricks that can help you increase you income without much investment.

Adsense Trick -1 : Check you Keyword density
Check the keyword density of your page, this will help you forecasting of ads that will be displaying on your pages. You can also adjust you pages to target particular type of ads.

Adsense Trick -2 : Update you page to target towards some ads
You can also update you page content to target some keywords.

Adsense Trick -3 : Build theme based content for better result
Make the pages of the related topic, you can use the keyword suggestion tools to achieve this.

Adsense Trick -4 : Increase you web site page count
You should write one or more pages per day to increase number of pages on you website. When you create more quality content you will start getting more visits to you web site and your income will keep on increasing.

Adsense Trick -5 : Use the best adsense ads format on your web site
Research on the ads format and then display the best ads on your pages.

Adsense Trick -6 : Use the right color combination for your ads
Use the ads color matching with your page theme.

Guide to Maximize Adsense Revenue

Here are the ways to maximize your adsense revenue
More visitors to your site
Promote you web site (web site promotion) to get more visitors to your web site. More visitors will definitely click on ads, so your revenue will increase.

Create and interlinks more pages
You can create more and more pages and interlink them to increase the page views on your web site. Increased pages views will maximize your Adsense revenue.

Choose the high paying Adsense key words
Use the high paying keywords in your web site to increase the per click income.

Tweak the ads placement
Tweaking the ads placements to suit you web site will generate more clicks and in turn you will earn more.

Ads format
Text format ads perform well so try the text format ads on your web site and choose the best format that works for your web site.

Guide to Get Targeted traffic to your web site

Writing articles and posting in the articles database
There exists many methods to promote your website into search engines and getting more traffic from search engine. Out of these methods, writing and publishing articles on the http://articles-database.com and other articles sites is a best way to get the targeted traffic to your website. The very important this is that, you can write article on specific topic and then submit article into articles database. In the author section of your article you can write about yourself or your website and create a link to your targeted page. So, the web users after reading your article will visit on your web site to explore your site.

In this way you can get targeted traffic to you Adsense web site.
Email You articles as Newsletter

You can also email your articles to the targeted audience. If the articles are good and useful then people will visit your web site to get more articles and information from your website.

Checklist that you should make to check your Adsense website:

Checklist allows testing your website before it is uploaded. This article will help you in identifying important check list.

Identifying Checklist for You Adsense Website
Check your website for correctness
Check your web site fully. There should no broken links. Site layout and fonts should be appropriate throughout the site. You should validate your HTML pages. Your website should be search engine friendly.

Apply for Adsense account
Check that your web site should be completed fully and there is no broken links before applying for the Adsense account.

Wait for the approval of Adsense Account
Google usually takes 2-3 days to approve Adsense account. Once approved, they will send you the welcome email along with the required information related to your account.

Adding Google Adsense code:
Once account is approved you can logon to your Adsense account and create adsense code. Copy the adsense ads code and then paste in all your pages of the website.

Next step is to Drive traffic to your website
To drive traffic to your site, you can promote your website in search engines, write articles and post in the article databases. You can also send newsletters to your targeted audience for getting more hits.

Adsense Secrets to Earn Big Money

Many web site publishers are earning money from google Adsense Program. But most of the web site owners are not earning at full potential. In this article I have listed some of the Adsense Secrets that will help you increase your adsense earnings and generating enormous cash flow.

Adsense Secrets to Start Earning at full potential

Write good and quality content:
The best Adsense Secret is to start write good content. Good content will increase the visitors stay on your website and the chances to clicking on ads become high. Good and quality content is liked by search engines, so you site will also start getting hits from search engines. By means of writing quality content your site popularity will increase and you will start getting more money from Google Adsense program.

Promote you website in Search engine:
You should promote your website in search engines and directory to get more hits. But, be careful; don’t use bed methods to promote your website.

Adsense Ads format
Tweak your adsense ads format to best suit your website design and theme.

Placement of Ads within content
Placement of ads within the content of your web page performs well, so place the ads in between content of your webpage.

Ads color and background
Use the ads without background color and borders. The ads without background, color and borders performs well.

Approch to Adsense World

2008-05-15T07:17:00.000-07:00

Easy monetizing of your blog with AdSense

Why should I monetize my website?
The more success you have with your blog / website, the more time and money you're going to invest to update it and host it properly.

At some point you may think: wouldn't it just be nice to have my site pay for itself?

Well, that is actually easier to achieve than it sounds! A decent hosting plan should cost you no more than $6.95/month. However, that's quite a low figure here and most people make many many times more than that in ad revenue...

By properly monetizing your blog site it is actually possible to have it pay, not only for the hosting, but also for the time you spend working on it.

Why AdSense?
First, because AdSense is a very simple and proven solution that already pays for hundreds of thousands of blogs/websites accross the world!

Also, AdSense is provided to you by Google which not only makes it reliable but also trustworthy. Once you have earned money from Google, you can actually trust them to pay it to you!

Finally, because the ads will be contexual, i-e they will be relevant to the content of your blog/site. This way, your visitors will not be offended for seeing the ads on your site.

How do I get started?
It's as simple as that:

Sign up: Sign up for AdSense. It's totally free! Then follow the provided instructions to put a little javascript snippet onto your blog skin or any web page you like. You may use our b2evolution AdSense plugin to make this even easier.
When visitors view your site they see contextual text ads that automatically adjust to the contents of each page / blog post so that they are always relevant. No flashing images, just relevant text links! :)
When a visitor clicks on an ad link, Google records the click and you get paid for it. Get ready for a monthly check from Google ;)

How AdSense works

To put ads on a web page, the webmaster inserts JavaScript code into the page.
Each time a page with an AdSense tag is visited, the JavaScript creates an iframe and sets its "src" attribute to the page's URL.
For contextual advertisements, Google's servers use a cache of the page to determine a set of high-value keywords. If keywords have been cached already, ads are served for those keywords based on the AdWords bidding system. More details are described in the AdSense patent.
For site-targeted ads, the advertiser chooses the page(s) to display ads on and pays based on CPM (cost-per-thousand-impressions, or the price advertisers choose to pay for every thousand ads displayed).[10] [11]
For referrals, Google adds money to the advertiser's account when visitors either download the referred software or subscribe to the referred service.[12]
Search ads are added to the list of results after a user performs a search.
Since the JavaScript is sent to the web browser when the page is requested, it is possible for other site owners to copy the JavaScript into their own web pages. To protect against this type of fraud, AdSense customers can specify the pages on which ads should be shown. AdSense then ignores clicks from pages other than those specified.