Have you made your first $100 from Adsense? Do you want to recieve the cheque immediately? What should you do in order to get the payment without a problem? I am going to discuss about the essential steps that you need to do before you get the payment from the previous months.
1. Check your address
Since payments are sent to the mailing address submitted with your application, it's important to confirm the accuracy of your contact information and payee name. If you need to correct any information:
Log into your account at https://www.google.com/adsense
-Select the My Account tab.
-Click the edit link adjacent to Payee Information and update the appropriate fields.
-Click Save Changes to update your account, or Cancel to exit without saving.
For security reasons, you cannot change the Payee Name or Country fields once your application has been approved. Therefore, you need to be alert and make sure everything is correct during the Adsense registration. If you need to make changes to either of these fields, please contact Google and request that we close your account. Once your request has been processed, you will then be able to submit a new application with the corrected payee name and mailing address. Nevertheless, you have the responsibility to ensure the correctness of your personal information.
2. Provide your tax information
In addition to confirming your contact information, you'll need to submit your tax information so that you may become eligible to receive a payment from Google. Google is required to collect tax-related information from all AdSense publishers, including publishers who are based outside of the U.S. , and we're unable to send payment to you until your information has been submitted. So don't skip this step!
If you haven't yet submitted your tax information, click the Tax Information link from the My Account tab. From this page, an easy-to-use wizard interface will help guide you to the appropriate online forms. You're able to submit most forms online, and we'll give you instructions on submitting any other forms that may be required.
3. Select your form of payment
Depending on your payment address, there may be a number of payment options available to you — I suggest you read What forms of payment are available to me? in the AdSense Support center to learn about each option. Once you've decided how you'd like to be paid, click the Payment Information [edit] link from the My Account tab of your AdSense account. Follow the instructions on that page to select your form of payment. Your payments will be held until you have selected a form of payment.
4. Enter your PIN
Once you've earned $50 in combined AdSense for content and AdSense for search earnings, we'll mail a Personal Identification Number to the payment address in your account. You'll need to enter this PIN into your account before we can send any payments to you. Your PIN will be sent by standard post and will take 2-3 weeks to arrive. Please refer to the corresponding post in my site for more information on PIN.
5. Generate $100 in earnings
When your total unpaid earnings reach $100, we’ll send you a payment at the end of the next month. For example, if your total unpaid earnings reached $100 during January and you completed the 4 steps above, we would send you a payment at the end of February.
If your total unpaid earnings haven’t yet reached $100, they'll roll over to the next month and accrue until they meet the $100 threshold.Payment is disbursed within approximately 30 days of the end of the month — to see the timeline of our payment cycle, read the Payment Timelines section below.
Original Source
Essential Steps to Get Adsense Payment!
Get 50,000 unique visitors a month
I surfed around the web and spotted a blogger saying he get 50,000 visitors per month doing blog carnival article submission. Just before I let you know who he is, I’d like to discuss a bit why blog carnivals will help us get tremendous blog traffic.
What is a blog carnival? How does blog carnival work? How will it give us this huge blog traffic? A Blog Carnival is a particular kind of blog community. There are many kinds of blogs, and they contain articles on many kinds of topics. Blog Carnivals typically collect together links pointing to blog articles on a particular topic. It is an event, like a magazine. It explores a particular topic or niche and is published monthly, weekly or whenever the editors decides really.
A blog carnival offer huge advantages for the Online Community, it allows you to submit your related articles and have them seen by a wider audience, perhaps attracting more users to your own blog. Carnivals are easy ways to get excellent one way inbound links and traffic, and best of all, they are free. When you are just starting out or maybe still want more blog traffic you can take the full advantage of blog carnivals. All you have to do is to find the appropriate carnivals for your niche and submit your best blog posts.
By submitting your best blog posts to the carnival of your niche you can pick up dozens or even hundreds of new subscribers from each round of carnival submission making it a good place to start your marketing campaign.Steve Pavlina in one of his post said:
"In my early traffic-building days, I’d do carnivals submissions once a week, and it helped a great deal in going from nothing to about 50,000 visitors per month. You still have to produce great content, but carnivals give you a free shot at marketing your unknown blog for free. Carnivals are like an open-mic night at a comedy club - they give amateurs a chance to show off their stuff. I still submit to certain carnivals every once in a while, but now my traffic is so high that relatively speaking, they don’t make much difference anymore."
So, what are you waiting for? Go, find the blog carnivals of your niche and start submitting your best posts. You will be surprise of how much blog traffic you will be getting here. Good luck!
Original Source
How I Got Banned, Then Unbanned From Technorati!
Last Sunday, I got an email from Gustav Mörtberg of Diablo Source pointing me to a post from Earners Blog call Trick to Increase your Technorati Rank. The author explained how he went from 40,000 to about 4,100 Technorati rank in just one day.
I used Xenu to fully spider & grab all the URL’s from sites I knew had a Sitewide link to Earners Blog. I loaded all the URL’s into a text file & got rid of any externals. I then loaded the full list into the pinging tool that comes with Blogger Generator, fire the Technorati ping server into it:
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
Then just let it run on the entire list.
This technique increased my link count from 888 to 3,100 within the space of around 60 minutes.
Blogger Generator is a get rich quick program that allows you to create a ton of useless Made for AdSense (MFA) blogs on Blogger.com. The $97.00 program also comes with the ping tool you would need to do that above Technorati dance, but there was no way I was going to pay $97.00 for it. However, if you’re evil :twisted: , you will be able to figure out how to get the ping tool for free.
With dreams of rocketing to the Technorati top 100 overnight, I grabbed a list of all blogs linking to John Chow dot Com, loaded it into the Pinging tool and blasted it away at Technorati. Now, Technorati doesn’t seem to mind if you send them a few pings (maybe even a few hundred). However, they seem to get upset when you try to send them 17,000. The results: Technorati banned my ass.
Getting Unbanned
At this point I was thinking, “Maybe it’s just a software glitch?” *Classic denial* Doing a Technorati search for johnchow.com resulted in the following message:
Huh?
There are blogs, and then there’s whatever you just typed in. If it’s a blog, we don’t know about it. Maybe you made a typo. Or maybe it’s a blog that doesn’t exist. Maybe you don’t exist. (In which case, please ignore this.)
At this point, I decided to play dumb and send Technorati an email asking why my site wasn’t ranked anymore. I stressed the fact that I am a longtime Technorati user, promoted Technorati, run the Technorati favorites button, etc., and asked for their help, because I don’t know what happen! :cry: The email worked. Technorati unbanned me and restore my ranking last night (which now stands at 259).
This mass pinging had a side effect on blogs that I linked to. Steve at Ramblings from the Marginalized wrote a post wondering why his Technorati ranking went from 90,000 to 15,955 in a day. Now you know Steve. If anyone else saw a huge Technorati increase, you have me to thank!
Overall, I wouldn’t recommend doing the above. I’m not sure at what point Technorati banned my blog. I noticed it was gone at about the 1100 ping mark. If you do wish to try it, then I recommend you keep the number of pings low and ping just top-level domains and not article URLs.
Source: johnchow.com
Google Adsense - The Easiest Money To Make Online?
For the last couple of months, Google Adsense has dominated forums, discussions and newsletters all over the Internet. Already, there are tales of fabulous riches to be made and millions made by those who are just working from home. It seems that Google Adsense have already dominated the internet marketing business and is now considered the easiest way to making money online.
The key to success with Adsense is the placing of ads on pages that are receiving high traffic for high demand keywords. The higher the cost-per-click to the advertiser, the more you will receive per click from your site. Obviously, it does not pay to target low cost-per-click keywords and place them on pages that do not receive hits.
With all the people getting online and clicking away everyday, it is no wonder why Google Adsense has become an instant hit.
For some who are just new to this market, it would be a blow to their pride knowing that their homepage is buried somewhere in the little ads promoting other people’s services. But then, when they get the idea that they are actually earning more money that way, all doubts and skepticism is laid to rest.
There are two major, and clever, factors that some successful webmaster and publishers are learning to blend together in order to make money easier using Adsense.
1. Targeting high traffic pages on your website. If you check on your logs, you will discover that many of your visitors are taking advantage of the free affiliate marketing resources and ebooks that you are offering on your site. In simple words, your ads are working effectively and are generating more clicks. It also means more money for you.
2. Placing Adsense links on pages that are producing little, or better yet, no profit. By placing Adsense on a free resources page, you will reduce the amount of potential customers being lost to other sites. Tricky, but effective nonetheless.
When learned to work effectively, these two factors are actually a good source of producing a minimal amount of revenue from a high traffic page. Many people are using this strategy to pick up some extra and cash with Adsense. This is also especially rewarding to informational sites that focus their efforts on delivering powerful affiliate link free content to their visitors. Now they can gain a monetary return on their services.
With the many techniques that people are now learning on how to make the easiest money by their Adsense, it is not surprising that Google is trying everything to update and polish their Adsense in order to maintain their good image.
The possibility of adding is 2nd tier in Adsense is not impossible. With all the people spending more time in their Adsense now and still more getting into this line of marketing, there is no doubt about the many new improvements yet to be made. Imagine the smiles on the faces of the webmasters and publishers all around the world if ever they sign up for sub-affiliates and double or even triple the amount that they are already earning.
The one particularly handy money-making feature that is available with Adsense now is the ability to filter out up to 200 urls. These gives webmasters the option to block out low value offers from their pages as well as competitors to their websites. Talk about taking only those that are advantageous and discarding the ones that seem “useless”.
With Google Adsense, the possibilities are limitless. Yet there is also the possibility of someone taking advantage of the easy money process that this internet marketing is doing. If you think more about it, these negative factors may force Google to break down and thrash Adsense in the process. If that happens, people would have to go back to the old ways of internet marketing that does not make money online as easy as Adsense.
For now, however, Google Adsense is here to stay. As long as there are people wanting to earn some easy cash online just using their talents, the future ahead is looking good. Besides with all the strict guidelines that Google is enforcing over Adsense, it will take awhile for the Adsense privileges to be spammed and even terminated.
Source:
How can I Reapply After Being Disabled?
For some unlucky reasons (mostly due to the invalid click activity), you adsenses acount is being disabled by Google. If you receive that email, I am sure you are very frustrated. The first thing to do is to make an appeal to Google, and provide as much evidence that favourable to you as possible. Chances (though really low) are there that you may get back your adsense account. Fill in the form below for making such appeal:
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/request.py?contact=invalid_clicks_appeal
As I have mentioned before, the chance for reinstate your Adsense accout is pretty low. If you account is really banned unluckily, you may wish to open a new Adsense account. From the Google' policy, if an publisher is banned, he/she cannot apply for another one. But there is a little trick that enable that enabled you to do so.
First choose a new computers to start a new blog/ site, and then apply it with Google Adsense. Make sure that the IP address is completely different with those you have used to login your Google and Adsense accounts. I believe that Google will approve you if your site is clean nd have enough content. Then, use that computers only (or other new computers with new and diffeent IPs) to login your Adsense account. Never login your adsense account with the one you previously used, because that will let Google know this new Adsense account has correlation with the previous invalid click activity and disable your account.
Hope it helps!
Source: dagsense code
Blogging Mistakes To Avoid
Blogging Mistake #1 - Not Updating
It never fails. Somebody sets up a new blog and is all excited about it. We see a furry of posts for the first few days, maybe even a few weeks, and then the number of posts starts to go down until the blog is hardly updated at all. Nothing kills a blog faster than lack of updates. If you are going to blog, then pick a posting frequency and stick to it. Whether it’s one post per week or 10 posts per day, make a commitment to keep your blog updated. A non-updated blog is a dead blog.
Blogging Mistake #2 - Blogging Only For Money
If you’re blogging only for money, then you’re in for a shock. Yes, you can make good money with a blog, but despite what that National Post story on me said, it takes a lot more than “no effort.” 99% of blogs on the Web cannot make more than $100 a month. John Chow dot Com makes money because I don’t blog for money. If the only reason you’re blogging is to get rich, you will fail.
Blogging Mistake #3 - Rushing a Post
I am sure we have all been guilty of this - I know I have. A hot story comes up and you want to get it out ASAP, but in your rush to get the post published, you forget to proofread and just hit the Publish button. Whenever I’ve done that, there has always been mistakes in the post. Before you hit Publish, take your time to double/triple check the post to make sure it’s free of errors. If you spot an error after the post, correct it immediately.
Blogging Mistake #4 - Not Being Personal
A blog is not CNN or News.com. People read your blog to get your opinion and your point of view. Give it to them.
Blogging Mistake #5 - Being a Copycat
What makes your blog stand out from the millions in the blogshere? Is your blog unique or is it just another copycat? I am certainly not the first blog to write about making money on the Internet, so what makes my blog stand out other than me posting pictures of my dinner?
You can write about the same thing as the next blog, but you need to add your own views to make it unique. Don’t just copy and paste what another blog posted. Give your opinion because that’s what blogging is all about. The most unique thing about your blog is you.
Blogging Mistake #6 - Not Replying To Comments
A blog is a two-way communication tool, but many bloggers forget that. When readers comment in your blog, please answer them. If your readers don’t leave comments then try adding these Two Plugins To Increase Blog Comments.
Blogging Mistake #7 - Not Giving a Full Feed RSS
Unless you make 10+ posts per day, there are really no good reasons for not offering a full feed RSS. Since turning on my full feed RSS, my RSS subscribers has increased steadily. I expected traffic to the blog to go down but to my surprise, it kept going up.
Yes, a RSS feed is harder to monetize than a blog, but many RSS readers won’t subscribe unless your feed is full. Not offering a full feed when you do only a few updates a day (or week) just makes you look cheap.
Blogging Mistake #8 - Not Reaching Out To Other Bloggers
The best way to get your blog noticed is by saying hi to other blogs in your niche. The easiest way to do that is to comment on their blogs. I check the comments on my blog all the time and I visit the commentator’s site. I discovered many great blogs this way. Other ways of reaching out to other bloggers includes linking to them, sending trackbacks and adding yourself to their MyBlogLog community. If you’re really creative and have a bit of money to spend, you can even try sending a Google IM.
Blogging Mistake #9 - Writing For Google Instead Of People
Some of you may recall that I am taking an Internet Marketing and SEO class. During this class, the teacher talks about stuff like key phases, keyword density, making sure your content is Google friendly, etc. The only thing I have to say about that is; write for people, not for Google.
You can have the most perfectly written Google optimized page in the world and still not ranked number 1 because Google follows people. And people won’t read a page written for a search engine because it makes no sense. I do keep an eye on my keywords and key phases when I’m writing a post, but I also keep in mind that the readers come first, Google comes second.
Source: johnchow.com
A Google Adsense Addiction
54% of all Google Adsense publishers admit addiction to click income. A recent online study conducted by a small group of Google Publishers found that 54% of all Adsense publishers where addicted to the income potential of Googles Pay Per Click system.
Some Google Adsense Publishers Need Therapy
It was also found that some publishers were so addicted they where checking their Adsense statistics up to 50 times per day.
Google Adsense is a system where individuals who own content rich website's can earn money by placing small targeted ads within the content of their website. The ads can be customised to fit within the scheme of the website and some successful publishers can earn in excess of $200,000 per month.
One publisher stated that her addiction started the day she placed the Adsense code into her html code. "I was introduced to Adsense by my boyfriend, who makes around a $1000 a month". She went on to say that she doesn't blame Google for her addiction, but the fever in which forums and blogs promote the fact that anyone can become rich with this scheme inspired her to keep adding pages and checking her stats.
Kate, did state that she was earning a reasonable amount of money from Google Adsense, but told us she also spent a considerable amount of money on scripts, ebooks and promises of gaining all you would ever want to know about Adsense, from forum gurus claiming they had made their fortunes and where willing to share their secrets if you deposited $97 into their PayPal account.
Rags to Riches in 51 Days
Another publisher I spoke to told me his addiction had made him a rich man in 51 days. "I was browsing the net on October the 15th last year and came across a website that had a photo of a guy holding a Google cheque for nearly $200,000 dollars. Under the picture it stated that this was just a 1 month pay check from Google. Lights and bells went off in my head as I thought, Man, this is what I have been looking for".
David, had been dabbling in online money making schemes for about 6 years and to date had not been very successful. But he did have 3 websites which had 1000's of visitors to them and after reading all he could on the subject, David placed 2 small Adsense ads on each page of his 1000 page website. "I didn't sleep that night. I was so excited, I checked my stats every 10 minutes all night" he said. Just when he was about to give up for the night, David did his final stats check. "It was 5.50am exactly and I nearly fell off my chair. 1000 impressions, 98 clicks and a total of $18 income. I couldn't sleep that day as I checked my stats every 15 minutes and watched the income rose to over $58 for the day. I was addicted to this thing, this scheme was going to make me rich and I wasn't going to miss a minute of it" David said.
David had gone from $32 in his Bank account to over $6,700 in just 51 days. He had checked his stats on average 60 times per day and had spent more than 612 hours during that 51 days optimising his sites and adding content. David also admitted just like Kate that he had spent quite a bit of his profits on "how to" books, but stated that it was money very well spent.
"I am addicted to Google Adsense" Kate told me, "but what better addiction could you have than earning money, while doing something you love".
About the author: Steve Szasz, Webseo+Plus offers visitors tried and tested techniques to gain profitability using Google Adsense. We can show you what and will not work. If you want the latest winning techniques about Google Adsense subscribe to our information packed newsletter by clicking Google Adsense Tips.
How to convert your visitors into constant traffic?
It is a question that most of the bloggers wanna know. I can say it is relatively easy to drive initial traffic to your site/blog. For example, leaving your URLs as the signature of your forum and emails. People are quite willing to visit your site. But the problem is: How to make them to stay close with your blog and make them to be your constant traffic?
I know many of you have probably opened up your web stats and found out that you are getting bombarded with visitors. It could have been caused by a link from a large site, by a tons of blogs linking to you, by an increase in search engine rankings, or by getting to digg's homepage. So with all these first time visitors coming into your blog, how can you convert them into regular readers?
1. Write Content on a Regular Basis
Writing content on a regular basis that can benefit readers is one way to get them coming back to your blog. I always mention it in my fourm as well as in the Adsense Help Group. Another effective strategy is writing a part series and that is, if a new visitor like part 1, there is a good chance he or she will come back to read the coming part series.
2. Be Creative and Unexpected
Keep visitors on their toes, spice up your regular routine with something different every once in awhile, it will keep your blog away from being boring. If visitors are excited by your blog they will of course subscribe your feed and stay close with you.
3. Make Things Easy for Your Visitors
Making things usable and easier on the visitor can drastically increase your conversion rate. If your content is hard to read, it is very unlikely that visitors will come back to read your blog. If they want to subscribe to your RSS feed then make it easy for them.
4. Make Your Blog Message Very Clear on Every Page
If your reader cannot work out what is the point of your blog within a few seconds they will probably take off pretty quickly. Ask yourself this question - What message are you sending about your blog?
5. Pay Premium Attention to Conversation
Write content that talk to them. By doing this you can create a conversation and allow visitors to comment. I always welcome all to comment on each of my posts, and I will always try my best to reply them. Of course, give a thanks to them is a must. Aim about building a relationship with your visitors. Have an atmosphere of enabling conversation to take place. Encourage them to come back and make a visit again.
6. Give Your Visitors Great Attention
Don't be selfish to think your blog is all about you. Help your readers when they need help and if they want something from your blog then listen and take it into consideration. That's why my comment is halfly about the questions on Adsense and I also need to reply them through comments. I hope, with the use of my new forum site, these questions can be raised and answered there in the future.
7. Pay Attention to Individual Page Design
Every page is a potential doorway into the rest of your blog. From my statistics, there are quite a lot of people come to my blog through Google searching. They will enter my site in differnet posts. Given this information, you have to make your pages engaging and easy to navigate. It is worth asking a non blogging friend to test your blog’s usability and navigability to see just how easy it is to use.
8. Provide a Link to Other Relevant Posts
You may have written closely relevant to other post. Have their links handy at the end of every article post. Providing them with more on the same topic is logical way of keeping them on your blog. Having a sitemap is also a good suggestion.
9. Promote your RSS Feed
After every post, it's nice to have an active link such as - Please subscribe my blog for updated Adsense secrets.
10. Have a "Search This Blog" Facility
Many visitors would like to use search features to find if you have written topics of their interest. I tend to use the Google search option that Adsense then this not only allows your readers to search your site but gives you an income stream for your blog.
In fact, there are many ways to convert first time visitors into regular readers; these are just some of the ways that I know so far. If you know of any other ways to convert first time visitors into regular blog readers, feel free to leave a comment. Remember, each new reader is a potential regular visitor, and perhaps someone who will link to your blog.
Source: dagsensecode
Adsense: Why Bloggers Don’t Get It
In doing the research for my series of Adsense articles, two common ideas kept getting repeated:
* My Adsense ads are horrible, they only pay out (insert low dollar figure here)
* My Adsense CTR is horrible, I only get a (insert extremely low CTR here)
To be fair these comments weren’t coming just from bloggers, but bloggers did make up an overwhelmingly large percentage. I think this stems from a misconception on the part of the bloggers that they are entitled to high payout and CTR. I’d like to spend a little time to share my feelings on this subject. In the early days a blog may just have been an online diary or journal, but like the days of the Nehru jackets, they are gone. What a blog is now is Chronologically Structured Content Management System, as opposed to the classic web hierarchical structured implementation. Let’s be clear, you can still use a blog as your online diary or journal, but nowdays it’s just as likely to be used as a commercial blog. Yes, I did just say commercial blog, and no the earth didn’t open under my feet and swallow me whole for saying it. Let’s take some time to look at a your typical blog.
You may post about commercial related subjects like your job, what you like to buy, or even your hobbies. However these posts are all about your life, they are no more commercially viable or attractive than say Aunt Millie’s Holiday Newsletter. Yes we all have an Aunt Millie in our family, every year she sends out a finely crafted newsletter in a coordinating envelope she ordered from paperdirect.com telling us all about her family. We learn how hard her husband works, how many activities her kids are in and how good they are at them. We also read the details of how her scrapbooking business hasn’t taken off yet, but she promises to spend more time on it right after New Years. So if you were a business owner would you want to advertise anywhere on Aunt Millie’s Newsletter? Then why would a business want to pay you top dollar to advertise on your blog? What’s that, you say your blog gets (insert a high number here) of readers per day, surely that has to be worth something? Well did you know Aunt Millie sends out over 800 copies of her holiday newsletter to 17 countries, on 4 continents? Now before you get all fired up about it, understand that I don’t have a problem with you having a personal blog or sharing it with the public. However your expectation that it has value outside of your family/friends/community, is a serious misconception.
So what exactly is a commercially viable blog? Don’t think of it as publishing a blog, think of it as publishing an online magazine. You need to start out with good content or articles about a small area or niche topic. You will need lots of content, and unless you are well known, don’t expect much to happen until you’ve written at least 100 and more likely over 200 articles. Yes you will have to devote some time and effort to publicizing and marketing it as well. Once you’ve got a significant focused reader base, that’s the time to slowly ad in the advertising. Now here’s the one that causes lots of people to freak out. BE PREPARED TO GIVE UP SOME PRIME SCREEN REAL ESTATE, IN THE CENTER, ABOVE THE FOLD, TO ADVERTISING. If you’ve worked with print media at all you will know the middle of the right hand page is the most desirable spot inside of a magazine (excluding the cover pages). I’ve sat through meetings where people have said ” … you know we need more right hand pages …”. If you want people to click on your ads, you will need put them where they can see them, above the fold in the center of the screen, in a prominent location. Yes I can almost here the keys typing for the flame comments and emails now. Before you hit that send button though, ask yourself this, are you building a space sough after by advertisers, or are you working on Aunt Millie’s Newsletter? No I don’t think your pages should be filled with ads, in fact quite the opposite, there should always be more content than advertising, ALWAYS!
Next thing, lose the fancy graphics and eye-candy from your template. Yes I know you may have paid for a fancy template, maybe you had your niece who’s a graphic artist design something for you, or you really like the way that spinning flaming platypus looks in your page header. Here’s the thing, it’s detracting from your content. Graphics should be simple, understated, and support the content, not overpower or compete with it. Now before some art student wearing a beret, corduroy jacket with elbow patches, and smoking a pipe or French cigarette, writes and calls me a Philistine, stop and think. Are you designing a commercially attractive and viable space, or are you designing an intricate macrame border for Aunt Millie’s Newsletter? Remember keep it simple and to the point.
Yes I know you feel like I just ripped off the band-aid, and now it hurts. Sorry but someone had to do it. I know some of you are still out there reading saying ‘but can’t I still have this … do we have to get rid of this … I really like that …’. Well I’m not your second grade teacher who’s going to tell you everything’s all right, that you don’t have to change a thing, and put a scooby-doo sticker on your shirt to make you feel better. If you want a blog that makes you more money than you spend at Starbucks every Tuesday, you will need to get serious about what you’re doing.
If none of this sounds incredibly fun, and really sounds pretty close to actual work, here’s the way I see it, getting an Adsense check for $5 is fun, getting an Adsense check for $500 or $5000 is work.
Disclaimers:
I don’t actually have an Aunt Millie, she’s a fictional character. But like you, I do have relatives who send out holiday newsletters.
Yes I know the minimum Adsense payment is $100, so you never could get a $5 check, but I was just making a point, mmkay?
Source: www.wolf-howl.com
New pricing structure for referrals
Last year we asked you for your feedback on referrals, and one of the issues we heard quite frequently was that it was too difficult to generate revenue with AdSense and AdWords referrals. To address this, we've just introduced a new pricing structure for both programs, which will be as follows:
AdSense Referrals:
- When a publisher who signed up for Google AdSense through your referral earns their first $5 within 180 days of sign-up, you will be credited with $5.
- When that same publisher earns $100 within 180 days of sign-up and is eligible for payment, you will be credited with an additional $250.
- If, in any 180-day period, you refer 25 publishers who each earn more than $100 within 180 days of their respective sign-ups and are all eligible for payout, you will be awarded a $2,000 bonus (bonus payouts are limited to 1 per year).
AdWords Referrals:
- When an advertiser you refer spends $5 within 90 days of sign-up (in addition to the $5 sign-up fee) you will be credited with $5.
- When that same advertiser spends $100 within 90 days of sign-up, you will be credited with an additional $40.
- If, in any 180 day period, you refer 20 advertisers who each spend more than $100 within 90 days of their respective sign-ups, you will be awarded a $600 bonus (bonus payments are limited to 1 per year).
Source: http://adsense.blogspot.com
The importance of Title Tags in Search Engine Optimization
A few days ago I was moaning to a mate about the fact that despite thousands of inbound links and a page rank of 6 - ProBlogger.net is still yet to rank highly for many of it’s relevant search terms in Google - as a result I rarely get any traffic from Google on this blog. Even for a term like ‘Blog Tips’ (something I write about a lot) I only ranked around 60th on Google.
My friend asked a simple question that made me realize how blind a blogger can be when they stare at their own blog all day and lose objectivity. He asked:
‘What is in the title tags of your blog?’
As soon as he asked the question I knew how stupid I’d been. This is a question I often ask other bloggers but had not asked myself!
The title tags of my front page had been ‘ProBlogger: Helping Bloggers Earn Money’. A good descriptive term - but not including some of the key terms that I was wanting to get hits on - particularly ‘Blog Tips’.
NB: your ‘title tags‘ are what appears between < .title > and < /title> in your blog’s templates. This title comes up at the top of your browser when viewing a page and comes up in search engine results as the title of your post.
After banging myself on the head a few times for my stupidity I decided to do an experiment - I changed my title tags on my home page to ‘ProBlogger Blog Tips: Helping Bloggers Earn Money’. Just a tweak really - the inclusion of two words. I set this up and waited to see what would happen.
The graph above (provided by digital point’s keyword tracker) tells the story better than I can with words. My search ranking for Google on the term ‘Blog Tips’ went from 65th to 10th in two or three days. On MSN I went from 40th to 1st. (the red line is another of my blogs which has always ranked highly on Google for ‘Blog tips’).
Now the term ‘blog tips’ isn’t the most lucrative term in the world and doesn’t bring in hoards of readers - but it is better than what I was doing with Google and it illustrates a point - your title tags are very powerful when it comes to optimizing your blog in Google (and other search engines).
I recommend that on your home page you have a title that incorporates your blog’s name and your main keywords. On individual pages I always recommend that you make your title the title of your post - which should of course include keywords for that post. I also include my blog name on individual pages on ProBlogger as I think it could intrigue people on Search engines to come and have a look. On some of my other blogs I just use the post title without the blog title.
So on my post ‘Does Blog Design Matter?‘ my title is ‘Does Blog Design Matter?: ProBlogger Blog Tips’
I’ve still got a long way to go with Google - my individual pages are not getting very high rankings at all - I suspect that they may have sandboxed me - but making sure your title tags are optimized is another step towards getting ranked and something I’d encourage all bloggers to consider.
Update: Another side benefit of changing your title tags to include your keywords is that you’ll find other people link to your blog using your title tags in the link. Yesterday I noticed two other blogs did this - rather than linking to me as ‘ProBlogger’ they linked as ‘Problogger Blog Tips’. This is good news because search engines look at the words that people link to you with in order to work out what your page is about and how highly to rank you for those terms. This should all help my ranking for those words.
Source: http://problogger.net
10 Useful Tools for Writing Blog Content
. Usenet / GG Groups
Source: http://www.dagsensecode.com
Mistakes To Avoid In Your Ebay Auctions
Online auctions continue to grow in popularity as an easy and efficient way to make money on everything from unwanted household items to rare and expensive collectables and even to bulky items like cars.
Log on to eBay and you will see countless auctions on any item you can imagine. As eBay auctions grow in popularity, it becomes harder to make money with your auction because it often gets buried or overlooked with all the competing auctions in the same category. Therefore, to make money on your auction, it is important to set your auction apart and avoid common eBay auction mistakes. Here are 3 important areas that you must take note of:
1. Wrong product category or product category not specific enough. Not doing enough research. As it is relatively simple and inexpensive to auction an item, many sellers simply do not put in enough effort researching the market. The result is that the auctions are put up in the wrong category. This would be tantamount to pitching your deal to the wrong market.
However, if you are marketing your product in traditional channels and paying money for your promotions, you are likely to do a lot more research and legwork. If you want to earn a serious income, then you should not treat your eBay auctions any differently.
To research, find the best eBay category to put your product auction in. If you are selling coins, eBay shoppers do not have the time to search all 38,000 plus auctions put up under the category of coins. You need to define your product category as specific as possible. You will then target the true eBay shoppers that are likely to be interested in your auction.
2. A blurred or ugly looking image. Be sure your eBay auction has a clear professional looking image. Pay heed to the saying “A picture speaks a thousand words”. Also, don’t forget to ensure that your image file size is not too large. If the image takes minutes to download, the typical eBay shopper is bound to skip your auction.
3. Incomplete and unclear product description. Be sure to give a detailed and precise description for your eBay auction item. For instance, you can give exact dimensions of the product or give specific details about the condition of the second hand item. An incomplete or unclear description is not likely to attract bidders for your item.
All in all, the best exercise I can suggest is to visit your Ebay auction and honestly ask yourself if you would be even tempted to put in a bid for this product.
If the answer is no or even probably not, then change it. If you are passionate about your auction and take the time to make it professional, your auction is likely to stand out. Make the effort to do it right and you are likely to have successful auctions.
About the Author: Evelyn Lim is an online publisher of a FREE newsletter aimed at helping aspiring home based business owners. She also hopes to educate her readers on skills to acquire multiple sources of online income. To subscribe to her newsletter, please visit http://www.e-BizMap.com or her blog at http://www.EvelynLim.com.
10 Essential Blogging Tools
So, you finally decided to take the blog leap. You've heard all about the marketing and search benefits so you stepped up to the plate and signed up for a TypePad, MovableType or WordPress blog software package and now you're a blogger. Okay, now what? Add the ten essential blogging tools listed below and you will also be well on your way to creating and promoting a blog that is a powerful marketing tool. I'll explain the use of the tool and offer some suggestions, including the tools I use on my own blogs including the DuctTapeMarketing blog.
Feed Reader
The best way to learn about blogs and blogging is to read, or at least scan, lots of blogs. One of the wonders of blogs is that you can have every new post from every blog you want to read delivered to your desktop or to online location via RSS, so you can easily read and scan the posts of many blogs in a very short time. Newsgator is a good online choice for feed reading and also has a version that integrates with Outlook. I use a free online service known as Bloglines.
Subscriber Center
You need to make it easy for your blog visitors to subscribe to your blog's RSS feed – so they can read your blog in their favorite feed reader. The best way to do this is to go to FeedBurner and burn your own RSS feed there and use the tools they provide to set up automatic subscriber links so people who want to use Bloglines, Google Reader, MyYahoo or Pluck, for instance, can click on one button to subscribe. Tech types can figure this out without the buttons but why not make it easy for anyone to figure out.
Side note: Subscribe to each of these yourself
Email Subscription Option
A lot of people will never get the whole feed thing, but everyone gets email. Create an option for people to subscribe by giving you their email address – they will simply receive your blog posts like an email message. FeedBurner offers this service for free. FeedBlitz is another option or, if you already have an autoresponder email list service they may offer this service. AWeber offers this and helps me integrate these blog email subscribers into my other mailing lists.
Blog and RSS directories
There are hundreds of blog and RSS directories and getting listed in many can be a good thing. I use a piece of software called RSS Submit , but you can also visit Robin Goode's frequently updated list and submit your blog and feed by hand.
Hint: Subscribe to the RSS feed he offers and you will be notified when new directories are added.
Ping Service
Pinging is a term used for letting the various blog and RSS directories know when you have posted new content. Again, FeedBurner offers this as an automatic option called PingShot and you should activate it. PingGoat and Ping O Matic are other options but they require that you visit and update your record each time you post new content.
Bookmark Manager
As you surf around the web or hop from blog to blog you may find sites that you want to point out to your readers. Online bookmark managers allow you to bookmark and categorize web and blog pages as you collect them and are a great tool for managing all of the stuff you find on the web. I use del.icio.us but BlinkList does a fine job as well.
Blog Stats
I like to track a few key stats in real time because it shows what other blogs might be linking to you or posting about your blog. A lot of people just like to track this kind of thing for fun and frequently visit sites like Technorati. I like to track it for networking opportunities. I use a tool called MyBlogLog because it allows me to see where traffic is coming from but also tracks what links on my blog visitors are clicking on. It's amazing how this data can help you write more effectively. (MyBlogLog also ranks your links so visitors can see which links on your site are the most popular.)
Desktop Posting
With most blog software you must go online and post using a set of tools provided by the blog software. Many bloggers like to use a desktop application to create and submit their posts as it gives them some extra tools and allows them to more easily integrate content and files on their computer.
I use w.blogger but also like Performancing, Qumana and ecto (apple folks) (w.blogger also doubles as a really simple HTML editor.)
Tell A Friend Script
My blog software (pMachine) has a feature that allows a reader to click a link and send the post to a friend. This tactic brings me lots of readers. You might try looking here for some simple scripts that do that same: http://www.javascriptkit.com/script/script2/tellafriend.shtml http://www.stadtaus.com/en/php_scripts/tell_a_friend_script/
Republish Your Feed Headlines
The ability to republish your blog posts on other web pages, sites you own or sites of strategic partners is a great way to expose folks to your blog content. One more time we turn to FeedBurner for a painless way to republish your blog post to any web page you choose with something they call BuzzBoost.
About The Author: John Jantsch is a veteran marketing coach, award winning blogger and author of Duct Tape Marketing: The World's Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide published by Thomas Nelson - due out in the fall of 2006. He is the creator of the Duct Tape Marketing small business marketing system. You can find more information by visiting http://www.ducttapemarketing.com.
The A to Z Guide to Getting Website Traffic
In September of 1999, Brett Tabke wrote "26 Steps to 15k a Day" in the Webmaster World forum. A lot has changed since then, and now is the time to consider a new 26-step plan that meets the current needs of webmasters in 2006. Some of the old ones still apply (writing new content everyday, for example), and some don't (submitting to the search engines is no longer necessary), and we're here to tell you which is which! As you probably already know, bringing in traffic is not easy - it takes hard work, determination and lots of elbow grease. So if you're ready, roll up your sleeves and follow these 26 simple steps, and within just one year you will generate enough traffic to keep you busy for a long, long time!
A) Keyword Research
Before you do anything else, use a keyword research tool and do an extensive job researching the right keyphrases to use for your site. What keyphrases are your direct competitors using? Are there any keyphrases that create a potential for market entry? Are there any that you can put a spin on and create a whole new niche with?
B) Domain Name
If you want to brand your company name, then choose a domain name that reflects it. If your company is Kawunga, then get www.kawunga.com. If it's taken, then get www.kawungawidgets.com. No dashes, and no more than two words in the domain if appropriate.
C) Avoid the Sandbox
Buy your domain name early, as soon as you have chosen your keyphrases and your company name. Get it hosted right away and put up a quick one page site saying a little about who you are, what you sell, and that there will be more to come soon. Make sure it gets crawled by Google and Yahoo (either submit it or link to it from another site).
D) Create Content
Create over 30 pages of real, original content on your site. This will give the spiders something to chew on. It will also give you more opportunities to been seen in the search engine results for a wide variety of keyphrases.
E) Site Design
Use the "Keep It Simple" principle. Employ an external CSS file, clean up any Java Scripts by referring to them off the page in an external file, don't use frames, use flash the way you would an image, and no matter what, do not create a flash site. Do not offer a busy site with lots of bells and whistles to your visitors. Keep things nice and simple. Make it easy for them to find what they are looking for and they'll have no reason to look anywhere else.
F) Page Size
The less kilobytes your page uses, the better - especially for the home page. Optimize your images and make sure the page loads quickly. Most people and businesses in the Western world may have high speed, but cell phones and other countries might not. If your site loads slowly, you may have already lost your visitor before they've even had a chance to browse around.
G) Usability
Make sure that your site follows good usability rules. Remember that people spend more time on other sites, so don't violate design conventions. Don't use PDF files for online reading. Change the colours for visited links, and use good headers. Look up usability for more tips and tricks, it will be worth your while.
H) On Site Optimization
Use the keyphrase you have chosen in your title (most important), your headers (when appropriate), and within the text. Make sure that your page/content is ABOUT your keyphrase. If you are selling widgets, than write about widgets. Don't just stick the word widgets into the text.
I) Globals
Globals are the links that remain the same on every page. They are the reference for new visitors to keep them from getting lost. Sometimes they are on the left of the page, sometimes they consist of tabs at the top. Often they are in the footer of the page as well. Make sure that you have an old style text version of your globals on every page. I usually create tabs at the top, and put the text versions in the footer at the bottom of the page. Find out what works best for you.
J) Headers
Use bold headers. On the Internet, people scan they don't read. So initially, all they will see are the headers. If your headers don't address their concerns, they won't stick around long enough to read your content. Use appropriate keyphrases when you can.
K) Site Map
Build a site map with a link to each of your pages. Keep it up to date. This will allow the spiders to get to every page. Put a text link to the site map on the main pages.
L) Content
Add a page every 2-3 days: 200-500 words. Create original content, don't copy others. The more original and useful it is, the more people will read it, link to it, and most importantly of all - like it enough to keep coming back for more.
M) White Hat Only
Stay away from black hat optimizing techniques. Black hat optimization consists of using any method to get higher rankings that the search engines would disapprove of, such as keyword stuffing, doorway pages, invisible text, cloaking and more. Stick to white hat methods for long-term success. People who use black hat optimization are usually there for the short-term, such as in porn, gambling, and Viagra markets (just look at your email spam for more black hat markets). These black hat industry sites are usually around just long enough to make a quick buck.
N) Competition Analysis
Who is linking to your competition? Use Yahoo's "link:" service to see the back links of your competition. For example, type in "link:http://www.yourdomain.com" into Yahoo search without the quotes). Try to get links from the same sites as your direct competitors. Better yet, see if you can replace them!
O) Submit
Submit to five groups of directories:
1. Dmoz.org and Yahoo (local, such as Yahoo.co.uk, or Yahoo.ca, etc... if you can).
2. Find directories in your field and get into them. Pay if you must, but only if the price is reasonable.
3. Local directories that relate to your country or region.
4. Any other directories that would be appropriate.
5. If you are targeting the local market, make sure that you are in the Yellow Pages and Superpages (because search engines use these listings to power local searches)
P) Blog
Start a blog about your industry and write a new entry at least once a week. Allow your visitors to comment or, better yet, write their own entries. This will create even more content on your site and will keep people coming back regularly to see what is new.
Q) Links From Other Sites
Simply submit your website to appropriate sites, asking that they link to your site as a reference because it will benefit their visitors. Don't spend too much time on this, if your content is good and original, they will find you and link to you naturally. Remember that Linking is Queen (http://www.redcarpetweb.com/promotion/0409.html#feature).
Stay away from reciprocal linking, links farms, link scams, and any other unnatural links. They may not necessarily hurt you, but Google tracks when you get a link, how long you have had a link, who links to the site that links to you, where you live, what you had for breakfast, and more (not really... but kind of).
R) Statistics
Make sure your server has a good statistics program. Use it! If you don't have access to a good program, then pay for one. Without the knowledge of who is coming to your site, from where, and how often, you will be missing out on some essential tools to improve your site.
S) Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
Sign up for Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing. Spend money getting people to your site. Use it for branding too. This will create a steady flow of visitors to your site, and will make your site more accessible to your potential clients. You don't have to be #1, you don't even have to be #5... just make sure you are on the first page of search results for most of your keyphrases, when the cost is right.
T) Look Ahead
Stay informed of what is coming up in your market. If a new product will be out next season, write about it now. Take advantage of being a first mover. The search engines, and linkers, will reward you.
U) Articles
Write an article once every week and get it published in as many online publications as you can (with a link back to your site). Include the article on your site. Not only will this create many links to your site, but it will also get people to click to your site, and most importantly you will become an expert in the eyes of your visitors. They may even begin looking for your site by querying your name!
V) Study Your Traffic
After 30 to 90 days you will have enough results to analyze in your statistics program. Go over them with a fine tooth comb. Get the answers to these questions:
- Where are your visitors coming from?
- Which search engines do they use?
- What queries do they type in?
- What pages on your site do they visit the most?
- What are the entry pages on your site?
- What are the exit pages?
- What path do they follow when they browse your site?
Use this information to tweak your site.
- Use the most popular page to encourage the visitors to make you money.
- Adjust the paths they use to send them where you want them.
- Figure out why they leave from the exit pages.
Also, see what search terms people use to find you, and fine tune your keyphrases. If you targeted "green widgets", but your visitors are finding you with the query "green leather widgets", then start creating content about "leather widgets"!
W) Verify Your Submissions
After 3-4 months, check that you got into Dmoz.org and all of the other directories that you submitted to. If you have not been included, then submit again, or better yet, write a polite email to the editor and ask why. Also, find any new directories that would be worthy of your submittal time and submit to them.
X) RSS Feeds
RSS (Real Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary) is becoming a powerful tool for Internet marketers. You can quickly and easily add fresh content to your website. Article feeds are updated frequently, so you can give your visitors (and the search engines) what they want - fresh content! You can use RSS to promote any new content, such as new pages, articles, blogs, press releases, and more!
Y) Press Releases
A press release is a written communication that you submit to journalists in the media (newspapers, radio, television, magazines) which are used to make announcements that are newsworthy. Create press releases announcing publication of any new articles or new company information or products. If it is interesting/original enough, a journalist may pick it up and write an article about it. Before you know it, your website address may get published in the NY Times.
Z) Keep Your Content Fresh
Remember to write a new page every 2-3 days. I only mentioned it briefly, but it is probably the most important point in this article. Keep writing! Without fresh content, your site will gradually drop in the search engine results. To stay on top, your content has to be the most up-to-date, freshest, and most interesting and original content in your field.
Follow these 26 simple steps and I assure you that within one year you will call your site a success. You will bring in a massive amount of traffic from within your industry and watch as your business grows!
So start writing, and write yourself to the top!
About the author: Shawn Campbell is an enthusiastic player in the ecommerce marketplace, and co-founded Red Carpet Web Promotion, Inc.. He has been researching and developing marketing strategies to achieve more prominent listings in search engine results since 1998. Shawn is one of the earliest pioneers in the search engine optimization field.
Ads not relevant??
If you are a google adsense publisher you must have came across with the problem of getting irrelevant or off-targeted ads on your sites. What are the reasons for getting irrelevant ads? How can you stop them from appearing on your sites? Read On and you will find these questions answered.
Reasons for getting irrelevant Ads:*Lack of content
You all Know that google adsense ads are contextual.Hence keyword rich content is a must to get well targeted ads.If your site has less content that can be one of the reasons why you are getting off-targeted ads and/or PSAs.
*Sensitive Keywords
Sometimes webmaster have to compromise on including keywords which are not related to your niche in their site's content.If these sensitive keywords happens to fall under the category of high paying ones you will see ads related to them on your site instead of getting ads related to the topic of your site.Some webmasters would think that they will benefit from these ads since they have a higher EPC but this is not the case,Since these ads are irrelevant to your site's content your visitors will not be interested in clicking on them.
*poor advertising strategies by advertisers
This is something which not under the control of the publishers.It is found that some advertisers uses generic keywords to bid upon in their advertising campaigns instead of using specific keywords.This results in serving off-targeted ads to a publisher's site.This is neither going to help the advertiser since it will reduce the sales and their ROI.
*Geo-targeting
Geo-targeting in the google adsense is another reason why we sometimes gets off-targeted ads.Some Geo-targeted ads doesn't consider about the site's topic and considers only about the geographic location from where the visitor is.
*comment spamming
This can be another reason for getting off-targeted ads.This happens mainly in blogs.sometimes adsense media bot picks up the sensitive keywords that may be there in the spam comments and serves ads which are related to them and thereby resulting in irrelevant ads for the site.
*Keyword rich content.
Each system will have its on methods of getting ads relevant.In google adsense it is more dependent on what you write about than anything else. So having more content with keywords related to your sites niche can help you in getting more relevant ads.
Content without keywords or with sensitive keywords won't help you.
*Use of section targeting
You can use Section targeting to emphasise those part of your content to which your ads to be related.You can read about section targeting here
Make sure to have significant amount of content between your section targeting tags else you will end up with irrelevant ads again.Also note that section targeting can take up to 2 weeks to take effect.
Also be warned about using this feature to emphasise irrelevant content as it might go against the google adsense program policies.
*Section targeting with "weight ignore"
You can use this to mask the your content with sensitive keywords from adsense media bot.Locate the part of your content with sensitive keywords and enclose it between section targeting with weight ignore tags.
*make sure that your site's topic is reflected more from your page titles,headers,meta tags,Image ALT parameter and from your content instead of from graphics and images that appear on your sites.
*Use your keywords in your page titles,headers and the words near to where the ads are going to appear.
*Don't use generic names as your page file names.For example,if your page is about "Making money with adsense" you can name the file as "making-money-with-adsense.html" or something like that.
*Use Competitive ad filter
You can always use competitive ad filter to block unwanted ads from appearing on your sites.Make sure to use it in a wise manner because a deliberate filtering can affect your EPC.
If you are an adsense publisher it will be worth taking a look at this List of Common Adsense Mistakes.
About the author:Sushith Mundayadan,Publisher of Tips To Run A Money Making Website Or Blog has a wealth of experince in online money making. The content in this article was developed from his experience in these businesses and his continual research into further business improvements.
Increase Your Google Adsense Earnings While Pleasing Your Visitors
Google Adsense has provided website owners a simple way to make money online. Just copy and paste a simple piece of code into your website and you can be making money within 5 minutes. No wages for salespersons, no dealing with advertisers, no hassles. However, there is a big difference between making a couple of cents per day and retiring on your own private yacht in the Caribbean . There is more to do than simply plugging your advertisements into any section of your website, sitting back, and hoping the cheques will start pouring through the door.
If you are looking for a way to increase your earnings with Google Adsense with you Blog or Website then the following tips should help:
1. Blend you Adsense Advertisements with the rest of your page.
This is a very simple but not always used tip. Countless studies have shown that users are more likely to click on your Adsense advertisements if they have the same link and font colours as the rest of your page. Google makes sure that the advertisement relevancy matches the content of your web page so by blending the Adsense advertisements it will provide a consistent look to your page with relevant content as well.
2. Putting Adsense Above or Below the fold?
The fold is simply known as the bottom of the page. If you have to scroll down to see more information on a page, this section is known as below the fold. Test your Adsense placement by analyzing the CTR (click through rate) that you get for advertisements that are above the fold, take them out and then put them below the fold, you'll get a better picture to see which has greater success. There is no hard-and-fast rule to what suits better but remember that success has a lot to do with location, location, location. So get testing.
3. Take the clutter out of your Website.
Like a good spring cleaning exercise look at your webpages and analyze what your visitors find useful and what gets very little clicks. This is not only good practice towards creating a more user-friendly website but it also allows you to test Adsense ads in different areas of your pages and see identify improvements on advertisement CTRs.
4. Help the Adsense robot.
A picture says a thousand words but to a robot/spider that is crawling your pages a picture says very little about what the content is about. If your site contains a lot of pictures then do yourself, your visitor, and the Adsense bot a favour and add some text to let everyone know what the image is about. This way the Adsense advertisements will be more targeted to what your site/page is all about and the user won't see unrelated advertisements within your website.
5. Increase your website traffic.
Seems like another obvious one, but so many good websites exist that aren't reaching their potential target market. By optimising your website to gain better search engine rankings, participating in forums that are related to your website, submitting your website to industry related directories, and getting the word out there in any way that you can think of will help drive targeted visitors to your website. Remember that the internet is an amazingly powerful medium to facilitate word-of-mouth. The effort you put into promoting your site will be rewarded by satisfied visitors/customers spreading the word about your website throughout the World Wide Web. However, make sure that you have a quality website/product/service or the opposite can happen just as quick.
In conclusion
By incorporating the above tips you should improve your Adsense earnings. I'm not telling you that by using the above that you'll be retiring on your yacht with your Pina Colada in hand so don't quit your day-job. If you follow the advice above it will get you on your way to improving your CTRs, your website design, and the experience for your user. Probably the most important thing that these tips help you with is to encourage you to test and experiment with Adsense and not just assume that whatever the style you use and wherever you put it is the right place.
About the author: Barry Fenning is the author of this article and the owner of www.betteririshwebsites.com A SEO Articles Website that can help both beginner and experienced webmasters. Please include this bio if you are reproducing the above article.
Mistakes To Avoid In Your Ebay Auctions
Online auctions continue to grow in popularity as an easy and efficient way to make money on everything from unwanted household items to rare and expensive collectables and even to bulky items like cars.
Log on to eBay and you will see countless auctions on any item you can imagine. As eBay auctions grow in popularity, it becomes harder to make money with your auction because it often gets buried or overlooked with all the competing auctions in the same category. Therefore, to make money on your auction, it is important to set your auction apart and avoid common eBay auction mistakes. Here are 3 important areas that you must take note of:
1. Wrong product category or product category not specific enough. Not doing enough research. As it is relatively simple and inexpensive to auction an item, many sellers simply do not put in enough effort researching the market. The result is that the auctions are put up in the wrong category. This would be tantamount to pitching your deal to the wrong market.
However, if you are marketing your product in traditional channels and paying money for your promotions, you are likely to do a lot more research and legwork. If you want to earn a serious income, then you should not treat your eBay auctions any differently.
To research, find the best eBay category to put your product auction in. If you are selling coins, eBay shoppers do not have the time to search all 38,000 plus auctions put up under the category of coins. You need to define your product category as specific as possible. You will then target the true eBay shoppers that are likely to be interested in your auction.
2. A blurred or ugly looking image. Be sure your eBay auction has a clear professional looking image. Pay heed to the saying “A picture speaks a thousand words”. Also, don’t forget to ensure that your image file size is not too large. If the image takes minutes to download, the typical eBay shopper is bound to skip your auction.
3. Incomplete and unclear product description. Be sure to give a detailed and precise description for your eBay auction item. For instance, you can give exact dimensions of the product or give specific details about the condition of the second hand item. An incomplete or unclear description is not likely to attract bidders for your item.
All in all, the best exercise I can suggest is to visit your Ebay auction and honestly ask yourself if you would be even tempted to put in a bid for this product.
If the answer is no or even probably not, then change it. If you are passionate about your auction and take the time to make it professional, your auction is likely to stand out. Make the effort to do it right and you are likely to have successful auctions.
About the Author: Evelyn Lim is an online publisher of a FREE newsletter aimed at helping aspiring home based business owners. She also hopes to educate her readers on skills to acquire multiple sources of online income. To subscribe to her newsletter, please visit http://www.e-BizMap.com or her blog at http://www.EvelynLim.com.
5 Tips To Protect Your Adsense Account
In PPC advertising industry click fraud is defined as clicks generated by Competitors of advertisers: These parties may wish to harm a competitor who advertises in the same market by clicking on their ads. The perpetrators don't profit directly, but force advertiser to pay for irrelevant clicks thus weakening or eliminating a source of competition. Competitors of publishers: These persons may wish to frame a publisher. It is made to look like the publisher is clicking on its own ads. The advertising network may then terminate the relationship. Many publishers rely exclusively on revenue from advertising and can be put out of business by such an attack. Other malicious intent: As with vandalism, there's an array of motives for wishing to cause harm to either an advertiser or a publisher, even by people who have nothing to gain financially. Motives include political and personal vendettas. These cases are often the hardest to deal with, since it is hard to track down the culprit, and if found, there is little legal action that can be taken against them. Unwanted "friends" of the publisher: Sometimes upon learning a publisher profits from ads being clicked, a supporter of the publisher (like a fan, family member, or personal friend), will click on the ads to "help". However, this can backfire when the publisher (not the "friend") is accused of click fraud. Clicks generated by publisher:Some publishers tries to generate clicks manually or with the help of computer programs to drive up their revenue. Following tips will help you protect your Adsense account from click fraud if u don't fall in the last category listed above. 1.Regular monitoring of traffic log and your adsense reports:Monitor your adsense reports and your traffic logs regularly(atleast once a day).If you do this regularly you will become familiar with your site's performance and you will be able to easily identify something strange and suspicious very easily.If you notice something strange in your reports or traffic logs you will have to report it to adsense support as soon as possible.You may include all the details yo have from your reports or your traffic analysis tool.Suspicious activities can be something like a conciderably high click throgh than you normally gets,conciderably high increase in page impressions recieved,A large number of clicks from a same IP etc.By sending an email with all the details you found you can notify google about suspected invalid activity.In order to be able to be monitor your sites performance and the behaviour of the vistors u will have to encorporate some kind of traffic analysis tools to your site.Google analytics,Stat Counter etc are well known examples used by a large number of webmasters. If you wish to track the clicks on the ads on your website you may wish to use Ad Logger .You may also check this which uses google analytics to track adsense clicks.You may also concider doing a search on "webmaster resources" and "site traffic analysis". 2.Be polite in forums:This tips is only important for those who are promoting their websites through their signatures in different forums.If you act rude in the forums it is never going to help you,but it can sometimes put you in trouble.Think about this case,You behaved in a rude way to some other member in the forum and you have a link to your site on your signature and the angry member decides to click on your ads regularly and deliberately.This can send the wrong message to google and sometimes they may think thats it you who is doing the clicks or you have appointed someone to click your ads regulary and they might decide to ban you.so i'd advice you to be polite and helping in all the forums in which you are participating.If you can't help,atleast don't blame or make fun of anyone.You may read this for more tips on promoting your website using forums. 3.Don't discuss your source of income(adsense)with family,friends etc: Don't tell your friends and family anything about how you are making money online or how your website is making money for you.Even if u decides to tell them make sure to tell them why they can't click on your ads.You will have to convince them that they clicking on your ads won't be a help for you and it will be a harm.The problem with discussing this with your friends and family is that sometimes they will start clicking on your ads thinking that the are helping you earn some bucks.But you know that it can get you banned. 4.Stay away from illegal methods of traffic generation:Invalid clicks or click fraud includes clicks from traffic generated using methods like Traffic exhange,PTC advertising,Auto surf etc.Thes type of traffic are blacklisted by adsese TOS.So you must stay away from traffic generated by illegal methods.The above mentioned are just examples and the list is not limited to them. Accidental Clicks: Couple of weeks ago i wrote to adsense support about the impressions generated by me while updating my site.The reply i got from them said that a publisher is allowed to view his sites as much as they want provided that he\she is not clicking any of the ads that appear on his\her site,he\she is not refreshing the pages too often.So that clears things up. What if you clicked on your ad accidentally? The answer is,You will have to write adsense support about this as early as you can.If you are interested in viewing and checking the ads on your site without creating illegal clicks you may use Adsense preview tool.AdSense preview tool is an addition to the right-click menu for Windows Internet Explorer 6.x, allowing you to preview the ads that may show on any web page.If you want to avoid complication of accidentally clicking on your ads you may disable ads for your computer. Don't sit back and relax while your website is earning you money using adsense.You will have to work hard to protect that Source of income from threats like clickfraud. About the author:Sushith Mundayadan
Read More Here: http://brokencodes.blogspot.com/2006/09/5-tips-to-protect-your-adsense-account.html
9 Simple Ways to be an Effective Blogger
Here are 9 tips to ensure you are on the right blogging track.
1. Focus your expertise
Always begin your blog with a theme or a focus. Although you can start one blog for all topics - both business and personal issues - it’s also best to separate your business from your personal blog particularly if the target audience is different. This helps you focus on the theme of your blog and enable you to blog easily without running off tangent!
2. Blog regularly
Commit time to blogging. Blogs are a little different from websites because blogs are expected to be updated more regularly than websites. Be sure to update your blog regularly. For example, I blog twice a week but I do blog extra if I have the time. However, if you worry you cannot blog regularly, try this time-saver tip of mine – set aside a day to draft 4 or 5 blog entries all at one go. Use them on days when you’re pressed for time or have writer’s block and cannot think of anything to blog about.
3. Show your personality
Don’t be afraid to show your personality when you blog. In fact, a blog is the best place to show the best bits of yourself – share as much as you can about how you feel and why you say the things you do. Don’t be afraid to use humour or honesty. Your readers will love you for being frank. Having said that, do set some personal rules as a blogger. My personal mantra is that I don’t cuss or have four-letter words in my blog.
4. Encourage feedback
Your blog exists because you want to start ‘conversations’ with your readers. You have an opinion to share and you want others to share theirs too. Some bloggers prevent their readers from leaving comments by turning off the Comments feature on their blog. I say enable your readers to provide you feedback but moderate comments – remove those which are rude. If you worry about spamming, plug in extra security by getting readers to register before they can leave comments and get the comments sent to you for approval prior to being posted to your blog.
5. Use photos to sell
Photographs always capture attention and convey emotions. They also help break the monotony of large sections of text. Remember to re-size them before you upload them to your blog. This keeps photograph sizes standard and consistent. I use photos which are re-sized to 400 pixels wide by 300 pixels tall. Don’t have gorgeous photos? Get them free from free stock photo sites such as freefoto.com or sxc.hu
6. Include links to other blogs
Include links to other blogs or websites. The mistake most people make is that they don’t want to link out because they’re worried their readers will leave. Don’t worry about them leaving - focus on writing quality engaging content. Your mission is to get them hooked enough that they will bookmark your blog and return often!
7. Use proper grammar and spellcheck
I can’t stress enough the importance of using proper grammatical language when blogging. You don’t have to be an expert in a language to use it well. Just remember that what you blog should be easy to understand without spelling or grammatical errors.
8. Ensure readability
When you blog, keep in mind that you need to ensure that your readers will be able to read easily. Follow newspaper conventions: use subheads to break up long paragraphs, keep one idea to one paragraph and use bulleted lists if the information is too unwieldy. Don’t torture your readers by having white text on a dark or black background. It hurts the eyes! Black text on white or light background always works best.
9. Be personal
The easiest way is to constantly use ‘you’ and ‘I’ liberally throughout your blog. This keeps it casual, friendly and easygoing. You definitely don’t want to blog in the third person because that would defeat the purpose of your blogging. Imagine you are having a conversation with your best friend. Use this mental image when you are blogging and you’ll never be stuck for ideas or words!
About the author: Krista Goon is the co-founder and business partner at http://www.RedboxStudio.com, a web design and web consultancy firm based in Penang, Malaysia. She has been blogging since 2003 (she writes for 3 different blogs - all on different topics) and has given talks about blogging. Find out what else she is raving (or ranting about) in her blog over at http://www.MayaKirana.com
The Social Bookmarking Phenomenon
Some days, it seems that we are quickly evolving from a digital world where information was THE marketable commodity to a communications market, where new methods of communicating, networking and socializing are being introduced on a rapid fire basis and are the new consumers of online attention and time. Blogs, wikis, RSS newsfeeds, podcasts, video socialization built around applications like YouTube...all of these are recently formulated methods of communication that seemingly overnight have developed millions of participants.
One of the networking methodologies that has evolved from Internet architecture is the phenomenon of "social bookmarking." One of the more popular sites is del.icio.us. On this site the notion is that you, the web surfer, share interests with others who have web access via your bookmarked URLs. It's the same concept as bookmarking favorites with your browser, but the collection of favorites has a coding system and is shared with others. You build a library of URLs that reflect your interests and that you consider worth visiting. You add a personal "tag" with a keyword that characterizes the site.
You can "subscribe" to tags so that you see every new post with that tag. That in turn can take you to the poster's entire list of favorites which may prove to be a new trove of information for you. del.icio.us allows you to go through the same exercise with podcasts, which are now scattered across the Internet galaxy like asteroids.
Others on the web have access to your library and thus to your personal interests. Utilizing a web based application (in this case, del.icio.us) participants are able to search through sites that others have bookmarked, using not only a standard search term but the tag that has been used to characterize the site. Tags form a collective body of URLs and thus, a body of knowledge - and collective access to those tags forms a community of people with common interests. Included in the process is an optional personal profile, which provides your email address and allow others to communicate with you personally.
One of the drawbacks to this format is that a tag search is going to get you every commercial website out there who has laid claim to the same keyword. It takes a lot of scanning and scrolling to find sites that have been tagged by individuals instead of search engines.
There are several platforms out there for social networking. Flickr (www.flickr.com) is a site that uses uploaded photos for networking purposes instead of URLs. www.43places.com is a site where you upload your travel experiences, travel photos and travel interests along with your profile. Wists (www.wists.com) is a "social shopping" exchange where the bookmarks are all about commercial shopping sites. The level of personal communication allowed by social networking sites is up to you: on 43 Places you can post your photo but refuse personal email. You can also hold the line at public access to your favorites library on del.icio.us. Other social bookmarking platforms (or tools) as they are called, include:
- Backflip
- Blinklist
- blogmarks
- Connotea
- de.lirio.us
- feedmarker
- Jots
- Lookmarks
- Scuttle
- unalog
- Spurl
- Simpy
- Wists
- Yahoo! My Web 2.0
They all have an assortment of tricks and widgets that make their sites a little different. Some of them have fairly sophisticated search methods for their subscribed users; some allow you to "bundle" tags for search purposes; most provide lists of the most popular bookmarks and the recent posts. It's all an interesting experiment in 'distance sharing'. Making use of it for professional (research) or personal uses simply requires taking the time to become comfortable with the methodology and then learning how to get maximum usage out of the tagging system.
About the author: Madison Lockwood is a customer relations associate for http://www.apollohosting.com. She helps clients understand how a website may benefit them both personally and professionally. Apollo Hosting provides website hosting, ecommerce hosting, & VPS hosting to a wide range of customers
Social Bookmarking – What is It?
Do you have an account on (http://) del.icio.us?
What! You say to yourself, that is a crazy name and it does not even look like a valid name for a website. Well, it is a real site with an Alexa rank of 123 which is in the stratosphere for web site rankings.
Let's use old, dependable Wikipedia for a definition of del.icio.us:
"The website del.icio.us (pronounced as "delicious") is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. The site came online in late 2003 and was founded by Joshua Schachter, co-maintainer of Memepool. It is now part of Yahoo!"
A social bookmarking site is one where you can establish an account and store your favorites. You can make these bookmarks private for your own use, or make them available to anyone on the Web.
You have your favorites listed in folders on your browser, but that information is available only to you on your home computer. If you open a bookmark site (and there are many others in addition to del.icio.us), you can share these bookmarks with any reader on the Web.
Why do this? One reason is that you can access your bookmarks from any computer with an Internet connection so you can get to your bookmarks when you are traveling.
However, the major reason is to help build traffic to your websites. Use of bookmarking sites is a way to create links back to your websites and help generate traffic. There are numerous bookmark sites and you can set up bookmark files on as many as you want, all of which create the links back to your websites.
The best way to learn about social bookmarking is to open an account on del.icio.us and learn about the site. You definitely need to know about it and how to use it to your advantage.
About the author: John V. W. Howe is an entrepreneur, author, inventor, patent holder, husband, father, and grandfather. He has been involved in entrepreneurial activities for over 40 years. He founded http://www.boomer-ezine.com and http://www.retirement-jobs-online.com to help Boomers (baby boomers) become entrepreneurs when they retire.
Top 10 Reasons To Advertise With Ezines
You've heard the buzz but still have some questions. Does Ezine Advertising really work?
Yes, Ezine Advertising really does work and here are 10 reasons why this form of internet marketing is so powerful and effective:
1. An Ezine is an electronic magazine or newsletter. The electronic format makes it easy to respond to your ad. A simple mouse click is much more convenient than picking up the phone, mailing in a card, or driving to a physical store
2. The electronic format offers less potential for distraction before they arrive at your "store". Just think if you send a traditional sales flyer through the mail. The customer is eager to buy but needs to drive past several other retail establishments to arrive at your store and then walk past still more in the mall or shopping center. They might spend the money meant for your pocket before they ever arrive! In an Ezine they click right from the ad into your "store" so there is less potential for loss.
3. Subscribers have opted in. Opt In means they have voluntarily signed-up to receive the Ezine and were not added to the list without their knowledge or permission. Your ad is less likely to be tossed in the garbage like junk mail or deleted like spam. It is also likely to be "white listed" and so won't get caught up by spam filters.
4. Cheaper than most traditional forms of advertising. Priced television, radio, or print media lately? It is also cheaper than many other internet advertising options. Have you looked into the cost of PPC?
5. Easy to target ads and products to specific audience. No matter what your target audience there is an Ezine out there to serve it-and probably dozens to choose from!
6. No need to narrow your category like in traditional classified advertising. Classified listings restrict your placement so only people looking in that category see your ad. In an Ezine every reader sees it!
7. Most Ezine subscribers read for the free information they expect from their Ezine and will usually read each issue from top to bottom. Since most publishers only allow a limited number of ads, your ad will have greater visibility.
8. Most people buy when they least expect to, so as they are reading their Ezine they will be relaxed and more receptive to marketing. This contrasts sharply with many other advertising mediums (TV, radio, direct mailing) as then people are expecting a sales pitch!
9. Ezine subscribers feel comfortable acting on sales pitches because the electronic format makes it risk-free to respond to your ad. They don't have to risk getting trapped on the phone or in a store by an over-eager sales staff. They take comfort in knowing that one simple click can get them back out again!
10. The electronic format also makes it easy to capture more information about your prospect. You have the opportunity to at least get their name and e-mail address (if you are savvy about your offer) and potentially a whole lot more. Once you've got that then you can sell, sell, sell!
About the Author: Deanna Mascle, Visit http://ezineadvertisingworks.info and http://howtoadvertisewithezines.info to learn more. Want to save money on Ezine Advertising? Check out our ebook "Harness The Power Of Ezine Advertising" which includes $21 of free ezine advertising plus our Ad Club. Our ebook not only offers FREE ezine advertising but additional tips.
