Complete Adsense Guide

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2010-02-22T08:39:00.001-08:00

Original Source

AuctionAds giving away $ 25 for all New Publishers

2010-02-02T20:38:00.000-08:00

This Something that every publisher is going to like. AuctionAds have announced that they are going to give $ 25 to every new publisher who signs up with them.

This is part of the promo campaign for AuctionAds. Earlier they were giving away $5 but now they have raised it to $ 25.

Sign up here

Also if you signed up with AuctionAds previously and have never earned a payout your current balance too will be bumped to $25 !

2010-02-02T06:46:00.001-08:00

Essential Steps to Get Adsense Payment!

2007-03-15T11:59:00.000-07:00

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

Get 50,000 unique visitors a month

2007-03-03T17:57:00.000-08:00

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!

2007-02-27T23:35:00.000-08:00

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?

2007-02-20T17:49:00.000-08:00

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?

2007-02-17T19:26:00.000-08:00

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

2007-02-11T22:20:00.000-08:00

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

2007-02-10T23:30:00.001-08:00

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?

2007-02-08T22:12:00.000-08:00

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

2007-02-07T21:50:00.000-08:00

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

2007-02-06T21:00:00.000-08:00

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).

These rules will also apply to users that you have already referred but who have not yet reached one of the new earning/spend thresholds. For example, if you referred an AdSense publisher who has currently earned $2.00, you will be paid $5.00 if that publisher reaches the $5.00 mark. But, if you have referred an AdSense publisher who has already earned $10.00, you will not be paid $5.00 retroactively for that referral reaching the $5.00 mark. However, should that publisher eventually reach the $100.00 earnings mark within 180 days, you will be paid $250.00.

Source: http://adsense.blogspot.com

The importance of Title Tags in Search Engine Optimization

2007-02-05T21:59:00.000-08:00

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

2007-02-04T21:57:00.000-08:00

. Usenet / GG Groups

- http://groups.google.com/The discussions that take place at Google Groups bring diverse perspectives. It also has a significant history of discussions to draw upon. You can browse through group topic relevant to your blog’s theme or you can search for a specific topic if you want to.

2. Yahoo! Answers

Like Google Groups, Yahoo! Answers is a feedbag for the content-hungry blogger.

3. Google / Yahoo! News

The news services from Google & Yahoo! provide access to tens of thousands of press releases and news articles every day. There services are indeed one of the best source of blogging ideas and search is the best way to go.

4. Keyword Tools

People type the topics, the questions they are interested to know in the search engine and these are captured by the keyword tools. So, if you are seeking a direct path to what users want to find on your blog, take advantage of using keyword tools such as Overture, MSN AdCenter, SEOBook's & Digitalpoint's. You can find a number of questions that help suggests a blog content idea.

5. Technorati

I know most of you are familiar with Technorati. It is certainly helpful for boosting blog’s traffic. But, did you know that they are also a good source for finding ideas to write about? Technorati is possibly the best for researching the most current topics or thoughts on the web. You can do basic search relative to your blog’s them. Sometimes, the posts at Technorati spark debate or disagreement, other times, they open up a whole new idea for information to be shared.

6. Del.icio.us

While Del.icio.us' popular page are not a great source for unique topics, specific tag pages, however, function much like Technorati, in that they provide timely links to pages that people have bookmarked. The site will give you ideas on what people are interested in and perhaps will bring you to blog-worthy material where your next blog content can be base upon.

7. Digg & Reddit

Both sites take user submissions and user votes, and both are best referenced using a search.

8. StumbleUponStumble

Upon can be a good source of blog content ideas although Stumblers often have a preference for humor and the absurd. Some suggested that the best way to use StumbleUpon is to follow their Buzz page and use the "tag" option in the toolbar.

9. Wikipedia

The obvious choice here is to look only at the articles, but I find that many times the discussion can be equally interesting. The search function is the best way to go, as the categorization structure isn't very user-friendly, yet.

10. Craigslist

I am not expose on using Craigslist but someone says Craigslist, like Technorati, is up-to-date, but it's a less tech-savvy and often more "average joe" crowd, which can make for an interesting dichotomy. Supplying your blog’s primary keywords in the search box will bring you relevant material.When you’re out of ideas to write something to blog about, remember the above list of tools or services. If you have some other tools you used for generating blogging ideas, please feel free to add it in the comment section.

Source: http://www.dagsensecode.com

Mistakes To Avoid In Your Ebay Auctions

2007-01-27T04:08:00.000-08:00

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

2007-01-27T04:07:00.003-08:00

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

2007-01-27T04:07:00.001-08:00

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??

2007-01-27T04:05:00.000-08:00

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.

Possible solutions for Off-targeted ads:

*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

2007-01-27T04:04:00.000-08:00

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

2007-01-27T04:03:00.000-08:00

5 Tips To Protect Your Adsense Account

2007-01-27T04:02:00.000-08:00

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

2007-01-27T04:01:00.000-08:00

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

2007-01-27T04:00:00.001-08:00

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?

2007-01-27T03:59:00.002-08:00

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

2007-01-27T03:59:00.001-08:00

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.

"Which program is better? Adsense or Yahoo Publisher?"

2007-01-27T03:57:00.000-08:00

Lately many of my customers have been asking me this question: "Which program is better? Adsense or Yahoo Publisher?" It sounds simple, but the answer is not. The reason being is that both programs work well, but both also have different places when considering whether or not to use them for a specific website. Here's why. Adsense has been around for a while now, and at the moment has the lion's share of the market in the PPC (Pay Per Click) game. But anyone who has been promoting them on their websites will tell you that the payouts have also gotten gradually smaller as time has gone on. Why? Well it's easy, they are still the best game in town, so they aren't worried about losing their publishers to another PPC. But then came Yahoo Publisher. Which unless you've been living under a rock for the past ten years, you already know the name, and know how big that company is. And with the purchase of Overture, Yahoo is coming into the game well equipped and ready for a fight. So, what's the difference between the two? Here is what I've been able to learn from my own websites. Yahoo, overall, is paying more per click then Adsense. But before you jump from this article and start changing your code, read on a bit more. Yahoo Publisher seems to be paying more then Adsense on similar content, BUT... Their ads are not nearly as contextually targeted as Adsense. So this can present a problem for website owners. For example, if you have a website that it's primary topic is 'HOME MORTGAGES', Adsense will display ads that only link to mortgage sites. But that's not true with Yahoo Publisher. Yahoo Publisher might display some mortgage ads, but also might display a Payday Loan ad (BTW if you need a payday loan, check out this page http://www.thegiftedone.com ), Vonage ads (Vonage must pay them some big money, as they seem to be the default when the script doesn't know what to do), or some other ad that does not relate to the content of your website. How do you choose which program is right for your site? This depends on the site itself and the type of surfers that frequent it. If you have a site that is highly targeted for a certain keyword, then I would suggest you stay with Adsense. This will keep the ads focused and targeted to your customers, presenting them with content that they will click. If they came to read about cooking recipes, they probably won’t click the Vonage ad. Here’s an example of a content targeted website: http://voip.magicanswers.com However, if your site is more of a surfer hangout, where people go when they are bored, or if your site covers a multitude of topics, then you might be better off loading it up with Yahoo Publisher ads. This type of surfer is more likely to click an ad that’s off topic, which in turn would pay you better. At this point what it comes down to is the click thru ratio. If monitored closely, you can determine what your surfers like and what they don’t like. What they click and what they don’t click. If one program is not performing well for you, then try the other. I’m sure that as time goes on, Yahoo Publisher will become more targeted, and surely will be more competitive. With Google’s Adsense as an adversary they have quite a fight on their hands. My advice to you is this. If you have one website, then optimize your PPC links for YOUR website surfers. If you have many, optimize each site accordingly, but do take the time to test each program. Find out which one will pay you more. Whether you own a giant corporation with hundreds of websites, or a home based business branching out to the internet, the bottom line is always the bottom line. Which comes down to the paycheck. A simple test might lead you to more money, which is always the goal.
About the Author: Chuck Crawford is an established expert in web design, traffic development and website financial analysis. He has been helping people design and develop their internet business since 1996. This article may be reprinted freely as long as all links remain active. http://www.affiliatewebsitedesign.com http://www.magicanswers.com http://www.thegiftedone.com

Yahoo SEO Techniques

2007-01-27T03:56:00.000-08:00

Different Search Engine Means Different Algorithm

All search engines have their own algorithms to determine the value and, therefore, positioning of websites. While the majority of SEO work tends to concentrate on Google because of the sheer weight of searches they receive it would be foolish to discount or ignore the other major search engines. Yahoo is considered one of the big three along with Google and MSN and by concentrating a little more time and effort on Yahoo optimization it is quite possible to gain a good amount of traffic. With ultra competitive keywords it may actually provide an easier way to generate search traffic than gearing all your efforts solely towards Google.

The Most Important Yahoo Optimization Factor

The first, and most pertinent point is that Yahoo judges content to be the most important factor in their algorithms. They do still consider inbound links and other factors but they are attuned to the way of the content site and they love sites that provide keyword-optimized content in large mass. While that may make it sound easier than concentrating on generating a huge base of inbound links as you would for Google, Yahoo optimization presents its own challenges and its own unique quirks that you should consider.

Looking At Keyword Density

Because of the relevance that Yahoo places on the content within your site, the keyword once again becomes a vitally important aspect of your research. While Google have been striving to promote sites that use organic content and webmasters and SEOs have been optimizing with around 2% to 3% keyword density Yahoo prefers a much greater density level. The danger, of course, is that giving Yahoo what they want may cause Google to deem your content as being keyword stuffed but there is another difference between the two algorithms that can help to counteract this problem.

Using Stems, Inflexions, And Variants Of Keywords

Yahoo is very heavily language based. This means that it is, strictly speaking, more aware of the nuances of the written language. It will include synonyms and inflexions of a keyword when considering your keyword density; something that Google does not consider to the same extent. This means that it is possible to optimize for both without diminishing your ranking with one another.

How To Optimize For Yahoo Without Getting Penalized By Google

Google likes a density of around 2% and Yahoo likes a density as high as 7% or even 8%. This means that you can effectively use 4 variations of a single keyword or phrase and a density of 2% for each. This offers further advantages. With Google you are now gearing your content towards four different keywords and offering the level they want, and you are still providing Yahoo with the much higher density rate that they require. Because you can include plurals and further stems of keywords this means you can write in a much more natural tone.

Using The Near Forgotten Meta Tags

One area that a lot of SEO professionals and webmasters alike now tend to overlook is the Meta tag. However, Yahoo appears to still give consideration to the keyword and description tags in particular. This is quite rare in the case of most search engines and Google certainly do not look for keywords in your Meta tags. Do not attempt to dupe Yahoo, though, and only include keywords that genuinely appear on your page and are relevant to your topic.

Regular, Fresh Content Is King

You’ve probably heard the saying that “content is king” and this is even truer when considering Yahoo optimization. The more content you provide the better. This may mean making regular additions to your site but it will generate the kind of results you are looking for. Blogs are also a very good way to continue adding relevant content to your site that Yahoo will smile down on.

The Lazy Yahoo Bot

Compared to other search engine spiders the Yahoo bot is a comparatively lazy animal. It doesn’t crawl as often as other bots and it certainly doesn’t crawl as deep into your site to find all of your pages and index them. This means you should pay extra attention to creating a legible sitemap and keeping it updated as regularly as possible. Yahoo has a sitemap submission feature that is similar to Google’s and using this is heavily recommended to try and ensure that Yahoo stays on top of the infrastructure of your site and ranks you accordingly.

Inbound Links And Controlling Them Yourself

Inbound links are still important to Yahoo, but again a lot of emphasis is placed on content. Textual relevance seems to be one of the most important factors so having control over your inbound links and being able to determine the pages where they appear and the anchor text of each is important. Perhaps the best way to generate inbound links for Yahoo optimization is to use the article directories to your benefit.

Yahoo Optimization Conclusion

Google may be the search engine that everyone talks about and optimizes for but ignoring Yahoo would be foolish. This is especially true because while the Yahoo algorithm is quite different to the Google one and other algorithms, it is still quite easy to optimize for both. The most important factors to remember are to use relevant Meta tags for every single page of your site, include as much content and update your site with new content as often as possible, and update a sitemap both on your website and with the Yahoo sitemaps function.

About the author: Matt Jackson ,WebWiseWords specializes in SEO writing geared toward any search engine or any SEO guidelines. They can create website content pages, articles, blog entries, and more that utilize search engine optimization rules to help promote your site with all of the major search engines, not just Google.

You Can Make Money Doing Online Paid Surveys!

2007-01-27T03:55:00.000-08:00

For the past few years, there has been a lot of talk going on about earning money by taking surveys online. Yet despite the buzz, many people are still skeptical about online paid surveys. Where does this skepticism stem from? Perhaps it comes from misinformation or the lack of information. Thus I thought it would be great for everyone if I were to share my experience in this field. I do not claim to be an expert but I do have a lot of experiences with taking paid online surveys. Trust me, if you like spending your free time online, participating in online paid surveys is one way to make good use of that free time. The basic idea is to earn money while enjoying yourself. Majority of companies engage in market research. This is how they try to get into the minds of their customers. They try to find out what we use, what we want, when and how we want it. Be it products or services, the goal is the same – to give the consumers what they want. In the old days, their methods were primarily limited to telephone surveys and questionnaires over the mail. With the Internet, research methods have undergone a revolution. It is now easier to get in touch with a broader consumer base. This is where we come in. We are the consumers. The companies want our opinion. They need it. Normally, manufacturers make use of another entity – the market research companies. These are the middle men who specialize in getting information out of consumers. These are the institutions we actually sign up with when we want to participate in online surveys. One important thing you must not forget is what I said in the beginning – I earn money through surveys as a supplement to my regular income. I have no dreams of becoming a millionaire out of this. Legitimate survey companies usually offer cash payments in small amounts – not more than $100 perhaps. More often, each survey will earn you anything from $1-$5. Think about it though, small things add up to big things. A note of caution: be wary of survey advertisements offering prizes that are just out of this world. Try to verify their legitimacy by checking out blogs and other paid survey sites which review such companies. So why not try it out? Look for some well-known names in the online paid survey business. Make use of websites that have already gone through these companies and listed them according to their features. That will make things easier for you. Remember, when signing up for the first time, fill out your profile clearly and thoroughly as this will be the basis for your participation in surveys. It’s easy, simple, and fun. About The Author:Nicolas Woiwod,Over the past few years, Nicolas Woiwod has accumulated a lot of experience in participating in paid online surveys, paid e-mails, and affiliate marketing. To reap the benefits of his extensive knowledge, please visit: http://www.paidsurvey24.com

Make Money Online Using Amazon?

2007-01-27T03:53:00.001-08:00

Amazon have set up an affiliate program (they call it the “Amazon Associates Program”). The theory behind the Amazon Associates program is amazingly simple. By sending traffic to the Amazon website, you will earn a commission (between 5%-10%) on all of the sales that result from any visitors that you send.

This is great because it means you do not have to get involved in product fulfillment. You have no stock to store, you don’t have to pick and ship orders and, perhaps most importantly of all, you don’t need to get involved in any customer service activities. All you have to do is be purely a marketing machine and send traffic to Amazon’s site.

Of course, the real trick – in fact the key to making this all work - is to send traffic to the Amazon site at a cost that is less than the revenue you receive from Amazon. If you are able to do that, then you can definitely make a tidy profit in the process.

Now, there are a number of options open to you for creating traffic. You can create traffic for free by writing articles, creating your own blog or even by setting up a website of your own and going through the lengthy process of optimizing your website for the search engines so that your website is listed near the top of the search results. These three methods are time consuming, but they will get you results if you stick with them.

Another way of generating traffic, which unfortunately is not free, is to create advertising campaigns using one of the many pay-per-click options that exist. This basically means using Google Adwords or the similar services offered by Yahoo! and MSN.

If you hadn’t already noticed, every time you do a search in Google, you will see a series of paid advertisements down the right-hand-side. You can create adverts that will be displayed when the user types in specific search terms.

So you can pick specific products from the Amazon website to promote and set up a specific pay-per-click campaign for each of these products. Each time the user clicks on one of your adverts, Google will charge you for the click, hence the term pay-per-click. You, in turn, point the user to Amazon’s website. If this whole process costs you less than the commission you receive, then you make a profit.

Simple as that!

Well, not quite. But help is at hand. If you are interested in learning how it is possible to make good money as an Amazon Affiliate, visit my website now for more information.

About the Author: Marty White is the author of The Amazonian King Super Affiliate System http://www.AmazonianKing.com

Reciprocal Linking Strategy

2007-01-27T03:52:00.001-08:00

If you want to get serious about driving more traffíc to your website and improving your search engine rankings you need to develop a linking strategy. There are three primary linking strategies:

1. Reciprocal Linking
2. Purchasing text links
3. Employing a link finding service

This month's issue of BizAtomic Advisor focuses on Reciprocal Linking – How it can help. When a trusted site links to yours, people follow that recommendation.

Reciprocal link means your website links to another website and that website links back to you. Search engines use link popularity to rank websites. Exchanging reciprocal links with other sites will build a great link directory that will motivate visitors to bookmark your website to get access to your link directory.

One of the factors search engines use to determine your relevancy to a search term is the number of websites linking to your website. This is an effective way to increase your search engine rankings.

Three key success factors for a reciprocal linking strategy are:

1. Quality of links should outweigh quantity
2. Link partners must relate to your site content
3. Partners should link to you from pages listing as few links as possible

Linking is what the web is all about. It helps you move from one document to another and from site to site while maintaining your focus on a particular subject. The ideal situation is to have one way links from related sites without you pointing back to them. However, you would have to have a lot of valuable information, tips, tools, articles, resources, etc. in order to motivate people to link to your website. Unfortunately most sites don't fall into this category and reciprocal linking is a requirement.

Step 1 - Get people to want to link to your website. Generating quality inbound links to your website requires a systematic approach and hard work. But the payoff is worth it. To begin with you must have good content on your website. Step one is to analyze the value of your content in relation to competitors. You will also need a page of outbound links on your website that visitors will find valuable.

Step 2 – Research websites that are worth linking to and that will bring relevant traffíc to you. You need to identify the portals, directories, news sites, ezines, blogs, and other information sources specific to your industry. You can let your fingers do the walking across the keyboard or you can purchase one of the many software tools on the market designed to locate relevant sites. They also help collect email addresses and even prepare letters requesting that a site add a link to your site. Without making any recommendations you may want to look into the following tools:

Arelis Reciprocal Link Solution
Zeus Internet Marketing Robot
Linking 101 Linking Management Script
Duncan Carver's Link Management System
Hot Links SQL V2.3
LinkMaster Pro
Links Manager
Links4Trade
PowerLinks.com

Make sure you at least visit the sites these tools generate. However, the best way to build long-term link popularity is to offer good content and features providing real value to your visitors. People will discover your website.

Google is a great help with your research because it ensures your partners are properly indexed. Look for sites closely related to you in terms of theme and keywords. Google's ranking algorithm takes into account each link's importance along with other factors like the proximity of your search keywords in the documents. In other words, it's not just about the number of sites that link to a given page, but also the importance of those sites (measured by the links to each of them). Google has given a name to its ranking algorithm for determining a web page's importance; it's called PageRank(TM) .

Human based directories like Yahoo and the Open Directory project have a lot of influence over search results. List your site in the correct category with a good description.

Next, make sure you are linked to and from topic specific and niche directory websites. These are sites that provide information that is an exact match for what you provide.

Don't forget partners and vendors from your business. Since you already have a relationship you are more likely to be able to request and receive a link from their websites.

Step 3 – Implementing your strategy. Like any marketing campaign you need a plan.

Set business benefit objectives for your Linking strategy. Think about what you are trying to achieve and write it down on paper.
Develop a content plan for populating your website with valuable content.
Set linking policies, pages, and linking code you can give to link partners for your site.
Monitor the progress of your linking strategy so that you can see what results have been achieved and adapt or tweak what you are doing to improve results.
Benchmark your site's link popularity against competitors

A Reciprocal Linking Program will require that you manage the following:

1. The name of the site
2. The URL
3. The name and email address of the person who runs the site
4. The date you contact the person who runs the site and the date he or she responds
5. The resulting deal (Some will say yes, some will say no, others will not reply at all, others will want a link back from you, some may want monëy for links, some will be out of town and take weeks to reply, etc.)
6. The status of the deal
7. Verifying that the link is in place
8. Checking the site periodically for the link (Yes, some folks swap links and then pull yours for odd reasons.)

Remember the most important benefit of a link exchange is the traffíc resulting directly from these links. Search engines are highly unpredictable. They keep changing their algorithms every now and then. Your site is on the top 10 results today, but it may not be so tomorrow. Of course, you don't want to exclude search engine optimization but your main concern should be getting traffíc from direct links.

About the author: BizAtomic - http://www.bizatomic.com - 800-942-9475

Adsense Alternative

2007-01-27T03:51:00.000-08:00

Many people have started using Google's AdSense program, but there are some who find it a bit too uncertain or simply not suiting their own requirements from an ad program.

But thankfully for such people, there are many alternatives to AdSense which attempt to alleviate some of its shortcomings. Here is a list of the most noteworthy ones from the lot with a description concerning each one.

AllFeeds (http://www.allfeeds.com/?action=publishers) AllFeeds has a great pool of online advertisers to choose from. It also features many display formats that you can choose from. These include banners, buttons, XML feeds, DHTML pop-ups and so on. It also features real time reporting of your ad status. The site will mail a check every month, provided that you earn more then $25.00, while rolling over earnings for the next month if you don't. Another interesting thing about AllFeeds is that it integrates with Google AdSense, maximizing your earnings with AdSense.

MarketBanker (http://www.marketbanker.com/mb/sell.php) MarketBanker allows you the unique possiblity to set the pricing for your site. It also allows you to allow or reject any link that appears on your site (although AdSense itself does a very good job of this as well, with URL filters) There's also a statistics section which will allow you to see how well your site is doing. The ads are small just like AdSense's and they're just as easy to set up. Also, registration for MarketBanker is free.

BidClix ( http://www.bidclix.com/PubTop.html) BidClix is different because it has advertisers compete for clicks on your site, which in turn is meant to generate the highest possible profits for your page. It also has a very large pool of advertisers which ensure there are plenty of people to choose your site. However, it does require more polish on site contents then AdSense. As most sites, real time statistics are available and its very easy to get started with this service, but it's also very flexible.

Chitika (http://www.realcontext.com/index.php?option=RealContext:+Contextual+Targeting+Engine) RealContext uses Artificial intelligence to retrieve the most relevant ads for your page. And there's an extra feature which makes RealContext unique as well. Keywords are selected based upon which previous selections payed off and which didn't. That means there's a constant feedback process that ensures you gain better revenue from your ads. It also supports blocking certain adds and child-safe filtering and many more options.

AdHearus (http://adhearus.com/webmaster.php) AdHearus is a very feature-packed contextual ad provider. As with AdSense, advertisements are targeted but it doesn't stop here at all. The ads are very flexible, you can select from text-ads, banners, rectangles, pop-ups, pop-unders or skyscrapers. You can also display your own ads, through rotation, both on your site and on other affiliate sites, which makes AdHearus a hybrid with conventional advertising technologies. There's a very comprehensive on-line real time reporting feature and, as usual with such services, starting out is free and it's a breeze.

AffiliateSensor (http://www.affiliatesensor.com/) AffiliateSensor has highly customizable ad blocks, which you can make for yourself with an easy to use on-line interface. You also get realtime reporting with clicks-by-domain, page and refferer. There's integration with Google AdSense as well, through the google_alternate_ad_url so AffiliateSensor can be used as a substitute for Google PSA's (Public Service Ads).

Kanoodle Bright Ads (http://www.kanoodle.com/about/brightads.cool) Kanoodle's offering allows publishers to get ads related to topics or segments, and not the traditional keyword oriented ads. The site also groups publisher sites with advertisers by hand to ensure high-revenue generating ads. And speaking of revenue, the amount of money you receive is a clear 50% share of the amount of money Kanoodle recieves for an advertiser.

TargetPoint (http://publisher.targetpoint.com) TargetPoint is oriented more towards content publishers. It offers full control over the look the ads, statistics over your site's overall performance and better revenue. It's free to register and you earn a guaranteed 60% of the total revenue. You can get payed with Paypal of Bank checks and (most times) wire transfers as well.

Clicksor (http://www.clicksor.com) Clicksor will earn you as much as 60% from the amount of money your website produces. What you get is about the same as AdSense, there are targeted text ads, you can view the revenues from your website in real time. You can receive money via PayPal or through a check every two weeks, provided that you have earned more then $50. If you haven't made that much, your earning roll over to the next period

Bidvertiser (http://www.bidvertiser.com/) Like AdSense, Bidvertiser displays text ads in your page. But the difference lies in the fact that advertisers bid over your advertising space, ensuring you earn as much revenue as you possibly can. This also means that bids will increase over time, earning you even more cash. You also get a great way to customize your ads with a very easy to use tool and detailed reports on your site's status.

Quigo AdSonar (http://www.quigo.com/adsonarpublishers.htm) Quigo AdSonar achieves relevancy by placing a filter according to your site's categories. It also offers you on-line reports of your site's status and the possibility to add your own custom ads replacing ads that don't gain you any revenue. The setup is very simple, in a similar fashion to AdSense's and quite customizable as well.

Vibrant Media IntelliTXT (http://www.intellitxt.com/site/web_01a.html) Vibrant Media IntelliTXT offers user-activated ads, highlighting certain words within the content of the page and presenting relevant ads when a user hovers his mouse over them. It uses a pay-for-performance pricing scheme and can easily be used along with other advertising methods, because it is unobtrusive. It places you in full control, allowing you to easily integrate it within your site with some simple JavaScript.

Nixie (http://www.nixxie.com/display.php?section=Partners) Nixie claims to hold a technology that can read and understand your site, enabling it to display the most relevant content to your site. Besides text ads, Nixie also features price comparison listings as well as live auction advertising. It's very easy to implement and has a good payment policy as well.

MIVA AdRevenue Xpress (http://www.miva.com/us/content/partners/arx.asp) MIVA AdRevenue Xpress is targeted towards small and mid-sized publishers. It implements Search Box functionality and also features things like a Category Directory as well as the handling of 404 error pages. It can be integrated with your page using a simple on-line wizard.

Fastclick (http://www.fastclick.com/publish.html) Fastclick offers you an impressive 65 percent of what it makes from a click on your website. Payments are done monthly, via PayPal or through checks. The ads can be formatted as you wish, and Fastclick even offers a free support serice for its members and no fees are required to register with the service.

contextWeb ContextAd (http://www.contextweb.com/Corporate/publisher/publisher.shtml) ContextAd offers the possibility of contextual ads for dynamic pages, meaning ads will change as soon as your page does. It's very easy to use and free to sing up for and offers a transparent payment policy. The ads are fully customizable and real-time reports are available 24/7.

AdBrite (http://www.adbrite.com/) AdBrite offers publishers the possibility of integrating text ads in their pages. These are done on your own rates, with the websites you approve by hand so it bares some similarities with a classic advertising scheme. You also have the option of adding a "Your Add Here" button that buyers can immediately click to ad space on your page. It can also be used in conjunction with Google AdSense, maximizing your CTR and offering advertisers the possibility of showing their links in your Google AdSense space. You have full control over the look and feel of your adds and finally, you get an incredible 75% of what the advertiser pays for on every click.

So, as you can see there are many offers for this kind of advertising, and many hybrids based on AdSense like advertising. Also, a lot of services can work together with AdSense to earn you an even greater amount of revenue for your ad space.

You need to have optimized niche website templates for best results. You may find the best adsense templates and blog templates at www.AdsenseTemplates.com (http://www.adsensetemplates.com). They are offering 100 fresh new templates every month.

About the author: John Ugoshowa. For more information about affiliate marketing see the affiliate marketing section of The Free Ad Forum.

Chitika - What Went Wrong?

2007-01-27T03:50:00.000-08:00

All I have to say is WOW. I haven’t seen this kind of vitriol since the last Democratic Convention, and all directed toward Chitika, a startup ad company that was supposed to be the Google killer. Their crime? Cutting people’s revenue checks after they’ve earned the money. Not a great PR move. And it looks like there are more problems with what, on the surface, looks like a great idea. I have to admit I don’t understand how anyone (including Chitika) makes any money with their revenue model.

Darren Rouse of problogger.net, who I respect immensely (and who makes a couple hundred grand a year blogging), has really flogged the heck out of Chitika. Right from the start I had trouble understanding how they were going to make any money.

Chitika Mini Malls allow you to sell specific products (merchandise) within the pages of your website or blog. The ads boast the best price for a specific product, and then allow the user to click to (supposedly) buy the product. They also include tabs for search and other functionality built right into the banner-like ad.

Publishers can choose to show ads by keyword (they pick the words), or by page context like Google (having both ads in contextual mode on your site violates Google’s terms of service).

Apparently Chitika has deals with companies like Shopping.com, Ubid and others to share in clickthroughs. Or they may just go through channeladvisor.com, a syndicator of content for the major shopping sites (which explains why they all have the same content).

From my comfortable chair I can see where the trouble begins. When someone comes to Shopping.com they’re looking for something, whether it is duck boots from L.L. Bean or a battery charger from Sears, and they’re looking for the best price, presumably so they can buy the product (it’s not called just looking around.com. It’s shopping.com.

So Bean or Sears doesn’t mind paying Shopping.com fifteen cents or a quarter or whatever to get the person to press the buy button, because they know the person is ready to put down the credit card number.

I’m not sure moving that model out to my web site is going to pay off in a pay-per-click model. Back when we did CASIE-award winning (5 awards actually) campaigns for John Hancock, the goal was to capture someone having a specific life event such as having a baby, marriage, graduation, etc., and get them to Hancock. The presumption was that they would be ready to buy. Chances are if they saw a banner that said Ready to tie the knot? Are you covered? or some such thing and they clicked, they were ready to buy, and it would have been worth paying for the click.

Shopping.com is similar. If you’re there, the life event is a new TV (not quite as profound as marriage, but important just the same).

I’m not sure how much a click on the Best price for a TV MiniMall ad by someone who is not ready to buy a TV is actually worth. Remember, they haven’t come to Shopping.com. Shopping.com has come to them.

Keeping that in mind (the value of a click from my site vs. the value of a click from the Shopping.com site), all of the controversy makes perfect sense.

Let’s start with the auditing fiasco. They told a bunch of publishers how much oney they made from people clicking on the ads, then decided to take back some of it. They claimed to be taking back money from clicks from countries where the products couldn’t be shipped and accounting for click fraud. While this is annoying, I can understand it, though I’m not quite sure how they could examine every click and figure this stuff out, especially when rumor has it the system isn’t exactly a technological powerhouse. In fact, according to Shoemoney.com, the technology is a PHP ripoff.

So they threw out a few clicks, right. Big deal. But here’s where Chitika crossed the Rubicon as far as I’m concerned — they decided that they were going to filter out what they called curiosity clicks, which they loosely defined as clicks that are not likely to result in a sale.

Wait a minute here…no one said anything about sales. As I mention in my previous article about Pay-per-click advertising, the publishers responsibility in the pay-per-click model is to get the user to click. The rest of the chain is then out of the publisher’s hands.

Chitika has basically created its own model here, and I call it Pay-per-selected-click. They are, in effect, deciding that some clicks are more valuable than others. Specifically they are saying that clicks resulting in sales are better than clicks not resulting in sales. Viola! They have invented Pay-per-Sale (or Pay-per-Action for those semanticists in the audience).

Other people call it BS. Actually so do I. I think it is dishonest to tell publishers that you will pay them for every click and then decide which clicks to pay for. That’s like telling the lottery agent that you’ll buy the tickets now for $1 each, but you’re coming back after the drawing to return the ones that didn’t win for your dollar back.

Put another way, if you’re giving away 70% of what you earn (60% to the publisher and 10% to his referring publishers), you can’t be throwing around dollar bills. And if your model is stupid (which this one clearly is), you need to pull some hocus-pocus man-behind-the-curtain give-with-one-hand-and-take-away-with-the-other kind of magic.

The most amusing part of this has to be picturing the look on the marketing weenie’s faces at L.L. Bean and Sears when the bill for a million clicks comes in and they find that they made four sales.

The bottom line here is that in this context (selling someone merchandise) a click from Shopping.com has more value than a click from Bobsblog.com.

Chitika turned me down for an account. They said that I didn’t meet the qualifications. Darren Rouse says that web sites that are product centered. Chitika says the same thing.

This proves my point even more. If a website is product centered (in other words reviews computers or exhalts the virtues of a Palm Pilot), then the fact that you are on that site means you have some interest in the product. Your Chitika MiniMall is the Buy It Now for that product. This means that there won’t be as many curiosity clicks, and Chitika won’t take as much of your earnings back.

You are getting subjected to Pay-Per-Action criteria with Pay-Per-Click rewards. If you want to see how publishers are reacting to this, you might want to Google Chitika sucks, or look up one of the anti-Chitika web sites like Shitika.com. Jensense also has a nice synopsis you might want to take a look at.

Without looking I’m going to guess that the angry people are the ones furthest from Shopping.com in content and model, and the ones who had the least taken off their earnings are more product centered (whatever the hell that means).

Chitika claims to be The Leader in Impulse Merchandising. Their model puts a different spin on the word context. For their ads to work, you have to be predisposed toward purchasing the product on one of their banners, and the theme of the site on which the ad appears is the actual context of the ad, not the keywords you supply or context Chitika uses to choose the banner.

I’d replace Chitika with a Pay-Per-Action ad that fits the theme of your site. If you’re lazy stick with them, at least until they either change the model so they make more money or go out of business. At this point I’m not sure which one to bet on.

About the Author: Matt DeAngelis runs AffiliateBlog.com. Matt is the former CTO of Modem Media, a pioneer in the Internet ad space. As a foot soldier in the Internet revolution, Matt devised the technology behind many of the most successful ad campaigns of the time.

How to Display Adsense on Wordpress with Adsense Plugins

2007-01-27T03:48:00.000-08:00

While Wordpress itself is a robust and complete blogging system, to really maximize the software and make money from Google Adsense you'll need to install and use a couple of Adsense "plugins".

Most of the plugins can be found by doing a search on Google, and installation is simple and straightforward. All you need to do is upload the plugin to your web host using an FTP, and activate the plugin inside your Wordpress administration area.

1) Adsense Deluxe Wordpress Plugin

The first and most important is a plugin called "Adsense Deluxe". While this plugin will help you to display Adsense ads on your blog, it also serves other purposes. You can use this plugin to insert Javascript, PHP and almost any other type of code into your blog posts.

The Adsense Deluxe plugin will allow you to insert Adsense ads into your blog posts by including a simple code like this:

You can create multiple ad formats in the plugin's settings page, and you can always change these later without having to modify the individual blog posts. This makes it easy to test different ad formats over time, and also to replace your Adsense codes with other ads if the need arises.

2) Adsense Injection Wordpress Plugin

Unlike the Adsense Deluxe plugin, the "Adsense Injection" plugin will insert Adsense codes automatically into every blog post, including older posts.

This is great if your blog already has a lot of existing content, and you don't want to insert codes manually into all of them. As the name suggests, when you use Adsense Injection you "inject" your Adsense codes automatically and randomly into all previous and future blog posts.

Thus, you will not have to worry about what's called "ad blindness" as your Adsense blocks will appear in different positions within your content. You can also randomize different ad formats and different alignments to make sure that no two pages have the exact Adsense codes on them.

Unlike the Adsense Deluxe plugin however, the Adsense Injection plugin cannot display other Javascript ads or PHP codes.

3) Adsense Beautifier Wordpress Plugin

The Adsense Beautifier plugin just makes your ads prettier. By adding an image on top or next to your Adsense codes automatically, the plugin can help you to achieve a higher CTR (click-through) and ultimately higher Adsense earnings.

The images are generic so you can use them with any type of content. You can also create and upload your own images to be used with the Adsense Beautifier plugin. If you do this however, make sure you check with the Adsense support team as you don't want to violate any of their terms of service.

The basic plugins are all you need to start earning from Adsense on your Wordpress blogs. Although there are any more tools and plugins you can use, you'll be safe for a long period of time if you stick to these tested and proven-to-work methods.

About the author: Gobala Krishnan is a micro-niche specialist that coaches Internet marketers to cash in on profitable markets using Wordpress and secret blogging tactics. Get started now by reading a copy of his report "Wordpress Adsense System" at http://adsense.easywordpress.com

Read More Here: http://brokencodes.blogspot.com/

Avoid Getting Banned From Adsense - Take Adequate Precautions To Avoid This From Happening

2007-01-27T03:47:00.000-08:00

Borrowing a sentence and distorting the same partially from a US Court case against Google, if it is said that “The web is becoming increasingly ‘Googlized”, it would not be wrong. Existing in a web space without Google has virtually become unimaginable. Whether you may need getting fully indexed by Google, or monetizing your site through adsense or ranking high in Google search results or be it getting page rank for your pages; what ever be your reason, you are going to need Google. After all, it has become a sort of objective source of finding content on the internet.

Google adsense and controversies.

Rise and rise of Google is not entirely unaccompanied by corresponding increase in litigation and protests over its terms of service. Some of these terms are plainly monopolistic; but you can not wish it away in a fair marketplace.

Those, who have adsense as revenue model for sustenance of their site, would always dread of having a mail like that your account was found to be related to invalid clicks and publishers disabled for invalid clicks are not allowed further participation in the program. Those banned from adsense have a unanimous complaint that they were not served with any warning or were not given any data by Google to substantiate claims of fraudulent clicks. Google on the other hand insists on protecting integrity of its proprietary technology and refuses to divulge any details.

Actually the whole system of adsense is so made up that anyone with just a basic understanding of the internet and search engine ranking can dynamically insert a javascript provided by Google in his website and earn substantial income that is very attractive considering that it takes no much time and one can work from comfort of his home in his free time. This view further gets strengthened when one comes across many “made for adsense sites” on the net that apparently seem to be doing well.

Of course, a unanimous argument is emerging that Google should explain its actions in more transparent way as to when it blocks adsense account or removes a site from its index and what irks the people most it that they are unable to find out how they can regain the lost indexing or page rank. Limiting myself only to the issue of disabling of adsense account in this article, let me opine very clearly that it is good. Nobody has right to cheat ad publishers and it is good that Google takes it seriously.

What can lead to banning from adsense?

Google is not known to take click fraud lightly as they also are to retain the advertisers interest in their mind. But I have seen that they are open to reason. I personally know at least ten webmasters whose account has been restored. If this disabling has happened to you, first action you must take to write them a mail giving all the reasons with some evidence as server log, files etc to strengthen your claim. It is definitely difficult regaining account from Google but if you are honest, it is not impossible. I think more often is the case where the person suffering the ban was doing something they shouldn't have been doing.

Some of things, you must avoid to avoid disabling of your account is signing up under multiple names, clicking yourself or through any network on ads appearing on your publishing network, generating robotized clicks through many enticing programs available on the net, expressly encouraging a visitor to your site to click an ad, having a site that is based on adsense arbitrage. I have seen many sites that expressly state something to the effect that their services are free but to help them sustain please click the ad. To mind, it is like playing with fire and such publishers can face disqualification any time. When you are buying a domain, please satisfy yourself that it is not previously blacklisted by Google. Remember when Google bans a site, it does not deliver ads to any other url which was previously running on same adsense pub-id.

One major reason of getting banned from adsense is get rich quick. A new webmaster, in case, he does not have much content on hi site would barely get 10-30 visitor on his site, which are not sufficient to help him earn from ad clicks. What he should do at that stage is to build good content but he is soon tempted by con men on the net selling something like "Automated Adsense Software". This is biggest scam happening where many new webmasters are trapped. Most of the time such software would steal content through scraping methods and creates thousand of content pages. As such search engines are cluttered with duplicate and useless content and you are risking getting banned from Adsense as this violates the terms of adsense.

Warnings by Google

Many webmasters whose sites have been banned, grudge that they never got any warning. Remember it is up to you to take precaution at the right time and keep checking the logs. Google will not give you any warning. However on a more personal note I have seen Google give warning or sorts. I saw a site which ultimately was banned, had high value ads being offered and gradually started getting low value ads and more and more of “Public Service ads” even when similar sites were served paying ads. This may be was Google’s way to telling that something is amiss.

What to do when banned from adsense?

Google bans publishers guilty of fraudulent clicks for life and does not allow then to rejoin the program. I would also like to share from my experience that such is Google’s reputation that many advocates who claim to specialize in fighting your case against Google to regain the account also would agree to take your case if you satisfy them that you are a victim and did not do any act against the terms of service.

There is no record of Litigation with Google being fruitful on this account. Google has its proprietary technology to detect such click frauds, which Google does not disclose. This stand of Google that it is not open to disclose its proprietary technology has been upheld by various courts. If you are the one whose account has been disabled, I don’t want to appear distressing to you but from my own experience in dealing with such cases, I must say generally ‘something’ is there which leads to Google disabling the account. If you are sure you did not indulge in such acts, must look around. May be some competitor did it to hurt you.

However if the banning of adsense, happens, then what are the suggestions, remedies or alternatives? Please go on to read the article from the link given in the signatures.

About the author: R S Chawla is a CFO and webmaster of www.b2blounge.com, a free to register portal for trade and services.

Read More Here: http://brokencodes.blogspot.com/

Sweet MEthods to get traffic for your new blog

2007-01-27T02:49:00.000-08:00

Blog is the one of the most popular medium that enables publishers to start earning money with Adsense. Content is the very first thing that you need to have. After that, driving traffic to your blog is also a very difficult part. Questions on driving traffic to the blog are always the most popular question to be raised in Adsense Help Discussion Group. Joing PPC advertising program can be one effecive way, but not every blog publisher can affor to pay to join such program. In this post, I am going to discuss three quickest yet free method that drive the first stream of traffic to your blog.

1. Post messages and leave signature on related forums/ groups

Just like what I normally do in Adsense Group. Leaving the URL of your blog as the signature is quite effective in driving traffic to your site. All you have to do is find some forums or groups that are related to your area of interest. Just like my blog, who is talking about making money with Adsense, I choose the Adsense Help Group as my primary forum to leave messages. Of course, if you have time, you can find out more related forums by searching through various Search Engines.

Go to a few that you find informative and read around a bit. Join a couple of the forums, that you find interesting and are of value to you, as a member. However, one thing to remind you is that you should check out two things before joining any forum after doing searching.

- A forum must be indexed by the search engines, particularly by Google. If it's indexed, your posts will appear as backlinks to your site, raising your blog's PR (PageRank) in the search engines. You can gain search engine traffic as a result.

- A forum must also permit the use of a signature file. By creating a signature, that includes your blog URL, you have a link that brings forum members back to your blog.

In your member profile, be sure to use a "signature" that includes a link back to your blog. Make certain the signature appears on all of your postings. Without that link, no new traffic can find you.

2. Tell everyone you know about your blog

This offline networking technique will bring a fresh batch of visitors to your blog. As you become more comfortable with talking to people about your blog, your traffic numbers will take a jump. Many of them will surf to your blog, to read what you have to say.

But remember, only ask your friend or relative to visit your blog, but do not mention or request them to click the ads for you. Encouragement or providing incentives to click your ads is highly prohibited under Google’s TOS. Bear that in mind!

3. Put your links on your e-mails

When you send out any e-mails, either personal or business, be sure to add a link to your blog to each and every one of them.

With a quick and easy to click hot link back to your blog, many of your e-mail recipients will drop by for a look. While not everyone will check out your blogging activities, a few will. Another source of new visitors has been added, with minimum effort.

These three free and quickest methods are, after trial, quite effective to drive traffic to a new blog. You should make a try on them now and start earning big bucks through Adsense!

Read More Here: http://www.dagsensecode.com/2007/01/free-methods-to-get-traffic-for-new.html

Optimize Your Blog

2007-01-27T02:45:00.000-08:00

If you have been serving Google Adsense ads on your website's for a while, or is getting ready to do it, you are probably wondering how you can benefit the most from Google's Adsense program....

It is no secret that there is big bucks in writing e-books, courses and creating products geared around Google's Adsense program. Many of these products are sold for several hundred dollars, claiming that they will show you "the hidden secrets" to Adsense success.

Some of the Adsense products and Adsense books offered does actually offer you value for your money, but there are also many scam artists operating in this business.

Let us tell you the biggest secret to Google's Adsense program "There are NO secrets!".

Now, how can we claim this?

By using pure logic, it is obvious that everyone is bound by the same terms and conditions for using Google's Adsense program, which again means that the only party that is in full control is Google.

With that being said, there are several things you can do to optimize your Adsense earnings, also without being in danger of violating Google's Adsense Terms.

1. Select the Google Adsense Ad type that fits your design best - and gives the best CTR.

Through several months of research, both by us and other Adsense users, it has been concluded that the 2 best general performing ad types are:

Skyscraper 160x600 with text ads.

Placement: Left or Right side

Big Rectangle 336 x280 with text ads.

Placement: Top or Middle

2. Select a Colour scheme that fits the design of your pages.

This is a much discussed part about optimizing Adsense income, and the opinions does vary.

However, our recommendations is that you select one of the following Colour schemes.

2.1 Colour scheme that matches your website

If you look to the top of this text, you will see that the Google Adsense ads are served on a white background (the same as the page background), without any borders, and with a font and link colour that matches the rest of the site. This is what is called a "non-intrusive" Adsense ad colour scheme, because it doesn't scream at the website visitor, and is therefore considered a part of the site, instead of a disturbance to the eye.

2.2 Use a random colour scheme (secret revealed!)

By using the techniques discussed in Adsense Tips, you can have Google serve Adsense ads on your website, and dynamically switch between 4 different colour schemes. This is actually one of the much overlooked features of the Adsense program, and by some referred to as a "big secret"...

3 . Do SEO (search engine optimization) on your website.

Google doesn't reveal how it's Googlebot determines what type of ad's to show on your website.

But if you follow these guidelines, it is our experience that Google does serve highly relevant Adsense ads, and additionally your websites will get well indexed by search engine robots.

Use a METATITLE, that defines what each page is about.

Use METATAGS, to define the keywords that match your page content.

If possible, register a domain name that has your top keyword in it.

On the first line of the page, give a descriptive title of your page in

tags.

Try to avoid using top navigation, use left navigation instead.

Always create a robots.txt file.

Remember to create a sitemap file.

Do a search on Google for "SEO" and gather more information.

4. Optimize your website for high paying Adsense keywords.

This is where you can make a big difference on your Adsense income. As mentioned earlier on this website, Google Adsense clicks varies from $0.00 and up to several dollars a click. The trick in optimizing your pages with high paying keywords, without breaking Google's Adsense terms, or damaging your site's content, is to do a bit of research and abstract thinking..

You will never be able to know the exact price a click on a given keywords gives you, this is a well guarded "Google secret". However, you can use 2 different legal and freely available tools, to get a better estimate on each keyword.

If you signup to Googles Adwords program, you will get access to different tools - including Google's AdWords TrafficEstimatorSandbox.

Here you can get an estimated cost to AdWords advertisers for a given keyword, and test out different keywords. You can use Google's AdWords keyword suggestion tool to have variations of your keywords suggested.

Let's assume that you have created a website about Horses, and you have decided to expand your site with more content.

A search with the above mentioned method shows the following price per keyword :

Horses $0,33

Model Horses $1,34

wooden rocking horses $1,11

Arabian Horses for sale $0,98

thoroughbred horses $0,66

So just out these examples, you might want to consider writing your next page about Arabian Horses for sale, or maybe even add a page about Model Horses, or wooden rocking horses for your readers children.

This method is also very useful when trying to determine if there are higher paying keywords, that you can target with the same content. From your readers perspective you are still offering content on the same subject, and for the Google AdWords advertisers, you are offering original content about their subject, and therefore highly targeted prospective buyers.

Please, always remember to write your content for your readers not for Adsense, since this can result in having your Adsense account terminated, and all your earnings will be lost.

5. Increase website traffic

Up to now, we have been discussing means of improving your CTR and click prices. Another factor, that is easy overlooked is your websites traffic.

Always try and increase your site traffic, i.e. by offering free valuable content, hold contests, offer newsletters, contribute to forums that are relevant to your topic etc.

6. Use Google Adsense Adlinks on your site.

This new type of Google Adsense Ads, have a different layout and function that the usual Adsense ads. When you add Adsense Adlinks to your WebPages (you can add both Adsense ads, Adsense search and Adsense Adlinks to the same page), your visitors will be presented with 4-5 links. Each link represent what google determines to be the most relevant keyword for your site, and when clicked on, your visitor is taken to a page displaying relevant Adsense ads to the link clicked on. Once again, any clicks registered on this page counts towards your Adsense income.

7. Use Google Adsense site search.

Offer your sites readers the possibility to search directly on Google from your site. Besides providing a search field, you will also have the added benefit that the search result page displays Adsense ads. Any clicks on these Ads, will be counted as clicks created from your website, and can thereby potentially increase your Adsense income.

Note: Google's Adsense Terms strictly forbids publishers to alter the search code (i.e. pre populating the search field), or encouraging its users to use the search field.

Read More Here: http://www.adsenseguide.info/optimizing-adsense.php

Why build links?

2007-01-27T02:37:00.000-08:00

Ok! So now you have set up your blog with quality content but still not getting enough visitors!!
Its time for you to build links for your site.

There are three main factors that determine the search engine ranking of your website:

Site optimisation
Site popularity
Link popularity

Site optimisation is about placing your keywords in the right places on your website and making your website accessible to search engines. Please read Search engine optimisation: The basics¹ for more about this.

Site popularity can be achieved through online and offline marketing and through link popularity - the more websites that link to you the more people will find your website. For more on online marketing please read this Buying your way in² article.

The directories

Advert: Training courses³

Want to learn more about about usability, accessibility or CSS? Why not come on one of our excellent training courses:

Courses are held every month in London and are taught by usability and accessibility professionals.

The best place to start any linking strategy is with web directories. The two biggest by far are Yahoo!⁹ and the Open Directory¹⁰ (used by Google). Being listed in these is an absolute must as they generate huge amounts of traffic.

There are plenty of other directories you should get listed in too. Global, local and industry-specific directories abound on the Internet. To find them run a search for ‘web directory’ on your favourite search engine. The directories that come up highest in the search rankings will probably generate the most traffic. You can also check these directories of directories:

Open Directory's directory of web directories¹¹
Search engine colossus¹²
Best Free Directories¹³
Internet search engine database¹⁴
Business Directory ¹⁵

Webmaster forums

Another great place to get your site listed. Most webmaster forums have an area where you're allowed to enter your URL to get feedback from other webmasters. Find some forums¹⁶, sign up, and get posting!

Long-term solution

Getting links in directories (and forums) is really important, but obviously there's only so far you can go with this tactic. It's really important to have a long-term strategy to build up those incoming links to a sizeable level. A real long-term solution, and one that adds significant value to your website, is to create first-rate content. That's it. Quite simple really. First-rate content should:

Add significant value to the readers of other websites
Be unavailable elsewhere on the web
Be regularly updated

If you can provide this kind of content then other websites will want to link to you. By doing so they'll be adding value to their site visitors.

How do I create first-rate content?

Unfortunately what works for one website won't work for another, so I can't offer you any specific advice. Here are some examples though, to help you start thinking about it:

CD retailer - provide an area where bands can upload their songs on to your website for site users to listen to
Accountant - offer regular updates about legal changes that affect the industry
IT trainer - provide a comprehensive information section showing how to give great training and offering some free online training
Gardener - show beautiful gardens from around the world and offer tips about gardening

As you may have realised by now, creating and updating your first-class content is a lot of work. It's also really hard to stay motivated because you don't see any immediate gains from it - it takes a very long time for word to spread about your website. Just hang in there and over time you'll see that it really does pay off.

Tell the world about your website

Now that you've created your first-rate content you need to let the world know about it. To advertise your website for free you can:

Look for websites and ask them to link to you
Write articles and press releases

Look for websites and ask them to link to you

There are three ways you can find websites that might want to link to you.

Go to your favourite search engine and type in some words related to what your organisation does
Sift through the websites in directories such as Yahoo!¹⁷ or the Open Directory¹⁸
Find out who's currently linking to both you and your competitors, check who's linking to them, and who's linking to them, and so on (To see a list of the inbound links to a website go to Google¹⁹ and type in link:http://www.URL.com)

Now that you've found these websites, ask them to link to you. A quick phone call or e-mail ought to do the trick. And remember, always mention that linking to your website will benefit their site users and therefore their website. You could also offer a link exchange, where by you both link to each other. If you're going to do this, it's wise to link to their website first, before getting in contact.

Read More Here: http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/search-engine-optimisation/build-up-links-website.shtml

THE DO'S AND DON'T OF ADVERTISING PROGRAMS- ADSENSE IN PARTICULAR

2007-01-27T02:34:00.000-08:00

THE DO'S AND DON'T OF GOOGLE ADSENSE.

1. Consistency is Good.

Google in my opinion is too, er, nosy, yes, that's right, nosy. Here's why, when I first signed up for a Google Adsense account, I got roughly 2 -3 dollars from the ads a day. A few weeks later, I got more visitors, and i got around 30 - 50 dollars. Then, they emailed me and said this:

QUOTE

Hello Anthony,

It has come to our attention that invalid clicks have been generated
on the ads on your web pages. We have therefore disabled your Google
AdSense account. Please understand that this step was taken in an
effort to protect the interest of the AdWords advertisers.

A publisher's site may not have invalid clicks on any ad(s), including
but not limited to clicks generated by a publisher on his own web
pages, clicks generated through the use of robots, automated clicking
tools, or any other deceptive software.

Practices such as these are in violation of the Google AdSense Terms
and Conditions and program polices, which can be viewed at:

In furry, I had about 340 Dollars US sitting in my Adsense Account, my first reaction was, W.T.F.

So, I emailed them again,

QUOTE

Hello, I have no knowledge of me generating any clicks on my own,
clicks through robots, automated clicking tools, or any other
deceptive software.I have been using this program with respect and
followed the Google Terms and Conditions.

If I have reached any steps with may have to do with invalid clicks, I
would like to know in detail what I may have done to result to this.
But in the current state of things, I would like you to review my
status and enable the Adsense program again.

Sincerely,

Anthony

And they merely replied:

Hello Anthony,

Thank you for your email.

QUOTE

By disabling your account, we feel that we have taken the necessary
measures to ensure that invalid clicks will not continue to occur on your
site.

We understand that you wish to receive specific information regarding the
invalid clicks we have observed. Due to the proprietary nature of our
monitoring system, we cannot disclose any specific details of these
clicks. We would like to reassure you, however, that we have thoroughly
re-reviewed your account data upon receipt of your response and have
reconfirmed that invalid clicks were generated on the ads on your site.
According to our policy on this matter, we have disabled your account in
order to protect our advertisers.

As outlined in our program Terms and Conditions, Google reserves the right
to terminate any publisher's participation at any time.

Sincerely,

The Google Team

Now, clearly you can learn from this lesson that Google watches your account VERY closely, and if they notice that there's something "fishy" going on with your account, they say "Bye Bye" to your account. I still insist till today that I never did anything against the Google Rules and TOS. So, If you suddenly have a jump in the number of Clicks that you get, you might just get screwed over by Google. That's why you always want a steady stream of visitors, or else, you'll risk having your account suspended, like what happened to me.

2. Keywords are the KEY.
I mentioned earlier that Google tends to not accept blogs for the Adsense Program, here's why: Blog's as you know, give out a wide variety of information, one day, the author could be talking about Goose Repellent, the other he could be talking about Computers. The was Adsense works is that it scans your page for keywords, then applies those keywords into the advertisements, therefore, if you're website is all about Computers, you'll have computer-based ads, if it's about goose repellent, then, you'll, er, have goose repellent ads. The thing about ads, is, that they all aren't worth the same price per click. So to say, if you have a computer ad, and someone clicked on it, you'd probably get $2 for that, on the other hand, if you had a Goose Repellent site, you'd get 2 cents for that click. So, if you had a blog, then you could talk about certain keywords and you’d get more revenue, as opposed to a goose repellent site, which cant change their content.
Therefore, it's important that you maximize your revenue by using "expensive" keywords, such include:

Web Hosting - 2 - 8 dollars a click
Computers 1 -3 dollars a click

So, if you website is technology oriented, you’ll tend to get more money than those who use a Goose Repellent site.

In addition, Google checks the amount of times your page uses a certain words therefore, if you have the word “cpu” 100 times on a site, it’s very likely that your advertisement will inceldue something that has to do with CPU’s.

You can use this handy Keyword density checker to see how many words and stats on you keyword density of a website. http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html. Limit is a 40k website.

3. DO NOT click on your own ads.
Seriously, if you click on your own ads, Google automatically logs you IP address, and then it notifies a moderator, then, well, you’d be pretty screwed. Because you aren’t allowed to click on them, and if you’re the sneaky type, you’d go to computers with different IP’s and click on the ads yourself. It’s a good idea, but, again, Google also monitors how frequently the ads come from the same IP, therefore ,even if it’s not your computer, but you use it to click from it frequently, Google will notice, Google tends to go for a wide variety of IP’s to ensure that it is actually getting real visitors.

More links related to Google Ads you might want to check out

Read More Here: http://www.trap17.com/index.php/google-adsense_t6544.html

How do I earn from my blog??

2007-01-27T02:23:00.000-08:00

Now After you have completed the above steps and you have your blog up,
Its time to join for an advertising program.
Google Adsense is the first choice of most bloggers,
but there are some other programs too, like Chitika,clicksor,bclick and many more which are on par with google.
For adsense go here: https://www.google.com/adsense/.
After you registered, it's time to play the waiting game. Google takes approx. 2 - 3 days to check your website, and see that it's got the right content.

For other programs check out the list below.

When bloggers think of online advertising, the words Google AdSense immediately pops to mind. Google had done an amazing job capturing the internet advertising market with the AdSense product. However, Google is not the only game in town. As a webmaster, it is your duty to seek out other ways to monetize your site. As we all know, putting all your eggs in one basket isn’t the smartest thing to do. Yet I have come across countless blogs with no other means of monetization other than AdSense. Even my own blog was running just Google until a few days ago. I was discussing this problem with Bradford Liedel of ModemHelp.net and he came up with an interesting idea – why not make a list of all the online advertising opportunities that are available for blog and site owners? This list will be part of a new webmaster resource site that will feature discussions and ratings on the listed advertising companies. The site will be launching soon. In the mean time, I have decided to give you a preview of the master list. The list is pretty big at 130 companies. I wonder how many will still be around in a year or two?

*Disclosure notice – Many of the advertising vendors listed offers affiliate programs, where the affiliate will get a cut of the income earned by the site referred. I have decided NOT to place any affiliates links on this list. Why? Because I am just too lazy to sign up for the affiliate programs. I’ll probably be kicking myself later for not doing this.

Primarily CPM Based Ad Networks

Primarily CPA/CPL Ad Networks

Primarily CPC AND/OR Text Based/Contextual Ad Networks

Shopping/Comparison Networks

“Non-Standard” Ad Networks (PopUps, Expandables, Pay Per Post, etc.)

Specific Demographic Ad Networks

Absolute Agency
AVN Ads (*****WARNING: ADULT NETWORK*****)
BlogAds
CrispAds Blog Advertising Network
HerAgency
HispanoClick
Pheedo RSS & Weblog Marketing Solutions
Qumana Adgenta Blog Ads
WayPointCash (*****WARNING: ADULT NETWORK*****)

NON-US Primarily CPM Based Ad Networks

NON-US Primarily CPC AND/OR Text Based/Contextual Ad Networks

NON-US Primarily CPA/CPL Ad Networks

If you run an ad-network and we somehow missed you, then feel free to add your company in the comments. When Bradford launches the new site - which you will hear about here - he’ll be sure to include you on the final list. Please only do this if you are an ad-network. I will deleted all comments with affiliate links in them.

Read More Here: http://www.johnchow.com/index.php/other-advertising-networks-besides-google-adsense/

Part 5: Posting to your blog.

2007-01-27T02:21:00.000-08:00

Part 5: Posting to your blog.
Seems simple enough doesn’t it. You’ve set up a nice, shiny new blog and now its time to start writing. I’m presuming you’ve followed Part 1: What to blog about so you’ll have a rough idea as to whether you are looking at posting about a particular topic area or sharing your thoughts to the world, but knowing what to write can often be particularly hard, and I haven’t met a blogger yet who honestly hasn’t at one stage suffered from bloggers block. Repetition, practice, habit….3 words that make posting to your blog easier as time goes on.

Sourcing post ideas
For some people knowing what to write about will be easy, particularly if you are writing about your personal life experiences or a hobby or interest you already pursue. For the rest of us, we often need a little prompting.
1. Get a RSS reader account
If you haven’t got an account with a RSS reader/ aggregator yet I’d suggest you go an get one because its the easiest, quickest and best way to read other blogs daily, particularly if you want to read more than a handful of sites. Personally I use Bloglines, but there a lots of different services available now.

2. Find some similar blogs/ sites
If you aren’t already reading blogs and other sites that cover similar items/ stories/ ideas to what you are blogging about, get looking. Use Google or Technorati to find blogs and other sites which cover your area of interest. If you are writing about specific topics services such as Google News, Yahoo News, Topix and MSN News all provide RSS feeds based on your topic area or keyword search and I personally use these services for many of the blogs I write.
3. Get reading
Spend some more time reading what’s being written in the blogosphere in your area of interest. Learning from others isn’t about copying, its about being inspired and perhaps taking in things like writing styles, formats etc so you can mentally form a picture of how you might like to write, and what you might like to write about.

The post
So now it’s time to post. Don’t feel to bad if your first post is a welcome to my blog post, we all do it, but don’t stop here. Start writing. You can provide commentary or links to other blogs and sites if you like (but remember to link). You can provide your thoughts, give advice, be controversial….what ever you want. The key is not to worry too much about it and to learn to enjoy posting. The longer you stick at it the easier it will become. Sure, look out for things like grammatical and spelling errors, but don’t obsess over them either. Its way to easy to find reasons not to post to a blog than it is to actually do it, particularly when you are writing a blog for the first time.

After the post
After you’ve posted a couple of posts, make sure you go to the main page of your blog and take a look at what you’ve done. In one way its always important to make sure that the posts are presenting correctly, but most of all its your chance to appreciate what you’ve done. There is always a sense of self satisfaction at looking at your work in a public space, the same way an artist is proud to have a painting hung in a gallery. This is you open to the world. Sit back and take a minute to enjoy it!

Read More Here: http://www.blogherald.com/2006/01/08/starting-a-blog-part-5-posting-to-your-blog/

Part 4: Customising your blog

2007-01-27T02:20:00.000-08:00

Part 4: Customising your blog
Now that you’ve picked out your choice of blogware, and have your account set up (we’ll leave the actually setting up for others, but most blogware and free blog services come with instructions….yes men, sometimes you actually should use instructions!) you’ll want to look at customising your blog prior to blogging. Some people may ask why? well we will get to the blogging part in the next post in this series but ask yourself a question: would you walk outside your house in the nude? Blogging without customisation is like going outside naked, although the inverse is true in terms of attention. Walk outside naked and people are going to look, and possibly laugh. Don’t dress up your blog and people aren’t going to look, at all. Your blog is going to look like 5 million other blogs out there and it will fade into the background. I suppose a better way of putting it would be wearing a camouflage suit in the jungle. In blogging you want to standout. You don’t have to create a Mona Lisa but you can do little things to make the visit more impressive for your visitors.

The Header
The header is the single most important design aspect of your blog. Other people will argue with this but I personally disagree because its the FIRST thing people will see when they visit your blog. No header or a really ugly header won’t stop people reading, but its not going to help make a favorable impression.

Making a header is easy. As long as you can use a WordProcessor (such as Microsoft Word) you can set up a simple header design for your blog.

Programs like Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro are popular, but you can also use programs such as The Gimp (which is free) to do your header.

Aesthitics are always subjective but remember to keep it simple, clean, and do something that reflects the subject matter, or your own personality.

Colors
Again, simple is the key. Refer to my Guide back in August on Design Theory for Bloggers as a reference for more details, but I’d recommend black text on a white background as standard for every blog. Remember to put yourself in place of a visitor, or even better, test your colors on friends and family. Its got to be easy to read.

Read More Here: http://www.blogherald.com/2005/12/04/starting-a-blog-part-4-customising-your-blog/

Part 3: Choosing a domain name

2007-01-27T02:12:00.000-08:00

Part 3: Choosing a domain name
For me, this is the fun part of starting a blog, for even if you are totally new to the internet you can find a name that suites your personality or what you want to achieve.

Naturally, Part 3 only applies if you are not going with a free host, because free hosts don’t allow you to have your own domain name. If you have decided to go free, skip to Part 4.

The name
There are two schools of thought in regards to the structure of your domain name: practical or colorful. Practical domain names involve at least one key word that states the topic of your blog, but ideally more, for example Cooking Gadgets is a blog about Cooking Gadgets. Blogs such as Kotaku, Gawker and Wonkette have colorful names that don’t describe what they are about.
Personally I’ve always gone with atleast a part practical domain name, because for search engine optimisation it helps in getting listed in the search engines.

Your name is your brand
I’ll hark back to my studies in marketing on this point, because your domain name is your brand, and what ever you choose you need to remember that it needs to be marketable. Practical or catchy are the two considerations. Some of the best known blogs in the blogosphere have catchy names that don’t relate to the topic, so don’t be afraid to try something different, but remember to check Google (unlike Pajama’s/ Open Source Media) to make sure no one else is already using the name.

Tools
One of the most popular tools for searching for a domain name is whois.sc. The service is limited without registration but I do recommend it when you are experimenting with various names for your blog, and also to see who is using other names as well

Registration
I’ve used a lot of domain name registrars over the years but at the moment I’m using Namecheap. Nice interface and free privacy protection (at the moment should you wish to use it). GoDaddy is also popular. Alternatively you may wish to use the domain registration service of your web host. A word of warning, anything over $10 USD is a rip off. A lot of so-called registration services out there are really just affiliate fronts for enom.com, so I’d seriously recommend namecheap or godaddy, because at least you know you are dealing with a source provider.

Read More Here: http://www.blogherald.com/2005/11/28/starting-a-blog-part-3-choosing-a-domain-name/

Starting a Blog Part 2: Choosing your host

2007-01-27T00:57:00.000-08:00

For people familiar with blogs or blogging Part 2 of starting a blog will be a fairly easy choice, but if your are new to blogging this is going to be a difficult choice, mainly because in having an active marketplace of blog hosting, whilst a good thing for consumer choice, also makes the decision on which form and provider of hosting to chose that much more difficult.

The type of hosting
Before you consider where you want to host your blog (where you want it to live, so to speak), its wise to understand the three different type of blog hosting.

Free: free hosting is whether you get a blog from a free service provider, who sometimes may display ads on your blog, and fully hosts the blog themselves.

Paid: Paid hosting is where you pay for a company to host your blog using their blogware (blog software), on their machine, and often with direct support from the company

DIY: You use your own web hosting company and a load a standalone blogging platfrom to blog from, sometimes a free piece of software (open source) or paid software, with your own domain name (www.yourname.com)

Considering your first time
In considering your first blog its important to consider the reasons why you are setting up your blog. Are you doing it for fun, because your friends are doing it? are you doing it because your part of a community with a particular interest?, or are you seeking fame and fortune, and want to maximise the potential to have large numbers of people reading your blog.

Fun for starters
If you fall into the first category I’d recommend using a free blogging provider, and there are plenty about. The most common service providers are MSN Spaces (from Microsoft) and Blogger (from Google). For a long time I’ve been recommending people start out on Blogger, because the ability to grow within the platform is greater than many other free service providers out there, but MSN Spaces has continued to improve and whilst the flexibility of the service isn’t as great as Blogger, the service now has more users and is extremely popular. Choose one or the other, or even play around with other services. The best thing about free services is that in being free you can experiment, and if its not to your liking walk away.

Everyone else
Even if you do only start for fun, this is still good advice, because for many the blogging bug does tend to bite. If you want to do anything more than muck around and have some fun, I’d recommend persuing the DIY path. The are a large variety of free and paid blogging platforms available for you to use, some of which can be found in this post, but the leaders in the DIY sphere are WordPress and MovableType.

What you didn’t read here
People will tell you that it’s difficult to set up a DIY blog, that you’ve got to stuff around with domain names, FTP and what not, but there is a secret to easy DIY blog hosting: look for a hosting company like Dreamhost that offers one click installation of WordPress and inhouse domain registration as well. You can set it all up from the same control panel and there is no ftp/ uploading or similar involved. Other companies also offer a installation package called “Fanstastico” which also provides quick installation without the technical knowledge being required.

WP v MT
MT was once king of the castle but recent survey’s indicate that WP is now more widely used that the MT payware. Personally I’ve used both and to assure that you never have to pay for it, I’d recommend WordPress. They’ve got a great community who are always willing to help, a huge range of plugins and extra’s, and you cant really beat free.

At the end of the day….
Don’t over do your research here. By all means take a look around but the important thing in considering how you are going to host your blog is to NOT be overwhelmed by the variety of choice but to make a choice then start learning how to get started.

Read More Here: http://www.blogherald.com/2005/11/27/starting-a-blog-part-2-choosing-your-hosting/

Starting a Blog Part 1: What to blog about

2007-01-27T00:54:00.000-08:00

Welcome to part one of my new series on starting a blog, both aimed a people new to blogging and perhaps as a handy refresher to those who are currently writing a blog but who want to start a new blog up. The posts won’t necessarily be daily, but they will be regular as we explore each stage of starting a blog.

Part 1: What to blog about
Often what should be the most simplest of things can often be the hardest as well, and choosing what to blog about can be really easy for some people, and really difficult for others. Take The Blog Herald as an example, I’d been reading blogs for 2 years before I launched The Blog Herald, and I knew from the first time I read a blog that I wanted to write one, but I couldn’t figure out on what, so eventually one day in 2002 it dawned on my that I liked blogs so much I’d write a blog about blogging…but we’ll leave the rest of that story for another day, but it does prove a point, sometimes knowing what to write about doesn’t come easily.

Personal vs Topical
There are essentially two sorts of blogs, one is a personal diary-style of blog that is written in the first person and relates to happenings in your immediate physical world and other thoughts and bits and pieces on things. For my why of thinking this is often the hardest style of blog to write, particularly if you are over the Age of 25. Teens seemingly have little of no inhibitions in relation to this style of writing, but for me it was something I wasn’t comfortable in doing. People who are naturally extroverts will be more comfortable than people who are more introverted.

A topical blog on another hand is a blog that may include opinions, but is focused on a particular subject (or topic). Political blogs where amongst the earliest of this style of blog, but the range of topics now covered go beyond anything I’d care to try and articulate in this post. There is literally a blog for every topic now, but some topics are better catered to than others.

Finding a niche
Marketing yourself under a personal blog to the blogosphere is a lot more difficult than writing a niche topic blog, because unless you are particularly well known, or have exceptional writing skills (and even this isn’t a guarantee), its going to be a lot more harder to gain attention in the blogosphere as opposed to a topical blog.

Before I go on though, I should mention there is a variation to the personal blog rule, and that’s writing under a pseudonym, or with a catchy blog name for your personal blog. Marketing is the key, and names like Dooce are more interesting as compared to say Heather Armstrong (no offence of course Heather), catchier, shorter, easy to remember….easier to market.

For the first time blogger though, unless you are extremely confident, I’d recommend starting with a topical blog. Even if it eventually ends up on the blog graveyard later on, its much better to develop your blogging skills on a topic as opposed to writing about yourself as an individual. Naturally the topic would reflect one of your interests as well, perhaps its a hobby, or a sport you play or watch…something along those lines. General rule of thumb: the more niche the better.

Google it
Google your topic area once you’ve settled on something and see what others are writing about it. Use the keyword(s) and search with “blog” on the end as well, and browse. Take hours if necessary. You’ll figure out pretty quickly whether
1. The topic has a high number of blogs or low number
2. Whether, in your opinion, there is room for your blog, in particular if you have a different point of view from others

These don’t have to prevent your starting a blog in that area, but its important to know your market, and you can also gain inspiration from other blogs.

Read More Here: http://www.blogherald.com/2005/11/24/starting-a-blog-part-1-what-to-blog-about/

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Part 3: Choosing a domain name

Starting a Blog Part 2: Choosing your host

Starting a Blog Part 1: What to blog about

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