The Basics of Making Money with Blogs And AdSense

Google AdSense is undoubtedly the most popular Pay Per Click (PPC) program in the industry today. By enrolling your site under the said program, AdSense will display a series of ads on your pages. You stand to earn every time a visitor of your clicks on these ads.

They don’t have to buy anything, mind you. They just have to click on the ads and nothing more. These ads are by no means random. They are contextually relevant, meaning, they are assigned based on their relevancy to the subject of your site.

Could a blog substitute for regular sites when it comes to making money through AdSense? Yes people, blogs can also be provide an additional income stream through AdSense! In some aspects, a blog is a more efficient tool for this purpose.

There are people online today making six figures per month from Adsense alone. Unbelievable but true!

There are three determinative factors for the success of a site enrolled under the AdSense program.

1. The Cost Per Click (CPC) that is carried by the ads assigned to your site.

2. The number of page impressions, or simply put, the amount of traffic that passes through your site. If you garner a lot of page impressions, you have a better chance of acquiring a lot of clicks.

3. The Click Through Rate (CTR), which is the number of clicks your ads get per the number of visitors that visit your pages. The higher your CTR, the more you stand to earn.

CPCs are a given. If you’re dead set on a subject for your blog, then you will just be attracting a certain group of ads. But if you wish to make a blog for the primary goal of making money online, then you have to choose the right keywords before everything else.

Basically, your blog will be assigned certain ads based on the keywords prevalent in its entries. There are some keywords that will attract ads that pay high, and there are those that will attract ads that pay low. The trick is in finding the high paying keywords around which you will create your blog.

Here are some tips that will help you find those keywords with relative ease:

* Create an account at www.adwords.google.com . Adwords, of course, is the advertising partner of AdSense. When you become a member, you could take a peek at how much the going rates are for certain keywords.

* Visit www.adsensearena.com . This is one of the very few sites that give information about high paying keywords for free. It would rather be kept a secret by those who discovered it, so keep it quiet;-).


The number of your page impressions really depends on the traffic that you can generate for your blog. Blogs would have an easier time with this because, as we’ve previously discussed in past lessons, search engines love them. But of course, this is not set in stone. If your competitors, for example, are also using the blogging strategy, then you’re all in equal footing.

To get the edge, do try David Pankhurst’s special report on How To Conquer Your Niche With Wordpress. David will share some absolutely mind blowing techniques that will tremendously boost your blog’s page rank through a simple manipulation of the Wordpress software. Check out his report at http://www.malkeenan.com/top10tricks.

Increasing your CTR is an entire subfield in itself! There are a plethora of strategies dedicated for this purpose. We have discussed some of these tactics in my newsletter, as well as my own blog at http://www.malkeenan.com/blog . These include the choice of ad design, the placement of the ads, and the colors to be used, among other things. I’m telling you, increasing your CTR has become a science of sorts in recent months!

Adsense - 7 keys to empire

There's a lot of buzz around about how you can make a quick and easy fortune using this AdSense course or that tool or this book.

And they show you their incomes from AdSense too (though not necessarily THIS month). Now, is it just me or is something a little odd in all this?

Say, I'm making $5000 - no make that $15,276 a month from AdSense on my sites. And now I'm going to sell all my secrets on how to do that for $67 or $97 or whatever.

So what happened, did I get all bored with my filthy riches and decide to become a philanthropist and sell stuff that makes me 15K a month for a pittance? Or is it something else?

Am I saying it's impossible? Certainly not. I know people who make that more.

But a little reality. Those people don't have 5 or 6 or 50 sites. They have maybe 500 or 3000 or more. Few sites make 20 or more a day. Very few. Average income is probably less than a dollar a day. So with 500 sites at a dollar a day, you've got your 15K a month.

Now the domain names cost you maybe $3500 to $4500. Then you need hosting and somehow you've got to build the sites and get traffic to them. There are excellent tools but the ones that will let you do this kind of thing in a reasonably short time are also very (very) expensive.

And you are continually dealing with sites that don't get indexed or get de-indexed or even get banned. Traffic today, gone tomorrow. Plus, if you're not real careful with those tools you may get an unpleasant letter from Google about a DMCA copyright infringement which could cost you your AdSense account.

You can make money, you can build an empire. But it isn't easy or quick no matter what you hear. And it really isn't a business. It's not a long run proposition, it's not stable. You need to keep creating more sites as older ones fail - or you need to be smart and use those AdSense revenues to build an enduring business.

You put up with this down to here, so here are the real 7 "secret" keys to AdSense.

1. The best performing AdSense type is the large rectangle. This has been tested over and over.

2. The best colors are blue for the link - surfers know that blue means click me. And darkish almost black and grey for the text and url. No borders. The same background as your page. Will it merge into your content? No, that's bogus. There are maybe 4 surfers in this galaxy who can't tell a Google ad when they see one. They are not going to believe it's part of the text. Wake up, OK?

3. Another format which is being reported to more or less work is the full wide banner type layout with text ads and images directly above the links. Try it and see if it works for you. Maybe it's a fad.

4. Keywords and related content are critical if you want targeted ads. If you want high paying clicks you need to target the costly keywords AND have content that supports the keywords.

5. You need traffic interested in the ads. Which means your traffic generation techniques have to be targeted not scattershot. You might hear that 1% or 1.5% clickthrough rate is OK and 3% is good. Nonsense. Really successful people get CTRs that are often well above 30%. Even with modest efforts you should be getting an average 6 to 15% CTR (per ad impression, not pages).

6. You have to track what you're doing and you have to test variations in ad layout, placement, color and related content to optimize your income. No one can tell you how to do it except the traffic coming to your site. If you don't test and track, you're flying blind.

7. You need to keep building new sites.

You are now a member of the AdSense Illuminati. Quite possibly you already knew all that. So why are you looking for something else? Really. This is all you need to start doing it.

Probably any course or book can help you if that's what it takes to get you moving and doing. Ultimately, no one can really show you exactly how to do it. You're going to have to learn the ropes and put in the time.

Like everything in life - the greatest traffic generator, the ultimate course or the super MLM opportunity, if it sounds too good to be true, then it is. There's no magic bullet, no ultimate secret to buy. There's no easy, painless, work free, certain road to riches (except, maybe, inheriting it and that can be very hard on the heirs).

Whatever you do on the net, do it wide awake and with your brain actually functioning. The final un-numbered key is that a technique, a shortcut, an idea that will make what you do easier, faster, or more profitable - one single tiny thing - is worth more than any book or course costs. One useable idea and you've gotten a great deal. If you learned something you didn't know or had forgotten, then it's worth much more than you paid. There may not be any magic solution out there, but there are useful concepts, techniques and ideas. You just have to see them for what they are, and then get busy and really use them.

6 more free steps to making money online

If you read my previous article you will know that the goal of these articles is to teach you ways to get started making money online without having to spend any money.

This is the second in the series and this time we deal with having your own blog. There are endless ways of making money once you have traffic, and your blog will get you traffic. The income we will be looking at today will come from Google Adsense.

There are multiple benefits to having a blog including the low cost (or no cost), the resources that will help you get traffic to your blog and the fact that you can provide your blog as an RSS feed. An RSS feed will allow readers to automatically receive your updates into their RSS reader.

Let's get started with our 6 steps.

1. Set up your blog. You will need to decide what you are going to blog about. You should decide on a theme and name your blog appropriately.

There are a number of free ways to set up a blog & to have it hosted for free. We will go with Blogger.com for our first blog.

Blogger will allow you to set up a blog for free they will host it for free and they will ping search engines every time you update, meaning you will get spidered & found.

Visit blogger.com & click the button on the front page labelled 'create your blog now' then follow the step by step instructions that Blogger provide.

Some key settings you will want to get right are:

I) 'Host your blog at Blogger' = Yes
II) 'Add your blog to our listings' = Yes
III) 'Ping Weblogs.com' = Yes
IV) 'Publish Site Feed' = Yes

2. Write some content. Before we move any further there has to be some information on the site & that means that you have to make some entries. You can write some of these entries yourself & some can be quotes from sites of interest to your reader that you can post using the Google Toolbar.

You can download the Google toolbar for free at toolbar.google.com. The toolbar includes a Blogger button. When you visit a site that has something of interest to your readers you can highlight the appropriate text & click the Blogger button. The content will then be added to your blog along with a link back to the site.

3. Once you have some content eg a weeks worth of blogging with 1 or 2 entries for everyday, you can apply for an adsense account. When you sign in to Blogger you will see an invitation to join Adsense. Use this link and apply for an account.

You can find out all about Adsense on the Adsense page but basically you get Google ads on your site & get paid if your visitor clicks them.

Google will decide what adverts show on your site based on the content it finds within.

You need to be aware that Google will decline your application if your site is not considered to have content. Nobody outside of Google knows the precise rules on this.

Once you have been accepted you can get some javascript from Google to add to you site. Copy this & then log in to Blogger.

Once you have logged into your blog you will see that one of the tabs across the top of the screen is labelled 'Template'. Click this. You will need to know a little bit of HTML to help find the right location to paste your Google code. But with a little experimentation you will find the right place for you. See the resource box at the end of this article for more help.

I would suggest that the ads need to be seen when the site loads but should not be too obvious or dominate your site.

4. Write some more content. Try and keep your content coming at regular intervals as a number of directories will check on your site at regular intervals & the smarter ones will visit on a schedule based on your update schedule. They will probably determine this in the hours after you first submit to them. Which is what we will do next.

5. Submit your site to Blog & RSS directories. Because you are hosting at Blogger, Weblogs.com will already be notified when you update your blog. (That means that every time you make a new entry they are automatically notified) You will need to manually submit to the various other directories some of which will require a link on your site to theirs.

You can add these links to your template below your Blogger logo. For a list of directories to get you started visit www.themoneyseed.com/rss

6. Keep writing interesting content. Ideally you want people to come back again and again. As with customers its harder to get a new visitor than to keep existing visitors. So make it interesting, in fact make it so interesting that they can't help but tell all their friends about it also.

As with most free ways to make money this will take time to get going, but if you can build a following you will make money.

6 Easy Ways to Increase your Adsense Revenue

How much revenue do you generate from Google Adsense?

Recently there has been a lot of discussion about people who earn over $10,000 a month just from Adsense. Furthermore, there are rumors of a few individuals who earn over $1 million a year just from using the power of Google advertisements.

So what is Google Adsense and how can you use this program to earn a six-figure income?

About two years ago, Google created this program to help websites to monetize their web-traffic.


Here's how it works:

Webmasters obtain a special code from Google which then displays targeted ads on their website. Whenever a visitor clicks on one of these ads, the webmaster earns a commission. Unlike other online businesses, there is no selling involved. All you need to do is get people to click on the ads.

Although this is an excellent way to generate an income, many websites are not effectively maximizing their Adsense potential. As a result, they are leaving a lot of cash on the table.

The question is how can you increase your Adsense revenue without increasing the number of web visitors?

The key to earning an income with Google Adsense is to have your ads match the rest of the site, making them look like part of your content. Your focus is to avoid having the Adsense blocks look like blatant advertisements.

The following are six ways that you can do this and increase your revenue at the same time:

1) Find the right place- Most website visitors read content that is in the middle of a webpage. As a result, the best place to put your Adsense block is in the top part of the page, at the beginning of your web content. You want to weave the Google Ads into your web content to give the appearance that they are extra links which expand on the information of the page.

2) Use the Large Rectangle-With Google Adsense, you have the option of picking different ad formats. Most of the time people opt to use the Leaderboard (728x90) or Wide Skyscraper (160x600) style ads. Unfortunately, this is the wrong choice, because both look like blatant advertisements. Instead smart webmasters have found that using the Large Rectangle (336x280) yields the best amount of click-thrus.

3) Ditch the border- Many people experience a sharp increase in Adsense revenue when they changing their border. What they change is very simple…they get rid of the border on their Adsense blocks. This is another way to make the advertisements look like useful web content.



4) Adapt the font- Whenever you write content, it should be the same font size and style as your Google Adsense block. This will help make it appear that the advertisements are a natural part of your website.

5) Match the colors- In addition to changing the fonts, you also should match the colors of your website. For instance, if your content is written in black, and your hyperlinks are blue, then the Adsense blocks should also be the same color. Again, this helps the advertisements appear to be normal web content.

6) Don't have too many distractions- On a webpage, it is important to give web visitor a limited number of options. By having too many links and graphics, the web visitor might go to a section that doesn't help increase your profits. While it is important to inform and entertain your web visitor, it is also vital that you monetize your site. So if the main focus of your site is to earn an income through Google Adsense, then get rid of all non-essential links and graphics.

By taking the time to implement these six simple steps, you'll see a dramatic increase in the click-thru ratio of your ads. If added to all of the content of your site, your Adsense income will skyrocket!

Five Easy Steps to Earn Money From Your Website

Step 1. Get A Domain For Your Free Adsense Websites (a link at the bottom of this page will get you to the sign up page!)



There are literally thousands(?) of companies from which you can order a domain name. Try to create a name that contains your targeted high paying keyword (ref #3 below).

For example: if you are going for equity line of credit -- create a domain called equity-line-of-credit.com (which is taken btw - lol)


Step 2. Get Cheap Web Hosting



Same thing goes for this one -- there are massive amounts of hosting companies around. Select the budget plan, you'll need less than 100 MB for this plan to work.


Step 3. Select A Relevant Topic For Your High Paying Keyword



This is the hard part -- how to find a couple of nice high paying keywords (donate a car, home equity - the list is long...) to build your web pages around.

Remember that Adsense spiders you page in order to display relevant ads: this is vital -- you *have* to stuff your article with those keywords. Don't forget to make it readable to humans.


Don't forget to apply for an account with Google Adsense by clicking on the following button!


Step 4. Get Traffic To Your Site



This is by far the hardest part -- and where most will fail. I have tried several different approches: Traffic Exchanges, Forum Posts, Most Expired Domain Traffic Companies, Banner Exchanges, Safelists!

There -- I just saved you a lot of money! Do NOT buy into ANY of those methods mentioned above -- it will NOT work. Guaranteed!

Instead.. Do a proper SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on your site using this free SEO manual (SEO Made Easy) and wait for the results... You'll have to be patient here -- allow for 3 to 6 months in order to get real targeted traffic from the search engines. That's all there is to it.

But -- as the SEO Manual explains... For this you need backlinks - and a lot of them!

Enroll in link exchange services (there are several) -- search for Free Link Exchange, Automated Reciprocal Link Exchange and stuff like that.

Submit your link to several web directories.

Submit your article, containing a link to your site, to several article directories
Buy cheap targeted traffic from Google Adwords. Swap cheap clicks for expensive ones on your site.

Step 5. Learn how to optimize your pages for top CTR



It doesn't matter if you have all that traffic when your visitors don't convert into clicks. To master CTR - or Click Through Rate you need to get the very best advice possible..

PPC Advertising Networks

Google AdSense is the most popular option under this category, but there are also others. Basically you need to sign up with the network and paste some code snippets on your website. The network will then serve contextual ads (either text or images) relevant to your website, and you will earn a certain amount of money for every click.

The profitability of PPC advertising depends on the general traffic levels of the website and, most importantly, on the click-through rate (CTR) and cost per click (CPC). The CTR depends on the design of the website. Ads placed abode the fold or blended with content, for instance, tend to get higher CTRs. The CPC, on the other hand, depends on the nice of the website. Mortgages, financial products and college education are examples of profitable niches (clicks worth a couple of dollars are not rare), while tech-related topics tend to receive a smaller CPC (sometimes as low as a couple of cents per click).

The source of the traffic can also affect the overall CTR rate. Organic traffic (the one that comes from search engines) tends to perform well because these visitors were already looking for something, and they tend to click on ads more often. Social media traffic, on the other hand, presents terribly low CTRs because these visitors are tech-savvy and they just ignore ads.

List of popular CPC advertising networks:
Google Adsense
Yahoo! Publisher Network (YPN)
BidVertiser
Chitika
Clicksor