Google Adsense | how to improve google adsense revenue

Don’t Get Caught With Google Adsense Click Fraud

2011-01-07T01:06:00.001-08:00

Don’t Get Caught With Google Adsense Click Fraud

Many web site owners are getting their Google Adsense account terminated when they have done nothing wrong to deserve the punishment. Considering the money that they are getting from Adsense, they would certainly want to get back into it.

Considering the money to be made with Adsense, it is no wonder that they would want to get back into it.

It is that same consideration why the Google Adsense click fraud is thought of and why many people are getting into it.

Click fraud is the act of clicking on ads for the purpose of costing the advertiser money. It is simply the same as paying out cash for false leads. Many people website owners are aware of this fraud and are sharing the same sentiment that this is the one big problem that Adsense is facing.

How do you prevent being involved in this fraud?

Majority of web hosts are offering access logs. Once this is offered to you, it is necessary that you hand it over to Google as well. This allows them to look for any suspicious activity on your site. Problems like this are very serious and giving it to them is saying that you would want to help them in any way you can in solving the problem.

It can also help if you have a click monitoring software. If you do not have one yet, you should try and get one. There is absolutely no major factor preventing you from having one because most of this software is free.

As usual, all the information you have received should be turned over to Google. This is showing Google that you too are fighting against click frauds and is in no way a part of it.

Study your server logs and watch for any activity that seems suspicious. Report anything that you may find odd, may it big or small thing.

You may want to consider disabling ads for your own IP address and local geographic area. This will certainly prevent accidents and will not make Google mistake another user as you. You can do through a htaccess file. This will avoid Google mistaking as clicking on your own ads and be kicked out because of it.

Keep your Adsense off on pop ups and pop unders. Your ads should not be displayed on content sites that promote illegal activity or tampering of the legal rights of other people or business. Included in this are the content that is considered adult and gambling ones. If you think that you may be breaking this rule, immediately remove your content or Adsense from the web page.

Be truthful and confess up to Google about times when you might have clicked on your own as, whether accidentally or intentionally. Or the times when you have done something that is against the Terms of Service that they are implementing. Be honest about anything that you may have done that is wrong. Confessing is way better than Google learning about it eventually. It would mean eventual termination and no getting back what you have worked so hard for.

Do not tell your family or friends about Adsense on your website. Chances are they may start clicking on them to help you make money without you knowing it. They may be doing more harm to you than help by trying it in the first place.

If ever someone you know chanced upon your Adsense, make sure they understand that they cannot click on your ads under any circumstances. It would be wise to brief them on important things about Adsense and what not to do with them.

Most pay per click networks have different measures in hand to protect website owners against click frauds. Other search engines can track more than 50 data points, IP address, browser’s information, user’s session info and pattern recognition. They also have “systems” available that detects fraud. Not to mention the specialized teams monitoring how things are going and helping advertisers stop click frauds.

Google offers suggestion on how to avoid click fraud. Using “negative keywords” can be used to keep your Adsense showing on products and services that are in no way related to yours. Adding tracking URLs to your links so you can track the traffic coming from Google.

Do not be caught in the Google click fraud. Be aware and be wary.
source:http://www.indoocean.com/caught-with-google-adsense-click-fraud/

Google Adsense is one of the most popular free ways for anyone to make money

2011-01-07T01:03:00.000-08:00

Article by Michelle Thomas

Google Adsense is one of the most popular free ways for anyone to make money from the internet. You can make text ads, images, video, text links and search boxes plus sales of their products listed by reference. It is to combine a free service and an easy way to make money online by revenue from advertising displays, web searches and online sales of products and services make. Read more about a Google Adsense Publisher.
Google has many different products online that will benefit the interested Internet users and to buy. Put products for entertainment, travel, leisure, business, advertising and marketing, photography and video, and more. Google Adsense as a publisher you can join for free and earn money by showing ads on your websites and blogs. You can share text, image and video ads on your pages. You can also search boxes and other Google products referrals. Google automatically scans your website content and place relevant ads and reference products. If someone clicks through the site after reading an ad, you get a commission. Likewise, if someone is an Internet search and visit the websites in the search results you also commissions. advertised and if someone buys one of these products or sign up for their free services to either a flat fee or a percentage of total sales. Also the way your ads look on your pages so that they fit into the color and theme of your websites and blogs. Plus you can keep track set up channels, how much revenue you from every ad unit earn

There are many free websites online you join, where a part of the Adsense to earn revenue or your publisher ID can be added to ads to switch and get 100% of the commissions. This is also very good for the Internet novice, not much about making websites and for the blogger who does not know how familiar with basic HTML code.
But you ads on your pages is easy. Everything you need to do is copy and paste your code where you want the ads, and Google does the rest. Google has a number of measures and guidelines for the programs you have to stick to it and it is better to follow them or you can lock your account and lose your earnings. However, some Internet marketers and webmasters thousands every month automatically just by adding text ads, video and picture units, search boxes, and reference products on their websites and blogs, and they have managed to do everything for free ! To learn more about using Google Adsense and how to apply for an account, see my blog Mailbox Money under the label money with Google Adsense

To get the ball on the inside to make money to get to Adsense , read this eBook by top internet marketing guru David Zohar Adsense Money Machine.
About the Author

I have several blogs online in categories such as entertainment, performing arts, lifestyle, shopping, include travel and recipes, movie trailers, free video training to get free dance performances and choreography, products for sale online, coupon savings, articles, short stories and much more. I’m trying to make money part time online by selling digital products, blogging and advertising.

source:http://webhostingblog.us/2011/01/income-from-blogs-and-websites-with-google-adsense/

Google Dashboard Enhances Privacy Control

2009-11-07T19:16:00.000-08:00

In conjunction with the 31st International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners, which occurred this week in Madrid, Spain, bothGoogle (NSDQ: GOOG) and Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) took steps to express their respective commitment to privacy.

Microsoft's announcement took the form of a policy paper that said the company's established privacy principles would apply to cloud computing and called for regulatory harmony around the globe.
Google introduced Google Dashboard, a Web page that provides a summary of the information Google users have stored online and a set of links for modifying data storage settings.

"In an effort to provide you with greater transparency and control over [your] own data, we've built the Google Dashboard," a Google blog post explains. "Designed to be simple and useful, the Dashboard summarizes data for each product that you use (when signed in to your account) and provides you direct links to control your personal settings."

The Dashboard provides data details for over 20 Google services, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Web History, Orkut, YouTube, Picasa, Talk, Reader, Alerts, Latitude, Profiles, and Voice, among others.

Nineteen Google services are not yet available on the Dashboard. These include Analytics, Checkout, AdSense, AdWords, Wave, App Engine, and Mobile, to name a few.

For a company that last year resisted adding a privacy link to its home page to prevent even the slightest page load time delay, the Dashboard demonstrates that privacy has become more of a priority.

Privacy advocates are calling the Dashboard a step in the right direction, though some are more critical than others.

For instance, John M. Simpson, consumer advocate with Consumer Watchdog, suggested the Dashboard was mere window dressing. "If Google really wanted to give users control over their privacy it would give consumers the ability to be anonymous from the company and its advertisers in crucial areas such as search data and online behavior," he said in a statement.

It might also be said that if consumers really wanted privacy they'd stay off the Internet and off the grid, paying only in cash.

Google To Reach $100 Billion In Revenue; Increased 31% Last Year

2009-11-07T19:14:00.000-08:00

In 1990 the world's first web-page was created, and by 1992 there were all of 26. Today there are about 150 websites for everyone on the earth-- population (6.7 billion) and Google daily users number in the hundreds of millions. Google's chairman believes that Google (now $22 billion revenue firm) will someday reach $100 billion in revenues; revenues increased 31% last year. Googled: The End of the World As We Know It (Penguin Press/ Nov 2009) by Ken Auletta, is another in a line of books covering the history of Google's spectacular rise while also trying to explain it and project the future. The very good part of Auletta's work is that it makes readers think about Google's approach and potential in the future; the not so good parts are that many areas recently 'invaded' by Google are not well covered (fortunately, Wikipedia and Google itself can help fill in the gaps), and too many pages are filled with useless anecdotes and detail.

Google's search service underlies the company's success. It is based on a secret (to limit spammers' efforts to artificially boost ratings) algorithm (PageRank) developed by Google's founders, based primarily on the 'importance' of the pages (recursively determined by the other pages linking to them), and constantly under change (359 in 2008). About 200 factors are utilized in determining PageRank. Auletta contends that Google also uses cookies to refine search responses over time.

Google's advertising revenues account for more than 40% of all ad dollars spent online. Google also pumps additional ad dollars into tens of thousands of Web sites through its AdSense program in which Google serves as matchmaker, uniting advertisers with Web destinations. In effect, AdSense allowed Google to turn everyone's content into a potential place for Google ads. Google charges a fee of about 33%, and the Web destinations pocket about $5 billion/year as a result of visitors clicking on the ads. AdSense for search also allows website owners to place Google search boxes on their websites - Google shares any advertising revenue it makes from those searches with the website owner. 'Google AdSense' has been criticized by some as a large source of "invalid clicks," in which one company clicks on a rival's search engine advertisements to drive up the other's costs; auditing programs are available to help detect and correct for this.

Google AdWords, however, is the company's main source of revenue. AdWords allows potential advertisers to bid to place small text ads (95 character limit - less intrusive and bothersome than typical banner ads) next to the results for key search words. All auctions for ads are run online and automated. The highest bidder gets to place a small text ad to the right of the search results; up to ten lower bidders also win ad space below it. The order is set by a combination of comparative bid levels and the "quality score" of all ads shown. (The quality score is calculated by historical click-through rates, relevance of an advertiser's ad text and keywords, an advertiser's account history, and other determined by Google.)

Minimum bids per keyword are set by Google, also using the quality score - a commonly searched word or phrase like JetBlue might cost only a penny or two, while more esoteric phrases like helicopter parts might go for $50/click. Advertisers can choose to pay either according to the number of viewers or clicks. Google Analytics allows advertisers to track day by day, hour by hour, the number of clicks and sales, the traffic produced by the keywords used, the conversion rate from clicks to sales, where viewers came from (referrers, as well as physical location), etc. It helps advertisers target by age, sex, income, zip-code, personal preferences for leisure time activities, product preferences, news preferences. etc.

Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006, the idea being to use it's free content as another platform for selling Google ads. YouTube, however, is losing money ($100 million expectation in 2009) so far. In 2008 Google also bought DoubleClick, a service that tracks users and records what commercial advertisements they view. It's main service is to automate the administration effort in the ad buying cycle for advertisers and the management of ad inventory for publishers to increase the purchasing efficiency of advertisers and to minimize unsold inventory for publishers - eg. allowing last-minute substitutions of higher-paying advertisers and filling unused ad space. Auletta reports DoubleClick as posting 17 billion display ads/day.

Ads constitute over 95% of Google's revenue, yet its tentacles are exploring numerous other areas. These include Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Scholar, Google Finance, Google Product Search, Google Calendar, Google Desktop (Docs, Spreadsheets, collaborative forms), Google Chrome (Google's browser), Google Sites (free and assisted way to create websites), Google Android (new mobile phone operating system, with over 1,000 released applications in 2008), Gmail, Google Reader, and Google Voice (provides people with a single phone number that can be used to reach them on their work, home, or cell phones, has 1.419 million users), as well as Google's efforts to digitize all books and to provide cloud computing (no installation). Part of this reflects Google's efforts to return more than just web sites in response to inquiries (eg. videos, books, photos, maps), and to respond to inquiries from more than PCs (about one-third of 2008 Google queries in Japan originated from mobile phones). Google's potential business model for all these is not clear - on the other hand, Google began without a business model, so it doesn't allow that to be an initial hindrance. (Google engineers are all allowed one-day/week to work on a project of their own choice, again without regard for profits; some of its non-engineers are also afforded that privilege.)

The cloud in Google's future - possible antitrust regulation, and lawsuits over copyright infringement (eg. Google Books). On the other hand, Fortune recently noted that Google and the Obama administration have generally good relations, with top company executives participating in a number of government projects.

Bottom Line: Readers need to read Googled slowly and carefully, thinking how this behemoth might affect their businesses. Newspapers, TV and cable stations are already undergoing dramatic changes as a result of Google. They also need to carefully read Wikipedia and Google sites for additional related information to fill in the holes Auletta left.

Ken Auletta is the author of ten books, including four national bestsellers. These include Three Blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their Way, Greed and Glory on Wall Street: The Fall of the House of Lehman, and World War 3.0: Microsoft and Its Enemies. You'll find the author online at www.kenauletta.com

http://www.basilandspice.com/financial-well-being/google-to-reach-100-billion-in-revenue-increased-31-last-yea.html

Google On Mobile Search; Bing; YouTube Pre-Rolls, Monetization; Power Seach Users

2009-07-17T04:39:00.000-07:00

We updated this post live, listening in on the Google Q2-09 Conference Call. Questions in italics.

Advertising

– Advertisers are not as uncertain anymore. Smaller advertisers have stayed consistent because of the benefits of return on investment on search. Bigger adverThe big advertisers stayed away for a bit but are back now.
– In Adsense for content, We saw solid results. Smaller partners performed well.
– We are seeing different means of monetization coming through: we’re beginning to see more branded advertising on YouTube and our display properties.
– The way to look at display for us is to look at multiple strangs. We’ve mand progress with the doubleclick ad exchange, having integrated that with Adsense. We’re going to see tremendous growth in the display space.
– On Google.com, Shopping and Computer Electronics verticals did well, but Finance was weak.
– Most of our advertisers are not maxing out their daily budget. We’ve spent time convincing them that search is an ROI medium, and we can’t create inventory - users create the inventory.
– CPCs have been impacted by increase in queries from low CPC countries like Brazil and China. International mix has an impact on our CPC - Germany vs India, then there are the currency issues. CPC was down year on year, and there was seasonality on top of it.
– There is a mix of display and performance side in advertising, and people are focusing on the performance side right now. Some advertisers are finding that display is a great complement to search. I think there’s a positive dynamic between the two. Advertisers who use search and haven’t utilized their budget entirely tend to spend on display.
– Google properties ahve driven most of the growth. AdSense properties have grown, but slower.

Focus On Power Users On Search

– Got more focused on active power users, who are typing longer queries and their expectations are greater than before. To serve power users, we launched options to allow users to slice and dice search results. We have a basic user principle that fast is better than slow. we’re looking to reduce latency, and launched improvements for Picasa
– We’ve had some success with local information, by determining where the user is. The search result innovations have been outpacing the innovations on the ad side. We’re going to push ahead with products that are good for the user on the search side.

YouTube

YouTube is now on a trajectory we’re very pleased with. Monetization views have triples in the last year. We’re monetizing billions of views now. We’re promoting feature partner videos. (Nikesh) YouTube homepage is of relevance and has established itself in the eyes of advertisers. Next move is towards long form video and pre-rolls. By bringing premium content to the home page, we drive views to premium content that increases inventory. Users are beginning to accept pre-rolls on premium content, and we dont see significant drop-off rates.

– It’s not our focus to monetize non-professional content. The non-professional content has relatively lower views. You can tell a professional quality video from a non-professional one. We don’t just mean large studios, but also smaller professional studios producing monetizable content.

– Pre-roll the key monetization method for YouTube? There are four main user activities on the site. They come to the home page, search for videos, watch videos and then interact with other users. Each activity will have a different monetization, form of advertising. The big inventory is in the watch pages. We’re trying to figure out if overlays will work. We’re still testing these things. We’ve been testing pre-rolls for quite a while.

Mobile, Mobile Search And HTML 5

– Users on high end phones are engaged. so display advertising there.

– We’re bullish on HTML 5. It’s especially important in mobile. This quarter we launched mobile versions of gmail and maps. One of the key things we’ve done is show desktop ads on mobile browsers of high quality. All of a sudden, we started seeing high searches and clickthrough rates. It makes sense over time, that search will perform better on mobile than PC, because we know more about the person. Mobile search tends to complement desktop volume, since people search from mobile when they’re away.
– 18-20 android phones will be out by the end of the year.

– Mobile search in the US has improved significantly, because of availability of phones with good browsers. Mobile search was pretty high in Indonesia and the Middle East, but we’re seeing it grow overall.
– The adoption of high end devices - the gphones, the iphone, they have a living on the web experience. there’s a fundamental trend that is happening there. there’s a whole ecosystem that is building right now.

Bing

How worried are you about search competitors (read: Bing)?

We haven’t seen any shift in search today.

Your take on bing? You think you should blend vertical search with search?

There’s an opportunity to do a much better job with finance search, and other verticals like shopping.

Gmail

“We are pushing out one new feature a week, like automatic message translation. Try that, it’s a big deal. We took quite a few of our products out of beta last week. All of them are relatively stable.”

Chrome OS

The Chrome OS will be available to the PC community at the end of next year. Other aspects of our strategy still have to be worked oout. The primary focus will be speed, speed of computation and use, and focus on the web. It’s open source, so it’s possible for people to just take it and do whatever they want with it. There may be other ways of making money from it, but we don’t plan to charge for it.

Google Wave

We want to make the web better - what is good for the web, is good for Google. we asked the question -what if email was invented today, and the answer is wave. The product was conceived in Australia.

War of Attrition? Collapsing The Industry?

– Business Model for App Engine? Isn’t the competition with Microsoft is competition? looks like a war of attrition, where you’re just giving up for free. Instead of growing the industry, you’re collapsing the industry. Our data points say that Android hasn’t been successful.

With the App Engine, there are opportunities for licensing models, but we’re confident that with the functionality, where they are running search both on internal and external information, and the more people spend time on the web, the more they search. We’re confident that in the long run it is positive for us. We’re trying to make connectivity pervasive. The adroid has is successful, and we’re optimistic that it’s going to make for an exciting and richer web.

Other Comments

– Disciplined about costs, but looking to invest in our big long term opportunities including display and mobile.
– Android, Wave, Chrome and Chrome OS are all open source. the more power tools we put in developrs hands, the more development we will see on the web, which grows the pie for everyone.
– Paid storage is not a significant portion of our revenues

Google Q2 2009 Earnings Call Transcript

2009-07-17T04:38:00.000-07:00

Google (GOOG)

Q2 2009 Earnings Call

July 16, 2009 4:30 pm ET

Executives

Maria Shim - Investor Relations

Patrick Pichette - Chief Financial Officer, Senior Vice President

Eric E. Schmidt Ph.D. - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer

Jonathan J. Rosenberg - Senior Vice President - Product Management

Nikesh Arora - President - Global Sales Operations and Business Development

Analysts

Imran Khan - J.P. Morgan

Mark Mahaney - Citigroup

Justin Post - BOA Merrill Lynch

Christa Quarles - Thomas Weisel Partners

Benjamin Schachter - Broadpoint Amtech

James Mitchell - Goldman Sachs

Sandeep Aggarwal - Collins Stewart

Youssef Squali - Jefferies & Company

Doug Anmuth - Barclays Capital

Spencer Wang - Credit Suisse

Jeffrey Lindsay - Sanford Bernstein

Jeetil Patel - Deutsche Bank

Heath Terry - FBR Capital

Steve Weinstein - Pacific Crest

Jim Friedland - Cowen & Company

Presentation

Operator

Good day and welcome, everyone, to the Google Inc. conference call. This call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Ms. Maria Shim. Please go ahead, Madam.

Maria Shim

Good afternoon, everyone and welcome to today’s second quarter 2009 earnings conference call. With us are Eric Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer; Patrick Pichette, Chief Financial Officer; Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior Vice President of Product Management; and joining us for the first time, Nikesh Arora, President of Global Sales Operations and Business Development. Eric, Patrick, and Jonathan will provide us with their thoughts on the quarter and then Nikesh will join us for Q&A.

This call is being webcast from our investor relations website located at investor.google.com. Please refer to our website for important information, including our earnings press release, issued a few minutes ago, along with slides that accompany today’s prepared remarks.

A replay of this call will also be available on our website in a few hours.

Please note that we routinely post important information on our investor relations website, located at investor.google.com, and we encourage you to make use of that resource.

As a reminder, we are holding two calls today. On this call we will discuss our strategic overview and Q&A with the usual format, followed by a second call which is effectively an extended Q&A session with Jonathan and Patrick, giving the opportunity for participants to ask more detailed financial and product questions in an efficient and reg FD compliant manner.

The second call will begin at 3:00 P.M. Pacific Time and will also be webcast from our investor relations website.

Now let me quickly cover the Safe Harbor -- some of the statements we make today may be considered forward-looking, including statements regarding investments in our core business and innovation, expected performance of our business, and our expected level of capital expenditures.

These statements involved a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Please note that these forward-looking statements reflect our opinions only as of the date of this presentation and we undertake no obligation to revise or publicly release the results of any revision to these forward-looking statements in light of new information or future events.

Please refer to our SEC filings, including our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2008, as well as our earnings press release for a more detailed discussion of the risk factors that may affect our results. Copies may be obtained from the SEC or by visiting the investor relations section of our website.

Also, please note that certain financial measures we use on the call, such as operating profit and operating margin, are expressed on a non-GAAP basis and have been adjusted to exclude charges relating to stock-based compensation.

We have also adjusted our net cash provided by operating activities to remove capital expenditures, which we refer to as free cash flow.

Our GAAP results and GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliation can be found in our earnings press release.

With that, I will now turn the call over to Patrick.

Patrick Pichette

Thank you, Maria. Good afternoon or good evening, everybody. What we will do is we will have our regular schedule, so Eric will give us his comments first. I’ll cover the financial portion and then Jonathan will give us a product update. As Maria mentioned, we also have Nikesh with us and then we will turn it to Q&A. So without further ado, I’ll let Eric introduce.

Eric E. Schmidt Ph.D.

Thank you very much, Patrick. So Google, we’ve had a good quarter, one that demonstrates our resilience in what continues to be a very difficult environment, 3% year over year growth, as you have seen from the press release.

Google as a business appears to have stabilized despite the still weak economic environment. Advertisers and customers are obviously seeing the benefit of the performance-based advertising that we offer and consumers are clearly using search more and ever to find the best deals.

We’ve also implemented careful cost controls to help our performance. Making our business more efficient has been our goal for the last few quarters and it should put us in a good position to benefit from the eventual recovery whenever that occurs. And we are going to continue to invest in innovation. History shows that companies which invest in innovation during downturns emerge stronger than the cost-cutting competitors and it’s easy for big companies, Google is now a large company, to become conservative to take small steps when they need to take really big ones, so we are determined not to make that mistake.

And as an example, you don’t change the world incrementally. You do it through big innovation and the ability to execute on your ideas. So for example, we just announced Chrome OS for netbooks, our effort to rethink what an operating system should be, based on our lightning fast browser technology, Chrome, which people are already using. We need a faster operating system for the same reason we need faster browsers -- people are now doing everything on the web and this will be an operating system built around ubiquity and the power of the Internet.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/149349-google-q2-2009-earnings-call-transcript

Google vs. Microsoft: What You Need to Know

2009-07-15T09:08:00.000-07:00

In less than a week, Google announced an operating system to compete with Windows, while Microsoft announced that Office 10 will include free, online versions of its four most popular software programs — a shot at Google’s suite of web-based office applications.

And not more than a month and a half ago, Microsoft unveiled its new search engine Bing which it hopes will steal market share from Google and finally make it real money online.

From the news of it, it’s a full-blown tech battle, complete with behind-the-scenes machinations to sic government regulators on each other.

It is, however, not a death match — it’s more of an fight to see who will be the King of Technology, since both companies pull in their billions through completely different siphons and are unlikely to severely wound one another any time soon.

Google pulled in $22 billion in revenue in 2008, 97 percent of which came tiny text ads bought by the keyword and placed next to search results or on pages around the web. Google makes a negligible amount of money bundling its online apps for businesses, charging $50 a head annually — but mostly it just gives its online text editor, email and spreadsheet programs away.

By contrast, Microsoft sold $14.3 billion worth of Microsoft Word and PowerPoint and other business applications over the last nine months, making a profit of $9.3 billion. It made a further $16 billion in revenue in 2008 through sales of its operating systems, which range from XP installations on netbooks, to Vista, to Windows Mobile to its server software.

Google now plans its own range of operating systems, starting with Android, an open-source OS for small devices like smartphones, and Chrome OS, a browser-focused, open-source OS that will run on notebooks and desktops.

Clearly top executives at each company look over at the others’ pots of gold and dream of ways to steal them, or at least make it harder for the other guy to make money.

In fact, they even dislike each other enough to spend money to make the other one lose revenue — take for example, Microsoft’s behind-the-scenes campaign to scuttle last year’s proposed Google-Yahoo advertising deal or its ongoing attempts to derail the Google Book Search settlement.

But in reality, the competition is really about creating universes or ecosystems that it hopes consumers will want to live their technology lives inside. And it’s about ego — a fight to be recognized as the world’s most important technology company.

Microsoft would love for everyone in the world to be using its Internet Explorer browser to search through Bing to find a story from its MSN portal to email via Hotmail or Outlook to a friend. Add in a smartphone running Windows Mobile and an Xbox in the living room for the kids, and you have a Microsoft family. And though it is much joked about, Microsoft is the dominant platform for software developers of all types, whether they are making small business software, massive online role-playing games or photo-editing utilities.

Google’s ecosystem looks different. It starts with a Google Chrome browser (oddly running only on Windows) with a default homepage set to Google News or a customized Google homepage. From there you might go to Gmail and then click on a Word document sent to you as an attachment which Google will quickly — and safely — open for you in its online word processor.

But most importantly, Google wants you to search and travel around the web, hitting web pages that run Google-served ads and Google tracking cookies. You might think that Google is a really cool company to give away all this free technology, while never thinking about the persistent and silent data collection Google is undertaking to profile you in order to deliver you to advertisers for a premium.

So How Do The Two Stack Up in Four Key Areas of Competition?

Browser market share as of May, 2009. Source: Net ApplicationsBrowsers:
Internet Explorer in all its variations still retains close to 70 percent of the market (depending on who is counting and how). That dominance remains, even though Microsoft’s latest offering IE8 lags behind all the other major browsers in features and advanced web capabilities.

Firefox, Opera, and Apple’s Safari have all driven browser innovation over the last five years, but most people have not been convinced to leave IE behind, despite other alternatives being safer and more advanced. Why does it matter? Well, IE installations come with a default home page, don’t they?

Google’s Chrome browser, on the other hand, is a handsome, whiz-kid of a browser. It’s sleek and nimble, and it revolutionizes how tabs are handled. The address bar is the search box (Google as default, naturally). Each website opened runs as its own browser instance and has very low permissions to read and write to files. The sandboxing of tabs means that if a single website hangs or crashes, the rest are unaffected. Meanwhile, lower permissions make it harder for a hacker to bust into your computer through your browser.

Chrome also has less than 2 percent of the browser market share.

Online Search: Google’s name now means search to most users. Google’s search engine means money to Google. In June, it delivered 78.5 percent of search results pages delivered to U.S. web users. In the first three months of 2009, Google pulled in $5.2 billion in revenue, a majority of which came from AdWords, an auction-based service that triggers ads based on the keywords in a search query.

Microsoft recently debuted Bing, a new search engine it hoped would fare well in comparison to Google. It’s got some fine innovations, and shows the company is thinking very hard about better ways to present information to users by finding ways to synthesize data, rather than just retrieving links. Still, despite these improvements, a $100 million ad campaign, and generous press coverage that treats Bing like an underdog, Bing gained only a point in June to get Microsoft 8.2 percent of all searches.

Operating Systems: Microsoft has been making operating systems since 1979 and has spent 28 years perfecting MS-DOS and Windows NT, the frameworks that Windows have been built around. Microsoft is estimated to run on about 90 percent of all laptops and desktops in the world. By copying its competitors’ best features, leveraging questionable licensing arrangements and using its base of accustomed users to buy it time against innovators, Microsoft has held on to its lead in the OS market for almost 30 years. That’s despite challenges from Digital Research, Apple and IBM.

Microsoft’s newest version, Windows 7, will be available in the fall. Early reviews say the OS boots quickly and sleeps fast, and avoids much of the confusing interface decisions that have made many dislike Vista, the successor to Windows XP. Microsoft also dominates in the business world, where nearly every medium to large company standardizes around Microsoft Office. Microsoft is also at work on version 6 of its operating system for handheld devices, which it first launched in 2000.

Its OS advantages are immense. It has millions of users who know nothing else and who like Windows. There are millions who are attached to games or the thousands of desktop apps that are only available on Windows. Thousands of devices just plug in and work on its hardware. And familiarity with Microsoft software is a requirement for a huge number of office jobs.

By contrast, Google first stepped into the OS game in 2007 when it announced its Android operating system for small devices. Google estimates that some 18 phone models will be running its system by the end of the year. Last week, Google announced, but did not show off, a new OS to compete with Windows, dubbing it Chrome OS.

That name signifies that Google’s OS will be for the web and browser-based. It hopes to convince developers to write software that runs inside a browser, instead of on top of the OS as developers for Windows and Apples’ OS X do. It will also let web developers extend the power of their websites by expanding the capabilities of the browser, allowing websites to lean on the browser for storage and processing help.

Advertising: Google is largely powered by its innovative auction-based text ads on its own site, but then expanded into serving ads on other people’s sites with the Adsense program. It bought the ad-serving and behavioral-profiling giant Doubleclick in 2007 for more than $3 billion, and has ventured into mobile, print, radio and television ads.

Microsoft has struggled to replicate Google’s online advertising success. Despite owning MSN.com — a portal that is second only to Yahoo as a destination — Microsoft has not made money on the internet. To turbocharge its ad delivery technology, it paid more than $6 billion in cash in 2007 for aQuantive, a full-service online advertising concern.

Instead, Microsoft’s online ad business lost $1.2 billion in 2008, double what it lost in 2007. The company expects 2009 revenues to be higher than the $3.2 billion it took in last year, but has not said it would make a profit.

Contrary to what some might have you believe, the benefits of the Google-Microsoft competition are immense.

Microsoft had largely grown complacent until Google came along to shake up categories. Gmail’s massive online storage capability and fancy programming made Microsoft hustle to upgrade its popular, though not user-friendly, web e-mail service. Google Maps led to Microsoft’s Live Maps, which now bests Google’s efforts in some ways.

Google has been winning the fight for the last few years, showing that it is still nimbler than the software giant from the Northwest. But the pendulum may be slowing, or even poised to swing the other way. With the innovations in Bing and the promise that Microsoft’s online Office offerings will be free and more fully featured than the Google equivalent, Microsoft is taking on Google where it matters for users: on the field of innovation.

And that will make for an interesting race, no matter which horse you prefer to ride.

Infographic: Wired.com/Dennis Crothers — Browser market share as of May 2009. Source: Net Applications

Update: This story was updated to correct the statement that recent Microsoft OSes were built around MS-DOS, when most versions of Windows have relied on Windows NT as their core.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/07/google-vs-microsoft-what-you-need-to-know/

Rosetta Stone sues Google for trademark infringement

2009-07-11T03:45:00.000-07:00

Rosetta Stone, a highly popular software program for learning foreign languages, has filed suit against Google for trademark infringement. The lawsuit claims that since 2004, Google has allowed companies to run Adsense advertisements on Google using keywords allegedly trademarked to Rosetta Stone. The result is that when a person runs a search on Google for Rosetta Stone, numerous paid advertisements for competitors of Rosetta Stone will appear on the page as “sponsored links.” The company asserts that Google even allows companies to use trademarked terms in the headlines of the ads.

Attorney Terence Ross, a partner at the law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The lawsuit on behalf of Rosetta Stone is just the latest in a series of similar complaints against Google for their advertising practices. A copy of Rosetta Stone's lawsuit can be found here.

While the infringement claims of Rosetta Stone for the use of certain terms may carry some weight, it seems difficult for them to prevail on their claim to hold a trademark on some other common phrases. For example, their complaint over other advertisers using the words “Rosetta Stone” in their ads is more compelling than their claim to control the use of phrases such as “Global Traveler” or “Language Library.” Also, considering that the Rosetta Stone company took their name from an ancient Egyptian artifact called the Rosetta Stone, their trademark infringement claim may run into some problems.

High Paying Google AdSense Words

2009-06-06T11:43:00.000-07:00

High Paying AdSense Words

For a typical blogger or website owner, we make money when someone clicks on one of the Google Ads on our site, or per 1000 impressions of the AdSense links. For most of us, we already know how hard it is to get people to click on these links and even if they do, sometimes the chosen ads are low paying ones because of the keywords used on our page.

So to help maximize profits, here is a list of 101 high paying Google AdSense words you can try and use to target the keywords in your content to. It is assuming that as the website owner, you will receive roughly 50% of the total cost per click that Google charges its advertisers, but you should check this with Google to find out the actual value (if they’ll tell you).

1. AdWords - $9.41
2. available domain name - $12.97
3. addwords - $10.92
4. AdWords campaign - $14.63
5. AdSense - $12.43
6. buy domains - $8.84
7. buy domain name - $17.10
8. bachelor degree on line - $14.36
9. best webhost - $8.68
10. bulk email marketing - $11.77
11. bankruptcy - $5.72
12. cheap domain name - $9.16
13. car insurance - $22.89
14. credit cards - $10.93
15. crm software - $15.96
16. car loans - $11.79
17. construction estimating software - $5.80
18. domain names - $17.57
19. debt - $13.18
20. degree education on line - $12.44
21. dell computer - $5.79
22. degree - $6.37
23. debt management - $7.15
24. database software - $3.13
25. email marketing - $13.24
26. ecommerce hosting - $11.81
27. education degree online - $14.69
28. earn money online - $3.04
29. free domain name registration - $5.81
30. free credit report - $9.57
31. flowers - $4.83
32. financing - $4.50
33. gas prices compare - $6.19
34. google news - $2.07
35. graphic design degree - $12.58
36. graduate degree program - $7.93
37. hosting providers - $14.25
38. how to get a web site - $5.83
39. hp computer - $7.52
40. interest credit - $15.53
41. insurances - $17.67
42. interior design degree - $14.17
43. java software - $1.69
44. keyword tracking - $4.37
45. knee support - $1.57
46. life experience degree - $8.36
47. lung cancer treatment - $6.10
48. loans - $9.86
49. merchant account - $10.55
50. microsoft certification - $4.88
51. mba degree online - $15.78
52. master degree on line - $11.51
53. marketing software - $8.28
54. network monitoring software - $11.45
55. nursing degree - $8.81
56. norton anti virus software - $4.01
57. Norton virus protection - $3.85
58. online accounting degree - $27.50
59. online paralegal degree - $19.45
60. online degree - $13.74
61. online psychology degree - $20.78
62. online college degree - $14.10
63. payroll software - $7.95
64. pay per click - $8.18
65. personal domain name - $10.26
66. project management software - $10.80
67. quicken - $3.46
68. quick money - $3.32
69. register domain - $9.03
70. register domain name - $8.31
71. register a website - $10.47
72. register url - $8.69
73. student credit card - $10.54
74. survey software - $9.51
75. scheduling software - $7.60
76. shopping cart software - $5.23
77. travel insurance - $6.76
78. tax software - $6.89
79. teaching degree - $12.72
80. turbo tax - $5.47
81. University Degrees Online - $10.98
82. unlimited web hosting - $8.31
83. university degrees - $5.68
84. undergraduate degree - $4.71
85. voip phone system - $9.57
86. visa credit card - $11.83
87. voip billing software - $8.21
88. virus protection - $5.58
89. website domain names - $12.65
90. web domain name - $10.62
91. web host rating - $9.75
92. web site register - $13.04
93. web hosting - $13.03
94. web design software - $2.57
95. web space provider - $6.62
96. yahoo domain - $7.70
97. yellow page advertising - $6.56
98. yahoo domain name - $9.00
99. your site - $2.57
100. zire pda - $2.16
101. zenith television - $1.55

NB: The dollar values were correct at time of publication; please recheck keywords using Google’s Keyword Tool for the most up to date values.

Microsoft's latest search engine could shake things up, says regular columnist Bill Thompson

2009-06-06T11:42:00.000-07:00

Will Bing boom or be a big bust?

Bing is the latest incarnation of Microsoft's search engine

Microsoft's latest search engine could shake things up, says regular columnist Bill Thompson.

While sales of hardware may be suffering greatly it seems that the general economic gloom has not yet diminished the ambitions of the larger technology companies to give us new products and services online.

In the last few weeks we have had Wolfram Alpha offering a way to search structured data and provide results in a form suitable for further computation. We have had Google Squared promising a simple way of pulling organised data from websites into a spreadsheet style format.

Finally, a new controller-free interface for the Xbox 360 games console from Microsoft that - the company hopes - will open up gaming to the millions who are intimidated by the complexity of current controllers.

And now, after years of effort, billions of dollars worth of investment and several failed attempts, Microsoft has launched Bing, a search engine that it thinks has a chance of unseating Google and which it would like us to think of as a "decision engine".

Site seeing

The name feels a bit strange, but I suspect it will quickly become as acceptable as other odd names for network services like Spotify, Paypal or eBay.

Microsoft is going to have to work very hard to penetrate the dense forest of thorns that Google has assiduously constructed over the years to protect the Sleeping Beauty of search in her fairytale castle.

Bill Thompson

What makes a good search engine name?

Discussing Bing at the All Things Digital conference Microsoft's boss Steve Ballmer said the company wanted a name that was short, inoffensive and capable of being "verbed-up" like Xerox and Google, and it may have found one.

The Bing identity is already being rolled out across Microsoft's online properties. Live Search Maps are now Bing Maps, the search box at the top of the Windows Live homepage is now a "Bing box", and the comparison site ciao! is now "ciao! from bing".

Microsoft is also working hard to reach the technical community, and the Bing team are twittering away merrily, though on Facebook the most prominent results for a search for "bing" are Chandler from Friends and a cool ice-cream shop in Shanghai.

However, Google doesn't make much effort here either and the official google.com page has not been updated since last November, perhaps because Facebook is a closed community with its own internal search function.

The Bing home page is quite nice, with an uncluttered feel that clearly owes a lot to the Google approach to stripped down design containing a large inviting search box laid over an image of a rugged landscape.

It even advertises itself as a "beta", just so we know they are a serious Web 2.0 production.

It seems to do a decent job, and the general results were certainly not surprising compared to what Google delivers for the same query, while cool features such as having the thumbnails of results for video search play the linked content show what can be done with modern browsers and fast networks.

It also integrates data from other Microsoft offerings like the ciao! shopping community, maps from Multimap and prices from the airfare prediction site Farecast.

Google still dominates when it comes to searching online

But even if Bing gets it right and offers a solid and reliable search product the barriers to entry are enormous and its success is by no means guaranteed. We may see Steve Ballmer back again in five years to launch Microsoft's next attempt to build a Google-killer, assuming that the company still has the money to spend on such a grand project by then.

One of the problems facing Microsoft or anyone else who wants to challenge Google is that search is now much more integrated into the general online experience than it was 10 or 20 years ago.

In the early days of the web a search engine was a website, and your choice of search engine was made every time you decided to look for something, so when Google itself launched it was easy for people like me to decide to go to google.com instead of altavista.com or yahoo.com in order to look for something.

Embed and extend

The argument that changing search engine is as easy as clicking on a new URL no longer holds, because search is embedded in many different places and often users will neither be aware of which search engine is the default nor have any real idea how to change it. Search is embedded in your browser, or accessed through a widget on a website or an app on a mobile phone.

Search is now embedded in many different programs

If you use the Firefox browser then Google search is built into the toolbar as the default. It is relatively easy to choose another search provider, but few of us do, and even though Microsoft has moved quickly to provide a supported add-on to Firefox so you can use Bing to search from the toolbar, I cannot see many unskilled users going through the steps needed to make this work.

Google search is embedded in millions of websites around the internet, including the w4mp.org site for MPs staff that I manage, because it was easy, simple and free, while millions of mobile phone users are happy to default to Google search if it is provided by their handset.

This sort of integration is not limited to the web. One of the nice features of Apple's mail program, for example, is that it tries to recognise addresses in mail messages and offers a menu that lets you add a new address to your contacts list or look it up on a map. Follow the link and Google Maps opens in your browser, with no obvious way to change the default.

Bing could of course succeed not by offering a better search than Google but by making money for more people. Google's targeted advertising programmes, Adwords and Adsense, are the key to the company's success and have fuelled its growth, and if Microsoft can find ways to generate advertising income for others then it may raise Bing's profile enough to take some of Google's mindshare.

As long as Microsoft has income from software sales to subsidise its search technology then it can afford to offer advertisers better deals than Google, which needs the money they provide. The success of Windows 7 and the Azure cloud computing platform could end up mattering as much to Google as it does to Microsoft.

Make money with online global domains International

2009-05-03T10:46:00.000-07:00

Millionaires Reveal Their Top 13 Success Secrets Seeing business opportunities. The Fast Way to Riches Finally Revealed Viral Videos product ebook dvd recording internet marketing myspace google adsense making money cash online business affiliate Video money, on cash online business millionaire opportunity expert reveal Make Money Online Millionaire Marketing Secrets! Now, before I reveal how you…

Google Adsense Success StepsGoogle Adsense Success Steps

2009-04-04T08:40:00.000-07:00

Websites together & compete in a virtual world that's inevitably separated from reality, changing the traditional parameters of communication & work. However, like any business & / or employment, profitability of the project is an elementary point for ROWTH.

Thus, it isn't necessary to take to the streets in search of advertisers, but visit one of the plenty of systems of affiliates, which together sponsors & webmasters free. It is a one-of-a-kind & worthy of being exploited by small & medium sites, those who do not have the tools for advertisers in an independent & serious reliable. One of the current options, & greater security is proposal for Google, which has seen the ads on your classic engine Search hundreds of thousands of pages around the world.

Google AdSense is the solution for plenty of digital publications. The program supports Spanish-language ads, which the net our language isn't outside, as is often usual in this type of market. However, commercials in spanish do not pay as well as those in English, & sometimes scarce.

one time accepted into the (service members must meet certain terms), the user is with a simple control panel, which Performance report on advertising, noting the number of clicks & impressions made during a certain period of time. Also, enabled a payment history.AdSense sends a check to each webmaster at the end of the month, provided they have attained the maximum gain set, $ 100. Otherwise, funds is accumulated

for next month.Finally, the cab design allows AdSense size, color and

type (text, picture or both) announced, among other features. Currently allowed to display up to six blocks of advertising in a same page. Can also be established channels, such way of further publicity. The latter mode delay 48 hours to update, while the overall data

For its part, AdSense for search service for a combined Visitors to the site & a cost-effective method simultaneously, which it is beneficial to all. This method is 100% configurable for fit the design of electronic publishing that's using it .. While the navigator finds the ads on the results of their searches, the first being associated with the latter. So why go outside to find a site for advertisers

they do several times a day.> But more surprising is the AdSense for content, where the commercials are selected automatically using filters, according to the content of the page that opens. Therefore, an article on printers published in a technology show, most commercials related to printing.

web than inside the digital environment? AdSense Google is reliable, efficient, speedy & easy to install anywhere web. All that's required to benefit from this service smart advertising is traffic. Here are some alternatives to Google Adsense advertising program:

Most people know the subject know what's Google Adsense? The method of payments for commercials in text format in the content of web pages, as this method of payment per click isn't the only solution for generating revenue , then the list of alternatives to Google Adsense:

2 AdBrite 12 Chitika eMiniMalls

1 adagency1 11 Casale Media

3 Advertising.com 13 Claxon

4 AffiliateSensor 14 Clickcent

5 AllFeeds 15 Clicksor

6 AzoogleAds 16 ContextCash

7 BidClix 17 ContextClick

8 Bidvertiser 18 contextWeb

10 Burst Media 20 Enhance Interactive

9 Buds Network 19 DynamiContext

Google has announced that, beginning this week, articles hosted on Google News will be fortified by advertising

2009-03-18T04:58:00.000-07:00

You must get your own website or blog ready before you register or apply for the Google AdSense program

2009-03-11T02:07:00.000-07:00

You must get your own website or blog ready before you register or apply for the Google AdSense program. If you do not have a website, you can register a web hosting package and get a domain at Current WebHosting.com. I have one a free Webhosting.com that you can click on the following link, http://www.000webhost.com/134376.html, to get your web hosting paggae or free now.

Since, you have a website or blog is ready that you can register a Google AdSense account but their has not publicly plublished details of its, do not worry about them.You can plublish AdSense on the website or blog untill your website or blog are approved process.

online money-making schemes beware

2009-02-11T20:58:00.000-08:00

The Internet is a dangerous place at the best of times, but since Facebook started allowing adverts to appear on its interface, we have been noticing a prevalence of similar ads saying you could earn $5000 per month by using Google.

If you click on one of these ads, they link to similar pages, apparently run by different people saying the same thing, and often showing the same pictures of $5000 cheques paid out by Google. If that doesn't put you off, then the website of the so-called eMillionaire Institute (or similar) may convince you that this really is a genuine opportunity.

Using a domain name that seems to have been registered only in December 2008, it's hard to see how these people can have been making money since January 2008 (the date on one of the cheques in the photos). The website itself looks slick - with logos of major TV networks and a fancy 10-minute countdown, implying you only have ten minutes to fill in a form to start making money.

But what happens if you pay the $1.95 to order your kit that tells you how to start making your fortune? There are reports appearing on the web from people who have tried it. One says you will unwittingly be signed up to a $39.95 per month subscription fee if you don't cancel. Another reports that not only the $1.95 was taken from his credit card, but a $197 fee was also taken out at the same time and he didn't know why.

Can you really make money out of Google? Yes you can, if you become a Google Adsense affiliate? I am sticking my neck out though and suggesting that this heavily-promoted "make money from Google" scheme being advertised widely across Facebook looks like it may be more of a classic pyramid scheme. Rather than making your money out of Google itself, I hazard a guess that the money you make will come from you setting up as an affiliate of this scheme, earning commissions if you get people to sign up, and you have to spend money to advertise on Google. Hence, there is a Google connection but Google is not actually employing you.

I could be wrong, of course, but I am not taking the risk of trying to find out, and I advise anyone who sees one of these enticing ads to leave well alone. If it sounds too good to be true, it is. If anyone knows different about this scheme, feel free to let us know.

Goolge Adsense and Google Search in your Mobiel Website

2009-02-11T01:11:00.000-08:00

Google search can be found integrated on tons of sites across the Web, including this one. Now, Google is extending that functionality to the mobile Web, where publishers can now integrate Google search and earn money on the revenue generated from clicks on mobile ads.

Much like Google’s custom search for websites, the mobile version can be branded with your own logo and design to make it feel for like your property. From there, users can search the Web as well as Google’s local, image, and news content.

Google Drives Affiliate Network Users to Google Accounts

2009-02-09T22:55:00.000-08:00

Users of the Google Affiliate Network can now access the network through a regular Google account. This means uses will be able to access Google's other products like AdWords, AdSense, Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, etc. with the same log-in.

"Users who have updated to Google Accounts have the option to bookmark their new sign in page or select the link marked Already Updated? Sign in with my Google Account from the legacy sign in page," explains Product Manager Sheila Parker. "In addition, if you are already logged in to your Google Account (via another product) and navigate to either of these pages, you will be brought to your Affiliate Network dashboard (no need to enter login information again)."

For now, Google Affiliate Network users still have the option to continue using their existing log-ins. In fact, Google will not be updating the Affiliate Network Sign-in pages until all users have updated. Once a user updates their Account, they'll no longer be able to use their old Google Affiliate Network username and password.

It seems like an interesting way to get more people signed up for real Google accounts. It could prove to increase the amount of use of other Google products, as I'm sure that's the idea.

How Informative Post is Superior to Associated Content

2009-01-05T23:54:00.000-08:00

I don’t write this to brag, I write this to inform my referrals, and educate others on the true blessing that Informative Post truly post is.

The superior blessings of IP to start with, is there is no guess work on what you are going to be paid for your work, so like on Associated Content you have to sit around waiting for a content producer to look over your work, and screw you on payment. IP lays it all out there for you, take it, or leave it.

IP isn’t covered with Google Adsense, or any other kinds of spammy ads. Informative Post web design isn’t ever changing, and full of glitches like Associated Content is. Everything is right up front when you log into your Informative Post account. There is no guess-work involved.

Many of IP’s “Jobs” are above AC’s average payout, and even Associated Content’s “Calls for Content”.

Informative Post is superior because each account has an “affiliate link”, Associated Content places one in your account but you get no credit what-so-ever for their sign ups. I posted about this in AC’s forum once after I received a $5 referral bonus credit. They were all shocked and amazed claiming AC had dropped that a long time ago. I guess I should have kept my mouth shut and I would have still been getting paid for it.

Douglas Brown who owns and operates IP is one of the nicest guys I’ve ever come across online. Though Associated Content has a massive staff, their support replies can take upwards to a week to receive (if you even get a reply at all, which they are famous for ignoring messages). Doug has always replied within 12 hours of contact, thus making IP superior. AC will never be able to say that, because their support is horrid. If you don’t believe me, do a test support contact, and see if your reply has anything to do with what you asked.

Informative Post is superior because they don’t run surveys, or contests with promises of prizes never handed out. Many others I’ve spoken to in the AC forums, admitted none of them ever get anything Associated Content has promised them, even simple things such as stickers.

Associated Content promotes defamation of government property, and private property with pictures of the stickers on mailboxes, and other items. It’s shocking they haven’t been slapped with a lawsuit. AC awards prizes for such things, or at least they use to. Informative Post is superior because they run no such promotion.

Yes there is two things that AC is superior over Informative Post and that is the personalized RSS feed, and webpage listing all our articles. No harm there though, I created my own, and who knows perhaps in time this will be implemented so everyone, not just me can advertise their articles.

Considering Associated Content is ran by hundreds of people, and Informative Post is ran by one, I’d have to say I’m overwhelming happy to admit that Informative Post is superior to Associated Content.

MSN adCenter's Content Ads Showing Horrible Click Through Rates?

2009-01-03T08:17:00.001-08:00

Brent Csutoras published results of his Microsoft ContentAds test by accident. I wasn't able to see all the results because he pulled them after being notified that he is not allowed to share any stats because he is in a private beta. I can tell you that I tested the ads on my personal blog and actually removed them about a week ago, due to the poor results in revenue making.

That being said, what I did see Brent post in his MSN Adcenter’s Publisher Beta vs. Google Adsense, which is now 301 redirecting to the home page. He said that the CTR (click through rate) was a fraction of what he noticed with his Google AdSense ads. I believe it was less than half, but possibly even worse.

Clearly, a publisher program that gets paid out by click and not impression, with a low CTR is not a publisher program that publishers want to participate in. MSN Content Ads is still very new and in very limited beta. I suspect it will do much better in 2009, but it appears they still have a long way to go to earn the trust of publishers and take market share from Google AdSense.

Note, if anyone has a cached copy of the post, please share it with us. :)

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

Update: I received a screen capture of the original post and posted over here. You can see that the CTR with Google AdSense was .11%, but with Microsoft Content Ads it was .01% - huge difference and it showed in the earnings.

Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: New Years 2009

2009-01-03T08:17:00.000-08:00

In this week's recap, I wish our readers and viewers a happy, healthy and prosperous 2009. Google updated the toolbar PageRank scores, but it seems like the search results both here and internationally were updated also. Live Search is using MSNBOT-Media to crawl JavaScript files. Google got hit with wildcard domain issues. Google Alerts is trigger happy. Google shows a did you mean answer for a child day care service, leading to a porn site. Google's strict image search option shows more porn than the moderate search. Danny Sullivan slaps Microsoft on their search initiatives. Microsoft's Content Ads program is doing poorly. Google AdSense is offending overweight people. Happy 2009 everyone!

Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed (note: If YouTube shows a video not found message, just refresh the page and play it again, it is a YouTube bug):

Google Experimenting With Content Ad Formats

2008-09-21T22:55:00.000-07:00

According to this release today, sent to Adsense publishers, Google is experimenting with different formats for ads. I think this is good news...

...for advertisers and publishers - anything that calls attention to the ads is helping both.

See the release below, and below that, the detail they reference:

Readers with sharp eyes will notice that on some rare occasions, your ads may appear or act slightly differently than what youre accustomed to. Rest assured that this is normal behavior that results from our efforts to improve the experience for all members of the advertising ecosystem. (You may have noticed a similar post about our search results on the official Google blog.)

One way in which we achieve this is by making continued tweaks and innovations to the user behavior and appearance of our ads. In the past, these experiments have included changes to the font styling, coloring, spacing, and other aesthetic components. More specifically, changes such as redesigned ad units and arrows to show additional ads have stemmed from these tests. The purpose of these tests is to identify changes to our product that can bring long-term benefits to our publishers, your sites visitors, and advertisers.

Before rolling out a change to our ads, we test performance for a limited number of ad impressions, which may not apply to all publishers. Although we dont notify publishers of these specific changes in order to prevent bias, we closely monitor the performance of these tests. We also welcome feedback from publishers, users, and advertisers, so feel free to drop us an email.
A fresh, new look for AdSense ads

You may have noticed that some of your ad units have started to look a little different lately " were happy to announce that, just in time for spring, weve given our standard ad units a fresh makeover. After extensive testing and research, weve found that the new formats are not only visually appealing to users, but they also perform even better for publishers and advertisers. Were in the process of rolling out this change to all ad units, and you should see that your ad units are automatically updated over the next few days. But, before you rush to make sure all of your ad units still match your site, please be assured that the fonts and colors of your ads wont be changed.

Davaosale: Trading the Dabawenyo way

2008-09-21T22:54:00.000-07:00

EVER experienced going from one house to another, or from one office to another, just to offer whatever item you want to sell? Wouldn't it be good if you will be able to sell your wares with just a click?

Davaosale.com brains Hermes Diomela, Mark Wendel dela Cruz, and Valentine Apostol encountered the same trouble back in their college days at the Ateneo de Davao University that prompted them to think of a solution.

Get updates and join Dabawenyos Kadayawan 2008 celebration

The three are best of friends in college and were all working as student assistants. Being chat addicts, they are not new to the power of the Internet in bringing messages across continents. They first tapped MiRC chat as a venue for them to go into buy-and-sell.

"Pero ang problema namin is madali mawala yung posts namin sa MiRC. Kaya we thought of another way to post our products. We came across the software PHPBB. Ito yung ginamit naming sa pag-create ng gaming website na davaosale.com," Diomela said.

Each of the three invested P700 for them to be able to buy an Internet domain worth P600 and fee for a one-year hosting worth P1,400. Davaosale.com was officially launched on March 15, 2004.

Diomela said they started inviting their chatmates and friends to visit their website, www.davaosale.com, and slowly they gained followers.

One year after their launch, davaosale.com averages at least 5,000 hits per day or 150,000 per month.

Diomela said that from the hits, they are paid by Google for their use of the American company's Adsense software. They receive about P15,000 per month from Google for using Adsense in their website.

Davaosale also earns from the premium membership fees of P500 per year. He said premium members of their website are given the priority to post their products on the website.

Majority of their income are, however, generated from banner ads. They charge monthly fee for the banner ads. Though refusing to divulge how much they averagely earn from the website, Diomela said it is just enough for them to live a decent life.

A visit at the website showed that there are a number of categories for viewers to select to depending on the items they are wanting to buy or sell. The categories range from automobile, agriculture, apartments, beauty and fragrances, books, magazines, cameras, computers and its accessories, clothing, gift items, food and wine, game consoles, health and fitness, jewelries, medical equipments, pets, toys and even human services.

Diomela said the items banned from their website are sex services, drugs, and fake items. He admitted though that some customers were still able to post fake items for sale in their website.

Website moderators are however at hand to address and delete posting of banned items.

Here's the complete list of their prohibited items:
1. Any item that is harmful to minors, obscene or otherwise objectionable.
2. Sales or promotion of certain weapons, such as firearms, ammunition, balisongs, butterfly knives, and brass knuckles.
3. Explosive device.
4. Cigarettes.
5. Illicit drugs and drug paraphernalia
6. Prescription drugs.
7. Unauthorized copies of software, music, video games, photos or other media.
8. Stolen items.
9. Endangered animals.
10. Any items used for hacking.
11. Bodies, body parts, bodily fluids.
12. Fake ID's.
13. Gambling or casino-related content.
14. Any form of prostitution, pornography, adult, or mature content.
15. Items that will aid in theft or violence.
16. Any other content that promotes illegal activity or infringes on the legal rights of others
17. Sales or promotion of beer or hard alcohol.
18. Sales or promotion of tobacco or tobacco-related products.
19. Sales or promotion of prescription drugs
20. Sales or promotion of products that are replicas or imitations of designer goods.
21. Sale of smuggled goods.

In some instances, there are customers who complain of being victimized by "scammers" who posted their wares at Davaosale.

Diomela said they usually monitor customers who are being complained about and if there is enough ground to the complaints, they are banned from the website.

Diomela, however, clarified that they are in no way involved in the transactions between Davaosale customers, thus they are not liable for anything. A disclaimer posted at their website states such.

Davaosale mostly cater to the 18-27 age brackets and middle-income earners and students.

So what's next for Davaosale? Diomela said they are planning to create another website that would cater to jobseekers and companies looking for workers. He however did not give details since they are still planning it out.

Davaosale is also printing a monthly magazine that they give to their "offline" customers. In the magazine are found the different items that being posted at the website. The magazine is by the way for free.

Diomela said many of their customers give good feedbacks and are thankful that Davaosale helped them find a safer and faster venue to sell their products. All for free, well mostly. Talk about Dabawenyo style of selling. (BOT)

AdSense For Feeds Is Now Available To All Google Publishers

2008-08-15T19:35:00.001-07:00

Google Operating System reported they are now seeing the Google AdSense for Feeds option in their AdSense account set up screen. I noted at the Search Engine Roundtable that many folks are buzzing about the new feature at several discussion forums. It appears to me that this beta offering is now open to all, if not most Google AdSense publishers.

In short, Google AdSense for Feeds allows publishers to add AdSense ads within their RSS feed distribution. In fact, Google has been making it easier for those with FeedBurner accounts to easily integrate AdSense for Feeds in their published RSS feeds. The other day, I broke the news at the Search Engine Roundtable that FeedBurner is not accepting new publishers into the FeedBurner Ad Network. A few days after that, Google pushes out the AdSense for Feeds to virtually all AdSense publishers.

Google Rolls Out Adsense for Feeds

2008-08-15T19:35:00.000-07:00

Some blog sites are reporting that Google has added the Adsense for feeds option in their Adsense accounts’ Setup menu. Checking out my Adsense account validated these reports. Right after the Adsense for Content and Adsense for Search options in the Adsense Setup menu is a new option labeled “Adsense for Feeds”. Google says it allows users to place relevant ads in feeds Google manages for them.

With the lack of official announcement yet from the Inside Adsense blog, I log-in to my Adsense account and saw the new option to create Adsense for blog feeds. Why you choose this option the Adsense account manager brings you to Adsense for feeds set-up screen. (Note: You are allowed only to set up one Adsense for Feeds ad unit) Once you’ve used up your single option, clicking on the link to Adsense for Feeds will just bring you to a blank page.

After this, you’ll be prompted to specify your blog’s url or feed url. Once you’ve done this you can start customizing your Adsense for Feed unit. However, if Google could not find a valid feed in you site, it will ask you to verify your Adsense for Feeds ad units and what its verified you can start serving your Adsense units to your blog/site’s RSS feeds.

If the system could not find a valid RSS feeds on your site, you will be asked to generate one right within your site to enable you to serve Google adsense units .

This is a welcome development for those Adsense publishers who are still earning a lot of money from their blog/sites Adsense units. While those who don’t want to go throuh the process of verifying their blog/sites will be asked to create their blog/sites’ Adsense units for Feed.

As for me, I might give this new Adsense feature a try.

Google, Yahoo Expand Ad Privacy Option; Miss Point

2008-08-11T21:44:00.002-07:00

Behavioural targeting of ads is the in-thing on the internet right now. It's when an ad company serves advertisement based on a profile they have created of you. You might have noticed something similar on Facebook, which serves future-ads based on your feedback on the current ads: it's a system that learns what to serve based on your personal interest, which is in turn based on inferences drawn from either your declared personal information ('I like this band') or your actions online ('I bought this CD').

It is obviously a grey moral area, as it involves tracking you over the internet, as well as tracking your purchase and/or behaviour as a potential or active consumer. Most of this happens unknown to us.
The practice raises privacy concerns -- how many of us know that we are under such scrutiny and surveillance? Is our privacy too much to expect while surfing the internet from our own homes?These concerns have caught the attention of the U.S. Congress and the Federal Trade Commission; steps have been taken to investigate these doings. Senator Daniel K. Inouye, in a congressional hearing expressed his concerns over behavioural targeting stating that "privacy is a treasured right, but it is also a right that seems to come under regular attack." He also added concern that people "assume they are in the privacy of their own home and that this privacy will be respected. Unfortunately, this is not always the case."

These hearings seemed to have made some impact on the ad policies of at least two major online players. Google yesterday, through a blog post titled "New enhancements on the Google content network" slipped in an opt-out option for cookies that serve both AdSense and DoubleClick ads. A cookie is what does the behavioural tracking mentioned earlier. Now that Google has acquired ad-network DoubleClick, the company will place an additional DoubleClick cookie on our browsers. This will allow advertisers to leverage Google's existing Adsense network to push more display ads. But at least now, we can opt-out of the ad-Blitzkrieg.

Yahoo, took a similar stance. This other giant in our online room will also allow you to opt-out of 'customized' ads on Yahoo.com. Yahoo already allows you to opt-out of such served ads served on third party networks.

Customized, here, is just a euphemism for behaviourial targeting.

What these announcements amount to is a skirting of the issue. How many of us will take the time to opt-out of a service? How many are even aware that there is an issue here? Do we need to click on a button, or fill a form to actively defend what should be an obvious right to privacy?

During the congressional hearing, Facebook pointed out [PDF] that "receiving information that is likely to be relevant... leads to a better online experience". The issue here is the word likely, and the steps taken to refine that likelihood. It would be an even better online experience if we had the option to opt-in to these services, rather than opt-out.

You can opt-out of Yahoo's cookies here, and Google's here.

Google to Force-Feed More Cookies

2008-08-11T21:44:00.001-07:00

Google is doubling down on cookies. I like cookies as much as the next guy; I've got a box of linzer tarts next to me as I write this. But when a company as powerful as Google starts force feeding you with tracking agents, some might see that as unpalatable.

Much of Google's revenue is based on targeted advertising based on the browsing habits of searches of its Web database. This was accomplished through its AdSense network, which places a cookie on the systems of anyone visiting a site in its AdSense network. Now, Google will place aDoubleClick cookie too, as it integrates that Web pattern tracker's network with its own. The strategy was announced in a Thursday post on The Official Google Blog:

•
•
•
•

Today we're announcing some key enhancements on the Google content network (partner sites for which we provide advertising) that will offer a better experience for users and better value for advertisers and publishers.

Some of the capabilities to be enabled "in the coming months" according to the blog include frequency capping and reporting, which allow advertisers to control the number of times a user sees a particular ad and access pertinent reports. Advertisers also will have access to "view-through" data, which helps show ad effectiveness by reporting how often people visited their sites after seeing an ad. Google also claims improved ad performance of its content network.

•
•
•
•

We are enabling this functionality by implementing a DoubleClick ad-serving cookie across the Google content network. Using the DoubleClick cookie means that DoubleClick advertisers and publishers don't have to make any changes on their websites as we continue our integration efforts and offer additional enhancements.

To be fair, Google's opt out policy permits users to choose not to accept the cookies with a single click. Personally, I don't really care if my Web patterns are tracked; I have nothing to hide. Hey, you might even benefit from being shown stuff you didn't know you needed.

Google AdSense Adds Western Union Option To Five Countries

2008-08-11T21:44:00.000-07:00

One of the most sought after payment options for Google AdSense publishers is the ability to be paid via Western Union.

Google had announced at Google Groups and WebmasterWorld that they have expanded Western Union payment to the following five countries:

* Bulgaria
* Egypt
* Lithuania
* Morocco
* Taiwan

Western Union payments are also currently available in other countries, including Argentina, Chile, China (Mainland), Colombia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines and Romania.

If you are in any of these 14 countries and would like to receive payment via Western Union, follow these instructions. You must also be set up as an "individual" publisher to qualify.

AdSensePro Ashley added that "payments will be made in US dollars, but your Western Union agent may be able to convert your payment to your local currency."

Forum discussion at Google Groups and WebmasterWorld.

Google Still Reliant On Text For Ad Placement

2008-08-08T23:24:00.003-07:00

Plenty of multimedia options exist for giving a website or blog a unique look, but when it comes to placing AdSense units, Google needs text.

The advent of universal search enables search engines to deliver more than the ten blue links of days past. When an image or video relevant to the query is available, people may see those items appear along with the usual links.

This lead to site publishers, bloggers in particular, to embrace the idea of pictures being worth a thousand words with their posts. A new post might be an image or a video, with little added to the post in the way of text, beyond the typical enthusiastic 'check this out' message.

It turns out that doing this on a site running Google's AdSense units gives the search engine problems when it tries to drop ads alongside that content. As noted on their Inside AdSense blog:Bad targeting likely means far fewer ad clicks, and less revenue, for Google and the site publisher. Despite the passage of time, Google's business model has not changed from a need for text to place advertising. It's something to keep in mind before posting one's next cute hedgehog pictures.

AdSense Ad Review Center Goes Missing For Some Google Publishers

2008-08-08T23:24:00.002-07:00

A WebmasterWorld thread reports that Ad Review Center, which helps Google AdSense publishers block advertisers, has dropped all the advertisers from showing up in the list.

But Google really did not hide all these advertisers from their publishers. It appears that based on how you actually access the Ad Review Center, you may see different options.

Russ noticed it seems to be a rendered bug of some sort. Russ had to click on the blocked tab and then re-click on the allowed tab. Once he did that, the ads showed up again.

I tried this myself and it is 100% a bug. You load up the Ad Review Center and the "Allowed" tab shows up empty. So I clicked on the "Blocked" tab and then clicked back onto the "Allowed" tab and the ads showed up again.

So this seems like a small bug that seems to be freaking out some AdSense publishers.

17 Google Tips for Web Businesses

2008-08-08T23:24:00.001-07:00

Web site owners should follow these handy tips for using Google's Analytics, AdSense, and AdWords tools.

by Jennifer L. DeLeo
Buzz up!on Yahoo!

Whether you're a first-time blogger or you've owned a Web site for many years, chances are you're not doing it just for fun. Most everyone wants to make money with their online venture, or at least gain lots of exposure. If this is the case, then you may want to opt for some Google tools to track your success.

If one of your objectives is to have a lot of eyeballs on your site, you may want to set up an account with Google Analytics, so that you can track your Web site's referrals and run traffic reports. Next, you'll likely want to choose which advertisements are relevant to your site's content by using Google AdSense. This way, you can earn money every time a visitor clicks on these ads. (Yes, real money!) Finally, Google AdWords will help you customize your ads and choose the right keywords to make your site search-friendly.

The idea of using these tools may seem a bit overwhelming at first. That's why we asked the Google experts to provide PC Magazine with a list of tips for using Analytics, AdSense, and Adwords. Study them, because they may just help your Web site grow and profit.

How Do I Convert Web Traffic Data into Revenue-Generating Opportunities?

2008-08-08T23:19:00.002-07:00

Understanding your Web site traffic will help you improve your site's revenue-generating potential by telling you what type of ads will work best on your site, as well as by offering advertisers proof that you're getting what amounts to prequalified sales leads. If you have ads on your site such as Google AdSense, AdBrite, or other off-server ads, you can set pricing and content requirements as you see fit. Be careful though about giving traffic data too freely: You don't want to compromise your users' privacy by selling their e-mail addresses (unless they provide their explicit consent), and you don't want to give away any information that might be of value to a competitor.For more on Web advertising, be sure to read What Is CPC-Based Web Advertising?

AllBusiness.com operates one of the Web's premier business sites, providing practical information and services for business professionals and growing businesses. See more at www.allbusiness.com.

Mention in-game advertising to video game fanatics and you’re likely to get one of two responses.

2008-08-08T23:19:00.001-07:00

Mention in-game advertising to video game fanatics and you’re likely to get one of two responses. The first will be bitter complaints that lament the scourge cluttering their virtual worlds. The other will be an uneasy acceptance that harbors hope the included ads will somehow make future games more affordable. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, however, in-game ads are here to stay.

Watchers like the Yankee group predict the marketplace for gaming advertisements will exceed $1b by 2012 and few companies invested in ad sales will let that pass by unattended. For several years, companies like Massive (Microsoft (MSFT)) and IGN have been working to make ads streamed to consoles an accepted reality. Publishers like EA (ERTS) and Activision (ATVI) have signed partnerships. Advertisers are lining up and anxious to see results.

Wednesday, Venture Beat reported Google (GOOG) may be gearing up to dive deeper into the market. According to the article, Google has been quietly testing “AdSense for Games” for months. Their technology, the report says, can be applied to console games, local PC titles, web-based PC titles and cell phone games. Wider spread deployment, the article suggests, could happen quickly.

At this point there is no official confirmation or news to suggest if anything is imminent. It is possible, as the article also contends, that this will remain in Google’s labs.

If a launch does happen, it would help settle questions about what Google’s been doing with the technology they acquired with the purchase of Adscape for $23m in February 2007.

For the near term, AdSense for Games is a story to watch.

At the end of June, Google expanded Adsense for video into a distribution service (Metue coverage of that deal is here).

Google Talks AdSense to Games

2008-08-08T23:08:00.004-07:00

Earlier this month, we reported that had Google launched "Lively", its own browser-based virtual world. This seems to be the search giants' initial foray into the booming gaming segment, where Google virtually had no presence.

Well, looks like that will change soon, as initial reports indicate that Google has been quietly testing its "AdSense for Games" product for months. This according to sources is an in-game advertising technology that allows it to insert video ads into games. In demos of the technology, a game character can introduce a video ad, saying something like, "And now, a word from our sponsor". Google could launch the technology fairly sometime soon, since testing has been going on for a while now. Given that Google has been working on AdSense for Games since 2007, it's unclear why they haven't yet taken the plunge into the lucrative gaming pool. The gaming pool is occupied by established players like Double Fusion, IGA Worldwide, Microsoft's Massive, MochiMedia and NeoEdge Networks. Perhaps Google is waiting for some really innovative ideas to stir up the competition.

The Yankee Group predicts the gaming ad market will be worth $971.3 million by 2011. Google's top executives know that search advertising may not last forever, and in-game advertising could become a compelling technology over time as both games and in-game ad technology become more and more engaging.

Avoiding These Mistakes with Adsense

2008-08-08T23:08:00.003-07:00

Don't you think it is fascinating that with so many Adsense publishers, all setting up hundreds of sites, they have absolutely no idea who their clients are? The first rule of setting up and maintaining a successful business is thorough knowledge of your client. Don't you think it is fascinating that with so many Adsense publishers, all setting up hundreds of sites, they have absolutely no idea who their clients are? The first rule of setting up and maintaining a successful business is thorough knowledge of your client.

Let's flip the coin and look at it from another angle. Google does not pay you for clicks on your site; the Adwords advertiser is forking out the money for your checks. The reason why he advertises is to sell a product or service or to drive people to his site for a subscription or whatever reason. He is doing it to gain a business advantage.

The question here is: Are you giving him an advantage or are you just costing him money?

You have heard "˜Adsense is dead' or "˜there is not so much money to be made from Adsense as in the past'. Most Adsense publishers think they have to set up a few more sites which will make up for the lost income. Dead wrong.

The reason for the downward spiral in Adsense income originates from untargeted ads on web pages. Most people would love to place the blame at the doorstep of Google, but this is not the case. The problem lies with the publishing of thousands of websites solely intended to get clicks, thus optimized for the search engine and not giving a second thought to the advertiser from Adwords.

The result from the misuse of Adsense is obvious. In most of the current Adwords information products one of the first warnings you are given when placing adwords ads is to remove the link to advertise on the content network. The reason is simple; the ads appear on untargeted pages leading to untargeted customers. This is a waste of the advertiser's money and a direct loss of income for the Adsense publisher. All the serious Adwords advertisers are not advertising on the content network, which in turn leads to less competition. The cost per click on a content page is far less that the cost on a generic page search.

Adwords and Adsense will never die and is and will remain one of the top income earners for many internet marketers.

So what now? The answer lies in improved sites with quality content. Play with the search engine not against it. If you want to compete with a search engine start your own. Not impossible, Google did it and succeeded.

So what exactly is improved content?

The keywords you are optimizing for should relate to your web content and add value for the visitor. This does not mean you have to write one thousand word pages all on your own. One to two hundred words per page will be fine as long as it answers the question or part of the question that the visitor was searching for with the search term. From there on the page can lead to Adsense ads and a click on the link will be a targeted visitor for the advertiser.

You also do not need to write each page yourself, you can still use PLR content and articles for your sites just make sure that the main question that the visitor would have when searching for that term is answered and lead them further to more specific information through Adsense ads.

Can you imagine the joy on your face when receiving a five figure check from Adsense, and think of the joy you would place on the face of the Adwords advertiser also receiving a five figure payday?

Once you have your site set up correctly there are a few elements that you need to give attention to. The truth about Adsense placement is that there is a trick to it. For high CTR your ad placement must be highly optimized.

I have seen this myself in testing different Adsense placement methods. One placement for all does not work. On certain pages it would be higher up and on others it would be lower down.

It is all dependent on the content of the page and the question you should ask yourself is at which point in the content is the visitor the most likely to want more specific information. If you write your content yourself you should write it in such a way that you give information and then raise curiosity, and it is at that point where your ad should appear for the first time. By utilizing this method and keeping your content targeted you will receive many clicks and your Adwords advertiser will receive the targeted visitors he wants.

Are you beginning to see how important it is to get the content and your ads right Now, let me ask you this: Are you one of the Adsense publishers who are costing advertiser's money or are you one that actually help make advertisers money?

Click Fraud Index reports biggest surge of botnet-generated pay-per-click fraud to date in the second quarter

2008-08-08T23:08:00.002-07:00

JULY 28, 2008 | First the good news: Click fraud dropped ever-so slightly last quarter, from 16.3 percent to 16.2 percent. But the bad news is that botnets were the force behind over 25 percent of all click fraud traffic in the second quarter, according to the latest numbers on pay-per-click fraud reported in the Click Fraud Index.

The numbers -- logged by the Click Fraud Network, a group over 4,000 online advertisers and ad agencies and reported by Click Forensics -- also revealed a slight decrease in the average number of fraudulent pay-per-click ads found in search engines such as Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher Network. The average for the second quarter was 27.6 percent, down from 27.8 percent in the first quarter.

But the big red flag in the report was the increasingly automated nature of click fraud, with botnets pumping out an average of one fourth of all such fraud in the second quarter. "Although click fraud rates were relatively unchanged in the second quarter, we found that the methods used to commit click fraud have become increasingly more sophisticated and difficult to detect," said Tom Cuthbert, president of Click Forensics. "The threat from botnets is the biggest concern as they have grown to cause over one quarter of all click fraud. Online advertisers should be extra vigilant in watching for traffic from botnets in their search marketing campaigns."

Danny McPherson, director of security research for Arbor Networks, says he's not surprised by the latest botnet numbers. "I know many of the core content folks are quite concerned with bits and click fraud, and suspect there is a great deal more abuse there then folks actually realize...it's extremely hard to detect if done right." McPherson says.

Meanwhile, China, Russia, and France were the main hotspots for orchestrating click fraud outside of North America, according to the Click Fraud Index, with 4.3 percent coming from China, 3.5 percent from Russia, and 3.2 percent from France.

Will Google's Knol be a force for evil?

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

If you missed the recent news it appears that Google has gone, in effect, head to head with Wikipedia, but with differences.

These differences are that Google’s new online encyclopedia, called Knol (derived from the phrase “unit of knowledge”), has a focus on authorship (Wikipedia articles are not credited to individuals) and frames the articles with Adsense advertisements thus “monetizing” the service. Moreover authors will get a cut of the revenue. You can find the blog post by Udi Manber, Google’s VP of Engineering, that announced the general availability of Knol here.

The logic behind Google’s move is obvious: With Wikipedia having become the pageview generating monster that it is (about 5% of search results link to its articles), and with its grass roots consensus style authorship, the opportunity to create a commercial version of the concept that gives authors ownership and revenue for their work is commercially compelling. The way editing Knol articles works is, by default, "authorized collaboration" where an author submits an article and anyone can suggest changes, but only the original author can allow those changes to be made. The alternative is "straight collaboration" where a lead author starts an article and specifically invites other people to edit the piece with the same rights she has.

Authors can choose to license their contributions under the Creative Commons Attribution License (the default), the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License, or an "All Rights Reserved" license.

All of the WYSIWYG editing tools are built-in to the Knol user interface, and by some strange marketing quirk even though you can’t yet add images or videos to articles (an incredible omission!) you can add cartoons from the archives of The New Yorker!, I find that seriously weird.

Users can search Knol’s content directly and as the articles are indexed along with the rest of the Internet, Knol content will turn up in general Google searches. Beyond searching Knol’s content, users can also write reviews of articles and rate them.

This brings up the question of whether Google will show favoritism for its own content over Wikipedia or for that matter over any other knowledge repository. It’s very early to try to analyze this and the answer is anything but clear so far. You can bet we’ll all be watching very closely for indications of evil bias.

Google's Former Product Director Joins the Board of MarketShare Partners

2008-08-08T23:08:00.000-07:00

LOS ANGELES, CA, Jul 30, 2008 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) -- Leading marketing sciences firm MarketShare Partners (MSP) officially announces the appointment of Gokul Rajaram to its board.
Rajaram joins MSP's board after nearly five years at the helm of Google's AdSense product management team. Heralded as the "godfather of Google AdSense," his extensive experience in the online advertising industry will be instrumental as MSP rolls out its breakthrough automated marketing mix and modeling tools to the marketing industry.
"My professional passion has been around optimizing marketing effectiveness and driving ROI via our efforts at Google. MarketShare Partners has created unique breakthrough tools around automated marketing mix that are unprecedented," said Gokul Rajaram. "MSP's solutions will drive massive change in the industry and I'm excited to be part of the team."
"MarketShare Partners is very pleased to have Gokul join our board," said Wes Nichols, Managing Partner of MarketShare Partners. "We became friends though our work with Google and have been impressed with his visionary perspective of where this industry is moving. He will be instrumental at helping MSP become the authority in this rapidly expanding field of marketing effectiveness."
Rajaram most recently served as Product Management Director for Google AdSense. He worked at Google from January 2003 to November 2007, helped conceive and crystallize AdSense in early 2003, and played a key role from its launch to its growth into a multi-billion dollar product line. He also helped drive a number of Google's acquisitions, including DoubleClick, AdScape, and dMarc. Earlier in his career, Rajaram worked as a technical architect at Juno Online, where he developed the back-end advertising system that drove much of Juno's revenues and helped it go public in 1999. Rajaram has an M.B.A. from MIT Sloan, a M.S. in Computer Science from UT Austin, and a BTech in Computer Science from IIT Kanpur where he received the President's Gold Medal for being Class Valedictorian.
MarketShare Partners is the leading marketing sciences firm focused on strategic models and tools that drive resource allocation optimization, marketing ROI and effectiveness. Serving global brands -- including nearly half of the Fortune 50 -- from seven locations, MSP is expert at developing dynamic and econometric models to quantify interactions between all business drivers that impact revenue -- not simply marketing or media drivers and well beyond simple media mix modeling. MSP has also developed a suite of advanced expert systems for small and medium business, media companies and marketing agencies, helping guide better decision-making through the latest in marketing science. Find out more at www.marketsharepartners.com.
Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=806531
SOURCE: MarketShare Partners

Introducing third-party ads on the Google content network

2008-06-02T22:05:00.001-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AdSense earnings can help you and others too

2008-06-02T22:03:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adsense Secrets: Getting More Clicks on Your Ads

2008-06-02T05:17:00.000-07:00

More CTR (Click Thru Ratio) means more clicks on your Google Ads. But, is CTR all about position and colors of your ads? No! It's a lot more than that. CTR also depends upon the quality of traffic, relevancy of ads, and even the subject of your website. Let's get in detail:

Do you own a High CTR website?

Yes! CTR varies from Industry to industry too. It depends upon the keywords you are using to make your web page. It has been observed that more technical the topic is (but not necessarily) less CTR it will give you (for example Search Engine Optimization, Affiliate Network - exceptions are always there), but still works if the Ad content is well written.

However, this is only one condition; there are many undiscovered conditions that affect the CTR of keywords. At times, a particular season also has an effect on the performance of keywords. For example family of 'Turkey recipe' keyword is more active around November and December only and a quite sluggish rest of the year. It becomes really necessary to study the behavior of keywords before starting a massive website of Adsense around a topic.

Your Ad Position and Color: Old, but very effective

Google heat map helps improve the CTR (Clicks Thru Ratio) of your website by suggesting you the most converting areas for your Adsense Ads. You can have a glance at the Google's Survey that illustrates the ideal placements of ads on your web page.
https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html#17954

https://www.google.com/support/adsense
/bin/static.py?page=tips.html#17954

Darker the area, better will be the performance of your ads. Your visitor tends to click on these darker areas more often than the other areas of the web page. Ads placed near rich content usually do well because users are focused on those areas of your web page. For example, on pages where users are typically focused on reading an article, ads placed directly below the concluding part of high quality content tend to perform well, as the visitors are left with no other choice except clicking the Ad block.

Get Targeted Traffic - The Most Essential Part

Traffic that is interested in your content (also called targeted traffic) is interested in your ads too. Thus, there is every likelihood that your ads will be clicked more frequently. Targeted traffic means more CTR, more earnings, and enhanced ad convertibility. On the other hand, the untargeted visitors are not interested either in your content or your ads, so keep your website's traffic targeted.

You can gather highly targeted traffic for your website by web promotion strategy and effective optimization of your web page structure. Effective web promotion strategy requires an appropriate Anchor text and more back links from relevant websites. And, to develop an effective web page structure, you have to optimize your Title Text, internal linking of your website, and most importantly your web content, in the best possible manner.

Choose the Right Anchor Text for Back Link Campaigns

Choosing the right anchor text for back links promotes your website to the traffic you exactly need from the search engines. Choose the Anchor text that directly speaks to your visitors and pulls the traffic that your web page requires. Targeted traffic results in increased CTR of ads. It helps promote your website to that segment of traffic, which is precisely searching for your content (or you can say the traffic that is most profitable to you). Targeting irrelevant keyword reduces your CTR by gathering the traffic which is not interested in your content or ads.

Wisely Choose the Title Text of Your Web Page

Title text of your webpage appears in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) as the Title link to your web page. Therefore, it is the title Text that directly speaks to the surfer on SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) about your content's theme. It acts like a Free Advertisement Link to your website. If your title text does not interest the surfer, you lose considerable amount of much-needed traffic. Figure out a Title text that directly communicates with your potential visitors, brings targeted traffic, and enhances the CTR of your AdSense Ads. Don't overdo your title text, and use less than ten keywords in your title text.

Help Google Detect the Theme of Your Web Page

There are many on-page and off-page elements that affect your ad relevancy. Better targeted ads increase both your CTR and EPC. Here is how to optimize your ads:

Meta Tags

If there is NO CONTENT on your web page, the Google Mediabot will consider the Meta Tags while displaying ads. Meta tags have a considerable affect on the relevancy of your ads. It is advised never to leave this space empty. Also, try to make it as easy as possible for Mediabot to understand the theme of your web page.

Title Text

Google Mediabot gives good weightage to the keywords used in the Title text, which in turn gets reflected in your ads. Choose effective keywords for your Title text. Even the order of words in a keyword can affect the ads that are appearing on your web page. So, choose your keywords wisely.

Headings

Google Mediabot gives importance to the Heading text enclosed in

Boost Relevancy Artificially - Use Google's Section Targeting

Now, you can enhance Ad relevancy by using Google's Section targeting. Using this technique you can advise Google mediabot about the areas of your content which should be considered or ignored while matching the Ads with your content.

For more information on the same topic, visit:
https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=23168&topic=371

For more information on the same topic, visit:
https://www.google.com/support/adsense
/bin/answer.py?answer=23168&topic=371

Use Channels for Analyzing Your Ads' Performance

Try to relate your traffic logs with your CTR stats. You will get to know which Traffic source is giving you what CTR. This will help you recognize the traffic segment which is most converting for your website. Channels allow you to analyze your ads' performance, so that you can pin point the changes that your website needs to boost your AdSense income. There are two types of channels available - URL Channels and Custom Channels. You can use the URL channel to track your performance, without modifying your Ad code. Through URL channels, you can analyze the performance of individual page or a group of pages, based on the directory system of your website.

Custom channels can help you measure the performance of different Ad formats presented in your web pages. And, by pasting channel-specific ad code into your pages, you can track CTR, Impressions, number of clicks each individual ad format is generating, and compare its performance with other web pages.

Block Junk Websites and Competitor Websites from Showing Ads

There are many junk websites that might be displaying ads on your website. These websites steal the traffic from your website and recycle it on their own Adsense ad blocks. Recognize such websites and stick them in Adsense Competitive Ad filter. Also, you can block your competitor websites using this competitive filter.

This trick can sometimes double or triple your Adsense income, augment user experience, and makes look your Google ads more genuine. For more information about this tool, visit:
https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=21593&ctx=sibling

This trick can sometimes double or triple your Adsense income, augment user experience, and makes look your Google ads more genuine. For more information about this tool, visit:

https://www.google.com/support/adsense
/bin/answer.py?answer=21593&ctx=sibling

Improving Your Conversion Reduces the Need to Constantly Promote Your Sites

2008-06-02T05:13:00.000-07:00

I just got off the phone with Michael Fortin, one of the top copywriters and conversion experts on the web.

We were doing a teleseminar for our members on conversion and testing for website owners wanting more out of the traffic they already enjoy, rather than constantly having to promote their sites to support low conversion rates. Specifically, we were talking about all the things you can do to test different "calls to action."

A call to action is anything you are trying to get people to do on any particular site or page of a site. It could be buying a product or service, getting people on an announcement list or newsletter, or getting people to click on your advertising links.

Most web publishers are so happy when they finally have a site up that they consider their work done and get right to marketing it. Once the traffic rolls in, they enjoy whatever sales or clicks they get and try to make more money by driving MORE traffic to the site.

Then they start building another site. And another. And another.

This is a disturbing trend that is creating a massive amount of waste. Both in resources and time. Especially when it comes to niche publishers who are building massive networks of sites on different topics in order to capture emails, generate advertising revenue, sell affiliated products and services, or to build their lists to generate backend sales to their subscribers.

The waste is generated when people are in too big a hurry to build more sites, add more products, and get more traffic to sites that can convert sometimes 1000% BETTER than they do now.

They are moving at a hectic pace, in this scenario, to build build build, when their income goals can most often easily be met without so much waste.

One example of waste is when someone builds a content-dry site that has nothing but Adsense and some links on it. People hit that kind of site and can't wait to find a reason to leave. The thinking is, "Great! My 'click thru ratio' is sky high! I am getting almost everyone to click on my ads!"

But here's what's happening in reality: you are working VERY hard to get traffic to such a site, only to "burn" it on a 35 cent click! No email capture, no followup, and most importantly no desire on the part of the visitor to EVER see your site again!

Would you rather have someone come through your site and click immediately on an advertiser's link, never to return? Or would you rather have someone come to your site, read some great content, sign up for your list and not click on ANY links that first time?

I will take scenario #2 any day of the week. And I won't have made a single penny off of that person with that initial action. But I will in the future!

If you have a site that you constantly test and tweak for performance (beyond its ability to repulse your visitors into clicking on an advertisement just to get to a QUALITY site) then you have a real business.

You can test and track SO MANY variables to make a site more profitable than it is now. Every site on the web can perform better than it does right now. Every single one!

The people who understand this never stop testing their calls to action to get their visitors to do more than something that results in a one-time action.

Traffic is the most expensive thing on the web both in the time it takes to get it and the resources you have to use up for each and every hit.

The traffic you have now might be all the traffic you EVER need on a daily basis to make a killing with your site. You will never know until you test and track everything about your site.

The headlines, the offers, the opt-in forms, the guarantees, testimonials, bullets, adsense placement, followup... In short, every webmaster on the net has a lot of work to do on every site they own if they really want to reap the kinds of profits their sites are actually capable of pulling in.

Most people get a site up and are happy with the sales or clicks they get and move on. NO! You are leaving so much money on the table thinking you are done with a site right after you put it up.

That site is the worst it should ever be! Wasting another domain fee, hosting fee, bandwidth and the costs associated with getting traffic to a brand new site before you have optimized your current site for the very best conversion it can pull is NOT good business practice.

I know people who have literally thousands of domains. And one thing I can guarantee you is this: They are making a pittance, even if they are making $60,000 a DAY, in comparison to what they COULD be making with far fewer sites and more testing and tweaking of that smaller group!

And Fortin seems to agree. He is going to be at my seminar in New Orleans September 9th - 11th, 2005 to expose everyone who attends to just how much money they have left on the table over the years because they have never tested different aspects of their calls to action.

It is enlightening, as well as depressing to find out how much money you COULD have made all this time had you tested from the beginning!

But the point is, you cannot go back to get all those lost subscribers, sales, or clicks. You can only start testing today to capture more money from each site you own. Thereby alleviating the need to have a massive network of sites all performing at half their potential or much less!

About the author:
Jack Humphrey is Managing Partner at Content Desk. He is also the author of Power Linking 2005, now in its 4th edition. http://www.power-linking-profits.comTo learn more about the profitable niche publishing industry, check out http://contentdesk.com/mardigras

Article Marketing 101: A Cost-Effective Method of Business Advertising

2008-05-30T22:38:00.003-07:00

Most of what you know about a business, a brand, a service or a product will come to you via a method called article marketing. Although it is currently one of buzzwords in the online business industry, it's actually been used for a long time. In fact, its use goes as far back as the advent of mass printing. So what is it exactly and how does it impact a business?

What is article marketing? At its core, article marketing is actually advertising, a means to promote something related to a business or brand. It comes in the form of a short article, which can contain news, an explanation, directions, clarifications or any relevant information about the product or service being promoted. Articles can appear in all types of media, more commonly in print and online.

Materials used in article marketing are distributed and published for free.

How is it used? Article marketing is often used in conjunction with an advertising campaign. Notice how write-ups in related subjects often appear in newspapers or on websites each time a company or brand is launching something?

A company producing cocoa powder, for example, will come up with articles discussing the different types of cocoa and how best to use them for cooking or baking. A car company can publish or post write-ups about road safety and vehicle maintenance prior to a promotional blitz for a new model.

Online article marketing Traditional article marketing is similar in many ways to its online counterpart. However, there are also several differences, many of which are considered beneficial by business owners. Some of these are:

Keyword relevance People who use the Internet look for information in a different way. In traditional media, promotional materials have to catch the viewer's eyes. In online marketing, an article can appear solo on a web page and have all the attention of the visitor.

In online article marketing, a write-up has to be search engine optimized, containing the necessary keywords that will help it appear high on search engine listings. As such, articles become highly targeted promotional materials, able to hone in on the relevant market – the kind that will be interested enough to buy, subscribe or participate.

It can go viral. Online article marketing allows limitless access and use of articles. Visitors can flag them, share them, vote for them or interact by leaving comments. If the article impresses a visitor, he or she can even promote it to others, thus spreading the word about the business without the owner having to pay extra.

Articles also get spread online a lot faster and can reach more people than traditional methods. It's quite possible, for example, that a write-up posted today can reach thousands within 24 hours and millions within two to three days.

Online article marketing is free. There's no need to pay for a half-page ad or a 15-second spot on TV. Articles may be sent to an article database or directory, a website that serves as a repository of write-ups.

Directory or database owners offset the cost of providing the site for free by charging advertisers instead. Articles are categorized so visitors easily find them.

Authors and business owners have more control. With online article marketing, the author can pretty much do what he wants to do with the write-up and how it appears on his website. He can, for example, post the article with just one single ad or post only the kind of ads that will be relevant to the article.

Article marketing continues to be a popular method for business promotions. The only disadvantage is that the method becomes overused and abused – hence, the appearance of low quality write-ups. Hopefully, with more discerning readers, article marketing will regain its respectability as a very effective means of promoting a business.

If you're looking for the best articles to populate your site with, Article Shark is where you can find articles that will suit your niche.

Make Money off Google

2008-05-30T22:38:00.001-07:00

In less than 10 years Google has become the dominant power of the internet. If someone needs to search the web for something, Google is who they trust to direct them in the right direction. Being such a powerful and innovative company, Google is also very trusted in general. They are extremely reliable and have constantly found new ways to make money in intelligent ways.

One of Google’s primary sources of income is their advertising programs. They have a program called Google AdWords that has become a necessary part of generating traffic for just about any site on the web selling a product. The way it works is that people who want to drive traffic to their webpage will bid on specific relevant keywords. When someone runs a Google search on these specific keywords, the bidder’s page will show up in the sponsored links on the results page. It is a fast way to make your webpage available to the public. The interesting thing about Google AdWords is the bidder pays-per-click, or in other words, the bidder pays only when someone click on the link leading to their page.

Another advertising program is Google AdSense. This program allows people to place ads on their webpage for other people’s services. It is a way to maximize you site’s potential income. The way it works is Google looks through a given webpage, and finds its relevant topics. It then says, “This page talks a lot about flowers (just an example). This would be a good place to put ads for site that sell flowers. ” Google AdSense then places the ads on your page and every time someone clicks on an ad on your page, you get a commission of what they pay to have the advertising there.

Now here’s the point. Google makes a ton of money off of these programs which means they can pay tons to have people promote the same programs. They want more people to use them. So here’s the little known big secret. Google Advertising has affiliate programs! Google will actually pay you to get other people to sign up for their advertising programs. This is an overlooked but powerful way to make money in the affiliate world.

Entrepreneur Kimball Roundy has developed a system that teaches you how to make money off of Google Advertising via video lessons. This system is called The SpiderWeb Marketing System and not only does it teach you how to promote Google Advertising, it does it for you through the system itself. Kimball gives this system away for free for this reason: by signing up for this Google advertising through The SpiderWeb Marketing System, he gets a commission from Google. You, the user, get to use the system for free, and then the system allows you to get other people to sign up for Google advertising under you! That means that you will start making passive income by successfully generating a downline and it’s all free! The SpiderWeb Marketing System will do everything for you. So to recap, you can make money off of Google, and now, you can do it better than everyone else.

Is Google in Trouble & Facing Bankruptcy?

2008-05-30T22:33:00.000-07:00

[NEW YORK - Wednesday] - by Devon Melk. Rumors are now running amok that the 2nd most powerful website on the entire Worldwide-Web may file BANKRUPTCY, with the deadline set for this December; being the date of both discharge and dissolution in a Federal Court of Law.

This would come as a SHOCK to investors and "Googlers" alike who both profit and benefit from the use of the World's largest and most powerful search engine which receives far in excess of 100 MILLION unique daily visitors and well over 300 million individual searches daily - making it perhaps the single most valuable public data resource as an "information bank" online the world over.

But is the rumor true or false?

The origin of the rumor occurred when some savvy Internet marketers began making statements that they had heard "insiders' talk" that the company (now publicly traded since April 30, 2004, just over 3 years ago) may face financial disaster with the release of a "new system" that would allow advertisers to get their otherwise pay-per-click (PPC) advertising completely free.

This, of course, would naturally lead directly (like a domino- effect) to the collapse of Google's sibling program AdSense; as its only revenue comes from the direct sales of AdWords "clicks."

The "new system" in question and responsible for the controversy over getting AdWords pay-per-clicks free is that developed by Dr Jon Cohen of New York City, New York (now retired) who discovered a simple, yet effective means, for getting Google PPC ads without having to suffer the costs involved.

The retired New York doctor and native has a publicly disclosed net worth now in excess of $70 million [US], having generated well over $377 million in product sales from sixteen (16) separate online businesses within just nine

(9) years since first venturing online in 1998 (about the same time as Google was founded).

It is estimated by company insiders and leading financial analysts that the

"good doctor" (as he's called by "all who know him") has purportedly saved well over $93 million (some estimates suggest closer to $136 million) in otherwise paid advertising at Google and the other major players in the PPC targeted-search arena online - including Yahoo, MSN, AskJeeves, AllTheWeb.com, HotBot, AltaVista, Lycos and Netscape, just to name a few.

The "secret" became available to the general masses last April, and its very release caused such a major sweeping stir among the community of Internet-marketers, affiliate-marketers, webmasters, ecommerce company owners and surfers alike that the site quickly rose to break the top most visited 1,000 websites on the entire planet briefly; and as can be seen here:

http://tinyurl.com/39lnjn (Alexa data on this!)

When asked if the "secret" would somehow ruin Google, Dr Cohen revealed almost cryptically that it actually would bring about just the opposite effect, and "stimulate" even more business volume for the virtual giant.

Many people were dismayed to find that Google itself is deliberately allowing the purchase of 100,000's of PPC ads offering the secret system to the general public -- which indicates to most observers that either they [Google] haven't caught it, or they simply feel that it somehow is not a threat to their continued operation.

For anyone's inspection factual and hard evidence supporting this can be seen by simply looking to the right-hand column when doing a search for

"get google ads free" (specifically in quotation marks) at Google.com under the "Sponsored Links" section.

Or take this direct and instant SHORTCUT:

http://tinyurl.com/2ctu6j

You can also see nearly 100,000 specific results in the "organic" fields index located in the center and which occupies the bulk of the results pages.

One would think that if Google felt threatened by such a release as this earth-shaking "secret" is, they would hardly allow for either paid-ads or organic content to make the top searches regarding it.

However, evidence supports to the contrary - and this being the case now for a full six (6) months.

Mysteriously, within just two (2) hours of its initial release last April, Google itself actually did in fact 'pause' the parent firm's attempts at advertising the new system using PPCs on their search engine - only, however, to release the hold after a Review Team consisting of some of Google's top executives completed performing an in-depth investigation and made the determination to ALLOW the ads to run.

The secret system was recently revised however to include "major new content" and "more exhaustive instructions," and is now available at its Home Site:

http://www.DigitalProductSearch.com/freegoogle

The most important addition is that of a so-called "string of code"

(tech-talk for some HTML) that can be added to any webpage(s) that instantly causes the elimination of the page owner's AdWords costs right away.

Even a "live" woman spokes-representative ("Rachel") has been added to the site, and who appears to literally walk out onto the webpage and talk to visitors and explain a bit more how the mysterious new breakthrough system works.

Since the addition of this new "live" spokes-woman has now appeared at the site, company Vice President of Sales & Marketing, Mr Todd Coutrin states that "sales for the system have skyrocketed above 2,430 percent suddenly and

with no limit in sight."

Coutrin continues: "With the newest revision now in place, plus all the additions added, affiliates for the new system can expect to earn even more than ever before!" (Note: Affiliates make up the bulk of the firm's sales generation.)

The refund rate for the new revised version of the secret (named V5.1) has dropped to less than half of what it was before the newer version's release; meaning it's now even more readily-received and put to use than ever before

(perhaps in large part to the newer simplicity of application) - now making it the safest and one of the best resellers for the networks of affiliate marketers who earn their revenues from the reselling of other electronic publishers' stock and digital product lines.

When asked, Google company representatives stated matter-of-factly that the rumors of bankruptcy for the ecommerce giant are simply not true, and that the rumor millings are in fact simply the result of "panics" brought on by the usual hysteria associated with anything large, new or revolutionary - or in this case, all three.

Attempts to contact both Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the former Stanford University students who founded Google in 1998, to request comment were unsuccessful.

Again, Google itself seems to be the biggest supporter of the "new system" as it's allowing more and more advertisers to promote the new system on its search engine before over 100 million daily searches and surfers.

10 Tips To Improve Google Adsense Earnings

2008-05-09T06:08:00.000-07:00

As predicted in last months MyBlogEarnings, my Adsense income has taken a bit of a hit this month as advertisers start to reduce their spend. So far this month my CTR has remained fairly constant, but my CPM has dipped by a few dollars.

I haven’t really worked on my adsense optimisation for a while, as after growing my adsense income from a few hundred dollars to over $4k in 8 months, I’d assumed that I pretty much had it cracked.

However, after this months CPM reduction I’ve added adsense optimisation to the list of things I’m going to focus on this month. Here are 10 Tips To Improve Google Adsense Earnings that have worked for me in the past, that I’m going to focus on this month to get my CPM back up for the rest of the month.

Make The Most Of Google Love

One of the common reasons bloggers don’t make a lot of money from Google Adsense is because they don’t write about topics that people are searching for answers on i.e. using Google. Just writing interesting articles isn’t going to get you a lot of clicks on ads as your readers won’t be searching for answers or certain products.

If you take a look at my top posts in the sidebar you will see that most of the posts are giving tips, or useful links for services, or are product reviews i.e. posts that get lots of Google love which sends lots of click happy people through to my site. If you post more articles of this ilk your adsense earnings will increase. These articles are also timeless and will continue to get Google traffic long after my regular readers have moved onto newer material.

To maximise your Google traffic don’t forget the basics like making sure your post titles are clear and that your first paragraph clearly explains what the post is about, so that even if you are not the top result you have increased your chances of being clicked on. Take a look at my top posts - every one of the post titles makes it clear what the post is about, which is why they do well on Google.

Smart Pricing - Less Is Better

I’m stunned by how many blogs haven’t factored in Google Adsense Smart pricing into their site design. If you haven’t come across Adsense Smart Pricing before, then in one sentence this is where Google looks at your site’s overall CTR and if it’s low then it will display lower value ads and if it’s high it will display higher value ads.

So, for many sites a quick way to improve earnings is to actually display fewer ads i.e. to remove poorly performing ad units like sidebar ads, or ads that are below the fold etc. This will increase your site’s average CTR, which will make Google display higher value ads in your better performing spaces which will raise your overall earnings.

Smart Pricing works across your Adsense account, not just on a site by site basis. So, if you are displaying a significant number of Adsense ads on other sites that have a poor CTR then you should remove them as your main sites will benefit.

If You’re Going To Place Ads Put In Best Spots - Don’t Kop Out

In my view, if you are going to run ads on your site then it doesn’t make sense to do it half-heartedly i.e not put your ads in the best slots. If you do you’ll never get to see the full benefits - if you’re going to do something in my view, then do it right!

This heatmap shows where the best positions for Google Adsense Ads are.

Blend Your Adsense Units

Following on from the previous tip, again if you are going to add Adsense ads to your site then again I think you should make sure that they are fully optimised. The best way of doing this is to blend the ads into your site by making sure that the text and link colours match.

To maximise CTR you should also wrap text around your ads. Many sites have tried placing ads above text or even before articles, but in my opinion this is a bad move, as all it does is encourage readers to ‘jump’ past your ads straight to the content.

Get A Good Stats Package

One of the difficulties with Google Adsense as it’s virtually impossible to see for certain which posts have a high CTR. But, if you have a good stats package then at least you can see which of your posts are popular so that you can try and write more of the same to further grow your traffic.

How to Test Google AdSense Ads (and Improve Your Revenue)

2008-05-09T06:07:00.001-07:00

Improve your revenue from Google AdSense ads by using this simple PHP code to test your ads and identify the ones that pay better. You could run one ad format for a week, then run the second format and compare results. Better yet, test formats simultaneously and start getting side-by-side results to compare the same day.

Lots of articles suggest trying out different types and formats for your ads. Then they say you will figure out the format, size and placement that gives you a better click-thru rate and increased revenue. That's all very nice. But, because of all the ways you can vary your ads (different sizes, shapes, locations on your page, link colors, text, border colors, etc.), this can be a long process. That is why I wrote this.

This site recommends Google AdSense for targeted ads This article is written specifically for Google AdSense ads. You might be able to modify it for other types of ads. Because ad providers and their code is always changing, this article is about Google AdSense only, but the general concepts might apply to other advertisers.

The Ad Testing Code

Google lets you vary many settings including colors of links, borders, text, backgrounds, plus ad sizes and shapes. Modify the default Google AdSense ad format and you are likely to increase your earnings.

In our example, we test an ad without a border against an ad with a border. This page has a white background, so “no border” means the color of the border is set to white. I wrote this code to test ads and found that ads without a border had better click-thru rates than ads with a border.

Take a quick look at the two ads formats we are evaluating in our coding example before we get too deep into the explanation. Only the border color is different. Everything else remains the same so we do not confuse and confound the test. (The channel ID assigned by AdSense changes, but that is not part of the appearance of the ad.) You could easily vary some other setting for your own purposes.

Building the Ad Testing Code

Log into your AdSense account and create 2 custom channels for your site. One channel is for each format you are going to test. (Adsense help explains how to set up custom channels.)

In the PHP code on your site, generate a random number of 0 or 1. We use this number to serve up one of two AdSense ads.

srand(time());
$random = (rand()%2);
?>

In your AdSense account, generate the AdSense code for the first channel. Our first channel has no (a white) border. Paste it in to your PHP code. Then, back in AdSense, generate the code for your second channel, selecting the appropriate custom channel and setting the border color. You will build something like the following:

To make it easy to see below, the border color we are varying is in bold text.

if($random == 1)
//test with white border (no border)
{
?>

}
else
//test blue border around ads
{
?>

}
?>

Let the ads run. In your reports you will see roughly equal numbers of each ad being served up. When you determine which format is better, try changing another setting to see what will give you even better click-thrus and revenue.

Download the code source (adtest.txt)

View page with both ads showing so you can see the differences.

Notes About Testing AdSense Ad Formats

Just like we tested two different border colors, we could have varied another setting. For example, if you want to see whether black link titles perform better than blue, set one color:

google_color_link = "003366";

and a second color:

google_color_link = "000000";

You can run a more complex test, with, say, three options for a single variable. Modify the random number generating portion of the code to generate a 0, 1 or 2. You should test only one variable at a time (holding all other variables constant). If you test too many variables, you do not know what is performing better.

When you get more comfortable with custom channels and with testing various ad formats, you can get more sophisticated with your tests and how you use my little PHP script.

AdSense’s Terms and Conditions require “not modifying the JavaScript or other programming provided to You by Google in any way.” The above ad test does not modify Google’s code. We are simply randomly serving up one of two scripts. When you look at the HTML source for each format that PHP generates, the scripts are exactly what AdSense generates. We have not modified Google JavaScript or programming in any way.

Mobile Advertising Click Through Rates of 5%, 12%, 25% and 29%?

2008-02-27T05:58:00.000-08:00

I am not the only one who finds the recent high profile comments about Click through Rates hard to swallow.
It started with Vodafone’s Ray de Silva quoting 25% at Mobile Advertising and Marketing Forum in London in January.
Then, at the MoMo Peer Awards Blyk’s CEO quoted 29%. Both Vodafone and Blyk have not shown any proof about this and they do sound like figures pulled out of that hat.
I spoke candidly to AdMob about the “reality” of these figures and there was agreement that these figures can only come out of very controlled circumstances or campaigns managed within a week or month. These are not the industry standard for on-going mobile advertising services.

As a market leader AdMob says that its click through rate on average is about 10 to 15% - which is impressive and on top of that realistic. But quoting figures as high as 29% is doing little that building up home for mobile advertisers in the market.
I would actually go so far as to say it’s like a “please advertise with me” number that sounds appealing but without justification or signing up – one will never know.
We know mobile advertising is a growing market. But quoting figures without substance is a bad move.
If you look at the chart above it’s from a campaign that I ran with AdMob. I made the same charts in more detail for campaigns run with Decktrade, Google and JumpTap and others.
By using examples of bkimedia.zinadoo.mobi and gomonews.mobi in campaigns run over 2 weeks I managed to track to see what campaigns were more effective by terms of cost and click through over each vendor. If you would like to know more, then contact me – but in the diagram above over two days the sheer volume of impressions on AdMob drove down the click-through vs cost ratio. The above is only a very small example and the click through rate for the campaign was about 2% - but then the cost of the campaign was also only pennies.
Finding a rational between cost vs click through vs impressions is the first step that companies need to take in the mobile advertising and marketing space before quoting unrealistic click through rates.

Google AdSense Expands Contextual Ad Placement Program To Small Sites

2008-02-25T20:52:00.001-08:00

Google has expanded its contextual ads program to allow many more content sites to carry its paid listings. The new Google AdSense program allows site owners to sign-up for the program in a self-serve manner, similar to becoming an Amazon affiliate.

Google's contextual ads program, Google Content-Targeted Advertising, was officially launched in March. In the program, Google negotiated deals with large web sites to integrate its paid listings into their web pages. Smaller web sites were not able to take part.

"When we rolled out content ads a couple months ago, we had set a threshold of 20 million page views per month for web sites we'd consider for the current program," said Susan Wojcicki, director of product management for Google's ad syndication programs. "We found there are huge number of very high quality web sites that did not meet that threshold."

The new AdSense program corrects this. It allows any site to apply, even those with only a few thousand page views per month.

"We built an online automated way for web sites to come to Google, sign-up and apply to be accepted into our network," Wojcicki said. "This program will be a way for web sites to earn money by putting ads on their pages."

Those accepted into the program simply insert some short JavaScript code into their web pages. In response, Google will deliver a banner or skyscraper-sized ad module filled containing paid listings.

While the program opens the doors to many more sites than before, not all will be accepted. Google will review the sites to ensure that they meet certain program policies. Among those not eligible are sites that include content about drugs, pornography or gambling.
Google Ads & Blogs

The program policies do not allow "personal pages" to take part. What's a personal page? This isn't defined. However, a traditional personal home page listing things like interests or family news certainly wouldn't be eligible. Similarly, some blogs may find themselves rejected, under this rule.

"In general, we're looking for at this stage web sites with more standardized content," Wojcicki said. "Blogs are an example of a gray area, and we will review them on a case-by-case basis to see if they fit our network."

This will be a difficult area for Google, because blogging tools aren't just used by those wishing to express personal views. Some use them simply because they are an easier way to publish a web site focused on a particular topic.

Gary Price's great search and research site, ResourceShelf, is an example of this. Gary moved to using the Blogger.com tool, now owned by Google, not out of great love to be blogging but because it was an efficient way to publish his content, he has told me in the past.

ResourceShelf is so tightly focused around a particular topic that it should be a natural for Google's program. But how about blogger Jeremy Zawodny's site?

Zawodny has a section of his blog archives that are specifically about Linux, which might be perfect for ads about Linux (should he wish to carry them). However, the home page of his blog is far more diverse, such as including a post (at the moment) about determining the optimal temperature for Heineken beer. Not exactly the standardized content Google wants.

Why even care about standardized content? Google's contextual technology automatically delivers paid listings that are deemed relevant to a page, based on that page's content. So, a blog that covers a wide variety of topics may be difficult to target.

For example, the jimpunk blog is about, well, a lot of pictures that have no apparent theme to me. But since this is a site making use of the free Blogger service, it already carries Google's contextual ads. This was done as part of the initial Google rollout of its contextual program.

What are the ads about? Buying "Iraqi Most Wanted Cards." Why? There's a part of the page that flows an article across the page that appears to be about the Iraqi conflict. As best I can tell, this may be what's causing Google to make the bad guess that ads for "Most Wanted" cards might be relevant to this page.
Helping The Web, But...

Google makes the pitch that its ad program should be a boon to everyone who uses the web, since the revenue will help publishers keep making good content for users.

"From the user standpoint, this will be good. No only will it fund quality publishers to produce quality content, it will also produce a better user experience, because they'll be able to see ads that are related to the content," Wojcicki said.

An excellent recent article from Business 2.0 explores in more depth the idea of contextual ads as helping support good web content. It's an idea I buy into. When I got involved with building web sites back in 1995, I always hoped there would be a way to connect those with good content with advertisers to fund their work. Google's program certainly will help with this.

Nevertheless, one major downside remains to the expansion of Google's contextual ad program. It leaves the company even more vulnerable to accusations that it may favor sites carrying its ads in its search results, as I explained when the program first announced.

At that time, Google denied that this would happen. The company has even added a FAQ answer denying it. And Google cofounder Larry Page reemphasized this last month, when I spoke with him about the issue.

"That's not something we would ever consider doing. We wouldn't bias our search results based on the monetary relationships we have with people," he said. "It would be sort of dumb for us from an economic perspective. Let's make a little bit more money and in return get everyone in the world upset."

Google AdSense Program Review

2008-02-25T20:51:00.000-08:00

Google AdSense, Google's advertising program that lets webmasters display ads from Google's extensive list of advertisers, has taken the Internet by storm. Through this successful program, unobtrusive text-based ads are served in member sites, who then earn a commission every time someone clicks on the advertisers' links.

At this point in time, the jury is still out on whether this program will continue to enjoy its initial success. That is why, through this article, we want to give you some highlights and insights on how the Google Adsense program has worked for us, one month after we signed up for it, so that we can use it as a checkpoint for future analysis.

Generate revenue from your website. Google AdSense.

Why is Google AdSense so Popular?

Google AdSense uses Google's proprietary PageRank™ search technology to deliver ads that are highly relevant to the content of a page. Google's engine will scan through the content of the page to determine its topic, and will then serve ads that are relevant to the page's content.

Running Google AdSense is simple and straightforward: Google gives you a snippet of HTML code that you can paste in the desired location on your page, and the ads start appearing immediately after you upload the changes to your server.

However, Google AdSense's main claim to fame is that, by displaying text-based ads, it is able to deliver much higher click-through rates than traditional graphic banner ads. As usability studies have widely shown, users are already conditioned to ignore banner ads (or anything else that looks like them). As a result, banner ad click-through rates have dropped below a dismal 0.5% (in other words, it takes 200 page views, on average, to get someone to click on a banner ad).

By using text based ads instead of graphic banners, Google has been able to overcome banner ad blindness, delivering click-through rates that are much higher than the industry's average (some put the figure around the 1.5% mark).

This site recommends Google AdSense for targeted ads

How much can you expect to earn by running Google Ads on your site?

The pay-off per click varies widely depending on what each advertiser decides to offer, based on the profitability of their products and their expected conversion rate (percentage of clicks that deliver a sale). Google is not saying what the average pay-off is nor how does it share the revenue per click with their AdSense partners, but how much you will earn per click will really depends on the topic and the product being advertised. Products with profit margins of $3.00 for the advertiser will probably give you a smaller pay-off per click than a product with a $300 profit margin. Similarly, ads with high conversion rates will normally give you higher payouts than less effective ads, since they can afford to pay more dollars per click, with a portion of that money going to you.

So, just for the sake of giving an example, lets say that your site receives 1,000 page views per day. At a 1.0% click-through rate and $0.50 pay-off per click to you, in a 30-day month you can expect to make:

1,000 x 30 x 1.0% x $0.50 = $150

The more traffic your site has, the more clicks (and the larger the pay-off) you will get.

Will Google's AdSense continue to be successful?

This is the big question, and nobody has a definite answer yet.

On the downside:

The program will most likely face strong competition from other search engines in the near future.
The proliferation of text based ads could make users "text-ad blind" the same way as they have already become "banner-ad blind", causing click-through rates to drop.
There is always the potential for abuse, since some unscrupulous program members may violate the program's rules and click on their own ads, inflating the advertisers' click-through rate and forcing them to decrease their pay-off per click.

On the positive side, I believe that Google AdSense's success is not only due to the fact that they deliver text based ads instead of banners, but because those ads are served by Google. The credibility and brand equity that Google enjoys is huge, and I expect them to continue to beat other search engines and advertising networks that may eventually jump on the bandwagon.

However, it is reasonable to expect at least a slight decrease in click-through rates and pay-off as a result of the increased competition.

For tips and tricks on how to maximize the return of your AdSense program, you can read The Definitive Guide to Google AdSense, by William Charlwood, the complete step by step road map for making and maximising your income from Google's AdSense program.

Introducing Google AdSense

2008-02-25T20:50:00.000-08:00

A few months ago, Google began distribution of the AdWords advertisements that are normally found at the right side of their search results (for more on AdWords, see http://adwords.google.com). This distribution was based on CPM rates, and was limited to sites that served more than 20 million impressions a month, along with ad networks like Burst!Media, TribalFusion, and Fastclick.

Last week, Google launched a new service called AdSense, which expanded on this distribution program and made it more accessible to smaller publishers.

This new program differs from what is now “AdSense Premium”, in that it is CPC based and, for the time being, offers less flexibility in terms of ad sizes -- only banners and skyscrapers are currently available. Publishers can apply using their existing AdWords accounts, or may request a new account. Applicants are usually notified within a day as to whether they’ve been accepted for the program.

There are no strict criteria for acceptance into the AdSense program, which, unlike other ad networks, does not place minimum traffic requirements on applicants. The only real criteria are the standard “acceptable content” requirements that exist just about everywhere. Of course, AdSense wants to attract quality content sites, and will only allow AdSense members to serve one ad per page – the service can’t be used for both banners and skyscrapers.

Once you’ve been accepted, you’ll be able to run AdSense advertisements on any site you own using the same ad code, provided you obey the guidelines. Reporting doesn’t occur in real time, but is updated regularly throughout the day. Currently, you cannot view reports based on a domain or site basis if you run the ads on more than one site. Google has published a very lengthy and detailed FAQ on the AdSense site, and if you’re thinking about signing up, you should definitely read it.
How Does The Targeting Work?

Google uses its search engine ranking technology to decide which ads to show on your site, and on specific pages of your site. For instance, on a Webmaster site, an article about Flash might be accompanied by an ad for Macromedia products, while an article about Web hosting might show an ad from a hosting company. This type of targeting is very effective, and results in good click-through rates in most circumstances.

However, this type of targeting isn’t perfect. One key issue with the system is that Google seems to be doing very little in the way of ad rotation. If a certain ad is highly targeted to your content, it might be shown every time. This means that if you attract a large number of return visitors, or generate a high number of page views per visitor, you may experience declining click-through rates on the ads over time.

Another issue is that Google targets the ads based on your site’s content, not your visitor’s desires. The difference between the two might not be readily apparent, but it can have a significant impact on clickthrough rates.

For instance, I run a literature site that provides information on classic books and authors. Google will analyze my content and serve advertisements they see as being appropriate. For instance, on my Shakespeare page users may see ads for Shakespeare audio books or limited edition prints. The problem with this is that while those ads fit my content, they do not fit my visitors. Most of my visitors are students doing research and they simply aren’t interested in buying those types of products. In contrast, advertisements for essay or other homework assistance services do very well on that site. But unless an essay site owner specifically selects a keyword like “Shakespeare” in their AdWords account, visitors to my site will not see any essay advertisements.

In pondering this situation I was reminded of a company called TeknoSurf Adwave, who eventually turned into Advertising.com. Their original claim to fame was that they were a CPC-only ad network. Yet they took the time to identify the banners that performed well on each site, and optimize the ads they served. This proved very successful – members enjoyed clickthrough rates high enough to generate an effective CPM. Indeed, the company’s figures were usually comparable to, or better than, the CPM rates offered by many other ad networks.

If Google could implement a similar system, it could greatly increase the effectiveness of their AdSense program. However, a hurdle to implementing this kind of system is that, currently, AdWords advertisers specifically select keywords under which they want ads to be served. For Google to implement TeknoSurf-style targeting, it would have to allow AdWords advertisers to opt into a program in which Google could place ads on the basis of what had been proven as the most effective keywords for that advertiser’s product.

In this situation, if an advertiser served essay advertisements based on the “Shakespeare” keyword, and those ads did very well on my site, Google would remember this. The system would automatically compare the text of that ad to the text of other AdWords ads, it would run similar ads on my site, and it would track the results to see how they ads performed. In this way, Google would constantly be learning what types of ads performed well on members’ sites and what ads didn’t. After publishers had used the service for a while, the program would be able to serve ads that were tailored to publisher sites’ visitors, rather than their content. Thus, CTR rates would improve, both Google and the publishers would make more money, and the advertisers would attract more targeted traffic.
How Much Can You Make?

The amount of money you can make with Google AdSense depends entirely upon the niche your Website fills. For instance, a site about men’s health can make a killing on AdSense because of the high level of competition for related keywords. The CPC rates for competitive keywords can exceed $1, which translates directly to your site’s earning potential within the program. Of course, if you’re in a less competitive niche, you’ll make less money. Still, I haven’t seen anyone report earnings less than an effective $1 CPM, and the average seems to be more along the lines of $4-$5 CPM. Some people are making an effective CPM of $15 or more with this program. And all these figures reflect what the site owner receives after Google takes its commission.

Commission is definitely one thing is that’s up in the air with AdSense. Google doesn’t publish the percentage it takes as a “cut”, and only displays the publisher’s cut in member reports. So far, comparisons of AdWords rates with AdSense earnings have produced commission estimates between 40% and 60%. Why Google refuses to publish its commission rates is unknown. It could be for legal reasons arising from the contracts the business has with premium distribution partners, or it could simply be that Google wants the ability to change rates without having to explicitly announce those changes.

So far, most members report steady declines in earnings each day. This could be a result of the issues I mentioned above, including the lack of ad rotation. However, Google will likely implement changes to increase the program’s effectiveness in future, so this phenomenon is likely to be temporary.
Looking to the Future

Currently, the online ad market is in a fairly dismal state. Though it has recovered somewhat from lows experienced after the collapse in 1999, Web advertising is still very much a buyer’s market. This is not because online advertising doesn’t work – it’s because people either do not understand how it works, or don’t know how to make it work.

One other reason is that advertising has traditionally been the realm of big publishers and big companies. Ad networks have changed this structure, and allow small publishers to display ads from big companies. However, due to the large minimum buys imposed by ad networks, most small companies have been limited to PPC search engine advertising. Google AdSense takes the PPC search engine model and allows small publishers to benefit from it. Now, for the first time, small companies can easily advertise with small publishers.

The implications of this are far-reaching. Currently, many advertisers will design low-CTR banners and pay CPC rates on them, or design high-CTR banners and pay low CPM rates on them. The end result is that the advertiser enjoys the benefits of either cheap branding or cheap traffic, and the publisher earns much less than they should. With AdSense, many publishers will likely end up abandoning low-paying ad networks, as AdSense ads are more lucrative and less annoying to visitors. This means that ad networks may end up with less available inventory and they will either fail, or end up having to charge more in order to compete with AdSense. Eventually, it’s likely that advertisers will be forced to pay a premium to run graphic advertisements that are more intrusive than the simple text ads Google offers.

Google generally has the public’s goodwill, and as these ads are provided by Google (and are clearly marked as such), the public will likely be more accepting of the advertisements. The current anti-ad attitude that pervades many aspects of society may be lessened by these types of ads.

All in all, Google’s new program is good for publishers and the Internet advertising industry as a whole. Even if you choose not to run Google’s ads, the ripple effect of their introduction may mean higher rates for the ads you do choose to run.

Google AdSense Expands Contextual Ad Placement Program To Small Sites

2008-02-25T20:49:00.001-08:00

Directory submission helps your website exposure.

2008-02-25T20:48:00.000-08:00

Your website can be on top and even reach the rank that you’ve wanted, by promoting it into different directories, to get listed into search engines.

Many webmaster in today’s market are doing different tricks just to be on top, they we’re doing this to get listed on different Search Engines. As a marketer you have to be aware on what are the different strategies to keep your website on top on different search engines. You have to familiarize what are the things that can help you to reach the top and get your targeted keywords.

So why does submitting your website into directories can help your website rankings? As a webmaster you must know the importance of search engines, and you can only achieve the good visibility in search engine through promoting it into different directories. There are so many directory submission services that lurking around the World Wide Web, even FREE or not, the important is make it sure that your website is promoted properly.

There are thousand of businesses competing on your specific targeted keyword, and the easiest way to conquer your targeted keyword is by submitting your website into directories for high possibility of exposure.

How to increase your Adsense Revenue

2008-02-25T20:47:00.000-08:00

Many webmasters are digging their wealth through google adsense, and there are lots of people trying their own way to get into adsense for their living. There are tons of strategies where you can use to increase your income and make a stable income from google adsense.

1. Boost your content – You must maintain your pages with fresh content and regular updates particularly all articles and information needs to be up to date. One of the most effective way of increasing your content and drive traffic to website is by writing an articles and ofcourse don’t forget to include adsense ads on every pages of your website as well. If you can’t write an article, there’s no problem ‘cause there are lots of free articles out there where you can publish on your webpage, just to make sure to leave some credentials where you found the articles and about the writer of it.

2. Customizing your ad placement. Google has different layout of ads that fits with your webpage, just look for something that fits with the layout of your page and experiment it by changing the background color; ie: if your webpage’s background color is blue try to change the adsense background with blue. And place your ads to a place where you think it will be easily notice by your audience.

3. Always consider your keyword. Keywords take a best part on every pages of your website. You must look for the keywords where you think you can compete with others. If you want to be easily get rank on your targeted keywords, you must look for the keyword that you think has a less competency, and don’t go for a keyword that has millions of competitions.

AdSense profits may vary from month to month and you will even hear stories of people making a living off of Adsense. You must work hard to have an stable income from adsense and do some strategies to make you wealth.

Driving up placement targeting earnings

2008-02-14T05:12:00.000-08:00

Carsurvey.org is a car review website published by CSDO Media Limited. Initially inspired by some of the earliest experiments in user-generated reviews, the site now hosts almost 100,000 English-language car reviews submitted by visitors from across the globe.

From 1997 to 2000, founder Steven Jackson ran the site as a hobby. However, the growing hosting costs became significant, so Steven opted to run ads to cover them. He joined the AdSense program and was impressed with the initial results, which were further improved by carefully optimising the location, colour and size of the ads. By 2005, the time demands of running a popular website while holding down a day job were no longer sustainable. The steady revenue from AdSense was a major factor in Steven's decision to leave his old career and devote himself full-time to running Carsurvey.org.

AdSense offered Steven many advantages. Its global reach matched Carsurvey.org's diverse user base, and the fact that it separated the selling of ad space from the management of the site was very important to maintaining the sites' independence and credibility. Steven says, "AdSense allows me to focus on running Carsurvey.org for visitors. As long as Carsurvey.org provides a useful service, AdSense helps pay the bills."

Ad placements

As a regular reader of Inside AdSense, Steven was quick to pick up on improvements to the custom channel feature, which allows advertisers to target specific site areas using ad placements. He updated his AdSense HTML code to highlight his site via ad placements and focused on the most important pages and locations within Carsurvey.org. This made the site more appealing to advertisers, as they could begin to target specific page locations and sections. In addition, it gave more prominence to Carsurvey.org in the AdWords site tool, as you can see in the image below.

Medium rectangles

In addition to implementing the ad placements, Steven also tried another AdSense optimisation tip and added more image-enabled 300x250 medium rectangle units to his site. Though initially skeptical, as using those units would mean both changing the page layout for all of Carsurvey.org and displaying fewer ads per page, Steven decided to give the change a try.

Accelerating revenue

The improvements were gradual at first, but soon Steven's revenue climbed as advertisers began targeting specific ad placements on Carsurvey.org, namely the new 300x250 units in prime locations. Within a few months, Steven saw his placement targeting revenue grow up to six times its previous level; it now represents 60-80% of his overall earnings.

"I can definitely recommend experimenting with the ad placements and image enabled ads, especially in the 300x250 and skyscraper formats recommended by Google. I thought Carsurvey.org was pretty well optimised, but this just shows that experimenting with AdSense ad placements and testing out new features can really pay off," says Steven.

Lucky number ten

2008-02-14T05:11:00.000-08:00

Two weeks ago, we let you know that the PIN and phone verification processes would be automatically triggered at $10, rather than $50. Along those same lines, we've also updated how it works to choose a form of payment and enter tax information in your account. Because we don't pay out earnings of less than $10, you'll only be able to choose a form of payment and enter your tax info once your earnings reach $10. When you first sign up for AdSense and log in to your account, these options won't be available yet.

So when it comes to payments, consider 10 your new lucky number. Once you receive your PIN or a notice to verify your phone number, you'll know it's also time to head to your account and enter your tax information and select your form of payment. Then you'll be on your way to receiving your first payment -- lucky you!

Perfecting your context with secondary keyphrases

2008-02-12T21:52:00.001-08:00

Help is on the way if you, like me, have had difficulties in getting Google AdSense ads to be truly targeted to the content of some of your pages.

I'm pretty sure, that AdSense will evolve to be even better now that this former Oingo and Applied Semantics product have access to the vast amount of information in the Google database.

But until this happens why not try to help AdSense to deliver better targeted ads?

The thing about AdSense is that it is a meaning-based solution - a semantic-oriented tool.

Meaning can't be derived from just single keywords - you have to take surrounding text into account - hence the term "contextual advertising".

Determining the context in which a keyword resides is the same as finding out its theme.

You look at the information-carrying tokens - the words that add to the meaning of a page and from this you derive the theme of the page.

You are of course already targeting one keyphrase per page and made sure that you have optimized the page for this keyword in the traditional way by taking filenames, Title Tags, inbound link text, body copy and HTML Heading Tags into account.

But it's no good (from a theme perspective) to only target one keyphrase per page and not pay attention to the surrounding words.

It's the surrounding words - the secondary keywords that qualify the theme of a page.

Of course you can always use keyword-brainstorming tools such as the SBI Keyword Manager or WordTracker alone, but what if you throw away valuable secondary keywords just because you think they are not relevant or targeted enough?

What if you purged a keyword from your initial list because of a poor KEI and never used it in your copy and this specific keyword could be the one keyword that helped AdSense determine the theme of your page and serve contextually better ads?

Well, this morning while I was researching AdSense some more I came across a tool called Theme Master From what I read on the site, from the online demo that I tried and from the testimonials by Robin Nobles, John Alexander and Michael Campbell this tool seems to do a very good job at pointing out those very important secondary keywords.

It's priced much the same way as WordTracker - ranging from $7.00 for one day to $240.00 for one year.

AdSense keyword research

2008-02-12T21:51:00.001-08:00

Google AdSense ads are contextual text-based ads that depend very much on the content of the page they are displayed on.

Obviously AdSense looks at several different thing to place the page at its correct location in the taxonomy so relevant ads can be selected and shown.

And consequently there isn't just one thing that can be changed to get AdSense to pick different ads.

One could argue that because it's such a complex algorithm that determines the theme of the page it doesn't really make sense to talk about keyword research and optimization in the usual sense.

There are basically two different reasons why you would want to do keyword research and change your pages.

1. To get rid of irrelevant ads, so you don't waste ad space on ads that almost certainly get 0 clicks because they are far away from what the visitor search for and expect to find.
2. To show higher paid ads, so you earn more per click.

So is Google AdSense keyword research something that should be treated differently from regular keyword optimization work?

Yes it should.

A page serving AdSense ads must serve a dual purpose.

1. It must attract enough search engine visitors by focusing on keywords with high demand but little competition. This is the way keywords are normally selected when you want the pages to generate traffic without having to put all your resources into tweaking and tuning the page.
2. It must attract high paying AdSense ads to maximize the revenue generated.

Let's say you have a page about "keyword optimization".

Through regular keyword research you have decided that "keyword optimization" should be your primary key-phrase.

Google show a favorably low number (4,760) of competing pages for "keyword optimization"

But a quick look at http://uv.bidtool.overture.com/d/search/tools/bidtool/ reveals that the maximum bid for "keyword optimization" is only $0.76

I know that there isn't a 100% correlation between bids for Overture keywords and for Google AdWords, but it's good enough to demonstrate why you can't rely on ordinary or traditional keyword research when it comes to maximizing Google AdSense income.

So what we are after now are additional keywords that are related so they can we woven into the content of the page - and help force AdSense to pick higher paying ads to show on your page.

"search engine ranking" would be such a phrase.

Google knows of 193,000 pages competing for the phrase "search engine ranking", so it's highly unlikely that you should be able to rank high for that phrase.

So traditional keyword research wisdom would say that it shouldn't be targeted, but when it comes to AdSense you have to think differently about this second keyword.

A quick look into the Overture View Bids tool show us that the maximum bid is $4.21

So the price an advertiser is willing to pay for clicks to the "search engine ranking" keyphrase is five and a half times more than the maximum bids for "keyword optimization".

So besides targeting "keyword optimization" to get targeted traffic to your page, you should also target "search engine ranking" to increase the likelihood that Google's AdSense will pick a higher paying advertizer.

An obvious tool to use would be the Site BuildIt Keyword Manager! if you have already decided to go with the benefits you will get from owning an SBI-based site.

WordTracker (of course) would also be an invaluable aid and you can purchase this service for as short as a one-day period.

Ken Evoy also did a rather lengthy additional Google AdSense review which should come in handy.

For an invaluable tool for generating supporting keywords you must take a look at Theme Master ,which does a great job of picking supporting keywords that helps define the theme of your page.

Help AdSense resolve ambiguity

2008-02-12T21:50:00.001-08:00

Being a part of the Google AdSense program makes it easy to integrate contextually sensitive ads into your website - ads that are relevant to the content of the specific page they appear on.

For most parts the AdSense theme analysis generate a well-targeted ad to appear on your page. This is because of extensive semantic analysis of the content of the page, but sometimes the Artificial Intelligence (AI) behind AdSense will fail to grasp the meaning or intention of your site and serve an off-topic ad.

Just relying on keyword matching to determine which ads are relevant to serve on your page isn't good enough.

It's not the keywords or keyphrase that you optimized the page to rank high for in the search engines that Google AdSense use to select the most relevant ads.

AdSense have no knowledge of what you intended the page to rank high for so it has no simple way to determine which ads would be most relevant to what you intended the page to be about.

And in a large number of cases, the pages were written with humans in mind, not to target a specific keyword. So there will be many pages that are about something, but they are not specifically targeting any keywords.

So AdSense goes far beyond simple keyword matching when it classifies or themes your page and looks at all the words on your page, how close they are to each other and tries to deduce meaning from this through semantic analysis.

The AdSense ads are generally well on target and very relevant to the content of the page, but sometimes ads will be shown that are not that relevant or even totally off topic.

The latter happens when you are using ambiguous keywords and you don't have any important supporting keywords.

"Turkey" for instance is a classic example of ambiguity.

Is the page about the country or the animal?

No way for AdSense to detect this without what I call supporting or secondarily targeted keywords.

Supporting keywords are those that help AdSense to determine the theme of your page.

It's the content of your page that forms the context in which the words live. And it's your important and targeted keywords PLUS the context that makes up the theme of your page.

So to conquer ambiguity and the (most likely) off-topic ads you need to work on your context.

You need to put the most topic-relevant word into your text so your primary keywords get such a context-rich environment to "live in" that your theme just pops out and reveals itself to Googles AdSense.

So for AdSense its important to work on both keywords (for the sake of good search engine rankings) AND your theme so the ads that are shown are relevant and on topic.

And with the advent of more and more search engine implementing themes, clustering and categorization into their services it becomes more and more important to not only think content, but also context and keep your pages on topic.

Strengthen your theme with Google synonyms

2008-02-12T21:46:00.000-08:00

Very recently Google added another search operator or search modifier.

The character ~ before a word in a query will have Google search for both actual occurrences of the word plus synonyms.

For the end user - the search engine visitor - this should bring back more relevant results - or at least results from more context conscious pages.

But for the internet marketer, webmaster or online business owner it has a far more profitable usage, and I'll get to that so hang in there.

A quick, very unscientific and not statistically significant test tells me that Google is using 'OR' operators to rank the 'synonymized' results.

A search for 'software' brings back 123,000,000 results.

A search for '~software' brings back 4,820,000 results.

In the latter you will find 'software', 'freeware', 'shareware' and 'driver' highlighted in the SERP.

Freeware = 6,190,000 results

shareware = 6,490,000 results

driver = 17,900,000 results

A search for 'software OR freeware OR shareware OR driver' brings back 7,480,000 results.

Now there's obviously a big difference between the initially estimated 4,820,000 results and the 7,480,000 results, but even results ranked between 400 and 500 show a nice correlation between the two search result sets.

Now, it's one thing that Google use the 'OR' operator when presenting the search results, but the really interesting thing is HOW it came up with the synonyms in the first place.

Nowhere on the advanced search page or in the FAQ does it say HOW Google decides which words are synonymous with your original keyword.

Google obviously can't use a normal thesaurus because it would be permanently out of date, but with the acquisition of Applied Semantics they got a hold of the massive ASO (Applied Semantics Ontology) which they most probably use for this new feature.

In the ASO, 'tokens' (words) are grouped together in 'terms' which are 'meaningful units' and each term is associated with one or more meanings or concepts.

In the same system, meanings are also related to one or more terms, which is what can be considered synonyms.

So since both the synonym operator and Google AdSense ads are using the ASO it makes sense to use the synonym operator to come up with additional keywords - keywords that can strengthen the theme of your page and make sure that AdSense selects the most appropriate ads for each page.

You can of course use Theme Master to do more extensive theme-research to get your primary targeted keywords the most appropriate context to 'live in', but if you just need a single secondary keyword to strengthen the theme of your page then Google synonyms should do the trick.

How To Get Banned From Google Adsense In Just 2 Clicks

2008-02-12T21:41:00.006-08:00

The darkest nightmare a hardworking affiliate webmaster fears is receiving a dreaded Google Adsense Warning, or even worse, a notice that Google Adsense has been disabled for the entire account.

The notice starts out like this:

"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."

Some webmasters use Google Adsense to generate 100% of their website income and the account may hold many different websites. In that case, every website is disabled at one time. An automatic disqualification can be devastating, especially when Google has no obligation to explain its decision in detail.

Not only does the account become disabled, but also existing click-through earnings are refunded back to the advertisers.

Life gets tough, but is it that easy to get an account banned? Yes it is.

The terms of service every Google Adsense Webmaster accepts, describes the easy do's and don'ts.

Do use the Adsense approved formats only

Do keep your click-through data and income private.

Don't display Adsense on registration or thank you pages.

Don't use Adsense code and a competitor's content-targeted advertisement on the same page.

Don't encourage anyone else to click on ads.

For a complete list, read the Adsense policies and terms

https://www.google.com/adsense/policies

https://www.google.com/adsense/terms

The easiest method an account can be banned is by a Webmaster clicking on the site's own ads.

Just how many click-throughs are needed to get a site banned isn't exposed, but Google Adsense watches for multiple clicks from the same domain. One person was banned who clicked twice from the same domain within a 24-hour period. That doesn't mean that is Adsense policy, because Adsense appears to place suspect sites on watch status until the action is duplicated.

Spikes in click-through percentages are hefty red flags. Those are the changes worth becoming proactive over by emailing Google Adsense. A site that rises from a consistent 1% click-through rate to a 10% click-through rate on one day could become suspect. The actual percentage that creates the flag isn't made public for obvious reasons.

What's the safest way to protect an account?

Don't click on the site's own ads ever.

Deceptive practices work for a short time, but they always come back to hurt the originator.

About The Author

Mike Oliver is a programmer/analyst who survived injuries from a serious multiple car accident. After speaking with attorneys who looked to create a case and then take up to 50% of any settlement, Mike Oliver knew there must be another way to get the legal help he needed, conquer the insurance nightmares, and keep 100% of his settlement without fear of a do-it-yourself-kit. He found it and saved thousands of $$$. You can, too. Get the lessons Mike paid to learn Free at www.car-accident-advice.com

Article source: http://www.topiccenter.com/Internet-and-Businesses-Online/PPC-Advertising/

The Truth About Google Adsense

2008-02-12T21:41:00.005-08:00

You have seen these headlines, right? Are they real? Can one person clicking on you Adsense links really earn you a $100? Maybe, maybe not. Most of the top paying keyword lists are a big crock of S**T! There is no doubt that the adsense program is one of the most successful marketing programs ever created. And yes webmasters are making money with Google Adsense but how much and how are they doing it is the real question.

There are too many scam artists who are trying to rip you off with some so called "top paying keyword list" Don't fall for it! Yes some keywords are worth $5 $10 $50 or even a $100 because that is what the advertiser is willing to pay Google to display those ads. It doesn't mean that is what you are going to make. Think about it, if a company is willing to pay $100 per click don't you think they are going to be watching the numbers pretty close. For that price they want highly qualified leads not thousands of people clicking on it and running up there tab. 1000 clicks at $100 each is $100,000. Now if that company gets $500,000 in business, fine but if they get $500 in business for that return then as the Donald says "someone will be fired!"

In the course of building several websites and using Google Adsense I made several discoveries. I put together a crappy little website and that crappy little website earned me $100 in a month. Not big money but pretty surprising since I didn't have that many visitors. Don't believe the screen shots showing you making hundreds a day and thousands a week. It could happen but those screen shots have been altered to inflate the income. Putting these discoveries into use on other websites have proven they work. There is no reason you can't make a $1000-$3000 a month over a period of time. I am not going to kid you. It takes work but once you get the ball rolling you will see your income rise. It is one thing to sell you a list of "top paying keywords" its another to tell you how to set up your websites and how to drive traffic to it.

There are steps anyone can take can take to increase their adsense earnings such as learning about the why the best placement for your ads is above the fold, what colors work best and how easy it is to match them to your site, but it can take lots of trial and error or you can learn from someone who has already tested it out. For example did you know--Why you don't need thousands of visitors to your website (you might be surprised) and how only 2 or 3 visitors a day can actually make you more money than 1000 visitors. You should learn why you want to make your visitors click and move on and why you shouldn't care that they don't stay. This is the exact opposite of every article you have ever read about creating "sticky" sites.

Yes there is money to be made with google adsense and top paying keywords can make you more but don?t get ripped off by paying too much for some ?magic list?. There is no free lunch.

TJ Smith is a writer and the creative force behind several websites. His report ?The Truth About Google Adsense? has been helping website owners increase their adsense income substantially. It can be ordered through http://www.borgstar.net

Article source: http://www.topiccenter.com/Internet-and-Businesses-Online/PPC-Advertising/

Adsense: How to Make Money With Ads by Google

2008-02-12T21:41:00.003-08:00

The chances are that you've seen "Ads by Google" on a variety of websites and perhaps wondered what they were all about. The fact is that you can probably get "Ads by Google" on your own site and if you do, you can look forward to getting paid by Google.

The system is called Google AdSense and it does two things really neatly.

First of all it allows virtually any website owner to make some money without having to do too much - all you do is paste some code that Google gives you into your web pages. This code creates the ads that you see and when someone clicks on one of these ads they go to the advertiser's site. The advertiser is then charged for the click by Google and Google shares the money with you. You don't have to worry about billing a load of different companies or anything else: this is all done for you as part of the AdSense service.

That much is fairly straightforward and good news.

But the really clever thing about AdSense is that the ads you see on your site are relevant to your content - automatically. So if you have a web page about mobile phones you'll see ads about mobile phones on it. If you have a web page about holidays in Tasmania, you'll see ads for holidays in Tasmania on it. Google's technology scans your web page and decides what it is about and then searches its database of well over 175,000 advertisers to find the ads that are most suitable for your page.

By making the ads relevant to your site, Google does you two favors: the ads can enhance the overall experience a visitor to your site gets which means they are likely to return, and because the ads are relevant to your visitor, they are likely to get clicked on.

And when they get clicked on, you make money.

To make most money with Google AdSense you need to develop web pages that are about high value topics. In other words, build content on your site that is likely to attract ads that pay highly when clicked because not all ads are worth the same.

In fact some ads pay many dollars a click whereas others only pay a few cents.

The art of maximizing your AdSense income is to understand how to attract high paying ads onto your pages and then drive a lot of traffic to those pages. Once you've done that you can look forward to getting paid by Google on a regular basis which makes Google AdSense one of the most attractive affiliate programs on the internet today.

William Charlwood
Author: The Definitive Guide to Google AdSense

For more information including a free 5-day course on maximizing your AdSense income visit ProsperitySense.com

Article source: http://www.topiccenter.com/Internet-and-Businesses-Online/Affiliate-Revenue/

5 Ways How You Can Boost Your Google AdSense Earnings

2008-02-12T21:41:00.001-08:00

Google AdSense is a great way for webmasters to monetize their websites. While many webmasters are struggling hard to earn $3 - $10 per day, some 'genius' webmasters have already enjoyed $30, $100, and even $300 a day from AdSense ads on their websites. How are these 'genius' webmasters differ from their counterparts? They think different! They think out of the box!

Let me share with you some tips which has been responsible in boosting my AdSense profits by 700%. Here are 5 of them, and if you follow these steps, I'm sure you'll see a difference in your AdSense income.

Here are the tips:

1- I concentrate on 1 format of AdSense ad, which is the Large Rectangle (336x280). This format has been proven to work with me in resulting high click-through rates (CTR). Why this format? Because the ads look like normal web links, and people are trained to click on these types of links.

2- I create custom palette for my ads. I choose white as the color for the border and background. This is because, all of my pages have white background. The idea is to make the AdSense ads look like they are a part of my web pages.

3- Previously, I put all my AdSense ads at the bottom of my pages. One day, I moved those ads to the top of the page. The result surprised me. My earning increased! Since then, I don't hide my AdSense ads anymore!

4- I maintain some links to other relevant websites, and I put my AdSense ads at the top of the links, so that my visitors see them first.

5- I automate the insertion of AdSense code into my webpages using SSI (server side included). You'll need to ask your web administrator whether your server supports SSI or not. Here's how to do it. You just put the AdSense code in a text file, save it as 'adsense.txt', and upload it to the root directory of your web server. Next, call the code on other pages using SSI.

This trick is really a time saver especially for those who use automatic page generators to generate pages on their website.

Here's a tool I use to generate thousands of pages on my website within seconds: http://www.adsense-insider-secrets.com/page-generator.htm

Try these tips today, and I guarantee your AdSense earnings will improve. For more tips, you can visit my site at: http://www.adsense-insider-secrets.com

Mohd Fairuz maintains a website called AdSense Insider Secrets. On his site, he shares with his visitors free tips, secrets & strategies how he managed to boost his Google AdSense earnings by 700%. Go to his website, and get the tips, free of charge at: http://www.adsense-insider-secrets.com

Article source: http://www.topiccenter.com/Internet-and-Businesses-Online/PPC-Advertising/

Google Adsense - A Website Income

2008-02-12T21:40:00.003-08:00

Many of us have websites and as a matter of course join the Google Adsense plan and place the appropriate script code on our web pages. Taking for granted that visitors will come to our web pages and quite happily click on these Google Adsense ads and consequentially we will make money.

However, having experimented with the placement of Google ads and reading as much information on the subject as possible there is far more to it than just putting the ad anywhere on your web page.

Positioning of the Goole Adsense script is critical and it is a proven fact that placing the ad at the top central position of your web page directly beneath your header banner and before your body text is a prime target area. Equally enough so is placing your Google Adsense ad on the top left position of your left sidebar? Both of these can result in you gaining a higher click through rate and a better CPM figure.

Just as important as the positioning of your ad is also the way it is presented and you should not just accept the default settings. It is far better to select the background colour of the ad to match the background colour of your web site and this also applies to the ads border colour.

Pay careful attention also to the Google Adsense link colours, if possible it is far more effective to match these colours to the same colour as you use for your main body text.

As with all things on the internet you really need to experiment with your website and try various configurations but follow these few simple rules and I think you will find a marked increase in your Google income will soon appear.

Terry Till

7 Great Tips To Improve Your Traffic Generation

Article source: http://www.topiccenter.com/Internet-and-Businesses-Online/PPC-Advertising/

Google's AdSense Soon To Have New Rival?

2008-02-12T21:40:00.001-08:00

A large part of Google's multi-billion dollar annual turnover comes from its nifty AdSense advertising program. The software enables website owners to drop in a piece of code to their pages that then serves advertisements provided by Google.

How Does Google AdSense Work?

It all works dynamically and the adverts that are displayed based on the content of the page. So if a website owner places the Google AdSense code on a page about holidays then holiday ads are delivered onto the page automatically by Google.

Everybody wins because when people click on one of the ads - the advertiser gets a visitor, Google can charge a rate for the clickthrough and the website owner who is serving the ad gets a share of this revenue.

It's been an excellent model for all parties concerned and especially as Google has enabled even small website owners to take part which means accumulatively Google's advertising real estate is absolutely vast.

Is The Monopoly Over?

But there may be trouble ahead for Google as, according to sources at CNETNews, Yahoo! is planning a very similar service to challenge Google's.

The two search giants have been up against each in the search advertising arena already but it is only now that Yahoo! seems poised to launch a monopoly-breaking attempt on Google's AdSense program.

This is all great news for smaller website owners as it means the two search goliaths will be vying to provide the best service and offering the best rates to compete for the lucractive ad space.

When Should You Accept Advertising On Your Website?

Well it's a difficult call. Do it too soon and you risk deterring visitors from staying on your website. Do it too late and you'll find that when you DO finally implement it people might not have seen it coming and they may leave your site in droves!

The best policy to adopt is, just like Google, to focus on RELEVANCE. Don't bombard your visitors with advertisements that are totally unrelated to their needs or interests or totally separate to the content you provide on your website.

And remember - often times it can be better to foster relationships and trust with your visitors with one eye on the longer term view rather than hit them with ads to make a small amount of cash in the short-term.

Michael Cheney is Author of The Website Marketing BibleTM. Take the Free 7-Part Course "Internet Marketing Made Easy" and get your free sampler of 'The Bible' here: http://www.websitemarketingbible.com/marketing/

Article source: http://www.topiccenter.com/Internet-and-Businesses-Online/PPC-Advertising/

How to Make More Money with Google AdSense

2008-02-12T21:39:00.003-08:00

Like any Google AdSense Publisher, you will want to increase your Google AdSense revenue. Your AdSense revenue depends on 3 factors: (1) the number of visitors to your site, (2) the number of visitor that clicks on the ads (Click Through Rate, or CTR), and (3) how well the ads pay (Cost Per Click, CPC). Get anyone of these factor to go up and you will earn more money from AdSense!

Google AdSense Revenue = Traffic x CTR x CPC

Fortunately you can control all of these variables.

Increase your web site traffic

There are many techniques to increase your web site traffic. I will list a few techniques here:

* Improve your search engine ranking. Basically, you get more traffic as your site get closer to the top (of any list including search engine result page)

* Add your site to directories. They are great way to build link popularity, as well as, get your site indexed in search engines.

* Add your site to search engines (not needed if you already did above)

* Advertise your site through other means

* Etc.

Increase the Click Through Rate
There are many techniques, I will list a few here:

* Make sure the ad is relevant. Although Google does most of this (Google AdSense will show ad according to the keywords on your page), you still have to optimize keywords and keyphrases on the your pages.

* Make sure the ad is visible (many people develop ad/banner blindess), so pay attention to your Google AdSense ad:

o placement - location of the ad on the page, i.e., top, bottom, side, integrated, etc.

o layout - leaderboard, banner, tower, etc.

o color scheme - standout color scheme, versus blend in color scheme.

Use channel and data gathered to experiment with the above combinations to optimize the click through rate.

* Etc.

In any case, never ever ask your visitor to click on the ads or do it yourself. This is against Google AdSense TOS and you will get thrown out of the program.

Increase how well the Ads pay
Your option will be limited with an established sites because you have to keep web pages relevant to the site theme, but you can create new sites to cater to more expensive keywords. You can do this by going to Google AdWords and see what advertiser are paying per click (you do not have to sign up to do this). For example, these are some words and recommended bid:

* Well, you get the idea.

o $1.56 - "webmaster"

o $20.00 - "web hosting" WOW!!!

o $0.62 - "forums"

* Create web pages relevant to your site, but optimized to the selected keywords.

* Avoid the use of low paying words that may confuse AdSense.

I hope this basic tutorial will give you a good foundation and allows you to become a more successful advertisment publish, that is, to make more money with Google AdSense.

Pinyo Bhulipongsanon is the owner of GreatNexus.com Webmaster Resources offering visitors with features such as webmaster forums, webmaster directory, webmaster dictionary, programming scripts, and webmaster articles.

Article source: http://www.topiccenter.com/Internet-and-Businesses-Online/PPC-Advertising/

Is Adsense Going To Turn Associate Programs Obsolete

2008-02-12T21:39:00.001-08:00

When Google introduced their new Adsense revenue sharing program, people began to wonder if things would change. Certain questions have been burning in people's mind like: what's going to happen to Associate Programs, how do they compare against Google's Adsense and will Adsense cause Associate Programs to be obsolete?

Well, that really depends on a number of things, which I will go over. In this article I am only going to cover a few advantages and disadvantages of using Google's Adsense vs Associate Programs and which Associate Programs will prevail.

In case you are not familiar with Google's Adsense, Adsense is a new service provided by Google. This service allows you to have text based advertisements on your web site, known as Google Adwords. In return, you will receive a share of revenue based on a pay per click arrangement.

How Does Adsense's Advantages Compare To Associate Programs

Adsense and Associate Programs share some of the same advantages such as, Adsense is free to join and so are most other Associate Programs. Making them both easy to start and suitable for you whether you are a beginner or an experienced marketer.

Another advantage with Adsense, is that you never have to search for advertisers. Google supplies you with the advertisements by using highly relevant content targeted ads. This will insure that only precisely relevant advertisements are displayed on your web site. As for Associate Programs, you will have to search for quality programs and the relevancy of the program will depend on the one you select.

Adsense enables you to filter out up to 200 urls, so you don't have inappropriate ads or display advertisements of your competition. The last thing you want is to send traffic to your indirect competition. No one in their right mind would do that, right! Moreover, with Associate Programs you can select which ones you want to promote, instead of worrying about advertising your indirect competition.

How Does Adsense's Disadvantages Compare To Associate Programs

One of the biggest disadvantages of Adsense, is that they never really tell you what percentage you will receive. I don't know about you, but wouldn't it be nice to know what percentage of revenue you will receive. If an Associate Program was to do that, they would have absolutely no one participating in their program, but somehow Google can manage to get away with that. With associate programs, you immediately know what your commission percentage is going to be before you sign up.

Even though you can filter certian urls, you will still receive inappropriate advertisements. The advertisements are only as good as the person who wrote them and if they select keywords or phrases that are too general, this will result in inappropriate advertisements appearring on your web site. Most Associate Programs enable you to write your own promotional advertisements, giving you a little more freedom.

Adsense does not rotate their advertisements, so eventually your click through ratio will decrease, as repeat visitors are less likely to click through them. Eventually, I'm sure Google will improve the way it does it's content targeting and start rotating their advertisements. By promoting an Associate Program you can simply change the wording of the advertisement, but with Adsense you can't do that, you have your hands tied behind your back.

Adsense's stats are terrible, they don't tell you which advertisements your visitors are clicking through or which keywords are involved. Google supplies Adwords users with the adequate stats, you would think that they would do the same for their Adsense partners.

You should keep in mind that any advertisement that is on your web site, is portrayed to be your recommendation. If you are advertising a poor product or service on your web site, it will reflect on your credibility. Any product or service that you promote, should be a reliable one. Otherwise people will assume that you have poor judgement and it will hurt your credibility. By promoting Associate Programs, you can pick and choose quality products or services to promote, giving you full control, without damaging your credibility.

Which Associate Programs Will Prevail

Even though Adsense has a substantial amount of disadvantages, it will still have a major affect on a lot of Associate Programs that are currently operating today. In fact, you could say it's a wake up call for many merchants, especially for the ones who operate a poor Associate Program. So if you operate your own Associate Program, that has a low commission percentage and/or has a poor conservation rate, now might be a good time to start thinking seriously about improving your Associate Program.

As to which Associate Programs will survive and prevail over Google's Adsense, it will be determined by a number of things. In order for Associate Programs to prevail, they will need to offer a high commission percentage of 40% or higher, have a high conservation rate of 1% or higher, and be a breeze to promote.

In the end, Google's Adsense is merely just another avenue of generating profits on your web site. Associate Programs will not become obsolete. Moreover, they will filter out the good Associate Programs from those that are bad, and only the quality ones will prevail.

Moreover, you can expect that Google will improve their Adsense campaign overtime, proving that they are a worthy adversary to the Associate Program industry. You must be able to adapt and improve as changes occur.

About The Author

Rich Hamilton, Jr is the CEO/President of http://www.ElitesMarketing.com. You can start earning cash today by joining our FREE Two Tier Associate Program and make $45 - $270 per sale http://www.ElitesMarketing.com/assoc/.

Article source: http://www.topiccenter.com/Internet-and-Businesses-Online/PPC-Advertising/

Google WebSearch? & Google Adsense - Yahoo!

2008-02-12T21:38:00.000-08:00

The makers of the world renowned search engine, Google, have taken things a step further to increase their user loyalty, grow their user base and at the same time reward websites for helping them promote their search engine. What a beautiful deal.

Google now offers WebSearch? allowing AdSense members to take the earning potential of their sites to an even higher level. Is it all about the money? For most I bet the answer will be ?YES?, however, those who would say no can say so with confidence.

Google delivers the best search results on the web today. Don?t be surprised if the majority of your website users use it to search the web. They pride themselves on highly relevant search results with a clean and effective interface. They offer various filters to fine tune their results to allowing you to eliminate any unwanted sites from being displayed.

They have started a highly successful symbiotic relationship between Google and websites that many webmasters will be taking advantage of as soon as they hear the news. It is said time and time again how Google AdSense has transformed websites not geared towards earning income, into solid income producing businesses. Now with WebSearch? it gets even better.

So what exactly is WebSearch??

It?s using Google?s SiteSearch or Google?s Web Search and displaying AdSense ads in the results and you earn income every time someone clicks on the ads. Lots of sites already use these features together or independently and them being able to monetize this is a sure plus. You are also able to customize your results page to some extent which includes full color customization as well as the ability to include your logo.

So how do I get it?

Well if you haven?t already done so you will need to create and AdSense account at Google AdSense and follow the steps.

If you already have an AdSense account then log in and click on Search Settings and you should be able to figure it out from there. They also offer reporting information which can also be filtered by channel and includes clicks, the number of queries and clickthrough rate.

The verdict

If you answer yes to any of the following questions then there?s a good chance that Google?s WebSearch is for you:

1. Do you want to give your users a reason to stay on your site longer?

2. Have you ever wanted to offer web search from your site?

3. Do you want to be able to offer a site search feature to your users?

And last but not least

4. Do you want to increase the earning potential of your website? More popularly stated as? Do you want to make more money?

I?m not a betting man but id put my money on you answering yes to at least one of these.

Happy Google WebSearch?ing :-)

About The Author

Alec Duncan is the founder of LilEngine.com a Search Engine Optimization resource site. Visit Li'l Engine for search engine optimization tools and strategies and also check out Developer Tutorials for web development techniques and strategies.

Article source: http://www.topiccenter.com/Internet-and-Businesses-Online/SEO/

Create a Blog to Promote Your Home Business

2008-02-12T21:35:00.000-08:00

Blog marketing is something that all blog owners do. They market their blog so that they can get readers, and make a profit from their blogs. Marketing their blog means to get it out there so that others that are interested in it can find it and read it. It is also a great way to sell things by using affiliate links and programs. Blog marketing can very well become a home business if that is something that you are interested in.

Having a home business by blog marketing would definitely entail that you have more than one blog. If this is something that you are considering, you will want to make a list of markets that your blogs can cover. You will find that your blogs will do best when you only have one market per blog. For example, if you have a blog about cats, you will not want to include anything on the blog about kitchen appliances. This is because the readers that read your blog and visit your blog to learn more about cats and what you have to say about them will not be interested in learning anything about kitchen appliances. Once you have overcome the relevancy issue, you will be ok. You can however, have a blog about pets, and then blog about all of the many pets that you want to include.

In order to make a living by blog marketing, you need to know every aspect of it. You need to know what needs to be done to get readers to your blog, how to write about the things that you are promoting and how to get it up in search engine rankings. Doing so will lead to successful blog marketing and making a home business income with it.

One big aspect of blog marketing is SEO. SEO is search engine optimization and it consists of optimizing your blog so that the search engines will find it and rank it as high as possible. Which also leads to more traffic and leads from your blog. If you do not have time to learn SEO, and apply it to all of your blogs, hiring someone to do this for you might be something that you want to consider. Especially if time is an issue.

Outsourcing much of your work is something that you will need to get used to if you plan on making a substantial amount of money with your blogs. You may want to hire bloggers or writers that can write the content for your blogs, and someone else that can leave comments on other blogs with a link back to yours. Spread out all of the duties on a spread sheet and decide how often each thing needs to be done for each blog. Doing so will help you to be more organized and know what you need to do when, as well as prioritize. Using a spread sheet will also help you to keep track of who is doing what, and keep you from asking more than one person to get one job done.

Blog marketing for a home business is not much different from any other home business. You are going to get out of it what you put into it. If you only put in a couple of hours a week into your blogs, you can not expect to make a full time income with them. However, being consistent and working on your blogs every chance that you get will pay off in the long run. You will also discover that there is no better feeling in the world than owning your own home business, and working for yourself.

Just remember to start small, and work hard. That is all you need to become successful at blog marketing and make the income that you are dreaming of. All of your hard work will pay off if you are persistent and keep it up.

Dassana Jayalath is the editor of InternetBizIQ newsletter. Visit http://www.internet biziq.com/ turbo-membership .html to find out how to use Turbo Membership to make money from your Blog.

Article Source: http://www.articlemarke ter.com/

Google AdSense Exploring Games?

2008-02-08T23:16:00.005-08:00

MCV discovered that Google had filed for patents related to interactive entertainment at this earlier month. Today, the trade association for videogame creators in the UK and Europe (Tiga), said that a product marketing manager from Google Adsense will speak at the group’s day-long “Working with Games” conference next week.

At least since Google bought Adscape back in February, there have been rumors that Google was casting a covetous eye on videogames. Now the picture is getting a little less murky, it seems, as Google heads out to make contact with videogame publishers, developers, and trade organizations.

They’ve got some catching up to do. But… they’re Google, and that means any provided competition by them needs to be taken very seriously. IMHO

How to Change Ads Without Replacing Code?

2008-02-08T23:16:00.003-08:00

After releasing their latest feature about Allowed Sites, Google AdSense introduce their upcoming feature again. This new upcoming feature will let publishers easily manage the AdSense ad units from within their AdSense account. That means, publishers can make ad changes without replacing code inside their pages. Though this feature isn’t live yet, but Google provide a sneak peek for publishers so publisher will know what to expect in the coming weeks from AdSense.

This new ad management feature from Google AdSense means that the ad unit settings (such as colors and channels) for new AdSense for content ad units will be stored inside AdSense account every time publishers generate AdSense ad code. Then, if publisher would like to change any of these ad settings in the future, publisher will no longer need to manually replace the AdSense ad code on all of the web pages. Publishers can manage the ads and make the update within their AdSense account. For instance, with just a few mouse clicks, publisher can quickly change the borders of all 336×280 large rectangles ad from black to green. Fantastic! This new feature will help publishers save time and will simplify the process of optimizing AdSense ad units.

Unfortunately, the ad management feature isn’t yet available in any publisher accounts. Google AdSense will be rolling it out in phases in the next few weeks, and they’ll follow up with another post at that time to help publishers more understand about how to use the new feature. The feature is available to use when publishers see the “Manage Ads” page appear under their AdSense Setup tab. Here are the screenshots for the new AdSense feature:

High Paying Adsense Keywords

2008-02-08T23:16:00.001-08:00

Let’s be honest, most internet marketers hope to make lots of money. This is very possible due to the many affiliate marketing programs available on the web today. One popular method of earning easy income which requires no work is AdSense. AdSense is ideal for webmasters who have high traffic websites or blogs and are seeking a couple of extra bucks or possibly even hundreds. By displaying AdSense adverts on your website, you will get paid every time a person clicks on the adverts. These amounts can range anywhere from 5 cents to 35 dollars per click. Despite this a lot of people will tell you that sometimes a high traffic website with AdSense adverts does not automatically mean good profits. The way to go about placing your adverts within your content layout is a huge necessity for you to achieve the most out of your AdSense campaign.
How you position your AdSense adverts is only one important factor in making money with AdSense. Second most important is the type of website you will display your adverts on. Just take some time to do some research on the most profitable niches in terms of AdSense clicks as different niches have different earnings per click generated. You will easily find that somebody who receives 100 unique visitors a day with a gardening website might only earn 4 dollars from 90 clicks. On the other hand a person with a website on a subject like car insurance might earn 40 dollars a day from 8 clicks. With this in mind you can see why you do not necessarily need to have a high traffic website in order to make a good income from AdSense. There are many keyword tools that you can utilize on the web which can aid you in finding out what the most profitable niches are; you just need to take a little time to search the internet.

Online Home Based Business Ideas

2008-02-08T23:15:00.003-08:00

Starting an Internet home business is an exciting endeavor, but if you’re not careful you might end up wasting time and money on a scam opportunity or one that doesn’t work. In this brief article, I’m going to share 3 legit online home based businesses that you can start right now. Hopefully by the time you’re finished reading this, you’ll have some methods that you can use to start making money from home.

Network marketing has changed a lot over the years, and there is a new breed of multi-level marketing companies that make it possible to grow a large downline over the Internet, without ever having to make a phone call or attending a meeting. These home based business model is my top pick because it allows you to build a large, residual income base that will pay you month in and month out whether you’re on vacation or building your business.

Another great way to make money online from home is with affiliate marketing and pay per click advertising. There are tons of great affiliate programs out there that will pay you well for sending customers their way, and you don’t have to deal with customer support, credit card charge backs, or shipping out products. Find an affiliate program that converts well, and they drive traffic to it through pay per click advertising programs such as Yahoo! Publisher Network, Microsoft AdCenter and Google AdWords.

Lastly, you can make money on the Internet through programs such as Google AdSense. Basically, you set up websites and add content to them. Then, you simply place the ad code on your pages and you earn money each time a visitor clicks one of your ads.

Hopefully this short article has given you some good Internet home business ideas that you can use to get started. Working from home is a very exciting venture and I would highly recommend it to anyone.

Keys to Improve Adsense Earnings

2008-02-08T23:15:00.001-08:00

Always keep in mind that AdSense can make money from your website. You get paid every time one of your visitors clicks on a link. The main issue amongst website owners is how to make the ads look more appealing to visitors. Here are some proven ways to easily improve your Google AdSense earnings.

Concentrate on one format of AdSense ad.
The one format that worked well for the majority is the large rectangle. This same format has the tendency to result in higher click through rates.
Why is this format so popular? Well, it is simply because the ads will look like normal web links. People who are used to clicking on your links will just click on through. They may or may not know they are clicking on your AdSense but as long as there are clicks, it will all be to your advantage.

Create a custom palette for each ads.
Choose a color that will go well with the background of your site. If your site has a white background, try to use white as the color of your ad border and background. The idea to patterning the colors is to make the AdSense ads look like they are a part of the web pages. This will result in more clicks from people visiting your site.

Above the Fold
Remove the AdSense from the bottom pages of your site and put them at the top. Do not try to hide your AdSense. Put them in the place where people can see them quickly. You will be amazed how the difference between AdSense locations can make when you look at your earnings.

Try to maintain links to relevant websites.
If you think some sites are better off than the others, put your ads there and try to maintain them. If there is already a lot of AdSense put into that certain site, put yours on top of all of them. That way visitors will see your ads first upon browsing into that particular site.

Automatic AdSense Insertion
Try to automate the insertion of your AdSense code into the web pages using SSI. Ask your web administrator if your server supports SSI or not.

The next question is how exactly do you do it? Just put your AdSense code in a text file, save it, upload it to the root directory of the web server, then using SSI, call the code on other pages. This tip is a major time saver especially for those who are using automatic page generators to generate pages for their website.

These are just some of the tips that have worked well for some who want to generate hundreds and even thousands on their websites. It is important to understand that ads are displayed because it fits the interest of the people viewing them. So focusing on a specific topic should be your primary purpose because the AdSense ads will be specifically targeted on a topic that people will already by viewing.

How To Make Money With Google AdSense?

2008-02-08T23:14:00.005-08:00

Learning how to make money with Google AdSense can sometimes prove to be more complicated than you think. Most people think that all you really need to do to make money with AdSense is simply placing the adverts on your website. This is however not true. Having read many forum posts at popular search engine optimization forums I found it quite common that a good portion of webmasters were complaining about the fact that their high traffic websites were generating poor AdSense profits. The reason why is because there are many important aspects to take into consideration if you wish to be successful with AdSense.

The first thing you need to attend to is working out how you are going to display your AdSense adverts around your website content. This includes decisions on the particular colors to use and the sizing of the adverts. Some people place their adverts in between their website content which is quite effective as it has a luring effect which increases your chances of people clicking on your adverts. Also make sure that your colors are the same as your general page colors. If for example you have a white background with black text then try to fit some AdSense adverts with the same colors within your content as well as around it.

The second factor I would like to talk about is your niche selection.It is always a good idea to do a little research with keyword tools and find out which niches have the highest paid cost per clicks generated. Developing a website with high paying adverts is far more worth while than having a high traffic website with a low paying niche. Some niches like student loans can pay up to $60 per click generated, although the values vary almost daily.

Why You Should Use Alternate Ads in Google AdSense

2008-02-08T23:14:00.003-08:00

Do you know how many PSA (Public Service Announcement) ads are displayed every day on your website? You might not be able to answer this question even though you are running Google AdSense. The reason is very simple. Google is not displaying stats about PSAs.

You might be losing no ads, several or hundreds as it is in my case. The only way to be able to access those statistics is to setup alternate ads and rely on the stats of the company that is providing the stats. The reason why you should setup alternate ads in Google AdSense is therefor twofold. First you probably would like to know how many PSAs are displayed and you would then like to monetize them instead of handing them out to Google for their public service announcements.

Setting up alternate ads is relatively easy. You first need to have some alternate ad code from a company such as Amazon, Chitika or Auction Ads and save the code into a normal text document. Rename the document to alternateads.htm and upload it to the root of your website.

Now add the line google_alternate_ad_url = “http://www.yoururl.extension/alternateads.htm”; to your Google AdSense code and the alternate ads should appear on every page where Google is unable to provide advertisement for.

After setting them up you can start analyzing the number of impressions that you receive from that backup network and tweak it until you are satisfied with the results.

How To Make Money With Google AdSense?

2008-02-08T23:14:00.001-08:00

Should My Website Using Adsense?

2008-02-08T23:13:00.001-08:00

Launching a website takes a lot of time and energy and, in some cases, money. Every for-profit site owner has the dream of being able to reap the rewards of a money-making website to make up for all the blood, sweat, tears poured into it. Whether you are selling products or services or both, it is can be important to have other ways to monetize your site. Finding free ways to bring in money is ideal, and Google AdSense has provided one very popular option to do just that. However, AdSense may not be the best fit for every site. There are pros and cons to consider as you ask yourself, “Should I put AdSense on my website?”

The potential pros to AdSense are relatively clear: you receive payment each time a visitor to your site clicks an AdSense ad. More visitors= more clicks= more money for you. Obviously, many people are making money from this pay-per-click program, because AdSense is indeed everywhere you turn online. It may seem like every website in the world utilizes Google AdSense. Still, it is possible that this program could be more of a deterrent than benefit to certain types of sites.

For example, if a visitor comes to your site and clicks on a Google ad, there is a chance they will move on to where the ad takes them without returning to your site. Although you made a few pennies from the ad click, the visitor will no longer be purchasing from you.

There is plenty of competition out there for your site; so it would seem an advertisement placed on your site competing with your own products might not be the most lucrative situation.

Perhaps the best use of Google AdSense is for sites that are simply informational. In this way, there is no product competition-only an ad to enhance your informational articles and give your site credibility. What is the best way to determine if Google AdSense is for you? Consider the goals for your site and decide whether the pay-per-click ads will add to your site while adding to your income, or if it will only redirect your potential customers, leaving you with some pocket change from the click as well as the loss of a sale.

Google Adsense Report Explained

2008-02-08T23:12:00.005-08:00

When you log into your Google AdSense account, you are automatically taken to the page where you can view all your AdSense activity. On the Reports tab, you’ll see “Today’s Earnings.” This is the approximate amount you have earned today in your Google AdSense account. Earnings are not final at this point and could be adjusted for invalid clicks or fees.

It’s interesting to look at the breakdown. As you can see, AdSense for Content, which refers to the targeted ads appearing on the pages in which you have written content, is listed first. Here you will see the number of page impressions listed in the first column.

While a page impression is generally the same as a page view, that is not always the case. For a more detailed definition of a page impression, see Google AdSense support, click on Your AdSense Account and then click on Your AdSense Report.

Next, you’ll notice the number of clicks. This refers to the number of times “your ads” were clicked on.

Page click through rate or CTR is in the next column shown as a percentage. It represents the percentage of the time an ad was clicked on after viewing your page.

Page eCPM which stands for effective cost per thousand impressions. It is calculated by dividing total earnings by the number of page impressions in thousands.

Don’t be intimidated by these statistics. The bottom line, your earnings, is what really counts. As you become more familiar with Google AdSense, statistics will become like second nature. First, just start.

How is Google AdSense Different From Other Ad Networks?
Primarily because it is Google and that carries a lot of clout just with name recognition alone. But here are some advantages to being a part of the Google AdSense network:

Getting started is fast and easy and requires no technical knowledge. Google AdSense even provides html code for easy implementation with clear instructions.

Google AdSense has both the AdSense for Content feature and the AdSense for Search feature.

Google AdSense not only provides keyword targeted ads but site targeted ads as well, maximizing your potential for revenue.

Google AdSense provides a filter so that you can choose not to run your competitor’s ads on your pages as well as filter other unwanted ads.

Google AdSense provides an extensive support site that is easily understood.

AdWords versus AdSense

2008-02-08T23:12:00.003-08:00

Google AdSense and AdWords are known by all, even though they are relative newcomers to the internet marketing scene. Everyone wants to be a part of the new wave in internet sales. Pamphlets fliers and e books are seen everywhere. They tell of the wonders of this marketing opportunity and encourage all to launch themselves in their internet marketing career.

So, what are AdSense and AdWords? What differences are there between them? This is information that you need but is not offered by the fanatics eager to find a new convert. You would be surprised about how little information these fanatics can have. That is the one thing internet marketers need in order to be a success: information.

Google AdWords is based on a very simple concept. If someone goes to Google and types in some words in the search engine bar they are asking Google to point them into direction to find what they want. These words they use are known to internet marketers and related people as: keywords.

Keywords are the words used to direct a target audience to a particular advertisement or website. By creating advertisements incorporating these keywords advertisers can have their ads displayed along with the various search results that Google comes up with and the amount of exposure their ads receive all but doubles.

Setting up a profitable AdWords campaign isn’t to be done lightly. Even greater care should be taken when managing it. AdWord campaigns that fail cost marketers much of their advertisement budget. Because AdWords is a pay-per-click advertising plan it allows advertisers greater amounts of exposure for a small fee; usually less than one dollar, but that can add up fast.

A web site owner may benefit from AdSense in the same manner that advertisers benefit from AdWords. When a web site owner subscribes to AdSense they select a variety of keywords or topics that are relevant to their web site and Google sends them advertisements to include in their site that are related it/ The advertiser will get more exposure and the web site owner will get a portion of the charges Google makes for the clicks. This is a proposition that benefits all when it is working right.

For more information or instructions on setting up either AdWords or AdSense campaigns do a search for the words “AdSense” or “AdWords” on Google. You can find a more in depth explanation and a how to instructions from Google.

How to Get Paid From A Blog

2008-02-08T23:12:00.001-08:00

While blogging may have started as a way for webophiliacs to share their personal reflections on life and find sympathetic audiences, blogging is not what it used to be.

There are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of bloggers, and the fact is that blogging is now done as much for profit as it is for pleasure.

There answers to the question,”How do you get paid from your blog?” all depend on your blog’s having an audience. You won’t make much money from your blog unless you have the traffic to entice advertisers, or to respond to your offers.

The secret to getting paid for your blog is to monetize your traffic

Most of the people who visit your blog do so either because they need information, or are looking for a specific product or service and think your blog can direct them to it.

You can make money by connecting your audience with products or service they might find useful and you have several options as to how you do it.

Becoming an Affiliate
How do you get paid from your blog by becoming an affiliate? All you need to do is link to other established websites which are selling products or services related to the topic of your blog, and if any of your readers use your affiliate link to visit those sites and make purchases, you’ll get a percentage of the sales proceeds.
You benefit by getting money without actually having to carry that product or offer that service.

AdSense
How do you get paid from you blog by using AdSense? Simply sign up for a Google AdSense account if you have read their suitability requirements. Once your email address is confirmed and your blog has been approved, the AdSense bots will begin crawling your blog and deciding which ads are appropriate for your readers.
You should start getting ads within forty-eight hours, and you’ll get paid each time a reader clicks on one of the ads.

Email Marketing
How do you get paid from your blog by using it for email marketing? If your blog is connected to your own online business, invite your readers to join your opt in email marketing list. You can offer an enticement like a discount or free shipping to any blog readers for their first from your business.

Posting Reviews
How do you get paid from you blog by posting product reviews? Just sign up with sites offering review, and advertisers who think your audience would be interested in a review of their products will pay you to post them. You don’t have to be 100% positive either; they want honest assessments so that they know how to improve their offerings.

Adding Paid Text Links
There are sites like contextual links which will pay you for adding text links to your blog posts.
They work with advertisers who want to target audiences in specific markets, and if your blog audience is large enough and your topic is a relevant one, you can get paid from your blog by signing up with them and adding some of their advertisers’ links. Please take note that Google has give a penalty for any website who selling their space for links.

How to Monetize Your Adsense Page

2008-02-08T23:11:00.005-08:00

How do you maximize your site? By earning some few dollars per click from displaying Adsense ads on it. Many are now realizing that good money is made from this source of revenue. Try the simple mathematical computation of multiplying those clicks for every page on your website and you get a summation of earnings equivalent to a monthly residual income with that little effort you have made.

Google AdSense is a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to display relevant and text-based Google ads on their website’s content pages and earn money in the process. The ads displayed are related to what your users are looking for on your site. This is the main reason why you both can monetize and enhance your content pages using AdSense.

How much you will be earning will depend on how much the advertisers are willing to pay. It will depend also on the keywords required. If the keywords the advertiser have chosen are in high demand, you could receive more dollars per click. On the other hand, low demand keywords will earn you just a few cents per click.

How can you start making profits out of your website using AdSense?

Sign up for an AdSense account. It will only take a few minutes of your time.
When the site is accepted, you will be receiving a clip code to include in your web pages. You can insert this code on as many pages or web sites that you want. The AdWords will start appearing immediately after.
You will be earning a few cents or some dollars per click when someone starts clicking on the AdWords displayed on any of your web pages. Trying to earn false revenues by repetitively clicking on your own ads is a no-no. This will result in a penalty or the possibility of your site being eliminated. The money you have already earned may be lost because of this.
View your statistics. AdSense earnings can be checked anytime by logging into your web site account.

Once you got your account working, you may still want to pattern them to the many sites that are earning more money than you are. It is important to note that there are factors affecting how your website will perform and the amount of money it will give you.

It is a common practice that when a site earning money, the tendency is for the owner to want to make more out of what they are getting already. It usually takes some time combined with trial and error to attain what you want for your AdSense contents.

Time and some important factors that you can practice and use.

How do you increase your AdSense earnings?

Choose one topic per page. It is best to write a content for your page with just a few targeted phrases. The search engine will then serve ads that are more relevant which will then result in higher CTR.
Using white space around your ad. This can make your ad stand out from the rest of your page so visitors can spot them easily. There are also other choices of colors you can use, provided by search engines, which can harmonize the color of your ad with the web page color.
Test your ad placement. It is recommended to use the vertical format that runs down the side of the web page to get more positive results. You can also try both horizontal and vertical formats for a certain period of time to see which one will give you better results.
More content-based pages. Widen the theme of your website by creating pages that focus more on your keyword phrases. This will optimize the pages for the search engines. It can not only attract traffic but also make them more relevant for the AdWords to be displayed.

Ways to Improve Your Adsense Earnings

2008-02-08T23:11:00.003-08:00

If webmasters want to monetize their websites, the great way to do it is through AdSense. There are lots of webmasters struggling hard to earn some good money a day through their sites. But then some of the “geniuses” of them are enjoying hundreds of dollars a day from AdSense ads on their websites. What makes these webmasters different from the other kind is that they are different and they think out of the box.

The ones who have been there and done it have quite some useful tips to help those who would want to venture into this field. Some of these tips have boosted quite a lot of earnings in the past and is continuously doing so.

Here are some 5 proven ways on how best to improve your AdSense earnings.

Concentrating on one format of AdSense ad. The one format that worked well for the majority is the Large Rectangle (336X280). This same format have the tendency to result in higher CTR, or the click-through rates. Why choose this format out of the many you can use? Basically because the ads will look like normal web links, and people, being used to clicking on them, click these types of links. They may or may not know they are clicking on your AdSense but as long as there are clicks, then it will all be for your advantage.
Create a custom palette for your ads. Choose a color that will go well with the background of your site. If your site has a white background, try to use white as the color of your ad border and background. The idea to patterning the colors is to make the AdSense look like it is part of the web pages. Again, This will result to more clicks from people visiting your site.
3. Remove the AdSense from the bottom pages of your site and put them at the top. Do not try to hide your AdSense. Put them in the place where people can see them quickly. You will be amazed how the difference between AdSense locations can make when you see your earnings.
Maintain links to relevant websites. If you think some sites are better off than the others, put your ads there and try to maintaining and managing them. If there is already lots of AdSense put into that certain site, put yours on top of all of them. That way visitor will see your ads first upon browsing into that site.
Try to automate the insertion of your AdSense code into the webpages using SSI (or server side included). Ask your web administrator if your server supports SSI or not. How do you do it? Just save your AdSense code in a text file, save it as “adsense text”, and upload it to the root directory of the web server. Then using SSI, call the code on other pages. This tip is a time saver especially for those who are using automatic page generators to generate pages on their website. These are some of the tips that have worked well for some who want to generate hundreds and even thousands on their websites. It is important to know though that ads are displayed because it fits the interest of the people viewing them. So focusing on a specific topic should be your primary purpose because the displays will be especially targeted on a topic that persons will be viewing already.

Note also that there are many other AdSense sharing the same topic as you. It is best to think of making a good ad that will be somewhat different and unique than the ones already done. Every clickthrough that visitors make is a point for you so make every click count by making your AdSense something that people will definitely click on.

Tips given by those who have boosted their earnings are just guidelines they want to share with others. If they have somehow worked wonders to some, maybe it can work wonders for you too. Try them out into your ads and see the result it will bring.

Adsense is a Huge Impact on Affiliate Marketing

2008-02-08T23:11:00.001-08:00

Adsense is really making a huge impact on the affiliate marketing industry nowadays. Because of this, weak affiliate merchants have the tendency to die faster than ever and ad networks will be going to lose their customers quickly.If you are in a losing rather than winning in the affiliate program you are currently into, maybe it is about time to consider going into the Adsense marketing and start earning some real cash.

Google is readily providing well written and highly relevant ads that are closely chosen to match the content on your pages. You do not have to look for them yourselves as the search engine will be the doing the searching for you from other people’s source.

You do not have to spend time in choosing different kind of ads for different pages. And no codes to mess around for different affiliate programs.

You will be able to concentrate on providing good and quality content, as the search engines will be the ones finding the best ads in which to put your pages on.

You are still allowed to add AdSense ads even if you already have affiliate links on your site. It is prohibited, however, to imitate the look and feel of the Google ads for your affiliate links. You can filter up to 200 URLs. That gives you a chance to block ads for the sites that do not meet your guidelines. You can also block competitors. Though it is unavoidable that AdSense may be competing for some space on web sites that all other revenues are sharing.

Owners of small sites are allowed to plug a bit of a code into their sites and instantly have relevant text ads that appeal to your visitors appear instantly into your pages. If you own many sites, you only need to apply once. It makes up for having to apply to many affiliate programs. The only way to know how much you are already earning is to try and see. If you want out, all you have to do is remove the code from your site.

The payment rates can vary extremely. The payment you will be receiving per click depends on how much advertisers are paying per click to advertise with the use of the AdWords. Advertisers can pay as little as 5 cents and as high as $10-12, sometimes even more than that too. You are earning a share of that money generated.

If your results remain stagnant, it can help if you try and build simple and uncluttered pages so that the ads can catch the visitor’s eyes more. It sometimes pay to differ from the usual things that people are doing already. It is also a refreshing sight for your visitor once they see something different for a change.

Publishers also have the option of choosing to have their ads displayed only on a certain site or sites. It is also allowed to have them displayed on a large network of sites. The choice would be depending on what you think will work best for your advantage.

To get an idea if some AdSense ads you see on the search engines has your pages, try to find web pages that have similar material to the content you are planning to create and look up their AdSense ads.

It is important to note that you cannot choose certain topics only. If you do this, search engines will not place AdSense ads on your site and you will be missing out a great opportunity in making hundreds and even thousands of dollars cash.

It is still wise to look at other people’s information and format your AdSense there. Just think about it as doing yourself a favor by not having to work too hard to know what content to have. Topic to be avoided includes gambling, firearms, ammunition, tobacco or drugs. If you are being offered more cash in exchange of doing AdSense with these kinds, it is just like signing your own termination paper.

With all the information that people need in your hands already, all you have to do is turn them as your profits. It all boils down to a gain and gain situation both for the content site owners and the webmasters or publishers.

Google Adsense and Quality Contents

2008-02-08T23:10:00.004-08:00

To know why AdSense is essential for your content sites is to know first how this works. The concept is really simple, if you think about it. The publisher or the webmaster inserts a javascript into a certain website. Each time the page is accessed, the javascript will pull advertisements from the AdSense program. The ads that are targeted should therefore be related to the content that is contained on the web page serving the ad. If a visitor clicks on an advertisement, the webmaster serving the ad earns a portion of the money that the advertiser is paying the search engine for the click.

The search engine is the one handling all the tracking and payments, providing an easy way for webmasters to display content-sensitive and targeted ads without having the hassle to solicit advertisers, collect funds, monitor the clicks and statistics which could be a time-consuming task in itself. It seems that there is never a shortage of advertisers in the program from which the search engine pulls the AdSense ads. Also webmasters are less concerned by the lack of information search engines are providing and are more focused in making cash from these search engines.

The first reason why AdSense is essential for content sites is because it already has come a long way in understanding the needs of publishers and webmasters. Together with its continuous progression is the appearance of more advanced system that allows full ad customization. Webmasters are given the chance to choose from many different types of text ad formats to better complement their website and fit their webpage layout.

The different formatting enables the site owners the possibility of more click through from visitors who may or may not be aware of what they are clicking on. It can also appeal to the people visiting thus make them take that next step of looking up what it is all about. This way the people behind the AdSense will get their content read and making profit in the process. The second reason is the ability of the AdSense publishers to track not only how their sites are progressing but also the earnings based on the webmaster-defined channels. The recent improvements in the search engines gives webmasters the capability to monitor how their ads are performing using customizable reports that has the capacity to detail page impressions, clicks and click-through rates. Webmasters and publishers can now track specific ad formats, colors and pages within a website. Trends are also easily spotted.

With the real-time reporting at hand, the effectiveness of the changes made will be assessed quickly. There would be time to sort out the contents that people are making the most clicks on. The ever-changing demands would be met while generating cash for the webmasters and publishers. The more flexible tools are also allowing webmasters to group web pages by URL, domain, ad type or category, which will provide them some accurate insight on which pages, ads and domains are performing best.

The last and final reason is that the advertisers have realized the benefits associated having their ads served on targeted websites. Thus increasing the possibility that a prospective web surfer will have an interest in their product and services. All because of the content and its constant maintenance. As opposed to those who are no using AdSense in their sites, they are given the option of having other people do their content for them, giving them the benefit of having successful and money-generating web sites.

Adsense is all about targeted content, the more targeted your content is, the more target the search engines’ ads will be. There are some web masters and publishers who are focused more on their site contents and how best to maintain them rather than the cash that the ads will generate for them. This is the part where the effectiveness is working its best.

There was a time when people were not yet aware of the money to be achieved from advertisements. The cash generated only came into existence when the webmasters and publishers realized how they can make AdSense be that generator. In those days, the content were the most important factors that is taken quite seriously. It still is. With the allure of money, of course.

How to Avoid Adsense Account Terminated

2008-02-08T23:10:00.003-08:00

Google is placing a high importance on the quality and relevancy of its search engines, and become the undisputable leader in search engines from then until now. Most especially now that the company is public property. In order to keep the shareholders and users of its engines happy, the quality of the returned results are given extreme importance.

For this same reason, doing the wrong things in the AdSense and other forms of advertisements, whether intentionally or unintentionally, will result in a severe penalty, may get you banned and even have your account terminated. Nothing like a good action taken to keep wrongdoers from doing the same things over again.

So for those who are thinking of getting a career in AdSense, do not just think of the strategies you will be using to generate more earnings. Consider some things first before you actually get involved.

Hidden texts
Filling your advertisement page with texts to small to read, has the same color as the background and using CSS for the sole purpose of loading them with rich keywords content and copy will earn you a penalty award that is given to those who are hiding links.

Page cloaking
There is a common practice of using browser or bot sniffers to serve the bots of a different page other than the page your visitors will see. Loading a page with a bot that a human user will never see is a definite no-no. This is tricking them to click on something that you want but they may not want to go to.

Multiple submissions
Submitting multiple copies of your domain and pages is another thing to stay away from. For example, trying to submit a URL of an AdSense as two separate URL’s is the same as inviting trouble and even termination. Likewise, this is a reason to avoid auto submitters for those who are receiving submissions. Better check first if your domain is submitted already an a certain search engine before you try to submit to it again. If you see it there, then move on. No point contemplating whether to try and submit there again.

Link farms
Be wary of who and what are you linking your AdSense to. The search engines know that you cannot control your links in. But you can certainly control what you link to. Link farming has always been a rotten apple in the eyes of search engines, especially Google. That is reason enough to try and avoid them. Having a link higher than 100 on a single page will classify you as a link farm so try and not to make them higher than that.

Page rank for sale
If you have been online for quite some time, you will notice that there are some sites selling their PR links or trading them with other sites. If you are doing this, expect a ban anytime in the future. It is ok to sell ads or gain the link. But doing it on direct advertisement of your page rank is a way to get on search engines bad side.

Doorways
This is similar to cloaking pages. The common practice of a page loaded with choice keyword ads aimed at redirecting visitors to another “user-friendly” page is a big issue among search engines. There are many seo firms offering this kind of services. Now that you know what they actually are, try to avoid them at all costs.

Multiple domains having the same content
In case you are not aware of it, search engines look at domains IP’s, registry dates and many others. Having multiple domains having the same exact content is not something you can hide from them. The same goes with content multiplied many times on separate pages, sub domains and forwarding multiple domains to the same content.

Many of the above techniques apply to most search engines and is not entirely for Google only. By having a mind set that you are building your AdSense together with your pages for the human users and not for bots, you can be assured of the great things for your ads and sites. Not to mention avoiding the wrath of the search engines and getting your AdSense and site account terminated altogether.

Get Caught for Google Adsense Click Fraud

2008-02-08T23:10:00.001-08:00

Many web site owners are getting their Google AdSense account terminated when they have done nothing wrong to deserve the punishment. Considering the money that they are getting from AdSense, they would certainly want to get back into it.

Considering the money to be made with AdSense, it is no wonder that they would want to get back into it.

It is that same consideration why the Google AdSense click fraud is thought of and why many people are getting into it.

Click fraud is the act of clicking on ads for the purpose of costing the advertiser money. It is simply the same as paying out cash for false leads. Many people website owners are aware of this fraud and are sharing the same sentiment that this is the one big problem that AdSense is facing.

How do you prevent being involved in this fraud?

Majority of web hosts are offering access logs. Once this is offered to you, it is necessary that you hand it over to Google as well. This allows them to look for any suspicious activity on your site. Problems like this are very serious and giving it to them is saying that you would want to help them in any way you can in solving the problem.

It can also help if you have a click monitoring software. If you do not have one yet, you should try and get one. There is absolutely no major factor preventing you from having one because most of this software is free.

As usual, all the information you have received should be turned over to Google. This is showing Google that you too are fighting against click frauds and is in no way a part of it.

Study your server logs and watch for any activity that seems suspicious. Report anything that you may find odd, may it big or small thing.

You may want to consider disabling ads for your own IP address and local geographic area. This will certainly prevent accidents and will not make Google mistake another user as you. You can do through a htaccess file. This will avoid Google mistaking as clicking on your own ads and be kicked out because of it.

Keep your AdSense off on pop ups and pop unders. Your ads should not be displayed on content sites that promote illegal activity or tampering of the legal rights of other people or business. Included in this are the content that is considered adult and gambling ones. If you think that you may be breaking this rule, immediately remove your content or AdSense from the web page. Be truthful and confess up to Google about times when you might have clicked on your own as, whether accidentally or intentionally. Or the times when you have done something that is against the Terms of Service that they are implementing. Be honest about anything that you may have done that is wrong. Confessing is way better than Google learning about it eventually. It would mean eventual termination and no getting back what you have worked so hard for. Do not tell your family or friends about AdSense on your website. Chances are they may start clicking on them to help you make money without you knowing it. They may be doing more harm to you than help by trying it in the first place.

If ever someone you know chanced upon your AdSense, make sure they understand that they cannot click on your ads under any circumstances. It would be wise to brief them on important things about AdSense and what not to do with them.

Most pay per click networks have different measures in hand to protect website owners against click frauds. Other search engines can track more than 50 data points, IP address, browser’s information, user’s session info and pattern recognition. They also have “systems” available that detects fraud. Not to mention the specialized teams monitoring how things are going and helping advertisers stop click frauds.

Google offers suggestion on how to avoid click fraud. Using “negative keywords” can be used to keep your AdSense showing on products and services that are in no way related to yours. Adding tracking URLs to your links so you can track the traffic coming from Google. Do not be caught in the Google click fraud. Be aware and be wary.

Why Need Search Engine Optimization

2008-02-08T23:08:00.003-08:00

Search engine optimization (Search engine Positioning) is something that no company that keeps an online presence can afford to ignore. The internet is difficult, if not entirely impossible to navigate without the use of a search engine like Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. and when you think about all the traffic that filters through Google on a daily basis, its obvious that search engine optimization can serve as an enormous benefit to business that draw some or all of their customers through their web pages.

Through search engine optimization, you will take advantage of the people who are coming through search engines like Google. The goal of search engine optimization is to ensure that the link to your site is as close to the top of the list of natural search results as possible when words relating to their business are searched. Because more than fifty percent of all purchases online are preceded by the use of a search engine and because people seldom tend to look below the first two or three pages of results of their search, it can be seen that search engine optimization is an important part of getting the web traffic that you need.

It is true that algorithm changes of search engines sometimes results of a website loses it’s position in the search engine ranking, but it can be corrected usually with tweaking of the web site. Just as you service your cars or other equipments, from time to time your web pages have to be serviced and tweaked. If your site is building on sound principles and offers useful content, then it should be able to weather the changes in search engine algorithms.

If your website is an important part of your business plan, then you should take a look at your visitors statistics of your website, take a look at your competitor and do whatever you can to improve your website so that it achieves higher rankings in search engine queries for your most important keywords and keyword phrases. If this is going to cost you some money to do, then do not worry about it, you will get that money back from the new customers who will find you when your site become more visible in the search engines Through your important keywords and key phrases.

Search Engine Marketing and Blogging Techniques

2008-02-08T23:08:00.001-08:00

Search engines are the web’s most used means of driving traffic to websites, and knowledge of search engine marketing is essential to anybody wanting to succeed online. However knowledge of blogging techniques is also instrumental in gaining you a high position in the search engine listings fore your chosen keyword.

Sure, you can promote your site in many ways and there are more ways than a top listing on a search engine to drive traffic to your website, but there is nothing to beat a top ten listing on Google or one of the other major search engines such as Ask, Yahoo or MSN to provide you with consistent sustained traffic day after day after day.

It is not difficult to get listed in a search engine, but it not so easy to be listed in that all-important top 20 position. The top 10 is the ideal, but if you are listed on one of the first two pages of a major search engine, then the traffic will come to you. That is guaranteed. Naturally, the higher you are listed the better, and you will do an awful lot better on the first page than on the second, but if the best you can do is page three then you are going to need a lot more than search engines to help you attract business.

So what are the main essentials of search engine marketing? You have two objectives, the first being to get listed and the second to reach the top 20. It is easy, as I stated earlier, to get listed on a search engine. Many design their site, submit it to Google and then wait for the Google Dance, when Google carries out its World Wide Web search for websites.

Forget that: do not submit your site to Google or any of the other search engines because that can delay your listing. Instead do one of two things. The best is to write a few articles on the topic of your website and submit them to the top article directories. If you can’t write, or if English is not your main language, then use an article ghostwriter. There are plenty people online offering article services at good rates.

Google and the rest frequently visit the higher ranked article directories and will pick up on the link to your website in your ‘author’s resource’, or bio. When they find your site, you get listed, and that can happen in less than 24 hours. That is the main way, but the other is blogs. Add a blog to your site, and it will soon be listed. Google, especially, likes blogs, particularly if it is a Blogger blog, since Blogger is owned by Google. You are virtually guaranteed a listing. If you are not too keen on Blogger, you can switch once your site has been listed. Wordpress is arguably the most versatile blogging software available at the moment, especially if you are running it from your own web space.

Once you are listed, you can improve your position by optimizing each website page for the topic of that page. Don’t forget that search engines list each page separately, and so each page should be optimized separately. However, you should initially focus on your index page, since it is that page which almost invariable gets listed highest. Once your site does have a reasonable high listing, it is possible that another page could get listed higher than your index page, although this is not generally the case.

You can then post a blog on the topic of the page, and add new postings on a regular basis. You should also include a link to your blog from your web pages and a link on your blog sidebar to your website. This will enhance the probability of your home web page being listed, as it also will your blog, since your blog can also be listed on Google and other search engines.

There are some simple things that you can do to make your index page more attractive to the search engines. Bear in mind that your listing is for one search term only, as used by someone seeking information related to the topic of your page. You can receive another listing for another search term (or keyword) on a different index. So, what you must do is to determine the best keyword for which to optimize your index page.

Once you have decided that, include it in the title of your page and place the title in ‘title’ tags. Try to make the title a bit longer than your keyword, so if your keyword is, say, ‘lock design’, make the title ‘The History of Lock Design’, for example. The main heading for the page need not be the same, but should also contain your keyword. A good heading, for example, would be ‘Lock Design from the 18th Century’. Place that in H1 tags to tell the search engine algorithm that the heading contains important text relating to your web page.

In order to accentuate the fact the ‘lock design’ is an important term in your web page, use it in the first 100 characters and again in the last paragraph of the page. You can also use it once for every 300 words if you want, but don’t overuse it. Use plenty of words that relate to the term, in order that the algorithm used to determine the relevance of your page can decide what the actual subject is. Hence, in the example used, it is still not clear if the locks referred to are canal locks or security locks. You should make that clear in the syntax of the page.

For example, your title could be changed to ‘Canal Lock Design from the 18th Century’, and you could make lots of reference to canals, barges, longboats, plan, construction, locks and design. These words will make it clear to the statistical mathematical formula that makes up the LSI (latent semantic indexing) algorithm that determines the meaning of the words used on your page, and determines that the page is about canal locks and not locks and keys.

There are many other ways in which you can optimize your web page to make it more relevant to the search term, and the more relevant the search engine deems it, then the higher the listing in the index for that specific keyword. Blogging can enhance the effect of your SEO, and not only improve your listing position, but also be listed itself, thus providing even more traffic to your website.

Search engine marketing involves a good knowledge of search engines and how they work, but if you get it right then the rewards can be very high in terms of traffic highly targeted to your product. The problem is, unless you know how, or have the right advice from people who know what they are talking about rather than trying to sell you a service, then it takes a long time to learn.

Google AdWords and Google Analytics

2008-02-08T23:07:00.004-08:00

Google provides a quick, effective and hassle-free way for merchants to advertise their products and services in the Internet through Google AdSense, a cost-per click and cost-per impression advertising service, where ads are displayed along search and content sites and search results done in the Google network. Merchants will be charged when online users click on the ads that are shown. Keywords are chosen in which the ads will appear, and the merchants will specify on how much they are willing to shell out for each click.

There are various benefits that advertisers can get from utilizing Google AdWords. Unlike other online advertising channels, AdWords enables the advertiser to do away with deadlines and contracts. Google’s kind of advertising does not ask prepayment and packages. It is by this method that merchants can manage their advertising campaigns with their preferred performance metrics.

The service gives maximum exposure for advertisers due to the sheer number of visitors acquired by the various sites included in the Google network. Advertisements are displayed along search and content sites and products in audience comprising about 80% Internet users in the U.S. Ads appear beside search results or occupying a space in a results page a user navigates through to get to a site directory.

Google’s own electronic mail service, Gmail, also features the ads.

To make the service more advantageous for advertisers, AdWords has integrated with Google Analytics. Google Analytics informs advertisers information such as the channels to which online visitors located their ads and the manner they react and interact with the site. The service enables merchants gain more visitors to their pages. Google Analytics also monitors the activities of merchants that are not related to AdWords, without any charge at all. With Analytics, one can create marketing campaigns that are target-centered and ROI-driven.

The initial announcement that Google is offering this service alongside AdWords has caused a considerable buzz among users. Advertisers have been on their toes deciding whether or not to avail of the new product. A lot of users have started to investigate what sets Google Analytics apart from other analytics companies such as WebTrends and Coremetrics. The tool got so in demand that Google has to temporarily stop interested parties from registering. By the time they decided to do so, over 200,000 accounts have been created.

The service is free for those sites that attract 5 million or less page views. For those sites that garner more views, it is necessary to register for a Google AdWords account. Registration is fast, it takes about only seven minutes to do so (less if the advertiser already has a Gmail email account.) The Help option is functional enough, and the system is available in multiple languages. Plus, Google placed importance in protecting the corporate data of each account, knowing that data regarding web analytics is extremely delicate.

Google Analytics became so popular in its initial launch due to several reasons: First, the fact that Google, a cyberspace giant, is offering it for free. Costs only occurs when the page starts to attract more than 5 million page views. The service is highly functional and has good features, which are more advanced than other analytics tools. Operations like Javascript and Flash events, PDF downloads can be tracked. Though there are doubts that Google will gain advantage from their offer to monitor outside ventures of the merchants, the company stresses otherwise.

Admittedly, some problems came up for Google due to the immense popularity of the service. It took almost a whole day or more for some data to load into the interface of Google Analytics, in fact some data takes more. There are also some difficulties with support infrastructure.

For those who are considering availing of the service, there are some possible concerns that need to be considered, that stems from it being a live or tag-based reporting software. The main issue with tools such as Google Analytics is that downloaded data like audio and video files and PDF may not thoroughly monitored.

Google Analytics is one channel for Google to take care of their advertisers and any other marketer who wishes to make good quality material on the web. The service is capable of delivering high-end web analytics to advertisers, and its integration with AdWords provides time-saving benefits.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool Tricks

2008-02-08T23:07:00.003-08:00

The Internet has brought on a lot of innovative ways to advertise a product or service. Since a lot of businesses nowadays have made the Internet as one of their major marketing channels, (if not the most important, they are always on the search for more effective ways to advertise their merchandise.

Google AdWords is a fast and hassle-free way to purchase highly favorable cost-per-click or cost-per-cost per impression kind of advertising, and it caters to all kinds of budgets. Advertisements sponsored by AdWords are shown prominently with search engine results on Google, and also on sites included in the diverse Google network, such as Blogger and Earthlink. Ads that are tied up with Google can reach a wide range of audience because of the huge amount of searches done on the Google network.

When one produces an AdWords advertisement, keywords will be chosen in which the ads will be shown, and a maximum amount for clicking the link will be assigned. One also has to specify the Google network sites in which the ad will appear. The operation saves businesses a lot of money since a merchant only pays when the ads are viewed, whether it gets clicked or not. Maximum payment is dispensed per thousand views. The ads made will appear immediately after the merchant submits the billing information required. The online account control center enables one to monitor the performance of the ads.

The ads are strategically placed in order to maximize exposure to online users. They can be located alongside or at the top of search results, or in a page that appears when a user navigates to find a site directory. Ads are also displayed on Gmail, Google’s own electronic mail service.

Advertisements that are keyword-targeted are ranked by determining the number of times they were clicked, and also by the quality score. The quality score, on the other hand, is known by its clickthrough rate and other relevant factors, such as the importance of the text of the ad and historical keyword performance. High-ranking ads will be placed at the top of other ads on the search results of Google.

The system determines the placement of the ads by studying the queries of searchers to know exactly what region they are searching for. The Internet Protocol address may also be used as a basis to know where the searcher is from. If AdWords fail to come up with the right targeting for the advertisements, national or global advertisements will be displayed in its place.

There aren’t much technical requirements for utilizing AdWords. It is advised to have the latest browser installed that is enabled with Javascript. For Microsoft Internet Explorer, at least the version 5.0 is recommended, and at least the version 6.0 for Netscape users. Editing of browser preferences may be necessary for those using an updated browser to enable Javascript and cookies.

It is possible to for AdWords ads to run on the individual web sites of merchants. There are two ways:

1. Google AdSense for Search
Websites that transacts at least 5 million searches per month can flash AdWords advertisements on their results pages.

2. Google AdSense for Content
Any web publisher can apply online. Premium service eligibility can be attained if a site receives more than 20 million views in a month.

What are the advantages of using Google AdWords? Contracts and deadlines can be a thing of the past by using AdSense. It does not ask packages and prepayment from users. There are no minimum spending and contract requirements.

When a Google AdWords account is created, a one-time activation fee is created, and an initial credit limit is established. The credit limit is increased everytime the account reaches is credit limit before 30 days has expired. Highest credit limit is $500.

Several payment options can be chosen from, the post-payment option and the pre-payment option. For the post-paying, payment is only dispensed for the clicks that the ad actually received.

Businesses will never run out of options on how to advertise their products and services. In fact, the channels have become more and more creative and easier for those interested to market their wares. Merchants should choose the most suitable and cost-free means for advertising.

How to Make Money with Google Adwords

2008-02-08T23:07:00.001-08:00

When talking about the Internet as a legitimate place for trade and commerce, one can’t help but speculate the costs a company runs in advertising campaigns in hopes of building a viable online market.

However, Google, Inc., the company behind the runaway success search engines, outdid itself when it launched its two-fold advertising programs, Google Adwords and Google Adsense. In essence, these two advertising programs allows for both advertisers and websites that host advertisements to make money with usage.

What is Google Adwords?

Google Adwords is the advertising program devised by Google on the basis of a Pay-Per-Click system. Under the Pay-Per-Click (PPC) system, an advertiser only pays for his or her ad placement when a searcher comes upon his or her ad and actually clicks on the link, regardless of sale or purchase. This means that the advertisement virtually runs continuously on various websites at the cost only of the number of people who visit their site! This removes the exorbitant fees other commercial websites would put upon an advertiser when he or she wishes to put up an ad there, even if he or she generates no traffic at all from that ad placement.

How does Google Adwords work?

What advertisers do when signing up for Google Adwords is also designing a textual advertisement of the product or service they are offering. They also submit a list of relevant keywords to the service or product they offer. These advertisements will appear on the right-hand side of a Google page.

However, one may have guessed that the huge volume of businesses under various categories may indeed end up with similar keywords in mind for submission in Google Adwords. In determining which company gets which keywords, Google Adwords devised a bidding system for keywords alongside a content relevancy system.

In the bidding system, advertisers bid and compete for advertisers. Auctioning off keywords usually start at around 5 cents, and it is through this system that various advertisers try to outbid their competition. However, owing to the fact that this may seem as though relevance and advertising placements are completely based on an advertiser buying his or her place, Google Adwords also takes into consideration through an automated computer system the relevance of the content of the website to the keywords submitted to the system.

How does Google Adwords look like after all this work?

The Google ad appears usually on the right-hand side of the page that’s signed up to host various Google Adwords advertisements. The company’s advertisement will appear only when the keywords under which it ad was listed was directly searched for by the web searcher. Again, payment for the advertisement placement only happens once the searcher clicks on the ad.

How can one minimize the costs of the Pay-Per-Click (PPC) system while maximizing profits from sales and purchases?

Google Adwords, unfortunately, is not a no-brainer earning system for a company advertising products or services. It requires a little bit more common sense; after all, it is of interest to minimize still the costs of the Pay-Per-Click system. If searchers keep clicking on ads without these clicks turning into tangible purchases, a company would end up paying more to Google than receiving profits from the traffic brought in to the website.

Simply put, minimizing PPC system costs will only happen if the more serious buyers are the ones clicking the advertisements put up on Google Adwords.

The first step into making this scenario happen is by not being in the top portion of the preferred keywords. While indeed, being on the top three of the most preferred links would generate more clicks than placing lower in the ranks, it would also mean inviting the clicks of a variety of searchers,the interested buyers, the curious searchers, the leisurely searchers not really looking for anything in particular, and the searchers completely clueless about what they are looking for and would keep on just clicking on to find out more.

Obviously, without targeting the people clicking on the advertisements, the PPC system costs will add up, without necessarily meaning purchases.

However, by being in the latter portion of the list, there is a greater propensity that the traffic being generated comprises those searchers who are seriously seeking to purchase a product or service. Even being on the second page of the search page may not be a bad thing; after all, these are the search pages found only by those who are seriously out to buy a product, and are those accessed by usually the more informed and intelligent buyers.

Moreover, sales will be greatly maximized by increasing relevance of content in the website and keeping all the links alive. By having more relevant and targeted content, a company avoids having its advertisements being clicked by people who get confused as to what the advertisement really is for. Live links keep assuring relevant traffic flows into the site, and even the continued featuring of the advertisement on other pages.

At the end of the day, Google Adwords is a viable tool in order to increase traffic to one’s e-business if used in the most efficient way possible. By minimizing irrelevant clicks and instead targeting those who are truly looking to purchase a product or service, a company can best assure the profits they collect would be much greater than the costs they have to pay for each click on their Google Ad.

How to Maximize Adsense Earnings Per Click and CTR

2008-02-08T23:06:00.003-08:00

You will have 3-4 ads on your page MAX. (NOT ad blocks. ADS). The fewer AdSense ads show on a page, the higher the average earnings per click for you.

If you place more ads on your page, they will show ads that rank lower on AdWords (and are cheaper). You don’t want people to click on ads that pay you $0.05. You want them to click on ads that pay you $0.50! AdWords are generally disproportionately expensive on the top positions. After a while, the bids “normalize” and you won’t get paid as much for showing that “AdSense” on your site.

Also keep in mind that many options confuse people. Give them few links to click on.

Don’t forget to create channels to track your ads. You can set up a new channel by following this path inside your AdSense account:

AdSense set up ==> Channels ==> Add new custom channels

Be descriptive in your channel name so you know what is going on and you don’t get confused. For example, if you have a page on golf clubs and you are testing a 250X250 square on the top left of the screen, use a name like: golfclub250X250left

Also make sure that you don’t use channels you have used in ads in previous different markets. I have found that this can confuse the system some times and your page can show ads for the OLD market you were in. This happens especially if there is not a lot of ad inventory in the new market you are in.

Many webmasters like the big rectangle. Why? Because it works! It gets very good CTR. However, I’m not sure that most people have actually tracked the profitability of their ads. Different markets can respond differently BUT, here are a few things to consider:

The 250X250 square, has almost the exact same look like the big rectangle. One ad below the other. But it shows three ads instead of four. What does that mean? It means that you give your visitors fewer options to choose from (but not too few) and they may decide to click more easily. Not only that but you now eliminated the 4th ad which would be, on average, the lowest paying of the four.

Can we push this even more? We can. We can create a similar block of ads with only two ads this time. Just create two 234X60 half banner ads and put one under the other. You now have a “mini rectangle” with only two ads. In many markets, two ads is the sweet spot not only as far as CTR but also as far as earnings per click go.

What about having only one ad then? This would definitely give you the highest earnings per click. But one ad usually doesn’t give people that much of an option. If it’s not compelling enough, they won’t click it. I would have at least two ads on my page.

Note: if you use the trick with the two half banners one on top of the other, make sure that you use different channels. I found that, if I use the same channel name, the exact same ad can show twice on my page! Use different channel names. It makes sense from a tracking standpoint anyway.

Make sure you disable the “advertise on this site” link that your AdSense ads show by default. This will make your ads look less like, well, ads - and more like helpful resources. Login to your AdSense account and click “My Account”. Scroll down where it says: Onsite Advertiser Sign-Up [edit]. Under that it should say: Subscription: You are not currently subscribed to Onsite Advertiser Sign-Up. If it says you are signed up, click the edit link and uncheck the box on the next page. All “advertise on this site” links on your ads should disappear in a few hours max…

How to Improve AdSense Quality Score

2008-02-08T23:06:00.001-08:00

Most people have no idea that this even exists. Yes, there is a quality score for AdSense as well, not just for AdWords. If your site has a low AQS (AdSense Quality Score), then it will be “smartpriced” and you will get paid less for the clicks your site generates.

Since we are in the business of making more money, let’s see some of the things you can do to prevent this from happening…

You need to know that Google has some universal rules that they apply to pretty much everything they do.

If a page has certain qualities, it will rank higher on Google

If a page has certain qualities, it will get a higher quality score in AdWords

If a page has certain qualities, it will display AdSense ads that pay you more.

Here are some of the things you can do to improve your AdSense Quality Score:

- Add quality links to your pages
- Add related keywords to your main term: If you have a page about “seduce women” you may consider including some keywords like “pick up artist”, “dating” etc…
- Use Terms of service and privacy policy links on your page. Yes, this can result in a higher Adsense quality score. Do it.
- Try to make your site more interactive so that visitors will stay on it longer. Google thinks that, if someone spends more time on your site, it must be high quality. Adding comment forms, special reports, videos etc can make your visitors stay more on your aite.
- Tell your visitors to bookmark your site (Google considers this a good sign of high quality as well)

How to Blend Adsense Ads on a Website

2008-02-08T23:05:00.003-08:00

AdSense is a wonderful opportunity for you to generate additional income for your website. It doesn’t cost you anything is the best part! AdSense is also very simple. You have to complete an application with Google and be accepted to host advertisements for other businesses. Then you simply add lines of code to the html on the pages of the website where you are willing to have advertisements. With that all in place, how do you blend the AdSense Ads into your website so they don’t stick out like a sore thumb? You don’t want them to distract the consumer from what you are offering on your website.

You may not be aware of it, but you have a lot of say in how the advertisements are placed on your website including the placement, format, color, and style. There are many places on a website to put AdSense Ads. Some prefer to place it on the top of the page and others like the bottom of the page. Along either side of the text for your website is convenient too. Since we read from left to right, the right side is more common as it will attract attention as the eyes move across the page. According to Google AdSense, the most effective location is at the top of the page because the entire ad can be seen. Often parts of it are hidden when on the sides unless the mouse is used to scroll over the information. This can be distracting to the consumer and lose the effectiveness of the advertisement. They also recommend using different colors for the ads to differentiate it from your website materials, but to use colors that compliment each other.

The format can be modified to make it different or the same as your website. Some advertisement hosts like everything to be in the same style and size to give a symmetrical look to the pages. Others like to have their information completely distinct from the advertisements. Both are effective so it is only a matter of personal preference as to how you want your website to appear. Colors including the background can be changed to make everything work together well. You might have to experience a little to come up with the right design you are happy with.

You want to blend the AdSense ads enough that they look natural appearing on your website rather than appearing to be out of place. If they don’t look natural they can be distracting to the consumer. They also won’t be effective because consumers don’t trust what doesn’t look professional when it comes to the internet. This could be damaging to your own sales on your website so pay close attention to this issue. It is a good idea to ask some others for feedback on how the information appears to them on your website. You should avoid placing ads to where they appear to be banners.

AdSense offers you some useful tools as well to get everything to blend. The Google Adsense Preview tools allows you to test the layout of your website with the ads in place. This gives you the opportunity to change anything that is ineffective before your consumers view in over the internet. You can also contact their customer support 24/7 for questions or concerns you may have.

AdSense is a great way for your website to generate additional income by offering to host advertisements for other businesses with similar products and services to offer consumers. You are still in control of the layout and design of your website.

What makes the idea of participating in AdSense more appealing is the fact you have the ability to change the color, format, and style of the ads placed on your website.