Google Adsense: Your Content Better Not Suck

I wanted to take a few minutes and write to you about something that is vitally important in building websites with Google Adsense for fun and profit.

I’m sure that you’ve heard this before, but I’m going to beat a dead horse right now, because it’s really, REALLY important to understand, and newbies and even experienced people STILL don’t get it (or maybe want to get it).

Let me shout this from the rooftops, so all will hear it...

Without good content, your venture into Google Adsense, and getting any kind of profits from Adsense is going to be tough, tough tough.

In fact, I’d say that it was almost impossible to generate any long term profits without good, solid content of some kind on your website.

Content is something that you simply can’t ignore, and it's a crime above crime if you do. Search engines love content and depend on it to kick back quality content results to its end users, people like you and me, or that guy who's looking for what you've got to give him, whether it's actual products, a service or just a Google Adsense ad.

Without good content for search engines to use and direct people to you, your website will never be found by anyone. In short, without content, your isolation from your end user is pratically guaranteed.

In case you haven't gotten it about the importance of content, let me one more thing. The big search engines, in many cases, even check your page for content and relevancy when you buy pay-per-click traffic. And without relevant content, they won't accept your ad.

So guess what? You need to be relevant, and you need some content to be relevant with.

Then there the problem with Google Adsense dropping advertisements into your site that have nothing to do with your site. I'll talk about PSAs (Public Service Ads), and how to avoid these no-paying ads in another message soon.

Readers love content, and will go out of their way to find good things to read in the subjects they care about. And if you provide them good content, they'll come looking again for you.

Without good content that people will come back to again and again, you’ll be a one shot website, and people won’t come back.

I’ve seen different webmasters and builders use specialized programs for page building. These programs build what is commonly called “scraper sites”. These sites take info from other web pages, and assimilate keyword-rich pages that supposedly will rank high on search engines. Granted these pages are total nonsense, and while they generate huge traffic from their high rankings, they usually don’t stay around long.

This scraper strategy may work for a while, but eventually search engines like Google will find out, and penalize your site.

Many sites are using programs that generate content. But people know what those sites are about the minute your page opens up on their browser. And once again, the search engines may very well pick up on the fact that you’re using artificial means to generate pages on your site, and ban you. It’s not worth it.

So you ask: how do I find relevant info to use in my site?

1. Explore Other Sites

No, don’t steal articles word for word from other places. But ideas for stories? That’s a different story (literally).

As Solomon said the Bible, “there’s nothing new under the sun.” But there’s always a “new” slant on content, and you’re a good brainstorm away from finding it.

Use your head. Check out what others are doing on their sites, and then combine the things you like in their content and ideas to make your content sing.

Be objective when looking other people’s content. If something grabs you, ask yourself why? Ask yourself why that angle of idea appealed to you when you came across it? And when you visit each site, ask yourself as you leave, “why would I come back to this site?”

2. Remember: The News Of The World and Your Adsense Site Are Connected.

If you’re maintaining an Adsense-oriented site, you need to be a “mini-expert” on your niche. That means reading material from others, and seeing how they can affect your Google Adsense site. You may think I’m repeating what I said above. I’m not. I’m talking about being personally involved in your content.

In your niche, affected by the winds of change, fickle buyers and surfers, and the ever changing landscape of the world and the web are sub niches. By keeping even the slightest tabs on your niche, you can align it to happenings outside of your niche that will affect your niche itself.

Example: One of the heavy keywords that came up this week when I was putting together my Top 500 Google Adsense Keyword List (available every two weeks for free, by the way, from http://axalda.info/topkeywords.html) was “cheap student airline tickets”. Of course, people always want to travel cheap, but why students?

Because it’s Spring Break, and kids are looking to spend Mom's and Dad's money for two weeks. If I had a niche, that I could have tied that information into a page on my travel or vacation website, I’d probably do very well in Adsense.

3. Read Magazines

Read a book or two. In many cases, magazines don’t follow trends—they make them. If you can get your hands on a publication or two that covers aspects of your niche, plunk down a buck or two, and get inspired.

There are a lot more ideas about how top get good content. Use your head, and fix it on your niche. Remember, like I said, you’re only one good brainstorm away from Adsense gold.

Till Next Time, Keep Building!

Gary

Getting Started With Google Adsense

It's probably one of the hottest topics out there, and with good reason. Where else can you get paid over and over again for doing something once?

Of course I'm talking about Googles Adsense program, for website publishers who don't mind placing a small bit of code into their sites to show ads in return for a share of the profits.

It's relatively easy to get started with Google Adsense, as all you need to have is a website or blog on which to show the Adsense ads, and a Google Adsense Publishers Account. To get an Adsense account you need to go to www.Google.com/adsense and apply for an account, as long as your website complies with their terms, you will be accepted and be able to log in to create your Adsense ads. If you don't have a website, you can setup a blog for fr.ee at http://www.blogger.com put up some content, and submit this. Blogger is also owned by Google, and some people claim this gives you a better chance of acceptance, whether it does or not you decide for yourself.

For the next part, once you are logged in you need to choose what type of ads to display, link units are just one line links to sites related to your sites keywords, ad units are the blocks of code you see everywhere with a short description, a link and a url for each site advertised. Once you have chosen which ad type to display, you can then choose the size and format of the Adsense box. This is where you must make a decision to ensure it fits in with your site, where you are going to place it.

Be aware that irregular sized and shaped adsense boxes work better than the regular ad sizes, 468x60 is immediately picked up as an ad due to banners being this size for so long online and has a low clickrate, while the 336x280 and 300x250 adsense blocks work much better. There is also some arguments as to whether you should blend the ad into your site by using the color palette Adsense gives you to edit the ads colours to make the colours the same as your site, or to make them stand out by making them a different colour, this will depend on your site, and you can test to see what works best.

After you have setup the format, colour scheme and type of ad, you will get the code to add to your site. Before you go ahead and paste it in, it's a good idea to setup channel tracking. Setup different channels named so that you will know what it is about, and this will enable you to track which ads are working, on which sites by changing them around, and tagging them with different channel ID's. This is one of the most overlooked parts of Adsense, the ability to track your ads through channels affords you the ability to test and tune to get the ideal colours, and placement for your adsense blocks.

Adsense does a good job of finding ads related to your site, and you have no input into what will be shown. Sometimes it gets confused, so you may have to tweak your sites copy to make the keywords more prominent so Adsense can do a better job of targeting your visitors with the ads displayed. Obviously the better the ads target your visitors, the more relevant they will be and the better the clickthrough rate.

As we already said, Adsense is a great way to make some income, and some people are even making a good living from it, it's residual income, fairly easy to setup and low maintenance. If nothing else it will help pay the hosting fees for your website, so why not get started with Google Adsense today?

How I doubled my Adsense Earnings

When I joined the Adsense Program in 2004, I made $0.43 for the first month, $0,91 for the second month and so forth.

Only in September 2006 I joined the $100 group. To be more precise, my first payment was approximately $170. It was then that I realized the potential of Google Adsense. I mean, to wait almost two years to see an income with Google Adsense is a very long time. But it was well worth it. I read posts of other people complaining that they are not making with the Adsense Program, but their website is online for two or three weeks. Yep, the money-makers.

Well, after that first $170 I was really into it, if you know what I mean. I thought to myself, how can I increase my revenue with the Google Adsense Program even more? What is the secret of other people? So started my whole venture. And what did I found out? THE BIG CONTENT IS KING. So I

decided that I am going to put more content on my web site. You know, at the time I did not realize that I can write articles myself.

To tell you the truth, at that time I did not know about SEO (did not even know what it meant). I hear that it means SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. (Now does that not sound very technical? But lets leave SEO for yet another article, shall we?

Anyways, what I noticed was that I was getting more than the $170 each month. The $170 went up to $300, then $350 and so on. Now I average at around $25 a day! And let me tell you, it is not going to stop.

You can even exchange links with other sites to improve you pagerank and google adsense earnings. The more backlinks you have, the more visitors you will get, believe me.

You can send an email to other webmasters asking them to exchange links with your site. The best advise I can give you is to put a backlink to the other site first on your site, then mention in your email to the other webmaster what you did and give him/her the url to your link page. Most will do the same to you.

Something very important is to visit a web site and tell the webmaster what his/her site is about, what your site is about and how it will benefit both of you to exchange links.

One more thing. You are free to use this article on your website provided that it stays unaltered and the links in the resourcebox is live, search-engine friendly links.

DO NOT STEAL. IT IS NOT WORTH IT.

Google Adsense: How Formatting And Color Schemes Can Make Or Break Your Click Count!

With Google adsense even the slightest adjustment on your website can make a world of a difference. Adsense requires little effort at all on your part, but the changes you can control can vary the amount of clicks you receive. That is why the formatting and colors you use for the ad will allow you to collect a higher income and raise your adsense revenue.

When placing the Google adsense it is crucial you place it directly in the heart of your content. You want the ad to be noticed but at the same time not take away from the content on your website. You want the adsense to compliment your content, not BE your content. Square and wide rectangular ads tend to fair the best and receive the most clicks for people.

You want to place your adsense above the main fold to maximize your clicks. The higher up on the page your ads are the more likely people will click on them. This is because not everyone reads all the content on your website, but by putting your adsense towards the top it is one of the first things they see.

Placing objects around the ads are a sure way to increase your adsense revenue as well. If you place images next to or above, the ads the images will draw the readers’ eyes towards your ads with more potential for people to click on them. You do not want to place too many images as this will drop the quality of your page, but placing one or two images will look professional and serve its purpose at the same time.

When adjusting the background color and border color of your google adsense box, you don’t want to make it stand out from the rest of the page. Have the background and border colors be very similar, if not the same color, as the background of your webpage itself. The color of the ad link URL should always be a lighter shade than that of the text. If the text is black then make your adlink a light gray shade. All in all your goal is to make the adsense have the same color scheme as your website has to help it blend in as oppose to looking like an ad that stands out.

It is important that you pay attention to the formatting of your Google adsense and maybe even adjust it from time to time. Make sure to keep records of how you fair as far as clicks go if you do make an adjustment. Testing will help you find what works best for your website. While it may seem like a very little adjustment on your webpage, it will ultimately determine how many clicks you receive. The formatting and color schemes you use are a vital aspect towards your success with adsense.

Shoot Yourself to the Zenith of Adsense Income with These 3 Sure Fire “Gold Bullets”

How can you make money with Adsense? Well the basic principle behind it is writing good enough content to attract good enough ads for people to click on. What is missing in this link? The answer: traffic.

Acquiring Traffic Method 1. Article Submission.
This One of the best ways you can get traffic. You write an article and submit it to article directories. Obviously you write articles based on what your site’s content is focused on. I would strongly recommend writing original articles (like I do) and not just copy and paste other people’s works and brand it your own. It is unethical and if Google picks it up, it can punish you. It does no good to your credibility too.

Do a search on Google for “article directories” and sign up for at least 6. Write at least 2 articles a day and submit them for a month. I am not lying, at the end of the month, if you do not see a significant amount of traffic gushing in; you can email me from my website and curse at me. If you bear to.

Acquiring Traffic Method 2. Forum Postings
This method coupled with the above method would give you a super healthy does of one way back links. Sign up, again, for 5 forums (related to your site) and try to post actively in all of them. It create tons of one way links and also, if you have built a good relationship with the community there, you can even blatantly promote your site!

Acquiring Traffic Method 3. Adwords
Yes you can combine Adwords and Adsense together and still make a profit. You simply use leverage. Heard of Adwords Arbitrage? You bid for keywords that are low yet you maintain high paying Adsense ads. Is it possible? Yes. Do your research and send only the cheapest possible traffic for search engine bidding. The key here is not to be laser targeted keywords, they can be off a little but they need to be cheap. Another way is to simply set separate content bids for content advertising. Set it very cheaply and it will drive traffic quickly also.

Do You Want To Increase Your Google Adsense Revenue?

How much revenue do you generate from Google Adsense?

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

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

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

Here’s how it works:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are Made For Adsense Sites Ruining Search Results?

It's happened to you. You've searched for something on Google and several promising results appear. You click on a link, but when you get to the site all you see are a few ads and nothing even remotely close to what you searched for. So you go back to the search results and try again, only it happens again and again until you finally find a page with some decent content...or frustration sets in and you give up all together.

Why does this happen? How come in this day and age Google can't give you the results you're looking for? A large part of the answer is the growing number of made for AdSense (MFA) sites on the web today. MFA sites are designed for the sole purpose of getting you to click on a Google AdSense advertisement.

Define Made for AdSense

A site is made for AdSense if its sole purpose is to get users to click on AdSense ads. Its owners don't intend that users will learn from its content or participate in a community. All that they want is for them to click on an ad. A site is NOT made for AdSense if its primary purpose is to provide unique content and the site owner decides to keep their content free by displaying advertisements, AdSense or other. This has been going on for years – television, newspapers, and magazines all generate revenue with advertisements. The difference is that the advertisements SUPPLEMENT the content of the show or article. The same applies for the web. If you have a news site or a forum, placing ads on your site does not make it a made for AdSense site.

Why Do People Make MFA Sites?

The thing with MFA sites is that they work. The overwhelming majority of the population has no clue what Google AdSense is and doesn't understand that Google and the site owner make money when they click on an ad. By placing these ads in locations that people tend to focus on (Google gives you examples of locations that result in the highest click through), it's inevitable that a certain percentage of visitors will click on the ads – either intentionally or unintentionally.

Site owners make anywhere from a five cents to several dollars per click (revenue is split between them and Google) depending on the industry. Big deal right? If you convert 5% of users into clicks and you make 10 cents a click, you're only making 50 cents for every hundred visitors to your site. Well if you make a thousand MFA sites and each gets two hundred visitors a day, you are making a cool $1,000/day.

Smart MFA site owners design sites with keywords that advertisers pay more than the standard 20 cents or 30 cents. They design sites with “content” about lawyers and car companies that purchase AdWords advertisements that cost several dollars a click. Re-do that calculation with five dollars a click instead of 10 cents and your jaw will drop.

How do they get their traffic? In addition to using conventional white hat SEO methods (like unique content and link building), many of these sites shamelessly also take advantage of keyword stuffing and cloaking – tactics that are considered unethical and are against Google's terms of service. Many also get their clicks in unethical ways – either by clicking on ads themselves or by employing bots to automatically click. This is called click fraud and is also against Google's terms of service.

Who Gets Hurt?

Some would argue that no one is getting hurt by “tricking” people into clicking. Hey they're not getting charged anything. No, but some advertiser is. Some business that's pouring their hard earned money into Google AdWords to attract TARGETED visitors to their site. Instead they end up paying for accidental clicks.  You (the searcher) also get hurt by getting less than optimal results. Imagine an internet where these sites didn't exist. You might actually have a chance at finding what you're looking for on the first try. That would save you some time that I'm sure you'd be glad to have.

Should Google Do Something About It?

Everyone's first thought is “Google could stop it if they tried.” In reality, probably not. Regardless of the talent they recruit, there are literally hundreds of thousands of people trying to figure out a work around. As Seth Jayson recently said in his article about the same topic entitled How Google is Killing the Internet “I think when you pit a few hundred Google Smarty Pantses -- who are getting fat on stock options and gourmet meals at the Big Goo campus -- against many thousand enterprising schemers on the Internet, the battle will go to those hungry schemers every time.”

Google does have a system in place to reduce click fraud and are always improving their algorithm to rid their results of sites that practice cloaking, keyword stuffing, and other black hat SEO techniques. Unfortunately, it's probably not enough.

The larger (and much scarier) question is whether or not Google wants to do something about it. For the time being, they stand to make a ton of money off of MFA sites. Until Google starts to see a negative impact from MFA sites there's really no reason for them to rush to do anything about it. Say Yahoo! all of a sudden came up with a way to identify and block MFA sites and provided better search results because of it, Google may be threatened by the potential (or actual) loss of search percentage. But until that happens I wouldn't expect Google to do much more than they are right now.

What Can You Do?

There's no doubt that MFA sites have clogged up the web with thousands of worthless pages. The best way to reduce the number of made for AdSense sites is probably to do something about it yourself. If you advertise on Google AdWords, don't allow Google to display your ads on their content network (AdSense sites). As an internet user, you can educate others about MFA sites and encourage them not to click on ads. It may not seem like much, but all of those clicks add up – just ask someone who owns a made for AdSense site.

6 POWERFUL VRE(Virtual Real Estate) Business Models You Can Start Building In 2006 Using Google Adsense - Part 1

VRE -- better known as "Virtual Real Estate" is literally everywhere online.

That's right. Everytime you do a search on whatever it is your searching for via the Internet you get a list of results. Within that list of results lye's thousands, if not, millions of pages of Virtual Real Estate that is making someone out there on the WWW some handsome profits.

The question is... "what have you done in order to stake your Internet "VRE" claim so you too can enjoy some of that profit as well?"

If you haven't started anything yet, that's okay because I did a little research for you and came up with these "6 POWERFUL VRE(Virtual Real Estate) Business Models You Can Start Building In 2006 Using Google Adsense" so you too can benefit like the many others out there online.

The first VRE business model I'd like to talk about are -- Article Directories.


VRE Model #1. Articles Directories.

Article Directories are in my mind are probably one of the best VRE business models on the web simply because they offer your audience and publishers Multiple Channels of information on any topic.

And the facts are, people come online for information.

So, what do Article Directories contain?

That's right... Information! ... and lots of it.

The other great benefit to Article Directories is that you don't have to write a single word if you don't want to because the whole purpose of starting your Article Directory in the first place is to get other people(we also call them authors) to submit their content for your readers and/or publishers to read and use.

Now, the Rule Of Thumb is simple when it comes to growing your Article Directory and that is... the more authors you recruit, the more your Article Directory will grow, filling it full of targeted information for your readers to digest and for publishers to use on their websites.

It gets better, so keep reading.

Did you know that the more pages you have within your Article Directory means... the more search engine food you'll have for the search engines to come and index into their database which will then be displayed within the search engines search results.

Remember in the beginning of this article when I was talking about the search engine results being full of Virtual Real Estate. This is where your Article Directories webpages(or your Virtual Real Estate) will be listed for web surfers find.

This also means that you'll receive a lot of FREE targeted search engine traffic to your Article Directory as it grows giving your authors FREE targeted traffic to their sites and keeping them happy, and at the same time, will be building your VRE nest egg on the WWW.

Are you starting to see the benefits to starting your own Article Directory on the Internet?

I hope so.

But don't go anywhere just yet, I'm not finished.

There's two more things I want to talk to you about before this part of the article series ends.

The first is RSS -- better known as "Real Simple Syndication" and what RSS does is it allows you to syndicate your Article Directories content or just content in general through an RSS feed so that any reader and/or publisher who subscribes to a particular RSS feed within your Article Directory will receive ANY new updated content that is published... INSTANTLY!

The other benefit to a RSS feed is... lets say you have 1000 publishers subscribed to one of your RSS feeds and one of your authors submits a new article at your Article Directory, all those publishers who subscribed to that RSS feed will receive it once that RSS feed updates and when someone clicks on the link within that RSS feed to read the new article, guess where the visitor is sent to?

You guessed it, your Article Directory, with your Google Adsense ads(I'll talk about that in a second) and whatever other related affiliate links you have on that webpage.

Now... for the BEST part, how-to make a $Profit$ with your Article directory.

I'm telling you, this is the easiest money you'll ever make for simply supplying your viewers and the Internet(A.K.A. The Information Super Highway) with what it needs the most, Information!

How do you do it?

Heard of Google Adsense(as I mentioned just a minute ago), because if you haven't, now you have.

What is Google Adsense?

Google Adsense is Googles affiliate program for publishers and how it works is it displays ads targeted towards the content on that particular webpage being viewed.

How do you get paid? Simple. Your reader just has to click on one of the ads within the Google Adsense ad box on that webpage and depending on what the topic is and keyword could pay some handsome commissions(usually between 35% to 50%).

And, guess what? You didn't even have to do any selling OR follow-up.

Not bad and believe me those clicks add up Fast and by having the search engines returning frequently for regular indexing and having RSS feeds(remember, when someone clicks on the RSS feed link on someone elses website they get redirected back to yours with your Google Adsense ads on it and other affiliate links) for other publishers to use on their websites you'll soon see your Google Adsense profits get Bigger and BIGGER!

Well, that's it for now. So be sure to be on the look out for my next installment of the "6 POWERFUL VRE(Virtual Real Estate) Business Models You Can Start Building In 2006 Using Google Adsense".