MoneyCentral

HOW TO BAN A USER?
Many of us across some situations when a person is encouraging/forcing users to click on there ads.Now the question arises how to report it to google?
there are 3 methods
Easiest of all send a mail to adsense-abuse@google.com
give the subject as Invalid clicks & in the letter body describe how the website/owner is violationg Adsense terms of conditions.Don’t forget to mail the violating site’s URL.

On the site which is violationg TOS click on ads by google (on top/bottom of each ad).Submit your feedback as reporting a violation and in the message give how the site violates TOS & give the URL of the site.

If you are already an Adsense Publisher
you may fill out the form on this link for instant action.

I RECIEVED A MAIL NOTIFYING THAT MY ADSENSE ACCOUNT IS DIABLED
You receive it only if you have violated TOS.You may reappeal for activation of your account but the chances are very low.

HOW DOES GOOGLE BAN A USER?
Google is smart enough .Here are the methods.
Too high income:If your site is a new one , is not indexed in any search engine & still earning 30$ a month then google may suspect you and then review your stats(how google reviews i s given below)

Reported violation:
If any one reports google in the methods above that you are violating TOS then google reviews your site as well as your stats.

Automated coding::A modern coding used for automated clicking of ads.But rememb. google may review the coding and ban the involved

self-clicks

———-
How does Google review?
They visit your site and see if anywhere you have put an objecional content.
Then they check your stats & see if the CTR(described below) is too high then they may post you a warning

Checkout gives your users a faster, safer, and more convenient way to shop online. OK, that sounds great for them, but what do you get out of it? Well, every time you refer a user to Google Checkout, you make a little money. It’s a simple process that includes all of three steps:

1. You place the Checkout referral button on your site.
2. Someone clicks on the button, signs up as a buyer with Google Checkout using a valid U.S. credit card, and completes a purchase of at least $10 before shipping and tax through Checkout within 90 days. (The current $10 minimum purchase corresponds to our existing $10 promotion for new buyers, so this amount may change in the future.)
3. You earn $1.

It’s that simple. Please note that Checkout referrals are currently only available for U.S. publishers, and Google Checkout is currently only available for buyers with a U.S. credit card. We hope to make both Checkout and Checkout Referrals available in more countries soon.

If you’re not convinced, why not try it out yourself? It costs nothing to sign up (actually, you’ll even get a $10 bonus) and it’ll make shopping online a little easier. And remember, if you’re still figuring out how to improve the performance of your referrals, take a peek at our optimization tips for referrals.

You can get started with Checkout referral ads by visiting the AdSense Setup tab in your account. We think your users will thank you for showing them Google Checkout, and your wallet will like having some extra money for you to spend at all of those great Google Checkout stores.

Well don’t be surprised if you don’t see the checkout refferal missing
The causes can be that you are not an US Adsense publisher or Google has some missing required information

This is perhaps the most easy way:-). All what you have to do is to parse your code. If you want to save your time , An online parser is available . All you have to do is to parse it there and then paste it into your blog template.You can place any where into your XML template , where you want them.I’m sure no more XML errors would occur.If you are unable to do the desired work, feel free to comment.
This method was said ok by the Adsense team in case of New blogger.

Here is the letter

"
Hi,

You are permitted to make minor edits in Blogger Beta. However, please keep in mind that in general publishers are not allowed to alter the AdSense ad code for any reason. Once you’ve generated the ad code in your AdSense account pages, you may not alter any portion of the code or manually change the layout of the ads.

Thanks for your understanding.
Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team”

It means that you cannot alter the code for changing Ad format ,colors or logo’s but you can use the above method for Blogger XML.


There are basically 4 methods to put adsense between the new blogger posts.

Option 1

——————–Option 2



————Option 3



Option 4



For all of them to be implemented, you need to parse your code.

Option 1 is good for image ads .I would choose a 250 x 250 square for it.


Option 2 is also good for image ads .I would choose a 250 x 250 square for it.As both of them support video ads


Option 3 works well with banners or half banners

Parsed ad here

Option 4 looks well in each format. I prefer a square for it.
This time, you will have to place it where the blog post end and the post footer start

Parsed ad here

For more assistance, here is the code which I have used.

Google Adsense Referrals for Google Apps are only for Google Adsense US publishers.
For those who didn’t knew about Adsense referrals for Google apps, here are its feautures::


Google Apps provides customized email addresses (powered by Gmail), Google Calendar, Google Talk, Docs & Spreadsheets and Page Creator, all for free for your domain. Best of all, everything is hosted by Google, so there’s no hardware or software to download, install or maintain.

You will be credited $5 when someone clicks the referral ad from your site and signs up for Google Apps with a domain that has not already been signed up for the service.
Currently available only in English
Well any Adsense publisher might love this feauture to be on their sites but Google Adsense have put this referral in beta test, meaning that only US Adsense publishers can have them on their website. On being asked their response is that US publishers provide their Social Security Number while Publishers from other countries do no

Blogexplosion.com, is very popular these days as it increases the traffic to your blog or in their words “explode your blog’s traffic”.Unfortunately it violates one of Adsense Policies. I just confirmed it from Adsense Team that it is not a valid way increasing traffic.According to Adsense Team, no publisher can increase traffic to their blogs by submitting to sites like BlogExplosion.
Banned Publishers have started complaining that BlogExplosion is just a Directory.

No words have been heard from the Blog Explosion Team as yet. Google has not disabled the accounts of all adsense publishers participating in Blogexplosion. Google Adsense , according to me are disabling only those accounts whose visitors clicking the ads are referred through Blogexplosion

So, Beware , if you are an Adsense Publisher partcipating in Blogexplosion

The sole purpose why I am writing this blog post is because I have received many complaints from fellow bloggers that they do not earn as expected from adsense. Everyday hundreds of bloggers start off their money making expedition with a hope that after few months or years they may be earning high by participating in programs such as Google Adsense.


After few days or weeks most of them leave blogging because they do not earn even a buck. Some may be cheating by clicking on their own ads or asking others to do that or just participating in programs that gives automated clicks. Such bloggers are either “banned” immediately or when they are about to receive their earnings.


When they are banned, they leave blogging. Then, a few honest publishers are left who are literary embarrassed by their earnings even after getting traffic or page rank. Most of them also leave blogging until they are fed-up. Then a few remain who just wait for the day when they would be the next Darren Rowse.


But that’s the truth, you can’t earn living by your Adsense earnings. According to me only few like Darren, Amit would be really making something out of adsense. Both of them have published a post on how much they earn. It goes in thousand’s $ per month.

Even bloggers like Peter Chen are hardly able to make out 200 $ per month which is not acceptable for a comfortable living

Tip:- First make blogging your part time job. When you realize you have got an alexa rank of below 100,000 gear up and be a full time blogger.

But all bloggers have got something in their part from where they can really earn from blogging.

-Start off with a blog.

-Post your content like a reputed teacher even though no one may be reading it!

-Submit your blog to as many blog directories as you can.

-Wait three moths until you get assigned a decent page rank.

Now what you have got is a page rank. Sign up for some other earning programs {like text link ads, pay per post}. If you have got a page rank around 3 or more, you can earn around 10 $ per sponsored post. You can do a sponsored post after every three days. That means you will earn around 40 $ in a week. Which in turn says 200 $ per month! How is that for a part time blogger. Slowly and steadily your site will get popular. More high Page rank means more $’s per post. A page rank five site can have sponsored post of upto 50 $ ! Just imagine !

Or maybe you might be interested in selling off your links?

Blogs like johnchow.com are selling links from their blogs at 300 $ per month that too with a page rank of 4.

Many respectable bloggers have been recommending Agloco and the truth I don’t know why they believe so much about this company. Agloco is compared AllAdvantage which turned scam after paying some of their members.

What is the point to advertise your Agloco affiliate link? Why wasting your time trying to find new signups with agloco? Cause agloco uses the same affiliate programs that you can use and try to sell them? Why you waste your time with agloco and make an effort to sell direct affiliate links without sharing it with this company?

Agloco just is another publisher like me and you! They use google adsense, Google search, Affiliate links from Comission Junction to others.

I went to the Sign up page and see that they don’t ask your address even they do not mention how to pay their members with check/paypal,etc… So let’s analyze it. If they pay with checks they need your address right? Which is not included in the sign up page. If they will pay with paypal they will need your paypal email address which is not included there as well, and even they do not mention any other ways!

Ok I have seen that many members was desperate before the launching of the toolbar and now that the toolbar is launched guess what? many people are happy about it! but guess what! The toolbar includes spywares, malware and a good virus!

I do not recommend you Agloco, there are better ways to make money on the web than helping others get rich. BE SMART!

All the best, Alex.

Today, I visit adsense blog and i found this adsense story there. Please have your read below:

When the Internet first boomed in India, many people proceeded with caution -- adoption was fairly slow compared to the U.S. But a few adventurous spirits jumped right in and have stuck with it for the long haul. Among them is Babychen Mathew, who left a career in journalism to start his own website. This site offers readers the latest headline news and feature stories on various topics. Babychen started this site as a hobby, and perhaps as an extension of his profession. Very soon after launching, he discovered Google and the AdSense program through various web development forums on the Internet. And the rest is history, he says.

“After exploring every bit of this Google product, with a few trial and errors along the way, I’ve discovered on my own the best ad formats and colors that suit my webpages,” he reports. Having tried almost every AdSense format and feature as they were offered, he settled for a vertical wide skyscraper (160X600) on the left sidebar and a horizontal link unit (728X15) along the top of his pages.



“Now, with the help of AdSense Support, I am currently using a medium rectangle (300X250) ad format too, and have integrated it into my content in some sections to capitalize on potential video ads,” Babychen continues. “I’ve tried other online ad distribution networks, and formats like flash ads and banner ads, but I was not very satisfied. While some were experiments, others didn’t cater to the Indian market, and a few others were plain irritating."

Today, Babychen is a happy publisher, with most of his revenue coming from Google AdSense. And he says he loves to recommend AdSense to all who will listen!

This article is poted from Darren Rowse site, a millionaire who made up his business on the internet.
In November 2002 I first heard the word blog after a mate e-mailed me a link and said I should consider starting one. Within 24 hours I’d created my first blog (a blogspot blog that doesn’t exist today). Since that time I’ve run 20+ blogs (most have survived, some have not) and I’ve also transitioned from hobby blogger to part time blogger to full time blogger.

Along the way have been many challenges, milestones and celebrations so today I thought I’d do some reflection and create a list of things I wish someone had sat me down and told me in the early days.

Here’s my top 18 Lessons Learnt in my 3 years of blogging. Write your own ‘lessons’ list and let us know about it in comments below. If you enjoy this list you might also like to subscribe to my newsletter to keep up to date on more posts like this on blogging.:


1. Be Lucky
I’m increasingly becoming aware that despite the many hours of hard work that I’ve put into building up my business that many others work just as hard and are much more talented than I am but do not enjoy the success that I’ve been fortunate to have. While I don’t believe that luck is the main ingredient in my own story I am convinced that in combination with some of the other things I’ll talk about below it has been of real importance.

The luck I’ve had along the way has included just happening to bump into the right people at the right time (on many occasions), discovering ad systems that just happened to work well on my blogs, starting successful blogs quite by accident, getting links from bigger blogs that led to a snowball effect of incoming links from elsewhere through to choosing the right partners for different projects. I could write many thousands of words on the luck I’ve had but I’ll not bore you with the details except to say that I’ve been a lucky boy.

The key I’ve found with luck is to run with it and to make every lucky instance last as long as possible. So when you strike it lucky enjoy it but also ask yourself ‘how can I capitalise on my good fortune?’


2. Work Hard
Of course the saying that goes ‘you make your own luck’ has some truth to it. Gary Player once said - “The harder I practice, the luckier I get”

I’m a strong believer that to be successful you need to be willing to work hard. While there are plenty of people selling ‘easy money’ on the web I’m yet to find a method of money making that doesn’t have at least some element of work to it.

Success in many areas of life comes out of discipline and hard work. Getting your body in shape, having good relationships, succeeding at study etc all take some level of commitment and work. Work alone is definitely NOT everything (I’ve seen many hard working bloggers who have not had success) but it is one element that I think is essential.

If you want to get to places you’ve never been before you need to be willing to do things you’ve never done before. This sometimes means leaving one’s comfort zone and knuckling down for some hard work.




3. Use the Power of Exponential Growth
I’m not sure that that heading is the right words to describe this but I can’t think of any others that begin to describe the way in which blogging has the ability to snowball. Perhaps it’s a ‘Tipping Point’ thing but as I look at the last three years in terms of blog traffic, earnings, profile and opportunities I see that the first 18 months were very very slow. Growth was definitely there from month to month but because the numbers were so small it didn’t really feel like I was going anywhere.

The wonderful thing about exponential growth is that if you stick at it for the long term it’s a very powerful force. I look over at the poll I’m running this month and see that 27% of bloggers who responded are making $10 or less a month from Adsense and I know it sounds so little.

In reality it’s not that much but it’s more than I was making 2 years ago from blogging.

Here’s a calculation that I kept in my mind in the early days.

If that $10 a month increases by 20% every month in a year you’ll be earning $89.16 per month at the end of the year. Of course that sounds small for a year’s work and I’m sure many bloggers would give up at that point but lets take it further.

If earnings continued to rise by 20% per month for another 12 months and you begin to see the power of exponential growth with a figure of $794.96 per month. Do it for another year and the figure is $7088.01 per month.

Do those figures with the figure of 30% growth per month and the figure after 12 months is $232.98 per month, after two years its $5428.00 and after three years it’s $126,462 per month! You get the picture. Now I don’t want to promise you 30% growth per month for three years straight but as I’ve written before, the power of exponential growth in conjunction with hard work and luck is possible - it’s my story. I see each post I write as an investment in the future and something that has the potential to earn money for me not just today but over the long term.


4. Differentiate Yourself
Part of the ‘Luck’ I’ve had is that I started blogging three years ago and not three weeks ago.

The Blogosphere has changed in many ways - some for the better (the technology and tools these days are much more advanced) and some for the worse. The downside of starting out now is that for every topic there seems to be many blogs already - the web is becoming more and more congested as people discover personal publishing. It’s also become a more competitive business on some levels and in some segments some of the co-operative spirit of blogging has begun to fade as people build their empires.

All of this means that if you want to build a blog that is a runaway success you need to consider how your blog will differentiate itself from all the others out there. While not every blog needs to reach ‘runaway success’ status for you to make a living from blogging (20 reasonably successful blogs can do just as well as 1 amazing one) even lower level blogs need to find ways to stand out from the crowd.

5. Provide Value
This almost goes without saying but I’ll say it none the less. A key question every blogger should ask when starting out is around the idea of what value their blog will give readers. As I look at the year ahead I’ve been asking this question about some of my own blogs. It’s easy to go a bit stale and so reviewing the value that you’re adding is an important part of keeping things fresh.

Value can be about many things including entertainment, education, community, information, companionship etc Without it you’re not likely to get people returning to your blog, linking to it or participating in it over time.


6. Target a Niche
I remember after about 6 months of blogging having a discussion with my readers (I only had the one blog at the time) about whether I should continue to write a blog that was very general in topic or whether I should start a few new ones. I took a poll and they were pretty split over what I should do. I wish at that point I’d started new blogs but out of fear of losing a few readers I decided to plough on with a blog that covered incredibly diverse topics and that increasingly frustrated more and more readers who shared one interest with me but who were not interested in the other things I was writing about.

Moving to a niche approach where I developed blogs around more tightly focussed topics was where my blogging went to another gear and it was probably one of the most defining moments in my business.

Read more about the benefits of niche blogging.


7. Diversify
This connects with my niche blogging point well but goes beyond just having multiple blogs on different niches. It’s really about taking the age old advice of not putting all your eggs in one basket.

While there is some real sense in focussing all your energy on one excellent blog there is some risk involved in this approach.

So much of blogging is out of the blogger’s control and there are numerous problems that could lead to a one blog strategy ending in disaster (these include search engine re-indexing, hacking, loss of data, character assassination, competition, the topic becoming obsolete etc). All good financial planners would advise not to invest in one type of investment but to spread the risk - I’d advise the same with blogging.

Diversification is not just about starting numerous blogs. It’s also about exploring a variety of income streams. i.e. if all your income is from AdSense it might be worth looking at other ad systems, affiliate programs, consulting work etc.


8. Don’t Spread Self too Thin
Of course take my points on hard work, niches and diversification to the extreme and a danger is developing so many blogs that none end up being remarkable enough to develop a readership and profile.

Balance is important so diversify to the point where it won’t decrease the value that you want to offer readers. This will vary from blogger to blogger depending upon many factors including available time, interests, personality, topic chosen etc. For some of you it will mean two blogs, for others it will mean 20 or more.


9. Have a Backup Plan
I’ve written on numerous occasions about the e-mails I regularly get from people telling me that they are quitting their job to become a full time blogger without much thought to how they’ll pay their bills in the year or three that it might take to build up their blogging to pay a reasonable wage.

The moral of the story is that it does take time and in the mean time you need a back up plan and some sort of way to help you transition into your blogging business. Very few bloggers are able to go full time quickly - you might need another job (I had numerous other jobs for over 2 years) or some other form of income to keep you going for a couple of years. In fact the fact is that some bloggers work their butts off for a couple of years and still don’t have anything to show for it at the end. So be responsible and see ProBlogging as having amazing potential but as being something that has no guarantees.

I strongly recommend having a backup income while you transition into blogging and to have in the back of your mind a backup plan for if things go wrong. I’ve been developing a number of other skills and interests over the past year simply because I don’t know how long blogging will last as a full time income. While I hope and expect it will continue to work out for me I know I have a few different options at hand to down the track if it all goes pear shaped.


10. Be Light on Your Feet
One of the things I love about being a solo-entrepreneur is that I have a business that is flexible enough to take opportunities very quickly as they come up. When a wave of luck kicks in after all your hard work you need to be able to position yourself to surf the wave. If you’re too cautious or have a model that is too rigid you might just miss the opportunities as they pass by.

I’ve been caught napping a number of times in this way but have also had a couple of times where I’ve taken the opportunities and reaped the benefits. Of course I’m not saying one should throw caution out the window, but try to build something that has checks and balances that isn’t going to strangle the life giving opportunities that might come your way.


11. Relationships are Key
I was attracted to Blogging in the first place partly because of the way in which it enabled me (a shy guy) to connect with others interested in similar things to me. From the very beginning I enjoyed the relational nature of blogging but also the way in which it allowed me to retreat into my introversion from time to time.

As I look at the things that have been most successful for me in my blogging most of them have had the key ingredient of another person (or more than one) to either help me or partner with me. Most recent is my partnerships with Andy with six figure blogging and Jeremy, Duncan and Shai with b5media but the relationships go back much further than that and are many and varied. I try to put time aside every day to seek out and build relationship with key bloggers that I’d like to work with in some ways - it’s amazing how these connections pay off in many unexpected ways.


12. Establish Boundaries
One of the first blog tips that I ever wrote was on setting boundaries for your blogging. The post itself was pretty naively written at the time - as I reflect upon it I’m not sure I really knew what I was talking about - it was a nice theory at the time. In more recent times I’ve come to see that the point of those I was quoting in the post was incredibly valid and wise.

Boundaries are very important on a number of levels.

Firstly they are important on a security level and for your own well-being. I know this personally from recent events. Writing in the public domain can have it’s own risks associated with it. Work out ahead of time what information you will and won’t reveal about yourself, your personal details and those of your family and stick to those boundaries.

Secondly it’s also wise on a readership and niche definition level. Go changing what you will and won’t write about in terms of topics too often and you run the risk of disillusioning your readership. While variety in topic and voice can add spice to your blog you also will want some consistency in your approach.


13. Don’t read your Own Press
I recently saw an interview with Elizabeth Taylor who was asked if she read much of what people write about her in the media. Here answer was no - she didn’t listen to or ready anything any written or said about her good or bad. Her explanation as to why was (paraphrased)

‘If you listen to the good things people say about you you might just start believing them. If you listen to the bad things people say about you you might just start believing them’

While I wouldn’t go quite as far as Elizabeth Taylor in saying don’t read anything written about you (after all conversation and engagement with others is what blogging is built around) I would encourage bloggers to hold lightly to the opinion of others about you.

It’s easy to become big headed when people rave about how great you and your blogs are to the point where you end up being a complete jerk and think you’re the messiah but on the flip side it’s also easy to become disillusioned and depressed when they rant about and attack you. Part of the skill of being a good blogger that comes over time is that ability to know when to take on board what others are saying about you and when to leave it. It is important to listen to the praise and critiques of others but try to keep them in perspective or it could lead to your downfall.


14. Beware of Hype
Controversy, Sensationalism, Big Claims and Rants are all very useful tools available to bloggers. Many a new blog has found itself in the spotlight (either by design or accident) after a post where the blogger created a stir with one (or more) of these elements.

I don’t have an issue with using these types of posts myself from time to time but I would advise that it’s very difficult to sustain a blog built solely upon these elements. Blog readers are a fairly fickle bunch and will come read your post that generates a stir but unless they find something of genuine value in your blog over time they’ll probably not hang around too long.

By all means use these tactics to get your attention (but have thick skin because creating a stir can cause a backlash) but you’ll want your blog to have something else going for it to make a lasting impression.

Also keep in mind the story of the ‘boy who cried wolf’. Hyped posts might work once or even twice, but they tend to lose their impact over time unless you work hard to make them fresh.


15. Get a Life
I remember someone once telling me that ‘no one ever gets to their death bed and wishes that they’d spent more time at work’. I remember nodding and making affirming noises. You see at the time I was a lazy slob, didn’t enjoy hard work and never spent much time doing any.

Of course these days I actually DO enjoy my work and the temptation is to spend a lot of time doing it. I love blogging for it’s creativity, relationships as well as the good pay packet that enables me to do things for others and I could quite easily spend a lot more time doing it. As a result I spend considerable time working at my business.

But I’ve also learned that unless I take time off the rest of life tends to fall apart at the seams. Not only that but the quality of work I produce suffers after 16 hours in front of the computer and improves drastically when I sleep more than 5 hours and interact with real people or get into one of my hobbies (go figure). While I love it, blogging will still be there tomorrow and I have a much more balanced approach to it than I once did.


16. Make Mistakes
It doesn’t feel that good when you stuff up or make a mistake but as I look back on the last year or so it’s the times when I’ve blundered that opportunities have often flowed. The key is to learn from the mistake, to make the most of what follows and to see it as an opportunity to improve what you do and make the most of any publicity that comes out of it.

Elbert Hubbard got it write when he wrote - ‘The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.’

Learn to see mistakes as opportunities.

17. Be Yourself
One of the temptations of starting a blog is to spend more time trying to emulate other bloggers than establishing your own voice and style. While there are a lot of lessons to be learned from other blogs there is a lot to be said for developing a strong blogging identity of your own.

There are a number of reasons for this that come to mind:

Transparency - readers are an insightful bunch and will quickly find you out if you’re not being genuine
Sustainability - it’s difficult to sustain writing in a voice and personality that is not your own. Be yourself and you’ll last a lot longer.
Consistency - regular readers of a blog overtime take on a sense of ownership of a blog. When you chop and change your writing to emulate and please others you’ll end up disillusioning the people who make your blog what it is (your readers). Be yourself and you’re more likely to be consistent (I’m not suggesting be monotonous - you can still be creative and surprising - just do it in your own style and you’ll be right).

18. There are No Rules
Lists like these always finish with a point like this that says ignore all of the above - but that’s not the point of this point (can you have a point of a point?).

All of the above is essential stuff (for me) but the thing I love about blogging is that it’s such a new and emerging technology that there are very few things that you can’t do or shouldn’t try.

Push the boundaries, experiment with the model you’ve got, try new tools and techniques and have a blast doing it. The worst thing you can do really is make a mistake - and we all know that they rock!

How to Write Home Run Posts
The following guest post was submitted by John Wesley who blogs at PicktheBrain.com (feed) about motivation, productivity, and self improvement.
The Importance of Home Run Posts
Most of you are probably familiar with the Pareto Principal, also known as the 80/20 rule. The rule states that 80% of results come from 20% of causes. In blogging this rule is even more extreme (probably 95/5) because of social media. A great post that goes viral, makes the front page of Digg, and is picked up by a top blogger, will easily receive 20 times more traffic, back links, and RSS subscribers than a post that’s merely very good.
Home run posts grow your blog rapidly so it’s important to do everything you can to take a post from good to great. This goes against the popular opinion that short frequent posts are the best strategy. This might work well for blogs that already have a sizable readership, but if you’re just starting out you’ll need to do more to make an impact. This means providing significant value.
What Makes a Home Run Post?
Home run posts come in all shapes and sizes but they tend to share a few important qualities.

1. Length - All the posts I’ve written that have made the front page of Digg, Reddit, or del.icio.us have been substantial, usually from 700-1000 words. People extract more value from longer articles. Maybe fewer people will read the whole post but the ones that do are more likely to vote it up and subscribe to your RSS feed. Go into detail and share everything you know.
2. Useful Information - The more value you provide, especially in a practical sense, the more incentive people have to share your article with others and bookmark it for themselves. This is why ‘how to’ posts and lists of tips are so successful. Focus on serving the reader.
3. Originality - It’s highly unlikely that you’ll write a great post by linking to someone else’s content and talking about it. These types of posts are good for meeting your weekly posting schedule, but they don’t add enough value to become popular. Aim to create stand alone, original content.
4. Well Written - This might be the most important factor. No matter how detailed and useful your post is it won’t spread if you mangle the message with bad writing. This is especially important in the headline and opening paragraph because that’s where readers are drawn in. This also includes good formatting and organization — no one likes to read huge blocks of text. You need to make your message as clear and concise as possible.
Hit More Home Runs by Writing in Multiple Sessions
Hitting home runs is difficult. It’s nearly impossible to predict what will take off, and it’s going to require great ideas and a lot of effort. The most important part is not rushing. Unless your post is breaking news, it doesn’t matter when it’s published. Taking the time to perfect it can make the difference between a few dozen and several thousand visitors.
My most successful posts are always written in more than one session. I usually get inspired and churn out most of the writing in the first session. Then I take some time off, at least a few hours, and let the ideas sort themselves out in my subconscious. A few hours later I write the conclusion and cut out or clarify poorly written sentences. I’m able to improve sections that had troubled me earlier and spot weaknesses that I hadn’t noticed. Before publishing I always do a final review and ruthlessly cut everything that doesn’t add meaning.
It might not seem important, but writing in multiple sessions and carefully editing will improve your writing dramatically. If you’re going to put the effort into creating a great piece of content, it makes sense to do everything in your power to increase the chance it becomes popular. Putting in the extra work will help you attract readers and take advantage of the 80/20 rule.

Blogging Tips: First Impressions Count
The following is a guest post by Lorelle VanFossen of Lorelle on WordPress and an excerpt from her popular book, Blogging Tips, Tips Bloggers Won’t Tell You About Blogging.
There are several “first impressions” your blog makes as it struggles to attract and hold on to readers. Few of those first impressions come directly from your blog’s design and layout.
Search Engine Results: The first impression most people get of your blog is found within search engine results. They see a post title, blog title, and content excerpts around the keywords of their search terms.
Blog Feed Aggregator: An aggregator is a blog or website which displays titles or post excerpts from various blogs. Aggregators usually list your blog title, post title, and first 100-300 words of your post.
Feed Reader: A feed delivered to a feed reader displays the content as text, with few images, and none of your blog’s design. Depending upon how the feed reader is set, it showcases the blog title, post title, first 100-400 words of your post or the full post content, if the blog owner has set the feeds to full. Typically, the post title and first 100-400 words are the first impression.

From Other Bloggers: Another first impression a potential visitor gets comes from the words other bloggers have to say about you. It could be a simple link to your post title, or a paragraph or two recommending your blog and/or your blog post. The information in and around the link can make or break a reader’s decision to click through to your blog.
Front Page: Many web designers design the front page of the blog before the rest of the pages, creating a gateway to your blog. This is old “print-think”. Nowadays, visitors may arrive on any page on your blog. If they get lost navigating, or need more information, they will click to your blog’s front page. Every page, including the front page, must visually represent the purpose and intent of the blog. The front page must also still be the gateway to all the categories, sections, and pages of your blog.
Single Post Pageview: Most visitors arrive on a blog post page. The first impression is to the visual presentation, blog title, post title, and content, followed by other visual images. It must also offer easy-to-find navigational aids to help them find related and more content.
About Page: More than anything on your blog, your blog’s About page cements the first impression with information on the blog’s purpose and intent, as well as the blogger’s expertise. If they get past the visual presentation, they will look for more information about the author.
Category Page Views: The page views of your category, tags, and archives showcase the content within your blog in related groups. The first impression of category pages are the post titles, followed by the first 100-200 words of the post content. Most visitors scan the post titles looking for information related to their needs.
Go through each of these “first impressions” to see what kind of an impression your blog makes on the web.

Why Affiliate Links are the best Form of Blog Advertising
This Post was submitted by Matt Jones, the author of Affiliate Programs and Internet Scams

With bloggers looking for alternatives to AdSense, which is renowned for it’s low click-though rates on blogs with ‘web-savvy’ readers, one of the golden oldies of Internet advertising has been making a comeback. Namely, using affiliate links.
Out of all forms of advertising affiliate links are the least obtrusive to the reader. Long lists of affiliate links are unnecessary because the key to affiliate marketing with blogs is pre-selling and so other than ‘top 5 affiliate programs’ in a sidebar there is little use for listing large numbers of affiliate links.
Pre-selling is content for your blog! Writing a fair review of an affiliate program or of a product (from a certain affiliate program) is both useful for your readers, while being fantastic for the search engines.
Fresh Organic Traffic
Normally the name of the affiliate program/product will naturally be in the posts’ title and throughout the main text of the post. If people link to the post they will probably use something like E.g. “Matt’s review of – insert name of affiliate program” – in the anchor text, which also helps that individual post rank very highly in the search engines.
In other words, reviewing a post about a specific affiliate program/product automatically adds a keyword phrase (usually the name of the affiliate program/product) to your sites ‘long-tail’ of keywords and provides prolonged low levels of organic traffic.
This screenshot of part of my long-tail traffic helps illustrate this:


The left collumn is the keyword phrase used, the right is the number of visits.
The Cycle of Honesty and Reward
Unlike with AdSense, bloggers have direct control over the affiliate links and so if a reader makes a purchase/carries out some sort of action through your affiliate link and are happy with what they got then a level of trust has been gained. This improves the probability that the reader will return (increasing page views generating revenue from other advertisements) and you will be able to recommended more products to them.
This in-turn encourages you to make quality recommendations and so the circle of honesty and reward continues.
We already know that just about any form of advertising works on ‘normal’ people, but ‘web-savvy’ readers are a tougher nut to crack. However, they have several characteristics which actually make affiliate links work better with them than with ‘normal’ readers.
Characteristics of ‘Web-Savvy’ Readers:
 They have a build in scam and spam detectors and will catch you out even if you have a BS in BS. The Cycle of Honesty and Reward can be used to the bloggers advantage here. The web-savvy readers ‘up the pace of the game’ forcing the blogger to play better, with better programs/products which is good for everyone.
 Web-Savvy readers subscribe to RSS feeds. This in almost creates a captive audience who read only the post and don’t even see other sidebar advertisements, which is great for a post with affiliate links. An RSS feed is surprisingly similar to a single-column landing page of affiliate marketer trying to sell an eBook because in an RSS feed all the focus is on the content.
 Web-Savvy readers can usually absorb a greater quantity of information and so the pre-selling, while still concise need not be cut short if you run over the 500 word mark. More posts can also be written presenting more opportunities for revenue generation.
 Many web-savvy readers have blogs of their own and may link to yours. They are even more likely to link if they bought a product on your recommendation and were happy with it (Honesty and Reward again).
 Web-savvy readers are more obsessive. What I mean by this is that once they have read a certain amount of content from a blog, providing they like it enough the chances are they will visit regularly or subscribe to the Feed.
Most of those characteristics are based on the core principal that web-savvy users are trained to focus on the blog content, which is where the majority of the affiliate links should be.
The only real downside to using affiliate links where the reader is aware of them is that they may be suspicious as to where your ‘allegiances’ lie and forming trust will be that tiny bit harder. However, this weakness can be used to the your advantage due to the personal nature of blogging.
The Crunch
A non-web-savvy person may visit a site and buy a product right away only to never visit again. This is the opposite to a web-savvy person. A web-savvy user would take longer to have their trust won over but once they have been, they are committed for longer and will generate more revenue in the long-run. Therefore, due to the characteristics listed despite popular opinion, by using affiliate links, web-savvy users are more valuable than non-web-savvy people.
How to Gain Trust From Web-Savvy Readers
 Not having every post about an affiliate program/product you recommended.
 Write about sites you don’t recommend explaining what is wrong with them. This shows you are critical and carefully chose the best programs/products to promote.
 Spread out the promotional posts with some that contain advice about using affiliate programs, which will help the reader earn more with the program you recommended (often mean you earn a greater commission). This has the added benefit of helping your reputation grow as an expert in your niche and I personally find writing advice far more stimulating than churning out reviews.
 Spend extra time to answer their questions respectfully, thoughtfully and accuratly because they will read the answers you gave to previous questions.
Conclusion
Too many bloggers are living with the deluded excuse that they are failing to make money with their blog because web-savvy readers read it. This was perfectly understandable when the only thing anyone could talk about was AdSense, but the rules of the game are changing and choosing specific affiliate programs is even more precise advertisement targeting than AdSense is. It integrates perfectly with blogs and should be fully utilised.

Search Engine Optimization is something that makes many blogger’s heads spin - I know this because every time I write an SEO article I get comments from bloggers telling me that its too big a topic and that they’d rather just write ‘quality content’.
Whilst I’ll never argue that quality content should be anything but a first priority in blogging, the fact is that there are many millions of pages of great writing languishing around at the bottom of search engines results pages that deserve to be read by many but which rarely see the light of day because their authors have failed to understand that just a few simple tweaks in the writing process could see them ranking considerably higher.
So it’s time for another series - this time on Search Engine Optimization for Blogs!
People often ask me ‘how do I get ranked number one in (((insert favourite search engine here)))?
My answer usually starts with - ‘I don’t really know what I’m talking about….but….’
You see whilst some of my blogs rank very highly on different search engines - I often don’t really know why. Much of what I do is educated guessing and experimentation. I do read a lot of other people’s advice on the topic, but the more I read the more I realize that I’m not alone in my guess work - virtually every article I read is a ‘best guess’ of some kind.
My main advice to people wanting to optimize their blogs for Search Engines is to keep it simple. Start with quality content on a specific topic and then tweak it using the best current advice going around.
When I think about SEO for my blogs I tend to divide the things I focus upon into two parts - offsite and onsite search engine optimization techniques. Offsite techniques are more about what others do on their websites in linking to you, onsite techniques you have more control over as you write.
Off Site SEO Techniques
Off site SEO techniques are as the name suggests factors from outside the site itself (ie from other sites) that impact the blog’s ranking in search engines. Many of these factors are outside the blogger’s control - however they are useful to know. The most obvious and probably most powerful offsite factor are Inbound Links (something I’ve already referred to above).
It is generally agreed that the links that point to a website are one of the most powerful way of climbing Search Engines results pages (in fact many argue it is THE most important factor). - To put it most simply - every link to your site is seen by the search engines as being a vote of confidence in your site.
Ideally Speaking - The best inbound links have three main qualities to them:
1. they are from higher ranked sites than your own
2. they are relevant to the topic you are writing about
3. they link to you using relevant keywords to your page
Whilst you may not have complete control over who links to you these are the types of links that you should be dreaming of.
How to generate quality inbound Links?
Of course whilst most of us know this it doesn’t make getting such links any easier - its in the hands of others in many cases. So how do you get such links?
 Quality Content - There are all kinds of link generating systems out there but in my opinion the best way to get links to your blog is to write quality content that people will want to read. You can solicit links with others or sign up for different link building programs or even buy text links on other sites but the cheapest and probably safest approach is to build inbound links in a natural organic way as others link to your quality content.
 Notify Relevant Bloggers of your content - Whilst I don’t advocate spamming other bloggers and asking for links - I would recommend that if you write a quality post on a topic that you know will interest another blogger that it might be worth shooting them a short and polite email letting them know of your post. Don’t be offended if they don’t link up, but you might just find that they do and that in addition to the direct traffic that the link generates that it helps build your own page rank in the search engines (more on letting other bloggers know of your posts here).
 Directories - Another way to generating inbound links is to submit your links to directories. I know of webmasters who swear by the benefits of such a strategy - the first thing that they do when starting a new site is to do the rounds of directories - submitting links to key pages with appropriate keywords in the links. There are loads of directories out there - many of which offer a free submission. Ari Paparo has compiled a list of blog directories that you might want to start with.
 Inter-link your Blogs - Increasingly bloggers are starting or joining blog networks to enjoy the benefits of multiple sites and writers working together. One of the advantages of networks of sites is that they usually link to one another. In doing so you have complete control over how your sites are linked to from multiple domains. It is worth noting that you should be careful with this approach - if all your sites are hosted on the one server many think that Search Engines will work out what you’re doing and the impact will be lessened.
 Buy Links - Many professional web masters have a budget to purchase links from other highly ranked and and relevant sites. I won’t go into this too much here but you might like to read more about it in my recent post On Buying Text Links.
 Swap Links - Similarly many bloggers swap links with other bloggers. Sometimes this happens pretty naturally (you see someone linking to you so you link back) but in many cases the links are strategic ones and formally arranged between site owners. I get daily requests for such reciprocal links (I rarely act on them). Whilst there is some benefit in such link swapping I would again advise caution here as many SEO experts believe that the search engines have methods for tracking such strategies and devaluing the links. Some try to get around this by doing indirect or triangulated links. ie instead of site A and B doign a direct swap they involve other sites. So A links to C in exchange for D (also owned by C) linking to B (also owned by A) - makes your head hurt doesn’t it!?! There are also a variety of systems around that say they’ll take care of such interlinking for you - I know many who use Digital Point’s Free C0-Op Advertising system. Personally I tend to avoid such schemes and have a policy of linking to sites I think are valuable to my readers. If they link back then so be it.
If you’re looking for link exchange/buying/selling programs you might like to look at systems like:
- Link Adage
- Text Link Ads
- Link Worth
On Site SEO Techniques
Having looked at Off site Search Engine Optimization Techniques I’ll now turn my attention to examining some of the factors you might like to keep in mind as you build your blog - (or Onsite techniques - things you do on your blog that help build a higher ranking). As with all SEO techniques there are many of these and a lot of speculation around all of them so let me touch on as many as I can:
1. Keyword Rich Content - identify a few keywords for your article that you’re hoping will get indexed highly by Google. Don’t pick too many but consider the questions
 How do I want people to find this post in Search Engines?
 What will they type into Google if they want information on the topic you’re writing?
 How would I find information on this topic in the Search Engines?
 What results come up when I do plug these keywords into Google?
 What other keywords are other sites using?
The answer to these questions will give you a hint as to what words you’ll want to see repeated throughout your article a number of times.
These keywords will need to be the most common words used in your article. Use them in some or all of the following ways:
 Keywords in post and page titles (read my post on using keywords in titles)
 Keywords in URL of page (blog herald wrote on this a while back)
 Keywords in outbound links (read this article on the pros and cons of outbound links)
 Keywords in bold tags (try do it at least once)
 Keywords in heading tags (there is debate over exactly how to use them but it’s generally accepted that h1 tags are important and that h2, h3, h4 etc tags also have an impact. Having said that I’ve seen some pages rank very well in search engines without using heading tags. There are many tutorials online about heading tags - here’s one.)
 Keywords in image alt tags (here’s how)
 Keywords in the general throughout the text of your post - but especially early on in the first few sentences
 Keywords in meta tags (they seem to be less valuable these days but many still believe they are useful with some search engines - here’s a Guide to meta tags)
Of course you can go over the top with keywords in posts and let it destroy your content - but if it fits with what you’ve written tweak it to include the words you are targeting a couple of extra times. Most SEO experts recommend getting your keyword density up to between 5-20% - I think 20% is probably bordering on massacring your content.
One last word of warning and disclaimer on keyword rich content (because I can just hear the comments on this post already) - don’t sacrifice your readers experience of your site just for the sake of SEO. Yes keyword density can be important in climbing the search engine rankings - but more important is that your content and design are user friendly and helpful to readers. There is nothing worse than a site that is stuffed with keywords - these sites come off as cheap, nasty and spammy - don’t fall for the temptation.
2. Themed sites - One of the growing theories of SEO is that you are more likely to rank well if you have a substantial amount of pages on a similar theme. ie a niche topic blog will probably rank higher than a general one that covers many topics. Build a blog with over 200 pages of content on the same theme and you’ll increase your chances of ranking well as SEs will see you as an authority on the topic. The take home advice here is to keep to some kind of a topic/niche/theme for your blog. It is also probably another argument for categories and tagging posts that relate together strongly.
3. Site Design - Search Engines like well laid out, well coded and easily to navigate sites. Make sure your pages validate (I need to work more on this) and that they are viewable on all major browsers. Search Engines don’t tend to like too much Flash, Frames or Java Script in your site - keep it simple and clean and their robots will index your site a lot faster and more accurately. Also try to keep your blog free from dead links (a challenge for those of us with older blogs with big archives).
4. Interlink your Site - The way Search Engines index your blog is to send little robot crawlers to your site to track what you’ve written and follow the links. Make it easier for them to get around your blog by using internal linking wisely. Most SEO experts recommend that you provide some sort of Site Map that means every page on your blog is just a link or two away from every other one. One way to do this for bloggers is to make sure that your category pages are in your sidebars as I do in this blog. Also make sure every page links back to your main page and any other important pages on your site. If you’re writing on a topic you’ve previously written about consider linking to what you’ve written before or use a ‘other relevant posts’ feature at the base of your article. You’ll see in my menus at the top of the page a number of my key categories and articles. One of the impacts of having them highlighted in this way is that they have become some of the most highly ranked pages on ProBlogger simply because they are linked to from every page of this blog.
5. Update regularly - The more you update your blog the more often Search Engines will send their crawlers to your site to index it. This will mean your new articles could appear in the index within days or even hours rather than weeks. This is a natural benefit of blogging - make the most of it!
6. Outbound Links - There is debate over how SEs treat outbound links from your blog. I’m in the camp who believe that relevant outbound links enhance your site’s ranking in search engines. I always link out to quality relevant sites that I think my readers will find useful and have a little anecdotal evidence that seems to support the theory that this is healthy for the way SEs index you (check out Waynes article on the topic for more info). Linking to sites outside your own blog does mean you end up sending traffic away from your blog so you need to count the cost of such a strategy. Note that you should always try to link to reputable and relevant sites to your own page. Also keep in mind that too many outbound could have detrimental impact upon your blog. Like in most things in SEO - moderation is the key.
7. Choose your domain name wisely - there are numerous factors to keep in mind when selecting a domain name. For one you might like to include your keyword in it if possible. Secondly you should do a little research to see if someone else has previously used the domain. This could have both positive and negative impact. If it was a quality site with inbound links you might reap some benefits but if it was a banned spam site you could still be banned from Google for a long time. One service you might want to use to check expired domains is Way Back Machine at Archive.org.
8. Register your Domain for a Lengthy Period - a recent patent by Google indicates that it now looks at the length of your domain’s registration in ranking it. It does this because many spam sites have short registrations and a longer one indicates that you’re building a site with substance and are in it for the long haul.
9. One topic per post - the more tightly focused the theme of a page the better when Search Engines come to rank it. Sometimes you might find yourself writing long posts that end up covering a number of different topics. They might relate loosely but if search engine ranking is what you’re after it could be better to break up your post into smaller more focused pieces.
10. Write optimal length posts - there is some thought going around the Search Engine Optimization community that pages that are too short can get passed over for high rankings. I try to keep posts at least 250 words. Of course there are some posts on my blogs that are shorter, but if I’m writing a post that I want to rank well I try to give it some meatiness in terms of length. On the other hand don’t make it too long either - because in doing so you make it difficult to keep your keyword density up and could end up with a less tightly focused page. Research also shows that longer articles can have a pretty steep drop off rate in readers after the text gets below the ‘fold’ or to the end of the first screen of article .
11. Avoid Duplicate content - Google warns publishers in its guidelines about having the same content on multiple pages. This goes for both multiple pages that you own but also pages that others own. This is because a tactic of spammers is often to reproduce content on many pages and/or to steel content from other sites. There is some debate over what duplicate content does and doesn’t include (for instance many bloggers use ‘free articles’ as content on their blogs - these articles often appear on hundreds and even thousands of other sites around the web and to me could be seen as duplicate content) - my advice is to be very careful about how many places your content appears. I do republish occasional posts (or parts of them) but try not to do this too much and attempt to add elements that are unique on each occasion that the posts are republished).
12. Ping - services like Pingomatic (there are numerous others too) will ping a variety of websites for you to notify them that you’ve updated. In doing so you’ll also be letting search engines know that you’ve updated which will trigger their robots to come visit your blog. I’d also suggest pinging Google’s blog search tool.
13. Submit your RSS to MyYahoo - submitting your RSS feed to MyYahoo seems to help with getting indexed on Yahoo. Read more about this at Getting Yahoo Traffic for your Blog. Some also think that doing the same thing to Google’s Personalised pages could have a similar impact.
14. Quantities of Content - I always get into trouble when I write about having lots of content - but I think its true that bigger sites tend to rank better than smaller sites - whilst it is possible to rank highly with a small site - it’s probably not the norm.. Search Engines will see your site as more comprehensive the more content you have. You also better your odds of being found in Search Engines if you have more pages. By no means am I saying just to put up random junk content - be careful about this - rather work at building a comprehensive and large site over time.
15. Submit to Search Engines - You can do all the best onsite SEO strategies in the world and still get no where because the Search Engines have not found you to start with. Each search engine has a way of letting it know about your site - submit your URL to be included in the index. Please note that this takes time and perhaps a quicker and more effective way is to get linked to by a site already indexed by the search engine. I’ve written a post about his previously here.
You might also like to tryout some of the services around that offer to submit your sites to search engines for you - I’d be wary of paying for this sort of service though. I never have and seem to do ok.
Again I will reinforce - the above techniques come out of my own experience and from the things I’ve learnt from others. I am not an SEO expert but find that if you keep the above in mind you can do reasonably well. Don’t become obsessed by SEO - if you do you run the risk of forgetting about your reader, forgetting to write quality content and you could find yourself getting into some dodgy SEO tactics that could get you banned from the Search Engines You’re trying to get listed in.
I’ll finish here by adding that SEO can take time - so be patient. After 2.5 years of blogging I’ve managed to build my blogs page ranks and SERPs but it did not happen over night. Sometimes it seems that no matter what you do nothing works - it may be that the words you’re wanting to target are actually a heavily targeted segment of the internet (consider changing your approach) - or it may just be that there is some unknowable glitch with the SE you are targeting - its a fickle game and one that I’d recommend you don’t rely on alone. So yes work on your SEO but also consider the many other methods around to find readers for your blog. You might like to read my Finding Readers for your Blog Series as a starting point.
Feel free to have your say on the topic of SEO and blogging below - share your comments, experiences and questions for the ProBlogger community to interact with.

Adsense Tips for Bloggers 7 - Well Placed and Designed Ads
This is part 7 in a series of posts on increasing AdSense revenue for bloggers. The full series is Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 and Part 8.

Revenue = high readership + high paying ads + relevant ads + well placed and designed ads

The forth element of our Adsense Equation is that of having well designed and optimally placed Adsense Ads. I’ve found that ad positioning is incredibly important. I remember shifting the ads on one of my blogs a while back and being over the moon to discover the next morning that the move had doubled the click through rates that I’d had over night! Its worth doing some tweaking.


Adsense Ad placement and design is an issue that is often hotly debated in Adsense discussion forums. It seems that each Adsense user has their own strategy - some like ads that blend in, others like ads that stand out from the rest of the page. Some like ads in banner positions, others in skyscrapers, others like to put them right in the middle of content. In my experience, different strategies work on different blogs at different times. The key tip I’ll give you is to experiment. Try new positions and design and track your results. One of the best ways you can do this is by using Adsense Tracker which is an amazing tracking package for adsense which gives you much more control over what and how you track your adsense performance. It does cost to purchase the tracker but in my experience you’ll make your money back pretty quickly by using it to adapt your Adsense strategies.

Let me also share a few other tips that you might like to experiment with.

Blend - Most successful Adsense users seem to be taking the approach of blending their ads into the overall theme of their page. This often means making the ad’s background (and often border) the same (or similar) colour to the background of the page and making the title and URL the same as links of the rest of the page. In this way the ad does not stand out as being ‘ad-like’. Having said this I know of a few bloggers who take the opposite approach and make their ads as bright and ugly as possible in the hope of attracting the attention of their readers. I don’t subscribe to this because I think it cheapens the overall feel and look of a page.

In Content - More and more bloggers (and webmasters) are putting their ads inside the main body of their posts. In this way the ads are prominent and more likely to be seen by readers as they read your content. If your text wraps around the ads this can be quite effective. On the flipside of this argument is that you may run the risk of frustrating your readers with dominant ads. People reading content online are a fickle bunch and get easily turned off by blatant advertising.

Above the Fold - it is generally accepted that your Adsense ads should be placed towards the top of your page and be visable without your reader having to scroll down. Studies show that blog visitors stay on average for only 60 or so seconds, many without scrolling down. If you ads are hidden towards the bottom of your page you decrease the likelihood of them ever being seen let alone clicked.

Left is Best - Google has put together a ‘heat map’ which is probably the best thing that you can look at when thinking about the positioning of your ads. You’ll see from it that they have found that ads on the left hand side of the page do much better than those on the right hand side.

Too Dominent? - The position and design of your Adsense ads needs to be balanced with the overall purposes and design of your blog. What is the priority of your blog - is it to make money or is it something else. I have a number of blogs - and place ads differently on each depending upon their purposes. For example this blog is not a commercial blog - I’m more interested in building relationships, sharing and hearing others ideas and updating those interested in what I’m doing with my life. As a result my Adsense Ads are in a less prominent banner position and are designed to fit with the overall theme of the blog. However on my Digital Photography Blog there is obviously a more commercial intent (as well as it being something of a passion and hobby). As a result I experiment with more prominent Adsense ads (usually skyscraper and within content).

I cannot stress enough how useful it is to experiment. What works on one blog doesn’t always work on another. I’ve also noticed that if you have a blog with regular and loyal readers that it is good to keep things changing as your readers tend to get used to the way your blog is and become blind to things like Adsense Ads. I notice that when I move my ads around that it often creates higher click throughs for a few days - until the blindness kicks in again. Joel Comm’s What Google Never Told You About Making Money with Adsense is an excellent E-book written with lots of good tips on positioning your adsense ads if you’re wanting to get another person’s opinion on this topic.

(from problogger.net)

Adsense Tips for Bloggers 6 - Relevant Ads
This is part 6 in a series of posts on increasing AdSense revenue for bloggers. The full series is Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 and Part 8.

Revenue = high readership + high paying ads + relevant ads + well placed and designed ads

The third element of our Adsense equation is that of relevant Adsense ads. It is all very well to rank high in search engines to generate high levels of traffic, but without relevant ads that relate to the content of your blog you are not likely to generate much in the way of click throughs.

Let me give you an example. Recently I was asked to help a fellow blogger who has struggling with his Adsense ads because whilst his content largely focused upon the topic of ‘health care’ - most of the ads being served to his blog were focused upon ‘blogging’. He was getting quite reasonable traffic levels and had a reasonably high paying topic (there are some good health care ads out there) but as you’d expect, people coming to a blog about health care did not click on ads for blogging software and services at a very high rate. The challenge was to get his ads reflecting the content of his blog.

Another fellow blogger had the problem of not getting ANY ads being served to his site. Instead of paying ads all he was getting was the public service ads that Adsense serves when they couldn’t find any relevant paying ads (these pay nothing).

How do you get relevant ads? Here are a few things to try.

Make sure there are ads available - My friend who didn’t get any paying ads served was focusing on a key word for which there was no or very few ads. A simple way of checking this is to do a search on Google for the key word you are targeting. If they don’t serve ads on their own search results page its an indication that such ads are scarce - if not non existent. They way we got ads on my friends blog was to experiment with other related keywords. He didn’t have to change the focus of his blog - just the way he described his topics. For example if there are no ads for ‘bed linen’ try ‘blankets’, ’sheets’, ‘quilts’ etc. Experiment with different combinations until you find something that works.

Increase your Keyword density - The more you use your keywords the more likely you are to get ads on those topics. Its not common knowledge exactly how the Adsense bot decides what ads suit your content best (if someone knows feel free to post it in comments below) but it’s a pretty safe bet that if you put you keyword in your title, at least once in your first paragraph and then scatter it throughout the rest of your page that you’ll convince the Adsense bot of what your topic is. It MAY also be helpful to include your keywords in the URL of your page (Moveable type can let you do this - ie look at the URL of this page - it incorporates my title and therefore some keywords). It MAY also be worth putting your keywords in outward links, bold, italics etc. All of these strategies also help optimise yor blog for search engines which won’t hurt either.

Examine your Sidebars, menus, header and footer - It is not just your main content that the Adsense bot searches to find the topic of your page, but also your other areas. When I looked at the healthcare blog that was getting ‘blogging’ ads I noticed that he had the word ‘blog’ in his title, three times on his sidebar and once in his footer. It was also in his URL and he also used the word quite often in his content. My recommendation was to remove the word from as many of those places as possible and to increase his health care keywords. The ads improved their relevancy almost immediately.

Stick to one topic per page - Obviously this may not be feasible on your front page - but attempt to keep each individual blog entry/post as highly targeted as possible. I’ve noticed that some people often include two or three topics in one entry - this will confuse Adsense’s bot so split them up into two entries.

Block irrelevant Ads - Sometimes despite your best intentions Google just gets it wrong and serves your ads that have nothing to do with what you write. If you’re getting some repeating irrelevant ads block them. Adsense lets you do this to quite a few sites and its easy to do. I have a number of ads blocked, some because they are philosophically not consistent with what I write about, but mainly because they just are not relevant to the topic of my blogs.

Ask Adsense - If all else fails notify Google Adsense of your issue. Of course they are busy people - but Google prides itself on being responsive to its users. I’ve emailed with queries a number of times, once on an issue of irrelevant ads, and every time I’ve had positive results from my query. You’ve got nothing to loose - shoot them an email!

If you do all of the above you SHOULD find Adsense serves you with relevant ads. In conjunction with the other elements in our equation this will contribute to increased click throughs and hopefully higher Adsense revenue. Next in this series on maximizing Adsense revenue is a post on Well Placed and Designed Adsense Ads.

(from problogger.net)

Adsense Revenue = Traffic Levels + High Paying Ads + Relevant Ads + Optimally Positioned and Designed Ads

The next element of this Adsense equation to be examined is how to get high paying Adsense Ads running on your site. Obviously in any business one way to get higher profits is to charge more for your product - whilst you have no direct say in how much is charged for ads run on your site - there are ways of targeting types of ads that might bring in a higher return than others.

As we mentioned in our initial explanation of the equation, the PVR Blog is one example of a blog that targets a well paying ad type - ads for PVR technology. Whilst I do not know specifics of earnings I would suspect blogs like Gizmodo who run Adsense ads would also be generating a higher paying ad, due to their focus on technology.

The lesson we can learn from blogs such as these is that they attract specific ads (that presumably are well paying) by keeping their content targeted on the same topics. To over simplify what we’re saying - if you want ads about Camera Phones blog about Camera Phones.

Finding High Paying Ads is not as easy as it sounds (is anything?). Do a search for Google on High Paying Adsense Ads and you won’t find too many sites listing the best keywords for Adsense. The top Adsense users in Adsense discussion forums tend to be pretty secretive about not only what keywords they focus on, but also what sites they run. I don’t blame them either - its good business sense really.

Having said this there are a number of strategies and tools that you might like to employ to help find high paying keywords.

Buy them - Finding high paying keywords for your blog is possible by yourself for free - but as with everything a few entrepreneurial types are willing to do the leg work for you to save you some time and give you a comprehensive result. One service that you might like to try to find good keywords is Top Paying Keywords.
Trial and Error - I know this will frustrate some of you who want a nice and easy quick fix but overall it is one of the best pieces of advice I can give. Try writing on a topic - track the results - if it pays off do it again….lots. Adsense allows you to track specific pages or sections of your blog using its ‘channels’ feature - if you’re smart you’ll watch which sections of your blog are generating the highest ads by dividing your overall earnings by the number of clicks and comparing it to other channels. Keep trying new topics until you strike gold and then dig in like crazy!
Are there Any Ads? - This is a good first question. Despite the many thousands of advertisers using Adsense there are some topics where the answer to this question is no. A simple way to check is to head to Google and do a search for the key words you’re wanting to blog about. The results page will bring up not only a list of other sites writing about that key word (they are you competitors) but on the right hand side there will be a list of ads - these are the same sorts of ads you’ll get on your site if you write on the topic. If there are ads there, it is a good sign. If there are not - maybe its worth finding another topic to write on if you’re hoping to attract ads.
7 Search has a list of the 100 of the top paying keywords (in their advertising program - not Adsense) at the moment. Its a bit depressing actually to see a list like this because you’d have to sell your soul somewhat in order to go with many of them. Its an interesting site to check out though.
Also from 7 Search (and more useful) is their Keyword Suggestion Tool which gives you an idea of what people are paying per click on different tools (again this is not specifically for Adsense but it will give you an idea of what the going rates are). Find What also has a similar service.
Google Adsense’s biggest competitor are Overture (they run the ads on Yahoo) - they offer a service where you can enter your keywords and they will not only tell you how much advertisers are paying for the words but also how many people are searching for the term. This is a very useful tool.
Sign up for Adwords - One way of getting a feel for how much people are willing to pay per click is to sign up with Google as an advertiser yourself. It doesn’t cost much to start a mini campaign and do some research this way. You’ll get a feel for what people are bidding on different words very quickly this way.
Word Tracker is the best tool I’ve seen to help in finding keywords that people are searching for in the major search engines. The excellent thing about Word Tracker is that they also tell you how many other sites out there are targeting the same words! This is very handy as it will stop you targeting ‘Britney Spears’ as a Keyword phrase even though its one of the most searched for keywords on the web because literally hundreds of thousands of other sites have beaten you to the punch. Word Tracker has a free version to trial it and their paying version is even better - well worth the investment.
I’m told Keyword Sleuth is a similar program to Word Tracker however I am yet to trial it.
Targeting High Paying Adsense Ads is an important aspect of generating an income from Adsense. It is not enough in and of itself however. You can have $10 per click ads (I’ve not found any of these yet) but without generating any traffic your research into the right ads will be useless. Likewise it is one thing to identify which ads you want to target - but it is another thing to actually get these relevant ads showing on your site. It is to this topic which our next post in this series will head - Finding Relevant Adsense Ads.

(from problogger.net)

Adsense Tips for Bloggers 4 - Increasing Traffic
This is part 4 in a series of posts on maximizing adsense revenue for bloggers. The full series is Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 and Part 8.

I have argued the case for our equation for increasing Adsense Revenue

Adsense Revenue = Traffic Levels + High Paying Ads + Relevant Ads + Optimally Positioned and Designed Ads

I now will turn my attention to each of the four elements of good Adsense revenue in turn and give some practical easy to implement tips to improve each from my experience.

Increasing Traffic Levels is a key component to increasing Adsense revenue. As I wrote previously, ‘The more people that see you Adsense Ads, the more likelihood there is that someone will click on them.’

Increasing the readership of your blog is not as simple as it sounds, it takes time, patience and hard work (and sometimes a bit of luck) Having said that there are many things you can do to get your blog in front of a wider audience and there exposing the adsense messages on your site to more potential ‘clickers’. Here are a few tips…


Quality, Interesting, Useful and Original Content - What are the blogs that you read the most? If you’re anything like me they are blogs that have quality content that ’scratches me where I itch’. This is essential to increasing your readership unless you have a pretty amazing ‘gimmick’ to bring readers in.
Good Blog Design is really important if you want your blog to create a good first impression. With millions of other blogs and sites out there its worth some effort to make yours stand out. Also worth a read is Good Weblog Design and Layout.
Link to others - be generous with your links to other bloggers big and small. You’ll be surprised how many links come back your way. This not only brings traffic from their sites but doesn’t hurt your ranking in Google.
Comment on others blogs - Some of my most loyal readers came to my blog because I genuinely interacted with them on their blogs through comments. Hear me now, I say genuinely because its easy to spam in comments, but this will have the opposite effect of generating readers to your blog.
Update Frequently - There is nothing that turns me off a blog faster than seeing that it hasn’t been updated for a month or more. Keep it rolling over with interesting content.
Interact with Readers - Having an interactive blog that invites the involvement of readers is one way of generating repeat visitors. I’ve written a tip on Interactive Blogging including a number of interactive tools that you can use on your blog. Also check out this tip on using comments effectively to increase interactivity on your blog.
Optimise for Search Engines - I can’t stress enough how important Search Engines are to increasing traffic, especially traffic that will click on your ads. I find that 95% of my traffic comes from Google and have found that anecdotal evidence suggests this traffic clicks through on Adsense ads at a higher rate than traffic from links on other blogs and sites. So work hard at getting listed and highly ranked on Search Engines.
Add a signature to your outgoing email - Learn a lesson from Hotmail who have used signatures on the bottom of their users emails for years to promote their home page and generate interest in their product. Be careful though if you don’t want your worlds to collide!
Web Rings - There are literally thousands of webrings that you can sign up for. I’m not sure how effective they are these days, but some people still swear by them.
Add an RSS feed to your blog - more and more people are reading blogs without ever visiting them through News Aggregators that pick up information using RSS. Whilst this does not guarantee those reading through aggregators will visit your blog (and therefore see your Adsense Ads) it certainly increases the chances of them dropping by, especially if you invite comments and have internal links on your posts.
List your site on Portals - There are a growing number of sites which exclusively list blogs. If you want people to find you its worth submitting your blog to be listed on them. Some focus on specific topics while others list blogs on a wide variety of topics (like Eaton Web and Globe of Blogs). Other portals like BlogShares and Blog Street also list a lot of blogs in different ways which might increase your blogs profile.
Blog Search Engines and Indexes - Get yourself registered on sites like Blogdex, Technorati, Popdex and Daypop (they require RSS I think). These sites have features that allow people to search for blog entries via topic and keywords. They also list the most popular recent topics and each have other interesting features which can enhance your blogging experience.
Start a Newsletter - Offer your readers a newsletter service to keep them up to date with your latest posts. I’ve found since adding a free weekly newsletter to my digicam blog that hundreds of readers have signed up for regular updates of my latest posts. Think about this - hundreds of people have given me permission to invite them to come back to my blog - every week!
Get Involved in Blog Projects and Memes - From time to time other bloggers will invite your participation in a blog project of theirs. Get involved, support their project and you might find it pays off. On the flip side start your own blogging project or meme. Do something that is of service to other bloggers. I tried something like this with Underblogs and Blogger Idol.
Get involved in other web forums - Genuinely participate in web forums and discussion pages on topics related to your blog. Many of these allow you to add a signature to your posts which raise your blogs profile.
Promote your Posts - If you think you’ve written something worthwhile spend a few minutes letting others know about it. I regularly shoot other bloggers to notify them of what I’ve written if I think it will interest them. Think about it before you send the email and don’t bombard the same people constantly with every topic you write on - be selective, concise, polite and helpful with your emails but don’t be afraid to promote yourself.
Add a ‘Email a Friend’ Option to your posts - make it easy for your readers to tell others about what you’ve written. I know this function gets used regularly on my blog and brings in new readers that I would never otherwise have been able to reach.
These are just some of the ideas that I’ve used and seen others use to increase the readership of a blog and thereby increase the exposure of Adsense ads to a wider audience.Many of the above tips were taken from my Blog Tips Series including the ‘Finding Readers’ Series.

What methods have your found to be effective at increasing the readership of your blog? What works for your and what doesn’t? What tips would you add to this collection?

Of course increasing traffic alone won’t greatly increase your Adsense revenue, but it can help! In our next Adsense Tip for Bloggers we will explore ways to generate High Paying Ads - the second component in our Adsense Revenue Equation.

(from problogger.net)

This is Part 3 in a series for Bloggers on how to use the Google Adsense Program. The full series is Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 and Part 8.

There are many factors that impact the level of revenue generated from a blog using the Google Adsense program. Books have been written explaining expert strategies for Adsense - However for the purposes of this series we’ve boiled it all down into four elements that we believe impact your Adsense earning capacity the most. Speaking in general terms here is a simple equation that illustrates how the factors each contribute to Adsense Revenue.

Adsense Revenue = Traffic Levels + High Paying Ads + Relevant Ads + Optimally Positioned and Designed Ads

Its not Rocket Science. Each of the above four elements contribute directly to the total revenue that your Adsense Ads will produce. Don’t just work on one of them though because if any one is weak it will hold your potential earnings back. Lets break each factor down….

Traffic Levels - The more people that see you Adsense Ads, the more likelihood there is that someone will click on them. As I examine the statistics provided by Adsense that report my daily earnings I notice that my earnings in the past 8 months have increased considerably as my total page impressions have increased. For example earlier in the week when Slashdot linked up to this post I had an influx of 50,000 visitors in 24 hours to my blog - it doesn’t take a genius to work out what this did to my Adsense earnings that day! Work on increasing your traffic levels and you should see an increase in your Adsense Revenue.

High Paying Ads - Once again I’m stating the obvious, but if the content you provide on your blog attracts high paying ads you’re going to do significantly better. For example it has been documented that the PVR Blog is doing pretty well when it comes to high Adsense earnings - the secret of its success is partly due to it being served with ads that are high paying. The topic of the PVR blog is, as you’d expect, PVR technology including TiVo, Replay TV etc. This is cutting edge technology and therefore advertisers are willing to pay top dollar to get their products and services out there! In comparison if a person was to start a blog on ‘toothpicks’ I suspect the ads are not likely to pay very much. It would take very high traffic levels to earn as much from a toothpick blog as it would the PVR blog.

Relevant Ads - A second reason the PVR Blog is successful is that it servers relevant ads. To put it simply people looking for information on PVR technology are confronted by Adsense ads for PVR technology. I recently visited a blog that was having trouble getting relevant ads - they had a blog on Tourist destinations in Australia - but unfortunately they were getting Adsense ads for remote control cars. You can guess what their revenue was like. Increase the relevancy of your Ads to your content and you are one step closer to increasing your Adsense revenue.

Optimally Positioned and Designed Ads - One of the coolest things about the Adsense program is that they give you freedom in choosing the best position and color scheme for your ads. Just like in the wider world of advertising - positioning is a key element to an ads success. A Billboard positioned on a road where no one drives is not likely to get the same results as one positioned on a busy intersection. The position and design of your Adsense Ads is critical - if they are out of site they’ll never get clicked on.

Bringing them Together - The above four elements are in many ways pretty obvious when spelt out like this - the challenge comes to improving each to optimize Adsense revenue.

Your revenue will only grow as high as the weakest one of these factors on your blog. For example if you have high paying, relevant, well designed and positioned ads but no traffic you’ll not do well. Likewise if you have high traffic, high paying and relevant ads but they are poorly designed an in a position where they’ll never be seen - you’ll waste all your other hard work. Its not enough to work on one element.

How do we improve each? In the next four posts we’ll examine each area in turn and suggest a number of ways that you might try tweaking them to increase your revenue.

(from problogger.net)

Adsense Tips for Bloggers 2 - Is Your Blog Suitable for Adsense?
This is Part 2 in a series on using Adsense on your Blog - The full series is Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 and Part 8.

Is your blog suitable for Adsense? - Before you rush into signing up for Adsense expecting it to earn you a million dollars it is worth asking the question of whether Adsense is the right revenue strategy for your blog. By no means is it the only option - you might like to check out this tip on other ways of making money from blogging.

Whilst there are some amazing success stories about earning big dollars with Adsense out there, it is worth taking a realistic look at some cold hard truths about the Adsense program.


Google does not accept every site that applies to the Adsense program.
Google Adsense Program Policies indicate that the content of sites must not contain things like excessive profanity, pornography, illicit drugs etc. Basically your blog needs to have content that is reasonably ‘family friendly’.
Also in their policy document is a reference to them not normally accepting pages of a personal nature. This is the topic of discussion in many Adsense forums and is obviously open to different interpretations. Many (if not most) blogs are personal in nature - however to maximize your chances of approval by Adsense a blog should be targeted on a particular topic/s. For example whilst this blog is often personal in nature - most of my individual posts (pages) focus on very specific themes which are repeated throughout the blog. update - this may have changed recently with Blogger now allowing blogger blogs to use Adsense.
Sites accepted into the Adsense program are also required to be easily navigable, have an adequate quantity of text based content (don’t apply if you’ve been blogging a week) and be written in English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Japanese, or Spanish. They may not to have excessive advertising or other contextual/competing advertising.
Whilst not stated in the Adsense Policy document, many also believe that sites accepted into the program also need to have reasonable levels of traffic. If your blog is new, it may be worth waiting a few weeks or months before applying to build up traffic and content levels. Others speculate that a professionally designed, well-organized and privately hosted blog has a better chance of being accepted. The more professional and successful your blog appears the more likely it is to be accepted by Adsense.
If still in doubt after reading Google Adsense Program Policies you can email Google for clarification or just apply and see how you go.

Of course, acceptance by Google into the Adsense program does not guarantee your success. The fact remains that certain blogs will always be more successful than others at generating income.

Future posts in this series will focus upon strategies and tips for increasing your revenue but it should be stated here that the most successful sites are generally sites with very high traffic levels and/or content that is directly related to a particular product or service (the more targeted and niche-like the better).

It is also worth saying that Adsense works best on pages with lots of text content. It only reads text in determining ads, not images so make sure you have enough relevant content.

The next posts in this series will expand upon these aspects of successful blogging with Adsense with our Adsense Equation.

(from problogger.net)