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Google is still the undisputable leader amongst search engines. In order to keep its shareholders and users happy, Google gives extreme importance to the quality of its results.
For this reason, doing the wrong things in the Adsense and other forms of advertisements, whether intentionally or unintentionally, will result in a severe penalty, may get you banned and even have your account terminated.
So if you are thinking about building sites to earn an income from Adsense, it is worth thinking through the strategies you will be using to generate that income.
Here are a some definite DO NOTS!
Hidden texts.
Filling your advertisement page with texts too small to read, or which has the same color as the background and using css for the sole purpose of loading them with rich keywords content and copy will earn you a penalty award that is given to those who are hiding links.
Page cloaking. There is a common practice of using browser or bot sniffers to serve the bots of a different page other than the page your visitors will see. Loading a page with a bot that a human user will never see is a definite no-no. This is tricking them to click on something that you want but they may not want to go to.
Multiple submissions. Submitting multiple copies of your domain and pages is another thing to stay away from. This is a reason to avoid auto submitters. Better check first if your domain is submitted already an a certain search engine before you try to submit to it again. If you see it there, then move on. No point contemplating whether to try and submit there again.
Link farms. Be wary of who and what your are linking your site to. The search engines know that you cannot control your links in. But you can certainly control what you link to. Link farming has always been a rotten apple in the eyes of search engines, especially Google. That is reason enough to try and avoid them. Generally a site with little contents but lots of links on a page will classify as a link farm, so if you want to earn money from Adsense, make sure that there is real content on the pages of your site and not just a series of links.
Page rank for sale. If you have been online for quite some time, you will notice that there are some sites selling their PR links or trading them with other sites. If you are doing this, expect a ban anytime in the future. It is okay to sell ads or gain the link. But doing it on direct advertisement of your page rank is a way to get on search engines bad side.
Doorways. This is similar to cloaking pages. The common practice of a page loaded with choice keyword ads aimed at redirecting visitors to another “user-friendly” page is a big issue among search engines. There are many seo firms offering this kind of services. Now that you know what they actually are, try to avoid them at all costs.
Many of the above techniques apply to most search engines and is not entirely for Google only. By having a mind set that you are building your Adsense together with your pages for the human users and not for bots, you can be assured of the great things for your ads and sites.
Not to mention avoiding the wrath of the search engines and getting your Adsense and site account terminated altogether.
If you’re looking at Google’s AdSense program you’re probably asking yourself how much you could make from such a program, and you probably think you can’t make as much as you can from traditional advertising schemes.
Google, of course, keeps a great deal of secrecy regarding how much AdWords advertisers pay per each click directed to their site and the same applies for how much AdSense banner holders make from their websites.
While there’s nothing official, rumors circulate around the Internet concerning the amount of cash a website can earn by using AdSense. And many people (illegally) disclose how much they have been making with AdSense. There are stories of people raising over one thousand dollars per month using AdSense. The truth is that if you have a small website and you just want it to support itself, and don’t wish to reach your pocket for its maintenance costs you can probably do this with AdSense. I personally have several sites that earn their keep with a few hundred dollars a year.
AdSense is also very good for people who host a lot of pages. Even if the pages don’t generate a lot of traffic individually, every click counts and you can earn up with a lot of money by doing this. And that just goes to prove that sometimes quantity matters nearly as much as quality.
There’s no telling how much money you’re going to make by using Google’s AdSense but you can make a rough estimate, before actually starting, by taking a few things into consideration.
First, is the amount of visits you get every day. While there’s no way to estimate precisely on this, you can generally make a safe assumption that if you have a lot of clicks per day you’ll be making good money. Also, this depends on what exactly your site is about. If your site is about anything popular (music, sex, whatever) you’re bound to get a lot of banner clicks. These have a coefficient associated with them, called the CTR (click through ratio).
Basically, what it translates to is that if a large proportion of your site’s visitors click the ads you’ll be making more money. And the best way to do this is to have some popular content in your site, ensuring the links direct users towards popular items as well.
Then of course, there’s the position and number of ads on your website. While you don’t want to overdo it, having many links will undoubtedly generate more income for you as a webmaster. Do not however believe, that if you just add a lot of ads in an important portion of your site, visitors could always just skip them (and be assured that many do just that).
There’s something between an art and a science to positioning your ads. People generally look in certain places and never look in others, and knowing this a website author and/or webmaster can do a great deal of things to increase his earnings with AdSense.
>All in all, the amount of money you make with AdSense depends on many factors. But if you have a site with interesting contents and/or many pages, and if you see a constantly large amount of traffic every day, you can bet you’ll be making a lot of money with AdSense.
Even if you aren’t in the above categories, AdSense is still worth using because there’s very little hassle in setting it up, and many times it can help financially support the site, whilst being a nice bonus to get through the post at the end of the month.
If you’re using AdWords or AdSense you must have heard about a practice in the underworld of computing called “click fraud”. But what exactly is click fraud and how is it accomplished?
There are two sides to the Google advertising program -
1)Adsense – where a website publisher hosts ads on their site and GETS PAID when a visitor clicks on an ad
2) Adwords – the program used by advertisers – who PAY each time one of their ads is clicked on
Click fraud works in one of two ways:
1) either a publisher attemtps to have people clicking the ads just so that they can earn a greater income. For example, by getting friends/family to click on the ads. (I should say here – NEVER do this. Google WILL catch you – your account will be suspended permanently and any money in it will be lost).
2) or a competitor clicks repeatedly on an ad to get their competitors banned for click fraud.
Like AdSense, Bidvertiser displays text ads in your page. But the difference lies in the fact that advertisers bid over your advertising space, ensuring you earn as much revenue as you possibly can. This also means that bids will increase over time, earning you even more cash. You also get a great way to customize your ads with a very easy to use tool and detailed reports on your site’s status.
Quigo AdSonar achieves relevancy by placing a filter according to your site’s categories. It also offers you on-line reports of your site’s status and the possibility to add your own custom ads replacing ads that don’t gain you any revenue. The setup is very simple, in a similar fashion to AdSense’s and quite customizable as well.
Vibrant Media IntelliTXT offers user-activated ads, highlighting certain words within the content of the page and presenting relevant ads when a user hovers his mouse over them. It uses a pay-for-performance pricing scheme and can easily be used along with other advertising methods, because it is unobtrusive. It places you in full control, allowing you to easily integrate it within your site with some simple JavaScript.
Nixie claims to hold a technology that can read and understand your site, enabling it to display the most relevant content to your site. Besides text ads, Nixie also features price comparison listings as well as live auction advertising. It’s very easy to implement and has a good payment policy as well.
MIVA AdRevenue Xpress is targeted towards small and mid-sized publishers. It implements Search Box functionality and also features things like a Category Directory as well as the handling of 404 error pages. It can be integrated with your page using a simple on-line wizard.
Fastclick offers you an impressive 65 percent of what it makes from a click on your website. Payments are done monthly, via PayPal or through checks. The ads can be formatted as you wish, and Fastclick even offers a free support serice for its members and no fees are required to register with the service.
ContextAd offers the possibility of contextual ads for dynamic pages, meaning ads will change as soon as your page does. It’s very easy to use and free to sing up for and offers a transparent payment policy. The ads are fully customizable and real-time reports are available 24/7.
AdBrite offers publishers the possibility of integrating text ads in their pages. These are done on your own rates, with the websites you approve by hand so it bares some similarities with a classic advertising scheme. You also have the option of adding a “Your Add Here” button that buyers can immediately click to ad space on your page. It can also be used in conjunction with Google AdSense, maximizing your CTR and offering advertisers the possibility of showing their links in your Google AdSense space. You have full control over the look and feel of your adds and finally, you get an incredible 75% of what the advertiser pays for on every click.
So, as you can see there are many offers for this kind of advertising, and many hybrids based on AdSense like advertising. Also, a lot of services can work together with AdSense to earn you an even greater amount of revenue for your ad space.
Many people use Google’s AdSense program, but there are some who find it a bit too uncertain or simply not suitable for their own requirements from an ad program.
If Adsense isn’t for you, there are many alternatives which might suit you better, depending on your location, content of your site and requirements for how and when you are paid. Here is a list of suggested alternatives together with a description about each one.
MarketBanker allows you the unique possiblity to set the pricing for your site. It also allows you to allow or reject any link that appears on your site (although AdSense itself does a very good job of this as well, with URL filters) There’s also a statistics section which will allow you to see how well your site is doing. The ads are small just like AdSense’s and they’re just as easy to set up. Also, registration for MarketBanker is free.
Atlas Solutions is different because it has advertisers compete for clicks on your site, which in turn is meant to generate the highest possible profits for your page. It also has a very large pool of advertisers which ensure there are plenty of people to choose your site. However, it does require more polish on site contents then AdSense. As most sites, real time statistics are available and its very easy to get started with this service, but it’s also very flexible.
TargetPoint is oriented more towards content publishers. It offers full control over the look the ads, statistics over your site’s overall performance and better revenue. It’s free to register and you earn a guaranteed 60% of the total revenue. You can get payed with Paypal of Bank checks and (most times) wire transfers as well.
Clicksor will earn you as much as 60% from the amount of money your website produces. What you get is about the same as AdSense, there are targeted text ads, you can view the revenues from your website in real time. You can receive money via PayPal or through a check every two weeks, provided that you have earned more then $50. If you haven’t made that much, your earning roll over to the next period.
Now that you have learnt how to run a blog and use Adsense, we’re going to look at other ways of making money from a website.
One of the most common ways of monetising a site is to use an affiliate program. There are lots of different programs – here are a few that I use: Affiliatefuture.com, tradedoubler.com and clickbank.com.
Affiliatefuture and tradedoubler have a wide range of well known clients whose affiliate programs you can join – selling things ranging from finance to broadband, chocolates to clothes. They are free to join, so it’s worth signing up and taking a look around their site to see if there are any programs that fit with the subject of your site.
For the next few posts I’m going to be looking at Clickbank. Why? Because an online contact of mine has issued a challenge to me and another contact. I like a challenge, so I couldn’t resist.
The challenge: To build a site in the reverse phone look-up niche. This is a niche that mainly operates in the USA where, for a small fee, if you know a person’s cell phone number you can do a reverse search to find out who owns the number. This has obvious uses if you are concerned about who your child is calling, or to see if you can trace a scammer if they are using a US cell phone number -a subject close to my heart because I run an anti-scam blog.
The idea is that we each build a site, sign up for a Clickbank program (or programs) and then promote the site. The aim is to see if we can achieve an income of $1000 a month from our site. Sounds like a tall order – but like I said, I like a challenge.
I decided that if I post my progress on here, step by step, that should give you an idea of how to monetise a site using affiliate programs.
I’ll start in the next post by telling you how to register a domain name – so far we have used a free site from blogger, but sooner or later you will want to own and run your own site with your own domain name – and this is a good time to start. So read the next post to find out how to register a domain name and how to find hosting for it.
Website and blogs need content. If you enjoy writing, you can earn money by writing content for others. To make a success of this you will need good writing skills and enjoy spending time researching your content.
There are many sites on the internet you might want to look at:
The Warrior Forum. Members can offer their services in the “Warriors for Hire” section. New members/writers often start by offering to write free articles for a few warriors. This allows Warriors to see the quality of your work, and allows you to get some all important feedback.
Daily Article. A site where you submit articles that you’ve written for sale. You can write about any subject you like and choose your price. Some articles sell quickly, some don’t.
Constant Content. I haven’t used this one, but I think it works in much the same way as Daily Article.
Helium. This works differently. You don’t sell articles, but you can get paid according to your rating . It’s a bit complicated – you have two ratings – number of articles written, and number of “rates” you”ve submitted. All the articles on the site are peer rated – ie members rate each others articles. Take a look to see what I mean.
I hope these sites give you a few ideas to get you started. Being a content writer can be lucrative once you have built a reputation and you only need to accept the amount of work you feel you can cope with.
I’m a member of the Warrior Forum. It’s by far the best place to learn all there is to know about Internet Marketing.
When you’re new to IM, the forum can be a bit overwhelming. Don’t worry – it’s like learning any new skill. It will slowly start to make sense and the place is a goldmine of information. It’s where I learnt most of what I know about IM – and I’m still learning.
You don’t need to join the forum to read most of the posts – you only need to join if you want to take part in discussions.
There is a search facility so you can search back posts to find information.
The answer is no – and yes!
Adsense works by autodetecting the content of your page. Usually it is fairly accurate. However, if ads are displayed that you don’t want for any reason you can block them by adding them to the “competitive ad” filter.
How to Use the Adsense Competitive Ad Filter
 Log into your Adsense account and click on the “Adsense Setup” tab. Then click on “Competitive Ad Filter”.
 Enter one web address per line in the box and scroll down and click on Save Changes.
How can you tell the web address of an Adsense ad? NEVER click on your own ads to find out where they take you. Google will BAN you for click fraud.
Fortunately – they provide an answer in the form of the “Adsense Preview Tool”.
What is the Adsense Preview Tool?
 This is an add-on for Internet Explorer. Download it from here – Adsense Preview Tool. One this is installed it adds an extra item to the RIGHT click menu in IE.
When you click on “Google Adsense Preview tool” from this menu you will see a list of ads that could be displayed on your site.
 You can click to put a tick beside the ads whose URLs you want to know.
Then click on “Show Selected URLs”. The URLs will be displayed in a box. You can copy them from here and paste them into your competitive ad filter.
NOTE: If the URL you copy is too long for the ad filter, you will see a message in red displayed after you click on “Save changes”. Just delete as much of the URL as is necessary to reduce it to 64 characters or less. If you look at the URL, you will probably find that most of it an be deleted so that you are just left with something like www.myunwantedsite.com
Once you have your site up and running you will want to know if it gets visitors. I usually use either Statcounter or Google Analytics. In this post I’m going to show you how to add a Statcounter to your blogger blog.
Start by going to Statcounter and signing up for a free account. Once you have your account, sign in. You will see a list of your projects (if you are setting up your first project, your project list will be empty).
Click on “add new project”. Fill in the details of your blog:
 I usually leave the rest of the options on this page unchanged.
Scroll down and click on “next”. Then click on “Configure and Install Code”
I always use an invisible counter – it’s a personal preference, but do you really want the first few visitors to your site to see that you have only had, say, 6 visitors?
 Click on “next” and then select your site type – there is an option for Blogger, so we will use that – although I usually just use the default guide. (The code you are going to get in the next step is the same – it’s just that the instructions for its use change.)
 Now follow the instructions that Statcounter give for using the code to install your Statcounter. I could give instructions here, but they would be exactly the same.
Using your Statcounter
 From time to time, log into your Statcounter account. Click on the name of your project (there will be a list of names if you have more than one site with a counter on) to see your stats.
I’m going to click on “keep safe” – a blog I run to help prevent people falling victim to scammers.
Choose which stats you want to see from the left hand menu. I usually use “Recent Keyword Activity” – which tells me which search terms people used to find the site and “recent came from” which tells me if people came to my site from an external link – for example from one of the social bookmarks you made if you followed the previous post on this blog.
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