Google Adsense - Introduction

Whilst many of you will know all about Google Adsense there may be a number who don't. This brief introduction to the programme is dedicated to those who do not have a clear understanding of the programme and wish familiarise themselves with it.

As the title suggests, Adsense is an advertisement application run by Google (there are a number of other less popular advertisement applications out there run by other companies such as Yahoo but we will deal with them another time).

Website owners or bloggers who wish to enrol in the Adsense programme can display text, image and video advertisements on their sites. The adverts are administered by Google and generate income, usually on a per click basis (this is commonly known as Pay Per Click or PPC).

Adsense is a great starting point for bloggers using the free blogging platform blogger (as I am) due to the simplicity involved in uploading Adsense to the blog. This is mainly due to the fact that Google also owns Blogger.

Although this is only a brief overview of Adsense as a whole, the purpose is to simply offer readers a brief introduction to the programme. You can read all the Adsense related articles on this site by click the link below:

Blog Addick Adsense articles

Affiliate Marketing - Introduction

Affiliate marketing is an internet based form of marketing where the seller of a product (be it an individual or a business) rewards it's affiliates (which can be numerous in number) for each new customer or visitor that is a direct result of the affiliates marketing efforts.

The growing trend of affiliate marketing has evolved as a direct result of the internet and therefore lends itself perfectly to websites and blogs alike.

Affiliate marketing has become an industry in it's own right with many individuals earning significant income as a direct result. Many of the top bloggers on the internet state that the income received from affiliate marketing is in fact their top earner.

Internet marketing is of the utmost importance to companies trying to make a name for themselves and their products. Affiliate marketing is the perfect tool to get a brand out there, which has led to a great number of companies and individuals getting involved, including affiliate networks, affiliate management companies, affiliate mangers (within companies), specialised third party vendors as well as many other types of affiliates/publishers who try and sell the various products available.

Web 2.0, including blogging and online communities has led to a rise in quality of the affiliate products that are available to promote, this is a direct consequence of the fact that a poor quality product can be exposed across the entire web in double quick time.

In this day and age affiliate marketing is rightly seen as a crucial part of product/service promotion. The other advantages of an affiliate programme is that it doesn't cost much to implement and will generate a consistent source of online profit. On the other hand it is also a great tool for affiliates as it is a way of generating an income using someone elses product.

It is usually accepted that Affiliate programmes will fall into two basic categories, these are:

1. Pay Per Performance.

2. Pay Per Click.

Pay Per Performance or PPP

Is the most commonly used form of affiliate marketing by individuals and companies trying to promote their products or services. The company/individual only has to pay the for an affiliate referral when it leads to a direct sale. Look out for multi-level or tier affiliate programmes, they will reward you for other affiliates that you sign up, meaning that you get commission for your direct referrals as well as that of your sub-affiliates.

Pay Per Click or PPC

PPC affiliate programmes are by far the most common place and are very simple for an affiliate to implement. Google adsense and Blogger are a perfect example (adsense is ready made to be added to your blog via your blogs layout). You get paid a small amount for every click on an advert that is featured on your site. Remember once someone clicks an advert on your site, they are gone!

How you implement affiliate programmes into your blog is entirely up to you. From what I have read and can ascertain from the top bloggers out there, they all seem to say that there main source of income is via the sales of product and not through adsense. Personally I have started with adsense before moving on to the product side of affiliate marketing. Find out more about adsense by clicking on the adsense page link.

Affiliate Programmes

You can sign up and promote various affiliate products via PayDotCom or Click Bank. They are by far the most popular site to promote affiliate programmes, are well established and therefore a reliable source.

How to make Money Online

Is it all in the Title?

I have just read a very interesting article about how to make money online using adsense. The article suggested that the title of a post plays a huge part towards the amount of traffic that will find it's way to your site.

This post will provide me with first hand evidence whether or not the post title does indeed generate more traffic or not!

The article went on to say that, a post entitled "How to make Money Online" generated twice as much money as a more descriptive article Heading. I'm not sure that you should be starting every post "How to make money online" as that would become rather dull. However if your not particularly interested in keeping the attention of your reader then it could be the perfect way to lure visitors to your site.

The other issue is that there must be literally thousands of posts entitled "How to make money online" so the odds are that you will be down the list on that particular search. The competition will be fierce so you better make sure that your SEO etc is all up to scratch.

You can read my ongoing article on Ways to Generate traffic and Make Money online to help optimize your blog.

The other issue with the headline is the relevance to the adsense ads. Of course there are many adverts related to "how to make money online" which will pay very well and will probably be clicked very often. The more out-there the post heading the less likely google is likely to find a relevant advert; if an advert is not relevant to the reason your visitor searched and found your site via the search engine, then why on earth would they want to click the ad. Very simple Eh!

As with all of my other stuff I will keep you up to date with any results I get from any of the discussed topics.

Adsense Ready Sites

I've just started to read a few articles on Adsense Ready Sites and the question is:

To Buy or Not To Buy!

There have got to be advantages and disadvantages with regards to buying a pack of these ready made sites.

Could these ready made sites provide us with an easy formula to make money online? Or are they just another form of corner-cutting that will ultimately lead to making someone else a lot of money instead?

Disadvantages

I have already discussed that google is looking for unique quality content to send it's visitors to. If you are buying websites that give no guarantee of being unique and are duplicated all over the web, then how are you going to get traffic to your site?

Search engines will pick up on duplicate content and will not feature the site very highly or will not feature the site at all. To earn money through adsense you need clicks, to get clicks you need traffic and so on. As far as I am concerned Search engines are currently a vital part of the traffic generating model, so you need to keep them happy with quality content.

The other issue I foresee is; can you guarantee that the site and content are legal. Many articles on the web have copyright's which of course means that you cannot use it. How are we to know if the entire site that we have just purchased is not a copy of an existing site. If our sites are copies of existing sites then, once we upload the site and content we will be breaking the law.

I have recently read a number of articles that have indicated Googles heightened attention towards MFA or Made For Adsense sites. It appears that the search engine is trying to clamp down on sites that don't really offer it's visitors any valuable information. If this is the case then you have to ask yourself if it really is worth spending money on a site that may not be featured on some of the main search engines.

Advantages

As far as I can see it is possible to buy packs of websites that guarantee unique content. If this is the case then it would be a dream to be able to pay for 10,50,100 or 150 sites that were ready made. I suspect ,like anything in life, that you would have to pay through the nose for premium content sites. I am a great believer in getting what you pay for; if you pay very little for something then the likelihood is that the quality will not be there.

Conclusion

As far as I can see Adsense Ready Sites would be a good idea if you can guarantee unique quality content. The question I keep asking myself is, why if someone has produced 150 sites with unique quality content, that will bring in a significant residual income from adsense, why would they sell them?

I personally believe that it is a far better method to create blogs one at a time. Pick a subject that you are interested in, get the site looking how you want to, do all the steps to generate traffic, incorporate google adsense into the blog or site and then update the blog once a week or month.

Of course this means work, as I haven't found a work free route yet, then my opinion is that putting work in initially is the only way forward.

Adsense - The Easy Way to Start Making Money Online

Adsense has got to be the easiest way to start making money from a blogger blog!

The best thing with Blogger is that adsense is set up for you once you have registered for an account and picked your Blog name.

Although many expert bloggers choose wordpress as their Blog tool of choice, I have decided to go with Blogger as it is free and very simple to start with.

A very simple and basic equation that I found on Problogger is that:

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

Here are a few things to remember when you are adding adsense to your Blog:

• When looking to implement Adsense into your site remember to keep it simple.


• Simple Blogs make more money from Adsense - Fact!


• Look at other adsense advertisers, click on a adsense links to get idea's from other sites and users.


• Position of Ads - The great thing about the Adsense programme is that you the freedom to choose the best position for your ads. Positioning is a key element to an ads success, make sure that visitors to your blog can see the advert; underneath your heading or on the top right of the page is usually a very visual and successful place to locate them.


• Design of Ads - Google also alows you to choose the color scheme for your adverts. It is usually wise to make the ads blend in nicely with your blog so that they don't look too ugly.


• Make sure that the adverts are relevant to the information on your Blog. Remember though, once a visitor has clicked an ad, they are lost to another site!


• Once you have positioned your ads, start to work on improving the traffic to your site. Remember content is as important as SEO (search engine optimisation) these days. I will go into trying to generate traffic in a separate post once I have started to try and drive traffic to this site.


• Ads vary in the amount they pay, search the web to find the best paying adverts. Forum's may be a good place to start. I will go into this once I have tried to ascertain the information myself.


• Try new things - If a position of an ad isn't generating any clicks then try various other one's. Don't be afraid to mess around with your adverts until you find a formula that works.


• Block ads that have no relevance. It is possible to block adverts that are not relevant to the content on your site, I have not had to do this yet but I am told it is quite simple.

If you have any other tips or advice that you feel is crucial to running a successful adsense campaign add them below.

One ebook that I have been told to buy over and over again is Rob Benwell's blogging to the bank 3.0. If you have any feedback on this book let me know.