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Adword Ads Writing Basics

ruwanblogs@gmail.com (Unknown) — Sat, 23 May 2009 09:57:00 +0530

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Before you write an ad, you have to remember that in even a low-competition market,
your ads are under pressure to perform (that is, your clicks must also convert), or otherwise
they will end up costing you money. Because of this you should always write ads with two
things in mind:

1.The ad must persuade the prospect that the page this ad points to will hold the answer
to what they are looking for.
2.The landing page must deliver on what the , otherwise the clicks will be
wasted.

In addition, you also have to ensure that only those people whom you are targeting will
click on your ad. Or to put it differently, you want to make sure that you get the clicks that
are most likely to convert into buyers.

Now that we know what's required,we can map out some guidelines for writing the ad.

Identify what you are selling
Make sure you have a clear idea of what you're selling and how that will tie in with your ad.
Choose the keywords that apply to your site, and include them in your ads.

Narrow down your target market

Understand who you are selling to. An excellent example of this is one of Perry Marshall's
recent ads for his book, Guide to Google AdWords. He's targeting serious business minded
people who are willing to pay for quality products, so he's made sure that he
lists the product price in the ad. Does
that help? It will potentially keep out
people who are looking for free advice

or those who cannot afford the book.

Narrowing your market.
You can refine the focus of your market
by writing down who exactly you are
selling to for my weight loss e-book
that I wrote way back when I was
starting out in Internet Marketing, I focused on young adults who led extremely busy
lives and wanted an easy, effective and time-saving solution to managing their weight
problems.

Use focused keywords to help you create a targeted ad

As I've explained in the previous section, focus on subtopics rather than ads for the
general keyword they convert much better into customers because you are able to
direct them to exactly that page that contains the information they are looking for.

Write to persuade this is sales writing in a very small space

Sales writing boils down to a simple principle convincing the reader to take immediate action
on what the writer wants them to do (sign up to a list, buy a product, etc). To do this right, you
have to first attract their attention (headline), convey the most powerful benefit (first line)
and provide a logical justification for taking that action through your most powerful feature
(second line).

google ad words made easy (book) By Brad Callen

Pushing the 'Start' button (Forth step of creating your Adword Ad )

ruwanblogs@gmail.com (Unknown) — Sat, 23 May 2009 09:48:00 +0530

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You'll be asked to review your account (what you've entered so far).

The page simply lists all the information that you've input, including your ad, selected
keywords and your maxCPC/ daily budget as well.

Scroll down, make sure you haven't made any errors (you can fix them by clicking on the
'Edit' button next to each field), and then click on "Continue".

The next page will ask you if you have a Google Account. Depending on your subsequent
answers, it will either ask you to create one, or ask you to enter your Account login info.
I'd recommend that you create a separate account for AdWords (for security purposes),
but in this example we're going to assume that you already have a Google account and
will use that instead.

Once you've passed this step (and confirmed your account), Google will send you a
confirmation email to the email address you've entered. Open the email, click the link
back to Google, and then enter your credit card or payment information to officially
open the account.

And that's about it. Once you've entered your payment information, your ads will start
showing almost immediately.

That took you more time to read than it takes to create an AdWords account!

google ad words made easy (book) By Brad Callen

Bidding on Keywords (Third step of creating your Adword Ad )

ruwanblogs@gmail.com (Unknown) — Sat, 23 May 2009 09:32:00 +0530

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Enter your keywords:

You'll notice that I've enclosed my keywords in quotes as well as brackets. Basically,
AdWords uses three types of phrase matches to match your ads with the terms being
searched at the time broad match (no quotes or brackets), phrase match (quotes) and
exact match (square brackets).

Broad match: This is the default option. When you include keyword phrases such as tennis
shoes in your keyword list, your ads will appear when users search for tennis and shoes, in
any order and possibly along with other terms like: new tennis shoes, mens shoes for
tennis, and so on...
Broad matches are often less targeted than exact or phrase matches.

Phrase match: Your ad appears when users search on the exact phrase and also when
their search contains additional terms, as long as the keyword phrase is in exactly the same order. A phrase match for "tennis shoes" would display your ad if a user search on:
red tennis shoes,new tennis shoes, but not for: shoes for tennis

Exact match:The search query must exactly match your keyword. This means [tennis
shoes] will only match a user request for: tennis shoes and not for: red tennis shoes, even
though the second query contains your keyword.

More details on broad, phrase and exact matches in chapter 6, when we will study
keyword research for AdWords in full detail.
Onto the next step...
Once we've entered the keywords, we now have to choose our bid amounts. You'll see a
screen as shown below:

First you'll select how you'll pay for AdWords. Based on your IP address, Google
automatically determines your local currency and sets that as the default value, but you
should change it to US dollars. That makes it a lot easier to manage your account as you'll
find that almost everyone discusses bid prices in dollars (especially all other guides on
AdWords). This setting cannotbechanged once your account is activated.

After this, you set your budget. This is the maximum amount you're willing to spend
throughout the day (divide your monthly budget by 30 for an easy way to reach this
number). For our example, I want to get maximum exposure here as well as test the ads
quickly (so I can refine them based on results), so I'll set this to $100 (for big campaigns and
especially for highCPCterms, you might have to set this much higher).

Note: If you're just beginning, you can set your daily bid
amount to $5/day if you want and Google will just stop
displaying your ad after your daily limit has been
reached.

Next, you set the maximum cost per click (CPC) for your keywords. Ideally, you should set
the CPC for your main keywords individually, but for now (and for the beginning part of
your campaigns) an over all CPC will do just fine. Since we already know from our keyword
research that we can get top position for our ads by staying within $5, I'll be conservative
and bid $1.00 per click. This will allow me to get a good position and stay within budget our
budget
After this, you get traffic / clicks / position estimates based on your settings. It gives you an
approximation of how many clicks (and what average position) you will get for each
entered keyword (based on your max CPC and daily budget).

By now, you're almost done. Click "Continue".

google ad words made easy (book) By Brad Callen

Writing your Adword Ad (Second step of creating your Adword Ad )

ruwanblogs@gmail.com (Unknown) — Sat, 23 May 2009 09:24:00 +0530

Let me take a minute to explain what we've done here, and why.

Our main search phrase is also the headline whenever possible, follow this example and
put your main keywords in the headline.

The first line is a benefit in this case, expert advice for people who are looking for help on
how to set up home theater systems. No matter what your level of knowledge, the
chance to get input from an expert (in this case, free advice) is hard to pass up.

The second line is our feature a free report available for immediate download. Your
feature will be a specific offering that matches your previously stated benefit most
closely.

The last two lines are the URLs first url will be the one displayed this must resolve to an
actual web address. The second line is the actual url where the prospect will be
redirected to that is, it must contain the address of your landing page.

And your ad is written! Following this template, you can put together ads in as little as 4
minutes (like I did right now).

Click on "Continue", and Google Ad Words will do an automated check on your ad text
and the provided urls to make sure that they follow their guidelines. Once that is
complete, you will betaken to a screen where you have to enter your keywords.

google ad words made easy (book) By Brad Callen

Setting up your AdWords account (First step of creating your Adword Ad )

ruwanblogs@gmail.com (Unknown) — Sat, 23 May 2009 09:06:00 +0530

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Go to the Google AdWords homepage (http://adwords.google.com/select/) and click
on the "Click to Begin" button to get started.

The next screen will give you an option between two types of accounts Starter and
Standard. Since we're going to be going deep inside Ad Words, there's no need to go for a
Starter account select "Standard" and then click on "Continue".

On the next screen, you choose the languages you want to target. So if you were in
Germany and wanted to target German-speaking Google users, you would select
German. Google also let's you target specific countries, specific regions and cities or
even a specified geographic location (such as a 20-mile radius around a certain street
address, for example).

I selected the 'target by country' option, so in the next screen I was asked to enter the
countries I wanted to market to in this case, since we are selling physical products we will
restrict our target market to US and Canada (a good thing, because this where the
heaviestdemandforhometheater system resides as well).

I'd recommend sticking with "country-level" targeting for now the other two options are a
bit more advanced, and I personally never use them.
Let's move to the next step writing your ad.

google ad words made easy (book) By Brad Callen

5 Reasons why you should be using Google AdWords

ruwanblogs@gmail.com (Unknown) — Sat, 23 May 2009 08:46:00 +0530

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Reason 1:The Google audience / user base has traditionally catered to technical
audiences and more importantly, to Internet savvy users.
The kind of users who are comfortable with buying online

These users (the tech-savvy, buying kind) are more likely to use Google than Yahoo or
MSN).

Reason 2:Google Ad Words delivers instant results - you can have your ad campaign up
and running in 10 minutes flat. Compared to this Yahoo can take anywhere from 2 to 5
days while they manually review ads.

Reason 3:With Ad Words, you can go target your prospects geographically down to
countries, states and cities. This is a great advantage for businesses selling hard goods or
services - they would prefer local prospects as opposed to someone half way across the
world.

Reason 4:My favorite quality about Ad Words is that it rewards good ad performance - that is, for an ad that converts (clicks/impressions percentage) exceptionally well (high
click-through-rate (CTR)), your ad will get better ad placement as well as better pricing.
Google wants to display the most relevant ads for the user. So... it makes perfect sense
that YOU will pay less per click, the higher the click through rate of your ad is.

Note:Click-through rate is simply the percentage
that users click on your ad. For example, if 100 users
saw your ad, and 2 people clicked your ad to visit
your website, your click-through rate would be 2%
(2/100).

Reason 5:Your competition cannot see the exact amount you're bidding for your
keywords or the CTR your ads are getting - a distinct tactical advantage that Yahoo lacks.

Basically, your competition will NEVER be able to tell how you are marketing your product,
unless they use a trick I'm going to show you later ;-) So, they won't be able to copy off of
your marketing and steal your prospects.
Bottom line - bringing instant traffic to your websites and converting those prospects into
satisfied customers is a much better option than waiting around for your search engine
rankings to.
And, in my opinion, Google Ad Words is the only game in town when it comes to PPC
advertising.
In the next chapter, I'll sit with you and take you through the entire process of creating an
ad campaign through Google Ad Words. I'll take you from start to finish - from picking your
keywords to creating an account to writing an ad to making it go live - and we'll do it in
less than 10 minutes.

google ad words made easy (book) By Brad Callen

What is Google AdWords?

ruwanblogs@gmail.com (Unknown) — Fri, 22 May 2009 17:18:00 +0530

With Google AdWords, you can create and run ads for your business, quickly and simply. Run your ads on Google and our advertising network -- no matter what your budget, you'll only pay when people click your ads.

AdWords ads are displayed along with search results when someone searches Google using one of your keywords. That way, you'll be advertising to an audience that's already interested in your business. You can also choose to display your ads on content sites in the growing Google Network. And, you can choose the exact content placements where you'd like your ad to appear, or you can let contextual targeting match your keywords to content.

You can choose from a variety of ad formats, including text, image, audio, and video ads, and easily track your ad performance using the reports available in your account.

There's no minimum monthly charge with AdWords -- just a nominal activation fee. Learn more about the cost of advertising with Google AdWords.

To find out more about Google AdWords or to begin creating your ads, visit the AdWords home page.

Copied From: http://adwords.google.com

What's A Website ?

ruwanblogs@gmail.com (Unknown) — Fri, 22 May 2009 15:29:00 +0530

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A Website is space on a computer where anyone who subscribes can say "This is me, this is what I do, or what I am interested in, what I know, or what I can sell you". An electronic brochure and source of information available to the whole world 24 hours a day.

Within the website, each screenful of information is called a page. Pages may contain text, or graphic images, or even photographs, sound and video.

A main feature are the "links" embedded within a page that can be clicked with a computer mouse and which transport viewers to other pages. To continue with the brochure analogy, you would normally open a brochure at the front or the back and browse forwards or backwards a page at a time. With a website, the user decides the order they want to see the pages in by clicking the links that interest them.

This interactivity generates a sense of ownership and participation in the user, binding them to the information much more tightly than a traditional brochure.

To maximise this benefit, it really needs someone with an understanding of interactive programming to get the best out of creating the electronic pages and links that build the website.

Copied From: http://www.fredmoor.com

What's a blog?

ruwanblogs@gmail.com (Unknown) — Fri, 22 May 2009 15:03:00 +0530

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Blog is short for "web log." Basically, a blog is an online journal. You can write or post about whatever you like: updates of your life, political opinions, a great trip, favorite recipes, what music you're listening to -- anything that strikes your fancy.
Your blog can include words, photos, or both. Yahoo! 360° publishes and saves all your blog entries for easy access as time goes by. You decide how private or public to make your blog by setting your permission preferences.
Blogs are usually composed of one or more blog entries. Each entry can have its own title and always says the date and time you published it. Blogs show the last entry first, and you can scroll down to read earlier entries. So it's like a reverse diary.
You can easily add a photo to your blog entry if you want. You can also make bold text, change colors and backgrounds, format your text, or add emoticons and even web links. If you know HTML, you can make even more changes, if you want. But your blog will look great even if you don't use any of these extras.

Copied From: http://help.yahoo.com

What's a blog?

ruwanblogs@gmail.com (Unknown) — Fri, 22 May 2009 14:47:00 +0530

A blog is a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world.

Your blog is whatever you want it to be. There are millions of them, in all shapes and sizes, and there are no real rules.

In simple terms, a blog is a web site, where you write stuff on an ongoing basis. New stuff shows up at the top, so your visitors can read what's new. Then they comment on it or link to it or email you. Or not.

Since Blogger was launched in 1999, blogs have reshaped the web, impacted politics, shaken up journalism, and enabled millions of people to have a voice and connect with others.

And we're pretty sure the whole deal is just getting started.

Copied From http://www.blogger.com

Start a blog, get 100,000 page views and make over $100 your first month

ruwanblogs@gmail.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 May 2009 21:48:00 +0530

Start a blog, get 100,000 page views and make over $100 your first month

If you’re a blog reader, chances are you’re also an aspiring blog writer. Launching a for-profit weblog is extremely attractive because it has the potential for endless profit with practically no overhead. Launching a blog is a quick and easy process even for the absolute beginner. The following is what I learned from my pre-lifehack.org blog in which I earned over $100 and received over 100,000 page views my first month blogging. I did it and you can too! Make the jump to find out how.

Technical stuff
First things first, you’ve got to get the technical stuff out of the way. The “technical stuff” I’m talking about includes choosing a blogging platform, choosing a hosting service, and choosing a domain name. Chances are you’re well aware of the various blogging platforms so I won’t spend time going over them. I think the best blogging software to use is Wordpress. Darren Rowse over at ProBlogger.net has an excellent post that describes the features of Wordpress 2.0. After you’ve decided on a blogging application, you need to chose a domain name and a hosting service. If you have never blogged before (or even if you have) you will find that it is easiest to chose a domain name and hosting package from the same service provider. GoDaddy.com has 24/7 technical support (although you will pay a premium compared to other hosting providers) and it will completely automate the installation of Wordpress for free. If you are not a technical person, this frees you from messing around with all the technical junk.

Domain name
It is extremely important that you think long term before picking a domain name. After you establish your blog, you aren’t going to be able to transfer your domain name without losing your readers, really! Think of your domain name as being permanently attached to your blog. Your domain name should be as short as possible, easy to remember, easy to speak, and not include any part of your name unless you’re a celebrity (which you’re not). You should avoid using any part of your name because if your blog becomes popular enough to sell, having your name as part or all of the domain name will drive down some of the blog’s value.

Get advertisements immediately
Sign up for advertisements immediately. You’re not going to make any money without advertisements. Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and many others offer advertisements that you can easily integrate into your site. I had great success using Google Adsense. Despite what you may have heard, you can make some pretty good money with Google ads. Checkout Darren from ProBlogger’s survey about Adsense income. I also recommend signing up with PayPopUp banner ads. PayPopUp pays you every time their ad is displayed, you don’t have to rely on users clicking the links. This will not make you nearly as much money as Google Adsense, however it is guaranteed money even if no visitors click your advertisements. After your blog is established, the goal should be to ditch third party advertisements and sell advertising space directly to companies.

Get Google Analytics immediately
You will want to track as much information about your visitors as possible, the easiest and most detailed way of doing so is with Google Analytics. Amongst many other things, Google Analytics lets you see the referring URL of your visitors, your top content, what Google searches are landing users at your site, how long users are staying, and their exit points. Knowing this information will help you customize your content so that you can maximize your readership. You should also consider using Site Meter to publicly display your site’s up to the hour traffic to potential advertisers.

Write 50 posts
That’s enough talk about setup, it’s time to talk content. That’s right, you need to write at least 50 posts your first month. That’s 2-3 posts per day, everyday for 30 days. It may seem tough, but it is absolutely necessary. The number one way that you will lose potential readers is to not update your site regularly. You need to establish readership, and get your Google Page Rank up, if you can’t come up with 50 posts the first month, you may want to consider finding another topic for your blog. Adding several posts per day will help increase the amount of Stumbleupon traffic your site grabs.

Submit every article to Digg
This recommendation is going to bring some negative comments, I’m sure. Regardless, digg.com is a tremendous way to advertise your site for free. Honestly, submit every article you write to digg. When you are starting a brand new blog, besides exchanging links with more establish blogs (which I recommend) there will be absolutely no links to your site. Even if you think the article is no good, submit it to digg. Let the digg community decide what is good content and what is not. You might as well let your work get some exposure. Some of my most popular posts through Stumbleupon got less than 4 diggs. Every article that doesn’t make the front page of digg will land you about 100 page views. If you do make the front page of digg (it’s a great feeling, believe me). You will get anywhere between 3,000 and 20,000 page views per day.

What would you do differently
I know some of you have been blogging for a very long time. What would you add that I didn’t mention? Is there anything I suggest that you disagree with? Please share your opinion in the comments.

Copied From http://www.lifehack.org

How to Make Money with Your Blog

ruwanblogs@gmail.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 May 2009 11:01:00 +0530

How to Make Money with Your Blog Site

1) Google AdSense

AdSense is by far the best, most rewarding monetization resource for blogs, news sites and small, content-rich information sites. Google offers AdSense, a service that lets independent publishers, bloggers and news site owners to publish text-based, context-relevant ads next to the content on their sites. This is done automatically without you, the publisher, having to worry about anything else except putting small-sized code inside each of your Web pages.

For every click on Google AdSense contextual ads, the publishing sites receives credit for a small amount of money, while Google keeps an undisclosed amount of the total advertising share. Though many lament lack of relevance for the ads and little return for the increased info clutter on their pages — many silent publishers — probably the ones who consciously make less noise about this, are making serious money with this program.

What few understand, is that to make AdSense work for you ($$),it involves strategic work. Just placing the code on your pages isn't enough. The focus of your site, the way the content is organized, the way web pages are coded, the titles you use and the color and position you select for placing your AdSense ads on your Web pages all make a difference to the results you get. Significant.

What is important is that different rules apply to different types of pages and content. So no set of rules equally apply to all sites. The key is for the publisher to keep questioning the integration of contextual, text-based ads by doing systematic, ongoing testing, experimentation and optimization. For a focused blogger, this can mean from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars per month. For a dedicated publisher covering high-paying information areas, it is possible to get into the 5-digit range without any major investments and with a relatively short time-to-market. I am not talking about a blogger in the traditional sense, but rather to focused and very professional independent information resources like SearchEngineWatch.com or Paidcontent.org, for example.

AdSense offers also the opportunity to monetize site searches while providing a powerful, lightning-fast search engine for your own site at no extra cost. By providing search-relevant ads on your site's search results pages. Google AdSense adds another great opportunity to monetize premium service and access with relevant text-based information about products and services.

Too bad Google AdSense doesn't let you select your contextual advertisers from its inventory.

Here some great examples of AdSense at work.

Alternative solutions to AdSense: Chitika, Kanoodle, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Yahoo! Publisher Network (in beta).

2) Blogads

Blogads is an effective solution for taking control of your advertisers and comparing your profit share with your online ad agency. As the name clearly implies, Blogads is an advertising service for blogs. When the service first came out, As I mentioned that Blogads offers a great opportunity for small, independent publishers, blogs and news sites to sell their ad space in a direct and useful way. Blogads keeps 20 percent of your net revenue and sends you the rest by Paypal or check as soon as you reach a predetermined amount.

For your advertisers Blogads provides a great bonus in terms of speed and simplicity: "Ordering an ad takes just two or three minutes. Submit your image and/or text ad. Define its duration. Pay with Paypal's secure forms. You are done. After the blogger approves the ad, return to tweak and optimize clickthroughs, renew or order on new blogs."

In the case of Blogads the publisher has control over which ads to accept and which ones to reject.

Alternative services:

Crispads is an advertising network focused on blogs. Crispads allows publishers to place ads in blog entries so that they're included in their RSS/ATOM feeds to generate revenues for syndicated content.

grokAds - an advertising clearinghouse for both buyers and sellers which works with any type of site. Offers quick and easy advertising to a specific market.

Tagword - Much like Blogads, Tagword also lets you to select which kinds of ads you want to sell to your site visitors as well as setting the prices you want to charge. Add the code provided to your selected web pages and you are selling text ads on your site! Users can create their text ads directly and submit them in minutes. Purchased ads appear on your site as soon as you're ready.

Create your own Text-based Ads service

TextAds is an open source text ad management system for web sites using PHP. It's been deployed with content management systems like PostNuke and should work with any PHP-based website.

The Idya AdSystem is a text ad management solution for web sites. It supports keyword-driven text-ads and PayPal payments. Installing takes a few minutes. Simply upload it to your site, use the installer to install it, and your site is ready to show text ads. You can check the entire list of its features. The AdSystem uses PHP 4 and MySQL, though it port to other DBMSs. The AdSystem has been undergoing re-engineering for version 2, however, it looks like the site is at a standstill and hasn't been updated since 2003.

3) Amazon Associates

The Amazon Associates program lets independent online publishers with the opportunity to promote any product in Amazon's inventory as affiliate agents. All it takes is adding a small, identifying code to the links that take your site's visitors to a specific Amazon product page (books, DVDs, electronics, etc.). If the visitors who clicked on your link buy an item even if it's not the item you point to — you earn a small commission.

Though the amount of return with the Amazon Associates program is small, nonetheless, it is another way to get income without adding clutter or not-relevant disruptive information to your valuable content. References to relevant books add to the user experience as it helps those who want to search for more information on a topic to see immediate and hand-picked recommendations.

As a matter of fact, it is possible to earn as much as 10 percent per sale as an Amazon Associate.

4) Text Links

Text links are controversial for some purists, but for those seeking a way to monetize content without adding clutter and intrusive ads — it is an interesting opportunity to explore further. Text links are an emerging advertising market that brokers small, text-only links, which often don't need prominent placement (the payback is not on the clicks) on your site pages.

What the advertisers want is a link presence on your site to gain extra "authority" (like the Google PageRank indicator) in an artificial way. This is why you may have noticed many of these text links being placed at the bottom of content pages or in other non-premium positions. The goal is to increase a site's value in search engines. The good thing is that as this market grows, the independent publisher has more and more options from which to select. Also, the publisher can approve and accept text links that are complementary and relevant to the site's content.

Though many text links point to second-rate services and products (online casinos, poker, Viagra, etc.) — this marketplace is growing and becoming more visible, therefore more advertisers of mainstream products and tools are popping up in numbers. Since you are the one accepting such advertising contracts, the selection of what you display is up to you.

To play this game, it is helpful to have a Google PageRank of 4 or more. (Here is an article where you can find out how to measure Google PageRank). For those having a PR value of 6, 7 or more, there is great opportunity for serious monetization. As an indicator, five or six text ads can easily bring in a few hundred dollars every month on a PR 6 site/blog.

A Google generated list of companies brokering text link ads: http://tinyurl.com/66pc4

The example above: FaganFinder
(check the bottom of the home page to see what I mean)

Other online text link agencies: LinkAdage Auctions - Offers blog owners the chance to sell text links on their site at market value through a private online auction.

Text Link Brokerage

Paid Text Links

See also: Will Plain-Text Ads Continue to Rule? (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)

5) Premium Content Sponsorships

Selling sponsored space is another option for the independent publisher. While this was associated with prominent flashy banner ads, this is changing and expanding in many ways. In my view, the successful strategy is to use selected and relevant sponsors to introduce, give access or extend the value offered by premium content.

A relevant product or service can sponsor a news channel or RSS feed. Sponsors can also sponsor a rich section of additional related content to a standard article. Having a resourceful bibliography or annotated resources section in your next ebook or mini-guide is also fertile ground to effectively showcase relevant sponsors.

X-events, podcasts, live and recorded web conferences, online interviews are great unobtrusive and relevant sponsorship opportunities.

6) Related Reports

Another opportunity should see more in the near future is affiliate marketing of related research reports. For sites that cover specific industry or niche topics, this is an opportunity to play an effective marketing role for research clearinghouses and large publishers of intelligence reports, analyst insider briefings, white papers and research findings.

These types of reports usually carry a higher price tag than normal ebooks and physical publications. The reason for the high price tag is because their content is focused on specific industries and topics, and it has information that's hard to find elsewhere.

The technology that makes this possible is available from 21Publish (the blog hosting provider) in partnership with Market Research.

7) Affiliate Sales

A good monetization channel for select products and services is affiliate sales. This approach involves signing up to become an affiliate reseller of specific products.

As long as the affiliate products do not affect the publisher's credibility and provide pointers to useful, high-value products that the publisher fully endorses, affiliate sales are a rewarding monetization channel.

The commissions received for these sales vary depending on the product and the original vendor sales and marketing strategy. LinkShare and Commission Junction are two of the largest affiliate program brokers. Check out their catalogs to get a good idea of what products and commissions are available.

If you write and publish your own e-books and other premium content publications, you may want to consider using an affiliate sales program to give your products greater reach and exposure.

My preferred provider for this is Share-It!, which offers full payment and an ecommerce infrastructure to online publishers while integrating a customizable affiliate program. You can set the commission and the products that you want your affiliates to manage. Share-It! automatically takes care of payments and accountability of the transactions; it sends updates and timely sales reports both to you and to your registered resellers. The system even automatically creates content pages that the reseller can link to from her own site.

8) Online Guides and E-Books

Self-published books, e-books, mini-guides, tutorials and other types of premium content generate a respectable source of income for those with relevant and useful content to share. Focused guides and reference publications in niche areas are a growing demand from qualified customers, especially when these products can be easily pre-evaluated in some form.

For bloggers, news sites and small independent publishers' ebooks and online guides should make a natural monetization channel. Much of the content written for a site is easy to re-edit and re-purpose for commercial use. Reviewing editors, topic-specific bloggers can use their writing talent to put together the best content they have on a specific topic.

Selling ebooks requires good online marketing skills, lots of exposure, visibility and honest testimonials from satisfied buyers. A little army of affiliate resellers can go a long way in helping your ebook get extra exposure and visibility. Plus partnering/bundling your product with those who are already the best in your class helps get more copies out the door.

9) Bookstore Distribution and POD Publishing

You can also increase profitability and exposure of your e-books by using a company like Lightning Source, which can distribute your digital content on Amazon bookshelves while allowing you to offer printed versions of your masterpieces using POD technology (print on-demand).

10) Merchandising

Selling your branded t-shirt or baseball cap makes sense when your publishing project has a strong brand, a powerful message or an issue that it stands behind.

Why would people shell out USD $20 or more to buy a branded t-shirt promoting a web site? If a bold tagline spells out a strong message or slogan about something of which many are passionate, readers want to support the cause by wearing them.

I think this works effectively where a) the personal brand is good enough to create a desire in readers to "stand" for it (few bloggers or news sites have this kind of charisma, but I people like Joi Ito or Howard Rheingold most likely can command some of this), or b) the author or blog / site stands for something clearly identifiable. It may be an overarching mission or a number of changing issues that make effective marketing themes for such products.

CafePress offers an extensive catalog of shorts, caps, calendars, mugs with over 80 customizable merchandise products waiting for your logo and tagline to be printed on them. CafePress provides the raw merchandise that you can customize by uploading your artwork and interactively adjusting it on through its online command center.

While CafePress charges a base cost for the material (e.g.: USD $13.99 base price for T-shirts), you can price your branded merchandise however you like and CafePress dutifully manages the transaction, payment, shipment and your monthly payments for your hard-earned commissions. In the process CafePress, also creates a full web-based shopping center that can be customized to match your Web site's design.

11) Collections, Anthologies, Compilations and Curated Content on CD-ROM

Thanks to CafePress and similar services, independent online publishers also have the opportunity to deliver vast amounts of content such as aggregated anthologies of articles, reports, audio and video files, or research collections on CD-ROM. All with complete infrastructure support for the mastering, duplication, labeling and shipping of these.

Again, the publisher pays a wholesale cost for the production of each CD-ROM ordered and the profit comes from the markup that the publisher decides on for each item sold. CafePress clears payments from customers, prints the CD, packages it and ships it to your customer. It sets aside your profit margin and cuts a check for you at the end of the month.

The publisher base price is USD $4.99 per CD (excluding shipping). You can mark up the price as much as you want and CafePress collects payments and sends your profit margin to you.

More info: CafePress Data CD

12) Paid Assignment

While many find this very controversial, more companies are using bloggers and independent sites to talk about, promote or cover specific products and issues. The Marqui program, in which I've participated, is a good example. But there are other ways to go about it. A person can go to a company and become its official online blogger. A person can take specific assignments for prominent sites and work for them, with or without credit, covering specific issues.

The important thing here is to be clear and upfront about it. People are inflexible about this because they're afraid that the people they trusted and read without question before may now write articles because they are paid for it.

From my point of view, I say the following:

a) question your sources, no matter how good they are and how fanatical you are about them.

b) take that ham away from your eyes: there is no objectivity, outside of the transparency of the reporter, blogger or news reporter. Everyone is influenced in one way or another. You don't need to take money from a customer to be influenced. What about all those journalists and bloggers who routinely receive free evaluations of gadgets and software that everyone else has to pay for? Doesn't that influence them? Invitations to press dinners? Product launches? Come on.

What counts, and what I think readers value the most, is being upfront, transparent and credible. Assuming you have been, like everyone else, "exposed" to cover certain issues rather than others — what matters is how "transparent" you are about revealing your driving motives, interests and goals while writing on that topic. Can you be influenced while remaining true to your opinions? I believe you can.

Taking money per se is not a disreputable act, neither is getting paid to write about a certain topic: isn't this what newspapers command their editors to do?

What the critics of paid assignments have underestimated is the large demand out there for this. If the paid writers are transparent, accountable and professional with their assignment, then this is as legitimate as any other activity.

I guess you only need to decide if you are in it for the art or the part.

Marqui paid USD $800 to the bloggers who did the assignment. Each one was required to write four articles a month that at least mentions and links to Marqui.

13) Donations

If you support a cause that goes beyond the mere reporting of news in your areas of interest, why not consider asking your readers for support?

People like to take a stand for the people whom they think can make a difference, so why not use this strategy to finance some of your effective communication campaigns? PayPal Donations, Amazon's Honor System and BitPass all offer a simple way to add a snippet of code to your site to make it easy for people to donate.

Depending on the system adopted, you may opt to receive money in euros, U.S. dollars, Japanese yen, pounds sterling and other currencies.

If all of the above fails:

a) Join a publishing network
If you are just starting up with your blog or small news site — and need either more traffic, exposure or experience before you feel you can do any of the above on your own — then joining a group blog may work for you.

Metafilter, Chris Pirillo's Lockergnome Channels, Blogcritics, WikiNews, Blogit or any of these group blogs, if not at my own MasterNewMedia, MasterViews and Kolabora.com, where I am always looking for additional contributors.

Working in a group blog can ease the pressure of having to post on a daily basis, gives you greater exposure in less time and exposes you and your ideas to an existing community of interested readers and other writers.

In some cases, like at Weblogs Inc., Creative Weblogging, Squidoo and elsewhere, contributing bloggers are also paid a share of the advertising revenue their blog generates.

Another great alternative is to look into the creation of local news sites and Get Local News has a smart idea ready to be picked up.

b) Blog your best without worrying about making money in any direct way. Money comes as a consequence of your extra exposure and visibility. Blogging creates extra income by allowing you to enter in close contact with relevant people in your areas of interest, and by facilitating exchange and contact with prospective customers through your online presence.

Simply blogging with no strings attached increases your credibility and authority in the field and earns you extra income when you are called to give advice. Having a blog to showcase your ability to review, explore or analyze issues and products is the best way to market yourself and to provide a living showcase of your talents and abilities.

Listen:
Making Money - session from Bloggercon III
Doc Searls leads the Making Money session at Bloggercon III. Audio from IT Conversations. [runtime: 01:24:31, 38.7Mb, recorded 2004-11-06]

True Voice: The Business of Blogging
Session hosted by Stowe Boyd at the Blog Business Summit in Seattle on January 24, 2005, with Robert Scoble and Get Real contributor Greg Narian.

Read:
Make Money off Your Blog
The Washington Post - January 30, 2005

The Blogs' Long Tail: Blogs And RSS Profit Potential

All of the above are non-exclusive strategies that can be used in parallel with other activities to create multiple income streams for bloggers, news sites and other content-focused online resources.

A few guiding principles have stood out from my own experience in the search for creating multiple income streams for an independent online publisher, blogger or small news site:

Relevance, Value
People want to see relevant information. Related to the main subject. If they like what they find, what better opportunity to give them more of what they want? Make your readers kings and queens at your site! The products and services a publisher selects should fit the editorial line of the blog/site as much as possible; this ensures a true continuum between articles and promotional messages.
Complementary
The additional ad or sponsorship information has to bring in value to the overall content. Selling prestigious and prominent content space for money without considering the relevance of the sponsoring firm to the sponsored content is a wasted opportunity for both sides. Given that no one enjoys being distracted by brand x or product z when trying to find something unrelated — why not leverage this natural and reasonable defense mechanism and match sponsors to relevant events and content spaces? Why not allow sponsors to provide extra value to the content/event offered by providing access/integration to premium-quality complementary resources?
Visual unobtrusiveness - Non-interruptiveness
Sponsorships, text-based ads, promotional messages don't have to scream for visual attention. If they complement and enrich what is already out there, they only need to be properly and intelligently juxtaposed, formatted and legible, scannable and printable, just like any other content on their hosting page. A site's web developer should have full control over the layout and positioning of these items by using CSS.
Publisher Control
The publisher must be king (or queen)
This is what I think. It is the publisher and not the advertising agency or some obscure algorithm that should control which ads show up on my web pages. It should be the publisher who takes the role of information director in full; not just in respect to what is written, but also about what is promoted. Separation of editorial and marketing offices is not an advantage in the type of new-media universe I envision.
Services like Blogads and the text-link clearinghouses facilitate this by allowing publishers to maintain full control of who are going to be their advertisers.

Google AdSense provides some control of which ads are displayed by letting publishers filter out up to 200 advertisers that may not complement their content. Ideally, as I have advocated, a publisher should be able to select from a large inventory of relevant and complementary advertisers in the ads he wants to carry.
Endorsement
A publisher should also in some way endorse the products she advertises as a way to provide value to her readers with such "recommendations." I have repeatedly refused to be a well-paid affiliate reseller or advertiser for products that I didn't believe in, while many times I have offered my space for free to companies and products which I thought deserved my readers' attention (proof is available, if needed). A sense of personal ethics and editorial coherence is all it takes.

Which monetization strategy to use?

Diversify income streams
Don't bet all your money on one horse and think like a coffee shop where money is made with many small transactions across a good variety of (generally low-cost) related offerings.

What I am learning is that you can make money by creating and cultivating multiple, small, income streams. Relying on one big source of income is always dangerous. If that resource disappears, so does your ability to survive.

List of interview questions

ruwanblogs@gmail.com (Unknown) — Wed, 20 May 2009 21:18:00 +0530

List of interview questions relating to the new job / company

Why do you want this job?
What qualities do you think will be required for this job?
What can you contribute?
Why do you want to work for this company?
What do you know about this company?
What interests you about our product (or service)?
What can we (the new company) offer that your previous company cannot offer?
You have not done this sort of job before. How will you cope/succeed?
Why should we employ you?
How long do you think it would be before you were making a significant contribution to the team/company?
How ambitious are you?
Would you compete for my job?
What do you like and dislike about the job we are discussing?
What are you looking for in a new job?
What would you like to avoid in your next job?
Are you too old for this job? [Shouldn't be asked in countries with age discrimination legislation.]
Are you too young for this job? [Shouldn't be asked in countries with age discrimination legislation.]
You may be over qualified for this position?
Are you prepared to relocate?
Are you willing to travel?
What level of salary are you looking for now?

List of interview questions relating to your current / previous job

How much does your last job resemble the one you are applying for?
What are the differences?
What do you think of the last company you worked for?
Why did you join your previous company?
Did they live up to your expectations?
Why are you leaving now?
Explain the organizational structure in your last company and how you fitted into it?
What did you think of your manager/supervisor?
How did you get on with your previous manager/supervisor, coworkers and subordinates?
What did you do on a day to day basis?
Did you increase sales or profits in your last job?
Have you reduced costs at your last company?
Did you feel you progressed satisfactorily in your last job?
What problems did you encounter in your last job?
What annoyed you about your last job?
What did you earn in your last job?

Career related interview questions

Why did you choose a career in …?
Why are you changing careers?
What are your career goals?
How long have you been looking for a new job?
Do you prefer to work in a small, medium or large company?
What would your ideal job be?
Are you considering any other positions at the moment?
If you have changed jobs a lot you may be asked how long you would stay in the new job.
Have you ever been fired?
How often are you off sick?
What will your referees say about you?

List of interview questions relating to you

How would you describe yourself?
How would others describe you?
Do you consider yourself successful?
What was your greatest success?
How did you achieve it?
What has been your biggest failure?
How could you improve yourself?
Are you a leader?
How do you handle criticism?
What sort of manager are you?
What makes a good manager?
Do you work well with others? Or are you a loner?
Do you need other people around to stimulate you or are you self-motivated?
Are you accepted into a team quickly?
Can you act on your own initiative?
How do you run a meeting?
What motivates you?
What management style gets the best results out of you?
Do you know how to motivate other people?
Are you competitive?
Are you aggressive?
What do you dislike doing?
Do you feel you are ready to take on greater responsibilities?
Can you work under pressure?
How many hours are you prepared to work?
Do you mind working for someone older than yourself? Younger than you? Of the opposite sex?
What interests do you have outside work?

Interview Prepare - Tips

ruwanblogs@gmail.com (Unknown) — Wed, 20 May 2009 17:40:00 +0530

Interview Prepare - Tips

Hello Friends. Here are some tips for facing the Interview in Good Manner -
Dress appropriately in simple - comfortable clothes that reflect your personality.

Avoid wearing new shoes (squeaking noises) and do practice wearing your tie.
Be punctual - don't be late or even too early.

Read up about the company - what business they are into, growth trends, diversification etc

Read your own resume - be sure that you don't have to look into your resume to recall details during the interview.

Carry extra copies of your resume and testimonials - you never know when you may need them.

Make sure you know the full name and designation of the person interviewing you.

Keep your references ready.

Remember to make a note of your previous or current salary with all its components.

Make a good first impression.

Wish the interviewer(s) cheerfully and with a smile.

A firm handshake is an indicator of how you are feeling. If you are a lady, then some male employers might not make the first move, but go ahead and initiate the handshake.

Wait till you are asked to sit down.

Look the person in the eye.

Do not appear too nervous or overconfident - Your body language usually conveys more than what you are saying. Don't slouch or lean forward too much.

Try to curb nervous mannerisms [eg. fidgeting or biting your finger.]

Appear comfortable, confident and interested in securing the job.

During the interview -

Start the interview with a pleasant smile.

Always remember to give a firm handshake. If there are women in your interview panel, wait for the other person to extend the hand while shaking hands.

Listen carefully to what the interviewer is saying.

Stress on what you can contribute to the organisation.

Remember that the employer is in control of the interview.
Don't be too long-winded, say what you want to convey in crisp sentences and use terms that would convey your job & achievements.

Complete your sentences - don't answer just yes or no.

What you don't know can be learned, tell them if you don't know something. But give instances of how quick a learner you are.

Do not boast. People on the other side are shrewd and can generally see through you. At the same time talk about achievements giving due credit to others.

When talking about yourself and your aspirations, do not sound vague or do not say that you don't know something. You should be very clear and precise about what you want to do, where you want to go etc.
I
f you don't understand a question, ask for clarification, don't answer vaguely.

Don't talk about your personal problems, why you need the job etc.

Don't get personal, even if you know the interviewer personally.

Don't be overconfident or too nervous.

Don't badmouth your previous employer - you could do the same in the case of the prospective customer.

Don't complain about politics, a bad boss or a poor salary - your reasons for change should be higher responsibilities, location etc.

If the interviewer is interrupted during the course of the interview, don't pick up papers on his/her desk and read them.

Don't ask about salary before the offer is made.

Strike a balance between what you actually are and what you want to be, don't paint a picture of yourself as somebody who is not concerned about money, social status etc.

Don't be in a hurry to complete the interview.

Ask questions at the end of the interview, it could be about the company, the job or the next stage of the interview process. It will be an indicator of your interest in the position.

Send a thank-you letter, outlining your interest in the job and why you are qualified for it.

Be Positive and Confident - And the Job is yours. Best of Luck!

How to face an Interview Successfully??

ruwanblogs@gmail.com (Unknown) — Wed, 20 May 2009 17:22:00 +0530

How to face an Interview Successfully??

This is a small guide for any candidate who are willing to face on any interwiew. Personally i know how exciting and heart-smshing thing to face important interviews, specially when it comes to the very first interview in the life . So hope that these little set of instructions would really be useful to you, when your interview is ahead. Read it and comment on your own experience and other thoughts

The interviewer hopes that YOU are the right person for the job. They are under pressure to fill the position so that they can get back to their own work. Therefore you are in a greater position of strength than you think. Concentrate on what you have to offer in the way of qualifications and experience instead of feeling intimidated.

An interviewer has 3 aims:

1) To learn if you are the right person for the job.
2) To assess your potential for promotion
3) To decide whether you will fit into the company environment.

The key to a successful job interview is in preparation

Be prepared: For the types of interview questions you will be asked
Be prepared: To ask questions yourself
Be prepared: To research the company
Be prepared: To look the part
Be prepared: To turn up on time

Job interview questions you may be asked

Q- How would you describe yourself?
A-You should describe attributes that will enhance your suitability for the position. Have some ready in advance.

Q – What are your long-term goals?
A – These should be career orientated. Make sure you have goals to discuss.

Q – Why did you leave your last job?
A – This could be for more responsibility; a better opportunity; increased income. Do not be detrimental to your previous employer. He could be the interviewer’s golfing partner.

Q – Why do you want this job?
A – Your answer should be: more responsibility or better opportunity or similar. Not: because it is closer to home or the gym.

Q – What are your strengths?
A – You should highlight accomplishments and experiences that relate to the position for which you are applying. Also, give examples of situations where your strengths have been demonstrated.

Q – What are your weaknesses?
A – This should not be a list of deficiencies. Don’t mention anything that could make the interviewer question your ability to do the job, for example “I am always late for everything.” Instead, discuss a weakness that could also be a strength such as “I am a workaholic!”

More Examples of Good Interview Questions

Tell me a little bit about yourself.
Describe your current / most recent position.
What made you want to make this change?
What do you most enjoy doing in your current /most recent position?
Describe your future ambitions.
How would you describe yourself?

Good interview questions for YOU to ask

Asking questions at interview has a number of positive effects:
It helps you find out more about the company and the position.
It can be used to divert the interviewer away from a subject you may wish to avoid.
It can help build a rapport with the interviewer.
It demonstrates an interest in the job and the company.

The questions must be about the position and the company. Avoid questions about salary, benefits and facilities until after you have been offered the job.
You should already have researched the company and it’s products and services. Your questions should demonstrate knowledge of the company’s history, successes and problems. If the interviewer is a representative of the personnel department the questions should relate to the company and be general. Specific questions relating to the position should be kept for the line manager who will have a more detailed knowledge.

Example questions relating to the position

What are the main responsibilities of the job?
What are the most difficult aspects of the job?
How did the vacancy arise?
What is the career path relating to this position?
How will my work be assessed?

Example questions relating to the company

What is the company hoping to achieve in the next 12 months?
What new products are the company planning to introduce in the future?
Are any major changes planned for the department/company?
Who are your biggest competitors?

Where to find company information

Information relating to companies, financial data, industries and business trends is available in business magazines which often publish on the World Wide Web and allow you to order Annual Reports relating to specific companies.
Companies often have their own web site.
Newspapers – search on-line press reports including archived articles.
Local library.

Interview Tips – Presentation

Obviously you should be clean and smart in appearance but you should also dress appropriately for the position, for example: a student placement that is more expensively dressed than the Managing Director may have a negative impact.
Clothes should be on the conservative side, which is more acceptable to people of all ages, cultures and backgrounds. After all, you are asking to be accepted into the company. Therefore always avoid extremes in hair, clothes, make-up and jewellery. Taking trouble over your appearance shows the employer that the job is important to you.

Interview Tips – Travel

Arrive 15 minutes early.
Make sure you have the correct address and know how you will get there:
Parking? Public transport access?
Do a dummy run if you are not sure.
Make sure you have a mobile phone and a telephone number so that you can ring ahead if circumstances beyond your control are making you late.
Be polite to everyone you speak to, it could be the Managing Director’s cousin! Have a copy of your CV with you.

- Summary -

You should show interest in all aspects of the job and the company especially if shown around the premises.
Do your homework on the company and the nature of its business.
Take care in how you dress for the interview. First impressions still count!

Some of the main influences on the interviewer are:

Your experience in other employment or life situations
Your personal presentation. How your personality comes across in the interview
Your background and references
Your enthusiasm for both the job and the organisation.
Relevant qualifications for the positio

How to Make More Money with Google AdSense

ruwanblogs@gmail.com (Unknown) — Wed, 20 May 2009 14:57:00 +0530

How to Make More Money with Google AdSense

Google AdSense is a Pay-Per Click (PPC) service. Webmasters are paid a portion of the revenue which Google collects from advertisers each time a web site visitor clicks on an AdSense advertisement.

Each click may pay anywhere from a few cents to several dollars. The average click seems to be worth about $.20. The more clicks AdSense advertisers receive from your web pages, the more money you make.

The basic formula for thinking about revenue from Google AdSense is:

Revenue = (Impressions * CTR * CPC)

The methods of increasing your revenue from Google AdSense are:

* Increase Impressions
* Increase Click-Through-Ratio (CTR)
* Increase Cost-Per-Click (CPC)

Increase Impressions

The most basic method of increasing your number of impressions is to increase the traffic to your web site.

The topic of increasing traffic to your web site is beyond the scope of this article, and most likely something you are already working on.

One technique for increasing the number of Google AdSense impressions without an increase in traffic to your web site is to motivate your users to enable JavaScript. Google AdSense ads require JavaScript. Visitors to your website who do not have JavaScript enabled in their browsers will not see your Google AdSense ads.

To encourage your users to enable JavaScript, create content for your web page which is only available via JavaScript. Implement browser JavaScript detection in your HTML to notify visitors without JavaScript enabled that they are only receiving a portion of your available content.

Increase Click-Through-Ratio (CTR)

A small increase in Click-Through-Ratio can mean a large increase in revenue. A rise from a CTR of 1.0 to a CTR of 1.1 should mean an increase in revenue of 10%.

Several on-page factors can influence your Click-Through-Ratio. These factors include:

* Ad placement
* Ad color
* Ad unit style
* Total number of links

Ad placement

The best location to place ads is wherever the web site visitor will be looking.

Open up your web page. Where on the page does your eye immediately focus? Place an ad there.

The best performing ads seem to be ads which are inline with content. However, it can be very challenging to place inline ads across entire web sites.

Placing ads across an entire web site is usually accomplished with Shared HTML (shtml) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). This effectively limits ads to appearing in the same locations across a wide range of web pages.

Ads On the Top of the Page

Ads in the page header perform moderately well. The location is a good one to catch a visitors eye. However, many web users have developed a condition known as "ad blindness" where their brains automatically skip over advertisements.

One technique to reduce ad blindness is to place the advertisement below the page header and as far into the content space as possible. If your content space can be divided into multiple sections, this may work well for you.

Ads On the Bottom of the Page

Ads at the bottom of the page perform poorly. Web site visitors tend to read a page from the top down, and may never reach the bottom of the page. In addition, web site visitors have many different browser sizes, which may cause them to never see the advertisement unless they scroll down to it.

Ads On the Right Side of the Page

Ads on the right side of the page perform moderately well, and are currently in vogue. They appear to perform slightly better than ads on the top of the page at the current time, most likely due to better resilience to ad blindess.

When using ads on the right side of the page, it is important to test your web page at several different screen resolutions in several different web browers. Your web pages should automatically resize to ensure that the advertisements do not scroll outside of the browser window or get "bumped" down below the content.

Internet Explorer appears to have a bug which can cause right side ads to be "bumped" down below the content if the total width of all sections of the web page is equal to 100%. To work around this bug, ensure that the total width of your web page is 96% or less.

Ads On the Left Side of the Page

Ads on the left side of the page may perform the best. The left side of the page is normally reserved for the web site menu. This means that users frequently look to the left side of the page.

The difficulty is determining where to place your web site menu when the left side of the page is no longer available to you. A top menu might work for you, depending upon the design and content of your web site. Placing your menu on the right side of the page is another option, but one that may confuse some web site visitors.

If Google allows more than one ad unit per page in the future, the left side of the page might become an excellent location for a single ad, either above or below the menu.

Ad Color

Many webmasters report that brightly colored ads which contrast sharply with the color scheme of the rest of the web page return excellent results for them.

My experience has been that ads which mimic the look and feel of the rest of my web page return the best results. This is most likely because the Google AdSense ads closely relate to the topic of the page and therefore appear to the visitor as additional content.

Ad Unit Style

The Google AdSense programs offers a wide variety of ad unit styles and sizes. The ad unit styles include:

Ad UnitDimensions Leaderboard728x90 Banner486x60 Half Banner234x60 Button125x125 Skyscraper120x600 Wide Skyscraper160x600 Medium Rectangle300x250 Large Rectangle336x280 Small Rectangle180x150 Square250x250

Leaderboard and Banner ad units are obvious choices to placement in page headers and footers. Leaderboards are preferable, because they are able to show more ads. Banners are a classic web format, and may be necessary where the width of your available space is limited.

Skyscrapers are an excellent choice for advertisements, because they appear to be less vulnerable to ad blindness than the horizontal ad formats. Google recently added the wide skyscraper format. This new ad unit displays one more ad than the classic 120x600 skyscraper unit. If you are currently using the 120x600 skyscrapers, switching to the new wide skyscraper format may increase your revenue from the Google AdSense program.

Rectangles, Squares, and Buttons are best used when placed inside a content area. This makes rectangles more difficult to place, but also gives then the best revenue potential.

Total Number of Links

Reducing the total number of links on your content pages can increase revenue from AdSense by reducing the options for a visitor.

If your web page has fifteen links and one AdSense wide skyscraper on it, the visitor has a total of twenty options for leaving your page without closing the browser window.

This means that, if the user clicks on a link, the random odds that the visitor will click on an AdSense link are 5 in 20.

If you reduce the number of other links on the page to 5, the total number of options presented to the user is now 10. This means that the random odds of a user selecting an AdSense ad are now 5 in 10.

Another option, but one which may annoy your web site visitors, is to open all external links in a new window. This will leave your page open in the users browser, giving them another opportunity to click on an AdSense link. This can be done by adding target="_new" to your HTML links, or by converting your outbound links to JavaScript.

It should be noted that Google AdSense never opens ads in a new window.

Test, Test and Test Again

Testing is the key to increasing your CTR percentages. Change your ad colors, wait a week and look at the stats. Do the same with different ad units and different ad placement.

Increase Cost-Per-Click (CPC)

Not all Google AdSense ads are created equal. Google AdWords advertisers bid for keyword combinations, and some combinations are much more expensive than others.

The Google AdSense robot, Mediabot, automatically scans your web pages and determines the appropriate ads to display on your page.

It is possible to create web pages which are designed specifically to attract certain keywords from the Google AdSense program.

To determine which keywords have a higher Cost-Per-Click, create a Google Adwords account in the Google AdWords advertiser interface. This will enable you to determine roughly what AdWords advertisers are paying for each keyword combinatiom.

Based upon this information, you may decide to create a new web page or a whole new web site.

AdSense Alternate Ads

Google AdSense is not always able to find an advertisement which matches the content of your web page. Normally, AdSense selects a Public Service Ad (PSA) and displays it in your ad space. These PSA's generate no revenue for you.

Google has created the ability to load an alternate ad when it cannot find a matching ad. This is accomplished by setting a variable called google_alternate_ad_url in your AdSense layout code:

google_alternate_ad_url = "/adsense-alternate-ad.shtml";

These alternate ads can include advertisements from Google AdSense competitors, such as Clicksor.

This capability enables you to tap into a revenue stream which would normally by lost to AdSense PSAs.

Future Improvements to AdSense which will Increase Revenue to You

Google is constantly improving the AdSense program. Many of these improvements will mean additional revenue in your pocket.

Google has recently improved the speed with which MediaBot accesses new web pages. This means that you start earning revenue more quickly.

Google is constantly working to improve the relevancy of AdSense ads. Ads which are more relevant are more likely to be clicked on by web site visitors.

Google is currently working to give webmasters the ability to place multiple AdSense ad units on the same web page. This will enable the webmaster to place five small single-ad units around the web page, instead of one wide skyscraper. This should considerably reduce losses from ad blindness.

Will Spencer is the webmaster of The Internet Search Engines FAQ.
http://www.internet-search-engines-faq.com

How Much Can I Earn With AdSense?

ruwanblogs@gmail.com (Unknown) — Wed, 20 May 2009 14:50:00 +0530

How Much Can I Earn With AdSense?

Google does not disclose exactly how much you'll earn per ad that is clicked.

The commission you receive per click depends on how much advertisers are paying Google for the particular ad. You will earn a share of that amount. I've heard of earnings anywhere from 2 cents to $15 per click.

So it is logical to believe that keyword phrases like debt free, employment, make money, mp3, sex, etc. will earn you more per click since these are highly competitive keywords that are searched for quite a bit on the web.

Advertisers generally pay more for popular terms because they are searched for more.

Even though Google will not reveal how much you are earning for each ad that is clicked from your site, you can still login to your account at any time and see the total amount of revenue you've generated that day, week, month, year, etc.

For example, if you see that you've made $12.60 today from 9 clicks then you can calculate that your average click-thru commission was $1.40 per click. That's as detailed as their stats will get. Also remember, that's only an average. You won't know how much each specific ad brought in.

The amount you'll earn also depends largely on the amount of targeted traffic you receive to your own site, how well the ads match your audience's interests, the placement of the ads on your pages, and of course the amount you receive per click.

Ideally, you should create a site on a topic you know a lot about. That way you'll have a much easier time creating a generous amount of content on that subject

Work from Home Resources

ruwanblogs@gmail.com (Unknown) — Wed, 20 May 2009 12:41:00 +0530

Work from Home Resources

This outline is dedicated to providing valuable work from home resources that will give you opportunities to make money online and expand your internet business. I’ve tried to break down the opportunities in a way that is extremely logical.

If you really want to get to the next level, you can’t be afraid to invest.

Fortunately, there are many ways you can get ahead without spending a fortune… Without further introduction, here are my resources:

Money Making Programs / GPT Websites

These programs are all free to join but I’ll just mention that Project Payday and DealBarbiePays both seem to pay much better than Cash Crate and Treasure Trooper.

Because I’ve made money with each of these programs, I firmly believe that they are all worth joining and exploring…

Project Payday

Minimum to Receive Payment: No Min.
Total Offers: 200+
100% Free Offers: 100+
Minimum Age to Join: 18
International Membership: US & Canada

DealBarbiePays

Free to Join
Minimum to Receive Payment: $20
Total Offers: 1005
100% Free Offers: 286
Minimum Age to Join: 18
1st Level Referral Earnings: 15%
2nd Level Referral Earnings: 3%
3rd Level Referral Earnings: 2%
International Membership: No, US only

*Bonus for Active Referrals: $1 for each

Cash Crate

Free to Join
Minimum to Receive Payment: $20
Total Offers: 264
100% Free Offers: 177
Minimum Age to Join: 13
1st Level Referral Earnings: 20%
2nd Level Referral Earnings: 10%
International Membership: Yes

*Bonus For Active Referrals: $3 for any referral that earns $10

Treasure Trooper

Free to Join
Minimum to Receive Payment: $20
Total Offers: 378
100% Free Offers: 349
Minimum Age to Join: 13
1st Level Referral Earnings: 20%
2nd Level Referral Earnings: 5%
International Membership: Yes

Make Money Writing / Blogging Websites

I’ve spent a lot of time scouring the web for legitimate companies that will pay you to write for them, the following two websites are highly recommended for this purpose:

E-how

Today.com

Web Hosting

If you are considering creating an online business, I strongly recommend that you purchase web hosting and a domain name. I’ve researched hundreds of web hosting companies and have come to the conclusion that Hostgator seems to offer the best hosting for the money (this website is hosted with Hostgator)… However, if you are not planning to sign up for a reseller account you might want to consider Bluehost as an alternate option.

Hostgator

Bluehost

Internet Marketing Resources

There are all sorts of internet marketing resources available on the web. The difficult part is figuring out which tools are needed and which ones are simply blowing smoke. I personally use each of these tools and they have been extremely helpful in growing my internet marketing / web-based businesses….

Google Keyword Tool

WordTracker Free Keyword Tool

SEO Tools Rank Checker

Search Engine Optimization Services

Each of these services will help you increase your search engine optimization efforts…

Building links to your websites can be extremely difficult but the following services allow you to expand your search engine ranking places without having to spend a huge amount of time and effort contacting webmasters to organize link exchange opportunities.

Linkvana

1WayLinks

Article Marketing Automation

Advertising / PPC Programs

The following are a couple of my favorite advertising / PPC programs… There are so many to choose from but the following two options seem to be the most profitable:

Google Adsense

Yahoo Publisher

Email Marketing

Many people don’t realize that the value in their online business is not in the traffic but how effectively they manage their traffic and convert their visitors into subscribers… We do this by offering value and providing our visitors with information that helps them, this gives them incentive to come back and thus a mutually beneficial relationship is created.

Creating an email marketing campaign for your website is extremely important and choosing a provider / email service can mean the difference between a successful business and a complete failure.

If you take a minute to look at the top right hand side of my website you will see a field to place your name and email address…

Please consider signing up for my email newsletter and when you’re ready, it might be a good idea to start your own. I recommend Aweber, it has helped me generate a lot of profit over the years and if you have a steady stream of web traffic, you should be able to reproduce the same results.

Aweber

Affiliate Networks

If you’re planning on monetizing your websites with affiliate products, I highly recommend using the following services:

Clickbank

PayDotCom

Conclusion

Although I’m sure that there are many worthy resources and tools that I neglected to mention in this outline, I know that each one of these recommendations has been made with a clean conscious and an intent to help you be successful regardless of whether you would like to grow your online business or simply earn money online.

I will continue to update this resource list on a monthly basis. If you have a worthy product or service and would like me to mention it, please go ahead and leave a comment or use the contact form with a recommendation.

How to Start a Blog

ruwanblogs@gmail.com (Unknown) — Wed, 20 May 2009 12:08:00 +0530

How to Start a Blog

After reading my new blog, a number of Nelson employees have told me they intend to start their own blog. Several have written to me, asking how to get started. So, rather than continuing to repeat myself, I will outline the process here. It’s actually easier than you may think.

Determine a theme. Most bloggers take one of three approaches. Some write on whatever happens to interest them at the moment. In this sense, their blog is truly a “web journal.” Others, select a single theme and stick to it. Frankly, this takes a lot of discipline. Still others, like me, focus on a primary theme but occasionally deviate from it. If you want to develop a following of loyal readers, I think the latter two approaches are best. People who have similar interests will keep coming back for more.

Select a service. I use TypePad.com. My daughters use Xanga.com. These are only a few of scores of services available. Some of these are free, such as Blogger.com, LiveJournal.com, Blog-City.com, and MSN Spaces (also Xanga.com). Others charge a nominal fee. Examples include SquareSpace.com, BlogIdentity.com, and Bubbler.com (also TypePad.com). However, even the fee-based services usually offer a 30- to 60-day free trial. Why do I use TypePad.com? Because I think it offers the best balance of power, customizability, and ease-of-use. Your mileage may vary.

Set up your blog. Most of the blogging services I have looked at make this a very simple process. Don’t be put off because it sounds technical. It usually isn’t. You won’t need to become a geek. However, you will have to make some decisions about how you want your blog to look. You’ll have to decide on a “theme,” meaning the colors, number of columns, and the overall look and feel of your blog. You may want to include your picture. If so, you’ll need a digital copy. Regardless, this is something you can tweak as you go.

Write your first post. Okay, now you’re ready to create your first post. If you haven’t done a lot of writing, this may prove to be the most difficult part. If you don’t have a lot of experience, keep your posts short. Develop momentum. Get the hang of it. Stick to what you know. You probably take for granted the fact that you have a great deal of specialized information that others will find helpful—possibly even fascinating. If you don’t know where else to start, begin with a “Welcome to My Blog” post. Tell your prospective readers why you have started your blog and what kinds of things you intend to write about.

Consider using an offline blogging client. This isn’t a necessity but it will make blogging much easier. An offline blogging client is like a word processor for blogging. It enables you to write when you’re not online and then upload your post when you connect to the Internet. The two most popular are BlogJet and ecto (yes, the lowercase “e” is part of the branding). BlogJet is my favorite, but it’s not available for the Mac. ecto is available on both Windows and Mac platforms. You can try both programs before you buy.

Add the bells and whistles. Most blogs allow you to post the books you are reading, albums you enjoy, and various other lists. TypePad is especially adept at this. You can also incorporate third-party services like Bloglet. This enables your readers to subscribe to your site and receive an e-mail whenever you post a new entry. The best way to get an idea of what is available is to read other people’s blogs and take note of what you like.

Publicize your blog. You’ll want to make sure you’re “pinging” the major weblog tracking sites. Most of the blogging services handle this automatically, as do the offline blogging clients. Don’t worry if you don’t understand this process. You don’t need to understand it to use it. (Here's a simple explanation.) Basically, your service or software will send a notification to the tracking sites to alert them that you have posted a new entry. If your software doesn’t allow this, you might want to make use of pingomatic. This is a super-easy service that will ping fourteen different services. All you have to do is enter your blog address whenever you post a new entry. If you want to manually enter a comprehensive list of ping services, here’s a list to get you started.

Write regularly. This is the best advice I could give you for building readership. If people like what you write, they will come back. However, if there’s nothing new to read, they will eventually lose interest. So, the more regularly you post something, the more your readership will grow. I suggest you schedule time to write. It won’t happen on it’s own. At some point, it comes down to making a commitment and sticking to it.

Finally, I would suggest that you be patient with yourself. Writing is like anything else. The more you do it, the better you get. If you have a little talent, and stick with it, you’ll eventually get into the rhythm and joy of it.

How To Start a Google AdSense Account and Make Money Blogging

ruwanblogs@gmail.com (Unknown) — Wed, 20 May 2009 11:34:00 +0530

How To Start a Google AdSense Account and Make Money Blogging

Starting a new account with Google AdSense is one of the easiest ways to start monetizing your blog. While Google AdSense might not make you rich, it's a simple and useful tool. In fact, it's usually the first step bloggers typically take to earn an income from their blogs because it is so easy to get started.
Difficulty: Easy
Time Required: 10-15 minutes to open an account. Additional time to research the options to monetize your blog.
Here's How:

1.

Read the Google AdSense program policies.

Familiarize yourself with what you can and cannot do as part of the Google AdSense program to ensure you're prepared to start your new account.
2.

Visit the Google AdSense home page.

Click on the 'Sign Up Now' button in the upper righthand corner of your screen.
3.

Complete the online application.

You will need to provide your blog's URL and primary language as well as answer some questions related to the rules of the Google AdSense program. You'll also need to provide your payment information to receive the money you generate on your blog from Google.
4.

Access your new account and review the ads available to you.

Google AdSense provides a wide variety of advertising options to bloggers from text ads to image ads and more. Take some time to research everything that's available to determine what will work best for your blog.
5.

Select your ad design choices.

Once you've decided which ad opportunities are best for your blog, select them. Google will provide a snippet of HTML code to you after you make your selection.
6.

Insert your Google AdSense HTML code into your blog.

Copy and paste the HTML code provided by Google into your blog's template. One of the easiest ways for a beginner blogger to do this is by inserting a text widget into his or her blog's template and pasting the code in the widget.
7.

Let Google do the rest.

It may take a few hours or a few days for Google to start serving ads on your blog. Google will search your blog to determine the predominant subjects of each page. When readers visit your blog, the HTML code you pasted into your blog from Google will activate and relevant ads will be displayed based on each page's content.
8.

Collect your money.

Remember, Google AdSense typically pays based on click-throughs (the number of times people click on an ad). Therefore, Google AdSense is unlikely to generate a large income for you, but every bit helps!

Tips:

1. Read and adhere to the Google AdSense policies in full before you sign up for a Google AdSense account. If you violate any of the policies, your account will be cancelled.
2. Take some time to perfect your Google AdSense program once you get started by learning the steps you need to take to increase your Google AdSense earning potential.

What is Google AdSense?

ruwanblogs@gmail.com (Unknown) — Wed, 20 May 2009 10:01:00 +0530

What is Google AdSense?

Google AdSense is an advertising program that was launched in the middle of 2003 by Google, the popular search engine. Google acts as an intermediary between a vast number of advertisers and an equally impressive number of website owners.

Advertisers sign up with Google and create text ads that they would like to be displayed. Google displays these ads on the results pages of searches that people conduct from Google.com. The Google AdSense program allows these advertisements to show up on pages all over the internet. To see some of the ads themselves, take a look at the sidebar on this page. The webmaster simply places a special code in their page and Google AdSense takes care of the rest. Perhaps the most valuable aspect of the system is that robots (specialized computer programs that scan internet pages) analyzes pages that ads will be placed on to determine which ads are most relevant to the page's content.

The relevancy of ads placed by AdSense varies on all sorts of criteria, but most ads are usually very relevant to the page on which the ad is displayed. For example, the ads on this page should be related to the internet, advertising, and/or the Google AdSense program itself.

Advertisers pay Google a certain amount for each time one of their ads are clicked. Google keeps a portion of this payment and passes on the rest to the owner of the website itself. Page views of the advertisements are irrelevant in terms of generating revenue in the program - commissions are only generated when internet users actually click on the ads themselves.

Google AdSense checks are sent out on a monthly basis. Many webmasters wait in anticipation of their checks since AdSense provides them a simple way to recoup some of the losses associated with posting websites on the internet. In some cases, webmasters can even make a profit using Google AdSense.

Outside of a Google AdSense Check:

Inside of a Google AdSense Check:

Earn money online

ruwanblogs@gmail.com (Unknown) — Wed, 20 May 2009 01:38:00 +0530

Earn Working Money Online

Hey if you are looking to work from home and earn working online then you are at right place. We will help you earn online. We provide you free ways of earning online. This is not a scam nor you have to buy anything. We will tell you how you can earn lot of money online working from home without any investment.

There are many ways of earning online and we will tell you step by step methods to earn online which will be easy to you. We will tell you four main ways of earning online. All of them are listed below.

Paid Surveys

Paid Surveys is first and easiest step to earn online. Companies want to know what their customers want, to know this they conduct surveys. Companies hire market research Company for conducting surveys. There are several ways for a research company to conduct a study. Some of the most popular methods are Focus Groups, Product Tests, Mystery Shops, and Paid Surveys.

Market research companies add people as panelists who can participate in these surveys. Market research companies are paid a lot of money to do this. In return their panelists are compensated for their help. An average paid survey takes around 20 minutes and pays from $5 to $20. Some may pay more depending on time and importance of the study.

Make Money With Your Website

There are millions of website on internet some of them are personal site, some are business site and many of them are made to earn money. Websites are the best way to earn money online.

There are many ways to earn with your website like PPC, Affiliate Marketing, Direct AD sale and many more ways.
If you want to earn with your website you can start with free method or by setting up your own personal website. Lear more about Earning with your website.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing can be best way to earn even you don’t have a website. Affiliate marketing is about promoting others product or services and earning commission whenever there is sale or lead made by affiliates affords.

Affiliate marketer helps companies to sell their product and in return they get fixed commission or some percentage of product cost. Affiliate marketing is not just about selling products you can earn by pay per sale, pay per lead etc. Lear more about Affiliate Marketing.

Freelancing

If you have expertise in the fields like web designing, content writing, designing or in a fields which can be worked from home then you can start working as freelancer. Freelancing is a short term contract between professional and employer for completing a particular task.

As a freelancer you can work in fields of journalism and other forms of writing, copywriting, computer programming and graphic design, consulting, and many other professional and creative services.

You can be paid on hourly bases or fixed price for particular task decided and offered by you to service buyer. If service buyer is agree with your pricing and offering then he will give you the work and you will be paid by service buyer when task is completed. Lear more about Freelancing.

It’s not a scam these are real ways of earning online. So don’t wait start earning now.

Reality Of Earn Money Online

ruwanblogs@gmail.com (Unknown) — Tue, 19 May 2009 23:57:00 +0530

Do you know you can Earn Money On Net For Free!!!

Well there are many resources and articles on net which tell you how to earn money on net.But most of then don't work well.

You can find whole web sites are made on the topics like
"Make Money Online,Earn Money at Home Business and Work"
OR
"Earn Lots of Money Online With The Best Free Home Based Business Opportunity Of The World"

All these sites looks very promising. But they are just earning money for the owners of these sites.

They are using it for marketing purpose and making you people fool by wasting both your money and time .

If you has ever participated in any such program then you must be agree with me that earning money is not such a easy task.

1.) Does it really possible to earn money online

Yes , It is possible to make money online.But it need hard work form your end .don't think you can make good amount of money by just clicking some link or reading mails.

If you got a web site then you can earn some money by spreading your business or by ADS.

It is batter to use you mind for making money then to depends on some ready made solution.

There is no Ways to Make Fast Easy Quick Money Online Today. making Quick Money is every one's dream but this dream can't be full filled without hard work.

Many Internet companies pay you to surf the web, read emails, visit web sites or sign up for free offers on the internet. It is natural to get attracted towards such an offers. but after trying these most of people find earn money is not that easy as shown by these sites.

If you earn some then there is no guaranty of payment.you may end up with just thinking about money, money, money.

2.) What program should I try

Well If you are located in US then there are many program which promises to give easy money.But as i don't belong to US i hasn't tested these .

But speaking to International People it does not really work .

If you are a WebMaster then you could try following:

Google adsense : that's my Favorites .I use google adsense on this site also. This is the only program that has work for me till now .
But if this work for me then it is not necessary that it will work for you also . If you has informative site then you can really make money threw this program. It is much batter than Pay per click or pay per impression or pay per lead program.
Try to sell some products threw you web site to earn money that is related to your web site.

By choosing wrong program you may end up by spending more money then you are earning.

There is no way to tell how much money you will earn .
You will earn money according to you own work.