Making Money from Your Website

The New Rush to Local Search Help

2011-02-20T20:57:00.000-05:00

Have you noticed? Have you received the tell-tale email that says "we can get you to the top of Google!"? It's the latest rush and if you're not a part, then you need to be. And it's not hard to get involved. In fact, you probably already know tons more than your local dentist about getting pages indexed in Google, and then working on getting them ranked higher in search.

Why this is rubbish to local businesses

When we approach businesses we don't tell them we'll get them to the first page of Google for their search term. That is like speaking in a foreign language they don't understand. It doesn't make sense and seems like a waste of time to them. What do you suppose they are really searching for from the Internet?

Customers are the Bottom Line

Yes, new customers - those who come in simply because of what you've done helping the local business get their pages and site ranking higher in Google. They don't give a flip about first page, number 10, whatever - what they want to hear from your lips is that you're concerned about making them more money.

How can the search engines make me more money

It's a fact that the lion share of the clicks go to the company in the top positions in Google. You never go searching deeper than page three - probably never more than the top 5 results. So this is what everyone else thinks as well. But what the merchant wants to hear is that these will convert into sales - not that you can get him or her to some magical position on this website. They really could care less. Money is where it's at.

Speak their language

So when presenting this whole local search optimization to them, it's important to speak their language. Don't sound like you are a lawyer. I remember when asking a friend (Brazilian) who dabbled in Japanese art work as a side hobby, some advice about getting a divorce in Brazil, they turned into a totally different person and started speaking this lawyerese that was simply a put-off. I never did do any business with them because I couldn't understand a word they were saying, even though I understand Portuguese. It was because they were using terms I didn't use nor could relate to in my day to day work. What a disappointment.

Provide value

Finally, provide extreme value. Give way more than expected and blow them away with what you can do for them online. This will make them a lifetime customer of yours and one that will sing your graces to their friends forever. It just makes sense to give.

This helps - work your plan and you'll be rewarded greatly. Ask me for advice in this.

Follow Through

2010-08-21T21:46:00.000-04:00

Hi All... I want to know your best follow-through methods you have so I can compile a list and make something of value for you. How do you keep going on a project that might be weeks away from a profit?

Tell me in 100 words or less and I'll share the ideas in a report which you can have for free.

Talk soon,
Dave

Christmas Money

2009-12-11T18:58:00.000-05:00

It's been eons since I've written so with no excuse I trust I can keep posting ideas and views right here. I'm pretty sure you haven't been wondering what happened to me, well, maybe after the first few months of not writing. There has been a lot happening in my life and I bet, yours as well.

I left off here with the 90 day plan to making a great income with AdSense. And a lot of you have written to me telling me that the strategy is working well. One of my last posts on the subject was that I was going to put all the posts in a document and market it. Would you buy it?

What is it? Making money with AdSense and blogs has probably been one of the less expensive ways to make money online that I know of. There is PPC, pay-per-click...but the cost of getting into that is not cheap. And the learning curve is high. Even with the many pay-per-click course out there, it is just baffling to most. The money is needed elsewhere and if you're like most, you'll admit right now you're doing your best to keep your head above water. So PPC isn't an option.

The sweet thing about blogging and putting up a few ads is that it is practically free. Find a place to host your site and you're in business. The important points are all covered in this blog.

So what have I been doing and where have I been the past few months? I've been developing some courses with other people and coming up with new ideas all the time. One of my latest projects is to map out how easy it is to get started in web hosting. I know, that sounds crazy, but I have a great deal of experience in that arena. And I know it something you could do, it all boils down to marketing. Just like anything else.

OK, about Christmas money. With AdSense, it's too late for that because you get paid a month after you start. But you can still get started with a site. It is easy and the only commodity is time. Combined with a little knowledge and elbow grease you'll have a perfect game plan for the new year. I know you don't have the study guide, but enough is in the blog here to get you started.

Hope you have a wonderful day and may God bless!
Dave

Why Tivo Works Well

2009-09-23T20:14:00.000-04:00

I get a certain question probably a lot more than others and that is, why do some things just take off and others that you would think be a great idea ..never get off the ground.

And the answer is real easy.

It's whatever people can relate to. Write that down.

It's the reason shows like Dancing With the Stars and Extreme Makeover are SO popular! We see us up there on the screen. We can relate.

And think of something in life you loved but didn't last and the answer you'll find is that somehow it was unrelateable.

We have an innate need to connect with stuff on "some" level. It just makes sense, no? You always associate with that which makes you comfortable.

So take this lesson and apply it to your niches. Why people think Tivo is such a great product? It allows them to playback things they can relate to at any time. Sometimes that's as good as mama's chicken soup.

Love to hear your comments.

Dave
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Updating Via Email

2009-09-23T11:20:00.000-04:00

Unless you were looking for it, you wouldn't know I updated my blog here by emailing this post to a control address at Blogger. Most blogging platforms will allow you to do this, so it's a good idea to stay active simply by writing to your blog.

Do you have other ideas about keeping you blog content current? Share them with me and I'll post them here.

Talk soon,
Dave Jackson

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

2009-09-23T11:13:00.003-04:00

Update Your Blog Via SMS
Keep your blog up to date by posting directly from your phone. This will keep anything that monitors your blog aware you are working.

2009-09-23T11:13:00.001-04:00

Update Your Blog Via SMS
Keep your blog up to date by posting directly from your phone. This will keep anything that monitors your blog aware you are working.

Blue Skies

2009-09-23T11:09:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite things is jogging about an hour after sunrise. It doesn't always work out that way, like so many things, but often it does and I get the opportunity to enjoy something that is visually satisfying and just great for my body as well.

This morning the skies were simply blue. No clouds. And I thought as I trotted off toward the beach that times are changing and that the day is going to be awesome. The run was wonderful and I even split up my running in the morning with an afternoon upper body workout.

Once home, some phone calls started coming in. These were the energy zapper types that seem to take the wind out of you. When I got done listening to the messages, I just wanted to stare out the window and contemplate what I am really doing here. Some people don't get it, and yet, others want you to be all things.

I came to this blog because I really haven't given you an update in a while. A couple of seasons have seemed to go by and even though the web address is still here, I haven't added anything.

Today I found by poking around the backend of Blogger, that you can actually update the blog by SMS Text. And many of you have asked me when your list of websites you publish to gets sizeable, how do you keep up without some sort of automation.

Well, you know I hate automation on websites. I can tell when it is used and it just feels so cold. I've been down that road and tried it, and the results are like a flash of kindling. Yes, you can realize some quick profit from it, but the long-term damage that it does to your blog or website reputation isn't worth it.

So I'll try a few quickie updates using SMS. I don't see how this is anything different than Twitter since you can only write a couple of lines. Still, it should keep the Googlebot gods happy, whereas Twitter can't do that for you.

Keep me bookmarked. I have some cool stuff I want to share with you that has been going on this past summer. And you are my friends, no?

Ed Dale is Fun

2009-08-12T12:47:00.002-04:00

One of the great things about running an operation from your home is that you are afforded more choices. What I mean is that you can make time for things that you couldn't do at work. And yes, there's a lot of garbage out there, but there's one chap I always gain a lot of information from. Ed Dale.

His Thirty Day Challenge is always refreshing and comes around each August. If you are into technology and how it can get your web business ahead, check him out here http://www.thirtydaychallenge.com/

Let me know what you think about it and if you've followed him before.

Talk soon,
Dave

Google AdSense Now So Easy

2009-04-04T09:24:00.002-04:00

One of the most rewarding things about technology is that it keeps improving. Whether or not you're on board, is something you have to wrestle with. It's not going to slow down, and you must get your stuff in gear unless you want to remain in the caboose forever.

I've been spending more time tweaking a system I use to put up small blogs and getting them to make money in a few weeks. It is very rewarding and something that doesn't take much time.

Google has been great at keeping current with trends and with what works. I was actually happy to see them drop video ads, i.e. ads that are displayed across YouTube videos when placed as an AdSense block on your page. These never worked and the videos did not follow the context of the site most of the time.

Soon I'm going to be releasing a video series on how to create the blogs and make money from them with contextual advertising. This will be similar to my famous 90 day challenge, but now all on video.

Talk soon!

Dave

Taking the Ecology Seriously

2009-01-12T18:50:00.000-05:00

It's amazing to me it means this much to them, even as good stewards, or maybe pressure to act wisely, but whatever the case, Google has done some great strides. Over the weekend, they posted a story in the Official Google Blog, about Powering a Google search. And don't just skim through the numbers. Read each paragraph so you get a good understanding of what they're trying to say.

Google has become more responsible than most data centers, and they are showing facts to tell you they're working toward keeping their carbon footprint down.

I thought about what my day is like and what I personally do to cut down on emissions that hurt the enviroment. I don't print as much as I used to, and even print on the other side of paper when I goof up the first time.

Are you turning your PC off at night? How about the little light in your office? Are you keeping it on for some reason?

And what is your thermostat set to?

Make a difference - peace of mind.

Dave

Above the Fold

2009-01-11T23:24:00.004-05:00

For almost a decade we've been hearing the words - above the fold - and yet I get the question at almost every event - where above the fold should we be putting our ads, Dave? And the answer is that there are SO many variables that you must test.

One of the reasons I keep a journal is so I can look back over the pages and see what worked and what business I didn't finish, maybe a few things that I wish I never did... those kinds of things. And that's what I'm talking about here - it's sort of like - well, as complicated as life can be. What you need to do is:

1. Find a nice website or blog you like.

2. Copy it.

3. Test ad placement.

Once I was under the impression that a great layout from a high trafficed site would bring me tons of AdSense revenue. But what I forgot was that I could not replicate that traffic exactly. Their traffic might be from any number of places with people set on buying. My traffic to the same style site might be from tire kickers.

So just because CNN is running a 150 x 150 ad in the top left corner and making $3000 a day doing so doesn't mean anything other than a starting point. The bottom line is that you must test and test at least through 1000 visits.

Even then, I advise using Google Analytics to see who is coming to your site. Another great tool I use is called Hittail. This is a tracking service that will show you search terms that may generate even more traffic. When I review my analytics, I can see what type of Internet user is coming to my site. With that info - and where, what time of day they are coming - I can pretty well tailor my site to them.

But you'll get none of this if you don't try stuff out. Don't say it doesn't work - it takes a ton of work to find the sweet spot. And remember, your sweet spot might be someone else's rotton spot simply because of demographics.

Go ye therefore and track!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-27T00:02:00.001-05:00

Hi folks!

Happy Thanksgiving from me. Hope you are fairing well and what you are doing is working to your expectations.

Take a day off and be thankful for all you have.

Kind regards,
Dave

Using EzineArticles in Your Content Network

2008-08-26T20:36:00.002-04:00

My wife and I just got back from the curriculum meeting with our third grader's teacher. Along with twenty-some other parents, we sat in tiny blue chairs while listening to what promises to be a fun and exciting year. And as soon as I got back, I wanted to check on a test I've been doing using Ezinearticles.com articles in my content network.

I've never used these articles before, but rather, had either someone write the articles for me, or I wrote them myself or I painstakingly used some article re-writer.

But on one of my sites that I write about Internet marketing, a fellow commented that he had the best "re-writer" in the world and that I had to check it out. So I contacted him, because I like to check out almost anything that I feel will give me an edge. And he wrote me back and provided me with the software which works with all the blogs I have.

You'd be a big dummy to convert all of your work to the latest whim. With something as crazy as a re-writer, it just makes sense to test it out on one or two sites. And that's what I did. The site is about wedding speeches. I know - you're going to email me and tell me how lame that is because everyone else is doing it.

It is a tough market because everybody and his brother has used that market as an example for Internet marketing. Wedding favors, speeches, wedding anything - there you go. But I used the re-writer on this site and simply cut and pasted the articles from Ezinearticles. Normally for this cardinal sin you would get lost on page 200 of the SERPs.

But I leave you with this screen capture of the last few days of stats that I've been tracking. I also did a lot of checking for identical content and only my page and the original article rank at the top - pretty cool! And I look to do this with a few other sites. Why not?

Language Translation Plugin Based on Geo IP Tracking

2008-08-08T00:01:00.003-04:00

It's time someone created a WordPress Language Translation plugin based on the visitor's IP geo-location. This way, when a visitor stopped by your site, it would be automatically translated for you without them having to search and then click on some "flag" in your header or sidebar.

You know what I mean - this would happen on the fly and once installed, you would have a hands-free operation. You keep posting in English, or your language, set in the plugin setup page, and forget it. Visitors would stop by and possibly not even know the blog was originally in English.

Google already does this with AdSense. When I travel abroad and check my pages, the ads are in Italian, or Spanish, or Russian. So the technology is there. We just need someone who knows how to make this happen.

GeoBytes.com has a lot of stuff like this on their website. For instance, check this out:

Crazy, right? So how hard can translating a page on the fly be?

Hey, I said I was going to shoot some video on the beach this morning (well, past midnight now) and I did. Hope you enjoy it and remember to drop me an email on how you're doing with your online business.

AdSense Plugin for Blogs

2008-08-07T00:30:00.006-04:00

Two days ago I received an email asking about how to insert AdSense blocks into blogging templates. And there are probably ten different templates and plugins that work pretty well with AdSense. In fact, there is one template I was sent today that was free and claims to get double-digit click through rates.

I remember when I started with contextual advertising in earnest, back in late 2005, my template was so bad that I was getting clicks from visitors because they were hoping for something better. I mean the site was decent, but the navigation really sucked, as it does with some blogging templates.

So people simply clicked away on the ads and I became rich and famous.

Later AdSense did some slaps which, even though they were making more money (adjusted for the economy) than they are now, caused many advertisers to quit. I don't advertise near as much as I once did. I was spending over $5 grand at my peak and I haven't done that since. Google simply expanded instead of creating better relationships with those spending lots of money.

But that's OK; I retooled and switched to running AdSense instead of Yahoo Publisher Network ads. The only way I think it would work to run Yahoo is to get something incredible low cost with Google AdWords, and send them to a page without ads - then have them click through to a page set up with Yahoo ads. I haven't tried that, but it would probably work.

The 90 day challenge I published last year was a total success and many continue to make small fortunes with the system. At the end of the 90 days, I took the pages off the blog here and claimed I was going to create a program for users. If you want to know more about that, feel free to drop me an email.

Out of the 90 day challenge blossomed a few templates that absolutely rock. They convert incredible well, and better yet, are designed to ping the best blog indexes. One site was so impressive (the niche had to do with wrestling) that I posted at 8 AM and the pages were indexed in Google at 2 PM. That is the fastest I've ever seen and what's more, the system can be pre-loaded with articles.

In fact, a few days ago on a site I have about making money online, I wrote about rewriting articles. The next day a fellow left a comment on the blog about his new tool that totally rearranges the text without changing it. Sounds incredible, but I checked it out and what this thing does is puts tons of &120 and such in the HTML so to copy comparing software - it appears as a new article. Blackhat? Yeah... it is.

On another blog, I was publishing about online television program viewing, and how some website allowed you view full programs. One such site is called www.fancast.com. The day after reviewing the site, one of the co-founders of FanCast commented and thanked me for the great review. Pretty sweet - this new system rocks.

So, I'm excited with how things are going and the only reason I don't totally spill the beans here is because right now it is working SO well that I will shortly be at the pre Google slap level.

It's getting late and tomorrow I promised myself a good beachwalk - hmmm - maybe I'll record a video on the way. I am in the midst of losing weight I've gained while sitting at the PC for hours on end. Trying to get back in balance.

Take care and we'll talk soon.

How to Get Greater Conversions Without Changing Your Copy

2008-06-20T23:25:00.003-04:00

I gotta hand it to Frank Kern. He knows just how down to earth to be without coming off as totally wacko. And at the same time he gives some great tips on Internet marketing.

Today I heard from Frank as he talked with his friend Matt on how some simple tweaks are bringing in insane conversions. Matt gives 5 examples of websites that dramatically improved conversions simply by changing a few elements on the page. And the content (which I always preach about) remained totally intact.

If you'd like to see the interview with Matt, mosey on over to Frank's blog at Mass Control.

Take care,
Dave in Naples, FL

What You Should Expect for 90 Days with AdSense

2008-06-09T04:00:00.000-04:00

OK - If you have followed along, congratulations!!!

You've completed what 90 percent won't. If you are in that 10 percent, first, I want to hear from you - and secondly - here's what the rest of you are missing!

You're now making well over $100 a month from your 12 sites. As time goes on, this will increase.

Well done! In a few days these posts will be deleted and turned into an easy to do product where you look over my shoulder and watch how I put them up.

Stay tuned!

Google Taking a Long Look at Linking

2008-05-13T15:13:00.003-04:00

I just got back from picking up my daughter from school, and it's been three years now that I've been upset why no one does anything around the school to better control the traffic - the speeding through the school zone.

Most people don't care, is what it boils down to. Certainly most parents as they drop off or pick up their kids, they speed away at up to 40 MPH in a 20 MPH zone. And they smile at me as they speed by.

Yes, they're late for whatever. Didn't properly plan, so the kids suffer - those who have to watch out for them - to avoid being killed next to the school they're trying to get to, or go from.

On that same road, we have a school bus that picks up for the middle school close by. The bus stops, puts on the flashing lights, but time after time cars simply keep going and break the law - both speeding and passing a stopped school bus.

I guess I'm the only one that cares, because I tell other parents and they just look at me funny. I even told the principal of this Naples, Florida elementary school and he told "me" to go do something about it. Guess he carries absolutely no clout with the city or county.

But I have found something that may work.

I don't complain much about our fine city. Especially here. But the city department of roads, or whichever department is responsible for road works, has the bad habit of leaving those orange cones and portable traffic signs laying on the roadside long after the job has been finished.

One such cone has been laying on its side next to the school for over a month. They are putting in new traffic signals (not school zone signals) and maybe that's why the cone is there. I figured they won't miss it for a couple more weeks (until school ends and they can speed all they want). So late today I'm going to pick it up... or try to... and run it over to a friends home who lives right next to the 20 MPH school zone sign.

On my way to and from the school, I will place and pick up the cone and put it right in the middle of the road near the school zone sign. Sounds like a plan to me. What do you think? I'd certainly slow down near a cone.

I'll keep you updated.

With that off my chest let me tell you about Google's look into paid links. Now I've preached that you should develop a good linking network, and I've even discussed using Three Way Links for your content sites. And many of you have asked about Google's new look at this - and will they ban or delist your site if they figure you have links from Three Way Links.

Matt Cutts talks about spam in the form of web pages, and I've been preaching for years that any work with spammy pages will reap the wrath of Google. They will delist you faster than you can say Jack Flash, as Mom would say.

So my experience has been that the main reason these sites are gone from Google is that they are a spam site. It's pretty cut and dry. But some still argue that the Three Way Linking constitutes paid links that are used for the purpose of skewing Page Rank or search engine results.

I believe that if your content is original, linking from other sites is a way to get noticed by the search engine bots (see my lesson on search engines at Net Dominate). At that point the search engine can disregard the link and consider the content. And that's all. It's not necessary to penalize unless the site is spamming or irrelevant.

What are your thoughts on this?

How to Use AdWords Correctly

2008-05-09T22:05:00.002-04:00

There's a lot of controversy on how to use AdWords the right way and I have my own cookbook for my formulas which I won't part with - well, maybe at the right price, hehe.. But the guys over at StomperNet have released a new video about an hour long. And it's worth a look.

Some of these things you watch and then think - gosh, I just wasted an hour of my night. But you'll glean some cool gems from this one without spending a cent and I'm not an affiliate.

I give it to you here because it is just another thing you should understand and have in your quiver.

There is another post coming out in just a bit, but here's the link. Maybe you can have this playing in the background while you do your work.

http://www.stompernet.net/goingnatural3/

Talk soon,
Dave

More Social Media - Justin TVs Dennis

2008-04-26T14:00:00.003-04:00

It's in the afternoon in NYC as I write this, and a little time left to see Dennis and Arnaud broadcast live from PodCamp 2.0 in Brooklyn.

I'll be creating a video on these social networks for Net Dominate and we'll review how we got to where lifecasting is - why it's important to pay attention to it - and how you can benefit from it.

I've just finished another video on understanding the search engines. It will be up later today.

Enjoy your weekend.

Google, Count My Clicks

2008-04-21T09:34:00.004-04:00

Yes, the news is that Google blew everyone away with their earnings report, but most of the chatter I've been hearing is how since around the 17th, clicks have been down - big time.

And some have even done their own investigative clicking - i.e. to have someone overseas or in a different place to click your ads and see if Google shows a click.

We're not talking click fraud here.

Granted, both are not right and I'm sure with the uproar of thousands who use Google to monetize their websites - Google will figure out why this is happening - or we'll figure out why Google is not crediting AdSense users with each legitimate click.

What have you noticed?

Dominate the Internet

2008-03-29T22:00:00.004-04:00

I just finished work on a new website. The idea is spectacular, and reminded me of the ride at Disney's Epcot called World of Tomorrow. Actually, I'm not sure of the name of the ride. It's in the geodesic dome at the entrance. A tram takes you up and around a sort of ride through history - right into the future.

You probably have been there and done that. OK, so remember when you go to the classroom of tomorrow - that's what I'm talking about. A teacher pops on the screen and you both are communicating.

That has nothing to do with contextual ads and websites, or blogs, but that's what I've been working on. It's cutting edge and futuristic and all that. I feel another blog coming on.

Now if you have been following me with the 90 day challenge, I'll be continually updating here and you'll be able to follow along.

As far as the new wave of web tech - I'll let you know when I start on that.

How to Make Viral Videos

2008-03-06T00:29:00.003-05:00

I'm just elated at all the information coming from some of the top marketers lately. And this is no exception. Really cool stuff.

Today I received a ton of emails about how great my web hosting company is doing with the move to a new hosting platform and control panels. I never knew people spent a lot of time in those things, tweaking their sites for best performance - but they do!

If you want to check it out, it's www.worldwidemart.com and I've even twisted eNom.com's arm to give us $7.95 a year domain registrations. I'm stoked!

And I also received a link to some information you're really going to enjoy. I totally believe this is the next wave of marketing. So drop by here and check out the video on how to make viral videos. What's cool is the viral video case study they talk about is some year old McDonald's hamburger that smells just like it did when they bought it. Can someone say preservatives?

Let me know what you think about this form of marketing by leaving a comment below.

What Is the Best AdSense System?

2008-02-05T22:01:00.000-05:00

Yes, you've noticed that I stopped publishing the 90 day challenge. And will I finish it for you? Yes - it will be posted all here. So many people have asked me to keep it going; and I am going to do it.

You know I took a break around October and have finalized a product that I will launch this month. I am excited about it and about learning this other facet of Internet marketing.

And I couldn't help myself Greg, I did purchase Frank Kern's Mass Control program. More on that later.

Look for new and exciting things from me.

And I have to post more pictures!

I truly believe the best AdSense system is the 90 day system I teach. When you do the do - you will have a good income at day 90.

Another Look at Affiliate Marketing

2007-12-01T09:56:00.000-05:00

If you've been reading my blog for awhile, you know that I've had a struggle with the business marketing concept of affiliates. When I started the blog, on September 15, 2005, my idea of Internet marketing was to create my own products and services and sell them on the web.

My first taste of affiliate marketing came when I was researching tools for my work and to report to you about them. What I found was that the majority of sites with "tools" or "info" on the subject of monetizing your website were not the creators of those items - but they were simply marketing or representing products from another site.

Because of their shrewd SEO, I found their site before I found the original site. Does that make sense? For instance - let's say you're looking for the Nikon D80 camera. When you search for that on Google, the first few results are NOT Nikon.

Is affiliate marketing a bad business model?

I used to think that these fellows were the same as pesky circus midway peddlers trying to hawk their cheap wares by having us play a game of chance.

Well, I don't think that way anymore.

The business model is as old as the hills and we've all used it - from buying something at Kohl's to pumping a few gallons of gas. Most retailers are selling somebody else's goods. They didn't make the merchandise, but because they are savvy on distributing it - we can't knock 'em for that.

So I apologize to all the affiliate marketers I've offended. You're probably making more money than most and in an honest way.

With that said, I've been working closely with the group at Russell Brunson's Dot Com Domination in Boise, Idaho. I've followed Russell because he has learned a great deal about making money on the Internet, and he's willing to share it - much like I do here with my own findings.

And through my work with them, I've found that there is even less work involved and a higher payout for that work, than what I am currently doing.

Initially, I am working with marketing my own products. And I will be working with affiliates to help me sell those products.

Am I giving up monetizing content sites? Let's just say that I am getting it as automated as I can so I can continue my focus with this new found venture.

My first product has to do with the job search market. The website is The Resume Secret, and you can watch the progression as I add content. My product is a shocking report on what most people overlook when job hunting and is what has help land me all of my dream jobs.

In February, I'll be joining Russell in Salt Lake City with the 12 month millionaire seminar. It deals with direct marketing - another area I have little experience in - but am wide open and will be sharing details about that.

In the next few weeks, I will be upgrading my Dave Jackson website so I can post about my work and findings and will be creating a membership area where you and I can communicate and share great ideas. This will be worth joining since I've gotten most of my "brilliant" ideas from membership sites like this.

One great tip is all it takes, no?

So that's where we're at on this December 1st! I hope to put up the Christmas lights and such today - better get at it... it's already lunchtime.

Helio Makes for the Finish Line

2007-11-19T22:51:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite programs on the telly is ABC's Dancing with the Stars. First, I love that it's live. That in itself is entertaining even if you've never working in the industry. Broadcasting anything live is exciting - well, almost anything.

And my favorite character this season is Helio Castroneves. Of course, my vote is with him because Brazil is my second country, but even still he wins me over with the way he applies his racing skills in practice and on the dance floor.

Now, I'm not that great a dancer. Worse, when I think they dance well on the program, I'm proven otherwise. And the inverse is true, too.

In all, I love seeing the way that once you have your formula for success, you can apply it to many different areas of your life. And the same holds true with what you are doing with your work on the Internet.

I will continue through the steps to day 90, then we'll take everything down and create a membership site where you will get even more of my inside tips. It will be like working in the garage with the Indy car. You will be able to see why and ask questions.

Tomorrow on to more work with your sites.

It's Raining Visitors

2007-08-24T20:32:00.000-04:00

About six years ago my family and I were staying at the Sheraton Hotel in Rio. I brought my boogie boards from the States because there's a great boarding spot just to the left of the hotel. Around the Sheraton Rio there are these very old tropical almond trees. They are majestic and beautiful and a perfect tree next to the ocean. In fact, I've seen these trees all throughout the Caribbean and South America. They are hardy and large leafed. I thought they would do great next to the house in Florida for shade.

I took four seeds that lay on the ground around the trees at the Sheraton in Rio back from Brazil with me, smuggling them in my suitcase. When I arrived home, I planted all four seeds in a pot and waited.

To my surprise, all four germinated! I planted them on the south side of the house, just right for the summer sun.

Today I was out in the yard trimming some of the fast growth of plants here in the summer. I climbed up in the tropical almond to trim some branches. Out there for about 20 minutes it surprised me that when I came down it was raining.

Because of the size of the leaves, and because it wasn't raining that hard, I didn't know it was raining. I was busy with the trimming and didn't feel the drops.

Hey, it's not even a third-way through our project and already I am reaping the benefits of the traffic I'm creating by following the steps I've outlined here. And when you're working on all this, it is surprising that little by little traffic is coming by to check out your website.

It's important to keep working. You have the tools, you have the steps outlined for you. Get out there and keep trimming!

What Are Your Results So Far?

2007-08-23T08:59:00.000-04:00

Okay, just taking a look at some of my metrics on the 4 sites to date. One of my sites, the one about acid reflux, http://www.vt88.com/, is doing poorly. I haven't received any queries from the search engines, even though the site is indexed.

But that doesn't mean diddley squat if you're in an area that's just really saturated.

I chose "acid reflux" to show you an example of a bad niche choice. This is a condition where when you get keywords, you'll need to dig a little deeper to find out if they can stand up to scrutiny. Acid reflux alone has a KEI of 456. That's awesome, but the competition (say - heavy hitters) is fierce!

Next, http://www.lxmart.com/ is doing well with the phrase "gold investments". This one was easy because right now there is a rush on gold. With China and India becoming more and more of economic powers, they want gold - and gold is hard to mine and find. The dollar isn't so strong either, so prices of gold are at all time highs. A few of the keywords I've focused on were showing right up there in the search engines (and we only started a few days ago). But right now they are not in the first few pages for search.

history of bullion market
gold industrial purposes
rules of buying gold
karat gold jewellry
californian gold jewellery
9 karats

This fluctuates and is to be expected when the site is new and has no reputation. When the articles I've created for the site start becoming distributed, the site's reputation will improve.

The next site, Three Best Dogs, is doing well. Here's a few URL's to show search results based on terms I'm focusing on:

the best miniature dog
mini dachshund tea cup
list of small dog breeds and thier characteristics
teacup breed of dogs that dont shed
ideal dog for single person

That's a few. You can see how well this site is doing. It's just going to grow. How this is different from acid reflux is based on some work I am doing. I've started compiling keyword lists on specific topics then running them through this psychological part and have found these work much better.

Lastly, http://www.abbey-properties.com/ is site 4. It is doing well. I'm including news stories, rewritten, of course, to make the site more appealing.

Take care and we'll have a new lesson later in the day.

Fastest Way to Get Into Google

2007-08-13T13:21:00.000-04:00

Just a quick note - my site number 1, the one on acid reflux at vt88.com, has already been indexed by Google. The best way you can tell if your page is indexed, is to pick off the first sentence of the page/article, and look it up in Google search using quotes. Here's an example:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Day+after+day,+millions+worldwide+suffer+from+symptoms+caused+by+acid%22

Check out the Google cache and you'll see it was cached four days after I posted it. That's pretty good.

One of my secrets using Blogger type blogs is to make full use of the Labels for each post. These always give me more entries in Google search for a variety of topics. That is always good.

This is all to say that what we're doing here, if you're following my methods, will get your site in the search engines in little time and people will start coming to your pages.

Day Seven - Site Four

2007-08-07T17:08:00.000-04:00

It's raining cats and dogs here and just a great time to get some work in. I've been showing you a scheduled way to put up a number of websites with great content and get them profitable for you by the end of the project.

Today we're at day seven and it's time for website number four. Have you thought about what you're going to create? It is easy to get articles - you just need to make sure they are rewritten to they are nothing like what is currently on the Internet. You can probably do a better job anyway.

Now you'll need five articles, so hope your fingers are rested and you're ready to go. We'll also need a full domain name and website to post the five articles to, so make sure you have that ready to go.

As far as articles, I have to stress again that you need to be thinking of something that many people search for, but where there's not a ton of content already written on that subject. And what is too much? Well, when you search, the results is how many pages that keyword appears on (of pages indexed in the search engine). So even though there are over a hundred thousand results - don't worry - you can quickly get near the top of the heap if there is not a lot of competition (millions of pages).

Take for instance a site I have on Immigration. I registered this domain long ago when a friend of mine from Brazil won the Green Card Lottery and brought his whole family to the United States. Today, I post to it almost everyday and it is well indexed and I already get a return on the site. And it's just going to grow!

How do I know? I am using the same formula that I'm using here. And you'll learn as the course goes on.

My website number four is about foreclosure. I didn't like the topic 100 percent, but I thought with the level of interest on this topic, I'm bound to get some of the traffic doing what I do.

Day Six - Site Number Three Complete

2007-08-06T15:32:00.000-04:00

Today you should have site number three up and done and looking complete. I am happy to report, at least when I checked it, the Yahoo Publisher Network ads were working well on my third site about where to find good puppies. The problem with YPN ads is that because of their limited inventory, you won't have as many geo-targeted ads as Google. Back in 2006, YPN was for me, top notch. The ads running were relevant. You got good CTR because of this, and man, the payout was really good - sometimes $5 a click. Those days are gone for now, but the formula I am spelling out for you works well, too. The idea is that you're going to have enough content out in the search engines. I can't stress enough how important it is to be patient and not to cut short or modify the steps.

So today, go back over your three sites and make sure everything is working, links, ads, copy makes sense and looks great. It you want me to take a look at any of your sites, drop me an e-mail.

Tomorrow, get ready for website number four. We're going to get that fourth website up and running with fresh content not found anywhere else on the Internet.

It's Finally Here

2007-07-29T13:45:00.000-04:00

Just a quick note which will make a bunch of people happy... We start the 90 day program on August 1st. This means if you start with that lesson, you should be making money with 90 days.

See you then.

No Time for Success

2007-07-08T19:00:00.000-04:00

In the other room there's a Nintendo Wii working. Two young boys play tennis together. In my mind there's a battle around the usefulness of video games to the end user. My main stance is that they are a waste of time.

Slice it any way you want, there are only so many seconds in a day. I'm not going to concentrate on doing everything quickly. People that know me, know that I enjoy the journey. But they also know that I question every activity I do.

Here are four levels of "time". See where you fit:

Level One is merely existing. You just go through the motions because your dream died long ago. This is the hardest level to break out of.

Level Two you are aware of time, but you are not conscious of it. This is the person who spends lots of time surfing the web, watching TV, playing Wii - wasting time that isn't going to help you.

Most everyone is at One or Two.

Level Three is again, aware of time, and you're efficient with it. You work towards being effective. You spend little time with things that don't get you toward your goals.

Level Four is where you are aware of opportunity cost. You spend time doing one activity, but you lose time to do the other activity - so you must choose between the greater of the two.

And it's not only activities, but people, too.

This is tough medicine, but you can't be Mother Theresa. Be careful who you spend time with.

Ok, tough lesson here. But this is what separates the AdSense winners from the losers. Look at every activity you do during the day and log it - keep a journal - and ask yourself - Is this worth my time?

You notice I am not rushing through any of this. That's because when I write about the actual work - most will want to the work without understanding what it takes to make it happen.

AdSense Discipline

2007-06-26T00:11:00.001-04:00

Out of all the keys to making web publishing work, this one is the one you need most. A frequent question asked is, Dave, how did you become so successful in the game. My answer is always the same: Discipline.

Few people are natural with it. Most people struggle with it.

A good explanation would be: That which keeps you going after all the motivation to do the action has disappeared.

I once asked good friend Chris Widener how he keeps writing his awesome newsletter and books. He told me that it took great discipline, but once he got into it - it came more routine. In other words, if you work against the voice inside that says sit on the couch and watch some more of the Travel Channel, you will get to the point where it becomes a part of you.

Discipline is simply a decision. It's an easy decision that is hard to carry out. You choose to do what you need to rather than not.

My kids often watch what I eat, because I have a condition called Celiac, where I cannot eat anything that has wheat gluten in it. And that's about everything. But, I am not wasting away... in fact, there's enough out there to keep me watching the scales.

But the temptation is always there. Pizza still smells great. So does warm bread. A nice bowl of cereal - yum... but, full of wheat.

So my kids tell me I must have a lot of discipline not to eat the pasta or bread. But I know what would happen if I neglected my condition. My health would quickly go downhill. Maybe even life-threatening.

What I want you to do is consider this business a choice. One that will eventually bring you health, financially. And that you must decide to be serious about it. Knowing that you can't partake of the table with wheat. You must accept that if you don't discipline yourself to do what it takes each day to make this work, that you're doomed for failure.

We'll be starting in earnest in a short time. Wax on, wax off. Discipline is needed. My scheduling sent to your e-mail address will help - but you must do the work.

I know you will.

What to Do, and When

2007-06-23T12:45:00.000-04:00

My sister and her husband just left for Miami Airport. Tonight they fly to Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil, to their work in the jungle. We talked this morning about poverty and crime in big cities. And we made mention of how we see it on TV, but if it's not affecting our street - it just doesn't matter. We're jaded.

The reason for this is we all have so much going on. Have you ever been so busy that at the end of the day you can't really write down what you did - there was just so much on your plate that it all ran together. Busy.

If you are aware that this happens to you, then you are a candidate for the remedy - a more focused life. A book that came out a few years ago had everyone thinking about living a life of purpose. We are here for a reason - so let's find out what that is and then develop a plan to carry that out.

My last post was about why we are here. Find your why and now find your focus to make it happen. Anyone that is at the top of their game will tell you focus is the main reason. High School Musical brought us the chant, "Keep your head in the game." That is so hard to do with all the distractions. We sort through what is more important to us.

After this quick course, I am considering starting another blog that simply gives my opinion on the differing home based business courses - especially AdWords/AdSense related. Since I receive around a dozen a week - that will keep me writing for a while. I am sure you get these, too. And if your here, you've probably purchased a $97 course or so, and then a week later found out there's an even "better" way to get traffic, place ads, make affiliate money... you name it.

That first course you bought started getting a little boring or downright tough, and you see the new course which states it practically "runs itself", so you buy that one.

At the end of the year, you're burned out and tell yourself it is impossible to make money on the Internet. You know, because you've done them all.

I know for a fact that if you would simply keep your head in the game and focus, you would make money - with any one of them.

We're wired this way, and there's no denying it. We want AdSense dollars now! We want fast food, quick fix pills, ultra high speed Internet... You get the picture. We have so much, but we still complain.

Because these things take time - these courses - we don't know which, for us, will work. I've seen so many courses that are just pure junk, and I'm sure you've seen the latest that every affiliate marketer is pushing - a party with the Rich Jerk at the Playboy Mansion. I almost cried when I saw John Reese pushing it. He made the bold statement that his earnings from the Internet were because of Christ (interview with Jeff Walker's Product Launch Formula), so I "thought" that he was a Christian.

Okay, I'm off course here, and I'm talking about being focused - but that one is a burr under my saddle.

To say that all the programs out there work is foolish. They don't. And you'll have to sit through the whole nine yards to find yourself in failure. Knowledge is the only remedy. Who has been there before and can they give me an honest opinion?

Some say focus is two sided: having a good "crap" filter, and then sticking to a method that works - until you're successful. Of course that's not right. Crap filtering is part of good judgment which comes from experience. You're going to have to buy your share of crap and learn quickly to stay alive in this game.

Focus on the task and take it faithfully to fruition. Do this and you will win... provided your system is not... crap.

Lesson Two - Why

2007-06-20T15:19:00.000-04:00

Things in nature are fascinating to watch. I was so tempted when I saw "Planet Earth" on DVD now at Costco - to buy the set, priced at $57, and treasure it in my collection. Why? Because critters, well, the wild variety, anyhow, are always working with a result in mind.

Animals, as my good friend Juvenal says, "just do it". They don't spend a lot of time analyzing. Remember that airline I mentioned yesterday? We had several floors of a large corporate building dedicated to "System Analysis." And even more space to "Yield Management." Number crunchers the bunch of 'em.

The wild kingdom is different. It's survival. They know exactly what they must do in order to make it through life. There's little time for R + R. God gave that to humans.

Knowing your end result is about having a vision, a mission statement that you are continuously working toward. It fascinates me how many started with nothing but a vision, and created greatness.

Ok, we don't need to have "greatness" as our destination, but, replacing your income, and having a home-based business is a nice starter point. It's freedom, friend. It empowers you with the choice to do what you will with your time and money. Start here.

The other day, while wakeboarding, I watched a fellow go through a routine that had him doing several extreme jumps and flips. In my mind, I wanted to do just that. But in my heart, I knew it would never happen unless I was specific about it.

What do I mean?

It's just like the person who wants to "go to Paris". It's a nice thought, but only that. You don't really want to go that bad. You haven't gotten specific about it. However, if you did - you'd probably do a little each day that would get you closer to your goal of Paris.

Zig Ziglar has a cool journal, where you write in it your to-do's, but also very specifically, you map out one thing you will do today that will get you closer to your goal. Remember, I talked about "action?" This is making it a reality.

So "specific" is being very clear about where you're going with the project, and what it will look like when you're done. For a trip to Paris, as example, a look at Hotwire, or other travel site, might give you an idea of how much tickets are. A look at an international apartment site will give you an idea of how much it's gonna cost you to live there. Get the idea?

But that's not all. We're not done here.

Denis Waitley who worked with Olympic athletes tells that they win the medal in their heads and in their hearts before they ever step out on the field. Wow - think of that! They mentally see themselves at the outcome - winners. So you must do the same in order for this to work at full efficiency.

Chris Widener, in his awesome book, The Angel Inside, tells how Michelangelo looked at the great slab of marble that was to become The David, and began chipping away at it. He saw that statue inside after many sculptors had rejected the stone as flawed and no good.

Just like Michelangelo, you need to know from the moment you start chipping away at this, what your outcome will be.

I love the GPS navigation in my car. I can punch in an address, and it gets plotted out for me. Wouldn't it be senseless for me to simply have the address on the dash and just start driving? So, the bottom line here, you must know your outcome and how you're going to get there.

Know why you are doing this. Why do you want to work? For the money? What will that bring? What will that replace?

The reason you need to know why is to keep you on track. Many a day will come when you don't want to do this tedious work. But when you know your why - it will help get you back on track.

What is Web 2.0?

2007-06-18T15:49:00.000-04:00

As promised, the first steps will be out shortly so you can begin your work along with us on monetizing web sites with Google AdSense. But first, a short clip on what Web 2.0 has done and is doing. This is brilliant.

Watch How It's Done - Google AdSense Earnings

2007-06-16T22:36:00.000-04:00

You don't have a list, like a lot of those jokers who advertise to buy their package. They got a following because one person who had a list, advertised to that list and thus created a new list... and so on. If there's a way to make a list quickly with a site and a little bit of traffic - I'd like to see it. It just doesn't happen... and therefore the list guys get richer from your $47 or $97 or $997, and you can't figure out how to make it work. Will they let you advertise to their list? Keep dreaming.

So, here's a little experiment that you can surely do, using a website, Google AdSense, some nice content, and some elbow grease... work. If this doesn't work, you're not putting in the work.

I don't expect to see life out of this for at least six months - but maybe we'll get lucky. In any event, this is how it's done and what has been making many a good living for a long time.

I suggest you subscribe and grab a coffee or tea and read up. My next posts will keep you linked on how you can really make money with AdSense.

Let's get started.

How the No Follow tag works

2007-06-14T16:24:00.000-04:00

This one is simple. There is an HTML tag called "no follow" which is used with links and causes bots, such as the infamous Google Bot and any other crawler to "not follow" the link you use it with. For instance, you send me a link to your site, but I don't want a bot to think that I give your site any value, I'll put the "no follow" tag there, like this: a href="http://www.blogger.com/marcelosnicesite.com/greatpage.html" rel="nofollow"

Here's a great video on "nofollow" and how you can use it on your pages to increase Page Rank.

http://www.prprowler.com/no_follow_trick.htm

Let me know what you think of the PR Plug as well.

How Many Link Blocks Can I Have?

2007-06-07T09:29:00.000-04:00

If you create websites specifically for displaying Google AdSense ads, listen up.

Google announced yesterday in their updated Policies, that if you are using their ads on your pages, your pages have to line up with their Landing Page Quality Guidelines. As I've preached, your pages must be of outstanding quality content and very easy to navigate. Anything less, and Google can pull the plug on your "partnership".

Next, they said we can have three link blocks on each page. That's great, because these links often add a lot of revenue on pages that have good content. Naturally, know that when people click the link, they're gone from your site.

Also note that links typically pay less than actual ads.

0x80070241 Error - Windows Vista Challenge

2007-06-06T14:36:00.000-04:00

I'm typing this from a temporary install of Windows XP Professional, on my main PC, as I sit and look out on the rainy field. It's one of those dark days, off and on rain, much needed here. My daughter seems to be getting out of her piano lessons as her teacher and my wife are chatting about life in the living room.

And me, I've been stuck behind this keyboard since I purchased Windows Vista Upgrade on June 2nd. The beta copy I had of Vista expired once and for all on May 31, 2007. Thousands probably went through the same dilemma of downloading and upgrading, but mine was/is plagued by unforeseen problems.

First, about 15 days out, you get this pop up on Vista beta saying to back up your files because Windows will no longer work in XX amount of days, counting down to May 31. So, like I am told to, I run down to Costco, the local warehouse type store here in Naples, and buy one of those 30 count TDK DVD+R stacks so I can burn all my GB's of "stuff" for safe keeping.

Yet, every time "I" burned the DVD's, I would get to about number 12 or 13 and run into a horrible error - some sort of I/O or such; once a dreadful BSOD - blue screen of death. Really bad stuff if you're burning a set of 26 or so DVD's - as these guys are all linked. So when that happens, you have to toss out your 12 or so burned DVD's and start from number 1. That's okay. I am very patient. But this went on for three times. And I began to think that Microsoft doesn't really want you to back up, because it doesn't really work that well in the beta versions.

Next, I thought I'd buy a new hard drive. Who doesn't need more space? I certainly do. That's why I bought my fancy DVDRAM so I could dump all my huge files and movies to it and free my tiny 110 GB hard drive. I laugh. I remember on my first PC the hard drive was 20 MB's. Can you believe that? And I ran a BBS (bulletin board system) on it for a few years. I upgraded to a 40 MB hard drive. And it was a breakthrough when I finally had 2 GB's of space.

My "new" hard drive is a 500 GB Seagate SATA drive, from Best Buy, an electronics store, which I got for around $180.00. When I installed it, it became drive F: So when I performed the backup of all my files from my old XP Professional, it went to F: - and there it is, secure, as a Vista backup format. Next, I wanted a working Vista - so I went to Microsoft and found I could buy the Upgrade version for $260.00. Naturally, I wanted it on the brand new hard drive, which is F:, and Vista complied. However, that's when my problems started.

With the new Vista on F:, and the beta on C:, there was a problem. The beta on C: was activated with a beta license. When I booted up, I'd get a window with an option for a dual-boot. And they don't tell you, but the beta will operate for 2 hours at a stretch until August 27th, 2007. So you can still do a little work on it - just NOT enough time to download my new Windows Vista from Microsoft's store - 2.43 GB's! At least not with their "Digital Locker". But many things want to see the C: letter in their programs. F: just didn't cut it. So - I'm figuring out how I am going to make this all work.

Okay, this is getting really long and complicated, and let me just tell you that you will probably get the 0x80070241 error when upgrading your Vista. It's not the end of the world - but it feels like it. What maddens me is that Microsoft blames it on bad hardware, when in fact, no matter which way you slice it (install it), it can pop up.

The workaround is simple. Download your Window Vista files and install. Don't activate or even enter a license when asked. Just skip the step. You now have a 30 day trial version of Vista. This is fine and your "real" version can install over this.

You can force install Vista Upgrade version as a clean install - however, you cannot activate it with the license they give you. It won't work. What you'll need to do is get the 30 day trial going on your PC, then pop in your Vista DVD and "upgrade" from there. Then it will work, because you're not doing a clean install.

Now why would I write about this in a Internet business blog? Because I know you face these problems and when you do, you can benefit from some of the research I've done here. That crazy 0x80070241 error seems impossible to get around, but trust me, keep trying differing ways to install and it will work. And one solution that worked for me was using a tiny program called Vista Lite. This will allow you to recompile the files and send them to the install in a different form. Try it. It may work. http://www.vlite.net/

I'm not in the clear, yet... but now I know what will work. I am just waiting for the Digital Locker Assistant to finish so I can save my purchased Vista to a DVD.

Then, back to work.

Search Engine Fun and Facts

2007-06-06T10:29:00.000-04:00

When I started using FidoNet for messaging back in the late 70's and early 80's, I was surprised how easy people forgot their niceness and were ofttimes brutal. Haven't you found that? Especially in forums! Woah, people can be downright mean.

If that happens to you, where damaging data is posted somewhere about you, there are things you can do. I recommend first asking the webmaster to remove the negative comment. Remember to not fall in the same trap and get all negative about the offending person. Explain the issue and many webmasters will oblige.

Find pages that talk well about you or your business and link to those from your website. This will give them strength and make them rise higher in the search rankings. Don't forget links from the social network sites.

Hop over to AboutUs.org and create an article about your site. If you're big enough, you can create an entry in Wikipedia, like I did for World Wide Mart. Wikis get listed when someone searches for that name. Make sure you don't spam the Wikis. WWM is a good example of a nice entry.

I'm often asked for testimonials on products that are used for business on the Internet. Feedback is one of the strongest supports for your product or website. If you get good feedback, tell the world about it. Use ConsumerReview.com, Epinions.com, or similar sites.

It's important to keep your website first in the search rankings. One of the best ways is to use smart linking which I talk about in great detail on this blog.

Let me know if you have any questions and we'll chat more soon.

Blueprint for a Web Based Business

2007-04-14T10:07:00.000-04:00

It's a sunny day in Naples, Florida. We did our Saturday morning routine by having brunch down at the magnificent Naples Beach Hotel and Golf Club right on the Gulf of Mexico.

From your table you can gaze out at the sea and take in the gulls flying effortlessly by, the beautiful sailboats that dot the horizon, or a few kids starting their first sand castles of the day.

This is a day I normally take off, but wanted to update you on how well the 90 day challenge is starting off. Actually, I'm changing the name. It runs over 90 days - but I want the title to be more specific to the course.

During one of our discussion sessions, I realized that most are focusing on too many things in an effort to have one thing float to the top as the money maker. And I'm not talking about multiple streams of income. I'm all for that.

I'm talking about trying PPC, Directory submits, link exchanges, ghostwriters, templates, PHP rewrites, the whole gamut. You can't focus on all these and do justice to any. We went over that and it's really a big mistake. Don't fall into this trap yourself, even if you are making marginal profits.

Another thing that came up was again in the area of focus. Most people found after the first few days that the program gets monotonous. And that's the reason that the field is so wide open for people who want to get into this market. Most drop off before payday. You must remain focused and that's why I believe this program is so great. You just do what you need to on that day and wait until tomorrow. But even if it is monotony, you still do it - knowing that if you stick to it, payoff will come.

Will everyone in the program make money? I believe so... but it's really up to what keywords they work with. I am doing my best to help them choose wisely. But remember, not every keyword is a winner. That's why we work with a dozen sites in the course.

Someone asked to sneak a site for people reading here to watch over time, and I've agreed to do that. Stay tuned.

The Ninety Day Challenge

2007-04-04T00:10:00.000-04:00

I've decided to take a break from my online work to mentor 10 people for a period of 90 days in how to make a steady income using the Internet.

As you know, I make the bulk of my income from contextual ads placed on websites that are content rich. But many have asked how to get started doing this. And a few have said that the information on this site is over their heads.

So, what I will do is break it down, step by step, for you to easily follow how I create my websites and where I place my ads. We will take real time examples. You'll see how my pages get cached by Google. You'll find out what tools I use. All my secrets.

In order to keep the group small - so I can help each person individually, I've decided to limit it to ten.

Imagine finally getting the blueprint to how to make quality sites and monetize them so they keep making money for you. We'll go over how Google changes the rules, how old school doesn't work anymore.

I'm calling this the 90 Day Challenge. I'll be sharing more details in the next few days.

What Are Your Best Hosting Companies?

2007-03-16T14:04:00.000-04:00

At first I had all of my sites at Yahoo Small Business. Then, when I noticed at Alexa that '95% of sites are faster than yours', well - I did some research. Netcraft.com was where I spent some time - and at the time, 1and1.com was pretty fast. I already had some accounts there, so I moved the Yahoo accounts over.

And that's worked out well until today - I'm getting 404 errors on many of my sites there. I called, using Skype, (because with 1and1 you'll sit on the phone for an hour before you get a live person), and the support girl told me that everyone is calling in. I thought it was funny, she used the words - "okay, to be honest with you..." Ha.

So right now I am doing a major upload to Yahoo. I still have the accounts there - never canceled them for ... well, for this reason. And it's coming up on 3 PM - which is the time I've chosen to change the DNS for my major accounts.

Hey, another fun URL at Netcraft is the hosting provider switching list. You can tell who's running away from their host. Rackforce and Rackshack hold the award. Check it out.

Gotta run... I am working on a report regarding the recent duplicate content penalty with Google. This was eye-opening, even for me - when I dug in. You'll be amazed.

So let me know who you use. I'm always interested in what is working for you.

Prince Keeps Us on Our Toes

2007-03-08T22:25:00.000-05:00

In 1991, thousands of people gathered in Maracana Stadium for what was to become "Rock in Rio II". George Michael, Guns and Roses, Debby Gibson, Santana, and many, many more famous rock groups took to the stage January 18 - 27.

But one character kept in character as being the strangest act on the festival. If you've ever done any work with entertainers, you know they can have very crazy personalities. And Prince fit that description to a "T" (or is it ?)

My good friend Carlinhos of Sao Paulo, Brazil, was contracted by MTV to provide the sound mix for Rock in Rio II. Naturally, each band must do a sound check before they go live. These were while the event was closed. Carlinhos made everyone sound great.

When Princes' band ran through their sound check, everything was super. The first few bands went on and MTV had a sweet mix. However, when Prince finally came on stage (he delayed his "entry" by over an hour), his sound people had switched all the inputs to the feed to MTV.

Most sound engineers would take half of the set to figure out the inputs - drums, which were on input 5 through 11 are now scattered in the 18 - 23 range. Vocals were where the keyboards are. And so on.

Carlinhos had the mix nailed in a little under a minute and a half. He figured out which input was switched and quickly labeled it. It was a huge challenge, but Carlinhos was up to it.

Since I started on the Internet in the early 90's (I had my own FidoNet node through the 80's, and ran several BBS's), it is a chore to keep up with change. What used to be a great business model six months ago - today won't float. Many companies, mainly the search engines, are switching the mix - changing the rules. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes because they simply want to improve their game.

There are few models you can implement and just watch them make money. Most of contextual ad businesses take work keeping fresh content and making sure keywords are worthwhile. You can do that by reading blogs like this.

One discussion I had with a marketer recently revealed that his testing with Google showed the search engine literally changing every few hours. Indeed, it doesn't take too much to get penalized anymore. Copied content is probably the biggest sin. From the way I understand it, Google scans everyone's copy of this "new" content. Then it figures out who is the authority site and knights them the king and everyone else a fraud.

When this happens, Google will not return to your site for many moons. It pays to take the time to do it right the first time. If you are not using your own copy, make sure you have someone else write it for you originally.

What is a good way to do this?

Elance.com is one place to find good writers for less than you think. It doesn't pay to write your own sites as a business. You need to have others do that for you. Spend your time researching and developing new websites. Not spam sites - real meat and potato sites that people will enjoy reading.

Make sure in your game plan you have set aside time to learn continuously about your trade. It's important. How many hours do you spend learning the market, and do you think Google is really changing faster than before? Thoughts?

Thoughts on Wealth: Dave 101

2007-02-16T00:04:00.000-05:00

Just a note about a new blog I am working on with my son, Kevin, one of the posts tells a little about me. Thoughts on Wealth: Dave 101

How Real is Click Fraud?

2007-01-31T14:25:00.000-05:00

Both Google and Yahoo report they are spending small fortunes on click fraud, Click Forensics just updated their Click Fraud Index with the latest numbers from last quarter. And, the short end of it is that it's up almost a half a percentage point.

Around 3000 advertisers are tracked by Click Forensics - both large and small.

What are the fraudsters clicking on? High-priced terms. Makes sense. If you're going to be a crook, go after the big money. Takes the same amount of effort, no?

Top five PPC term costs were: retail, financial services, health and fitness, technology, and entertainment.

More details in Click Forensics's press release.

An Update on AdSense Wealth Empire

2007-01-27T19:53:00.000-05:00

I received a couple of e-mails lately asking how my work with the AdSense Wealth Empire is going, so I thought I should give you a little update.

I am not at the level Roy and Maayan are at, but am heading that direction. There are some tips that I'd like to pass along to you that may help you get faster into the index, and keep you from Google's Supplemental Index.

You know, if you're treating your online work as a business, you must always be in "learning mode." In the past year, I've seen so many "AdSense" programs come down the pike that it made my head spin. A few were worth looking at; all deserved a few minutes of my time.

One that caught my eye was Joel Comm's AdSense Templates. I know I've been a little hard on Joel for promoting the picture block next to the ad block that eventually got nixed by Google, but he's been in the "same" game long enough to be respected. If you do anything online, you know it's hard to stay up with everything.

The templates Joel sold late last summer had something called HyperVRE in the code. These are PHP scripts that automatically rotate text and RSS feeds on your web page so that it is always showing fresh content. I think Matt Callen invented HyperVRE. I'm a big fan of Brad Callen's work - Matt's brother.

It's funny, but the same time I noticed many (say most) of my pages I created with AWE were already in the Supplemental Index. And, I received a feed from Jim Boykin's blog, where he once wrote about Google's Supplemental Index. Jim's blog led me to a post by "HalfDeck" on "Supplemental Listings". Wow - you gotta read that post from beginning to end.

What opened my eyes was the part about - Meta Tags. I even blogged about Meta Tags here on MonetizeThis. What I noticed about all of my AWE Meta Tags were that they were short... very short - Like: "Get great iPhone information here!"

Oh, man! I should have known better. All 50 pages zapped to Supplemental inferno!

So, make sure your Meta Tags are long! At least 100 words, I'd say.

Okay, next - I learned "why" Joel had all the rotating RSS and text on his HyperVRE templates. I mean, sure - that "looks" cool... but will it benefit readers and more importantly, my ranking in the search engines?

The inquisitive mind that I have, I started researching quality sites that used RSS feeds and how they fared in the search engines, specifically, Google. I was very impressed. Some sites that advertised an RSS feed using PHP even had a PR 7 - without that many backlinks. And, they were cached quickly. But my main question was did their pages end up in Google's Supplemental Index?

I sure couldn't find any.

One thing that really bugged the heck out of me was that Joel had promised a working version of HyperVRE in the AdSense Templates, which I bought, but, alas we only got the light version which doesn't do much of anything. You need the Gold version. Apparently, I wasn't the only one hot under the collar.

But I learned something. I needed the page to look fresh. And, this VRE stuff just reinforced that. I did take some code out of the light version that creates rotating text. This is good for use in your menus or nav area where you can have a little paragraph with "did you know" type of info. Looks nice.

A great script I found for rotating RSS feeds can be found at GoogleRank.com - and it's Free! And one of the best places for feeds I've found is MSN. When you work with their feeds there is none of the search html in the URL. It's the URL to the story so there isn't a way to tell you are using MSN.

Longer Meta Tags (and make "sure" that no two Meta Tags are alike - you must have a different keyword or key phrase in each one. AWE does this nicely.), and have good, current info on your pages.

Your homework is cut out for you; I know mine is.

AdSense Hypocrisy

2007-01-14T12:05:00.000-05:00

I am sure Brute had a witty return to Caesar's "Et tu, Brute?" Something along the line, "No, Caesar... not ME!" And yet we know he was caught in the act of being, to Caesar, anyway, a hypocrite. He talked one thing, and yet, he was guilty of the same.

Since the beginning of web servers, we've always had the server logs, which tell where our traffic is coming from. Recently I found a few hits on one of my websites from a site called AdsBlackList. With a name like that - you want to check it out.

In a nutshell, AdsBlackList is a live database of what AdSense publishers who know of this site, consider to be MFA (Made for AdSense pages) advertisers. Typically, these advertisers are looking for the lowest paying click, so it makes sense that if you could, you'd want to blacklist them using the AdSense Competitive Ad Tool.

My site was flagged because the domain name contained the word "four". I'm sure you've seen the AdSense ads with fourtopsites or bestfoursites, etc. These sites contain little, if no content, and have a few blocks of Google AdSense or Yahoo Publisher ads on them. And many of these types use the AdWords program to drive traffic to their sites.

Everything sounds okay and makes sense until I stumbled on a thread in the Digital Point Forums that discusses the AdsBlackList service and how members are adding sites. So I decided to check out a few of the pages of these members - hoping to find great sites full of content and nothing obvious in the way of blatant ads all over the place.

Here's a few for your enjoyment:

http://environmentalchemistry.blogspot.com/
http://www.healthythings-online.com/
http://www.free-legal-formsonline.com/
http://www.lasereyesurgeryhelp.com/
http://www.freelinksdirectory.net/
http://happy-mind.blogspot.com/
http://www.healthtu.com/

It just hit me as hypocritical that these fellows (and a few gals) would post about doing away with MFA sites when most of their own sites are the very same thing. But I'm sure they would be like Brute and say, "not ME!"

Here's the problem with this sort of thinking.

First, you're assuming that Google does nothing but toss up relevant ads that fit your content and their network location. But there is much more in play.

Google measures what other pages are on your site you are monetizing.
Google measures what other pages you are monetizing across your "network" of sites.
Google measures if the page you are monetizing is a good landing page, based on content, pictures (if you have or don't), tags, size of your description meta tag, inbound links and their quality.

And this is just the beginning.

It's dangerous to think that by blocking sites you'll fool Google into serving better paying ads. Remember that Google also owns the site where you are putting the competitive URL's - they know who you're trying to block.

So, what's the answer?

Make sure the pages you are monetizing are quality pages, not apparent MFA pages.
Make sure that if you get links, that you get them from within the content of another, similar site. What?! Yes, that's right - links from link farms or from high PR pages... such as those you see in the left or right hand column of a site, are pretty worthless. Google is looking for links from within a story about your site. For instance... say your site was about Bass Fishing Boats. If I made a link from this site to your site with a URL in the right column, you would get negligible power. However, if I made and entire post about how cool bass fishing is and that your site had the best selection of boats... well, that's a grand recommendation. The type Google "loves!"

Pass this along to a friend and begin to change your own sites this year and you'll see how traffic will rise and so will your Google revenue.

Google Indexing and Page Rank Update

2007-01-11T12:22:00.000-05:00

Matt Cutts posted the latest on Google indexing and where page ranks stands. If you check your page rank in your Google Toolbar, you may see something different than before. But according to Matt, that won't affect your search rankings. The PR score has been there for awhile and is now being updated. Dave Naylor reports there may be an outage.

I wouldn't really put too much into PageRank scores. Many obsess with this. Many of mine went up, some stayed the same, some went down.

In the meantime, Google is sending the sites plenty of traffic and I continue to add great content and keep our linking reputation high. Several of my pages with PageRank don't rank in the search engine. These are those ones that show up after you click that infamous "If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included..." at the bottom.

That means your page is in the index, but not ranking.

However, it's strange to have PageRank results from three months ago (according to Matt) and have the SERP tell you a different story. Wish they would do some catch up.

You might have read HalfDeck's page about Supplemental Results and are doing all kinds of crazy stuff to get you out of the sandbox. Matt addresses this by trying to calm people saying pages in supplemental will still perform well in search. But even Matt has said that those pages in supplemental are "deemed less important" from a PageRank perspective. Cutts tells us that the bot will come by more often and give Google fresher results. It doesn't make me feel any better - sorry.

Supplemental is not good for search consumers. They have no clue if they are getting the best or parts or old outdated. What tier am I getting results from? Google index, or Supplemental index? And why not go with an expanded Google instead of this "experimental" approach as Google's Nate Taylor said it would be in 2003?

Why supplemental? Money. It's less expensive to search fewer pages.

If you're there, Matt McGee has a great article on how to break free.

A few days ago I reported on Google's new patent to sniff out duplicate content. I don't think you should worry that much because ranking poorly may be because of the "Google Sandbox" and dupe content becomes a scapegoat. Search Engine Roundtable addresses Google Fix for Duplicate Content and there's even a thread in WebmasterWorld I've been following with advice. More on Dupe Content Filter and a WMW thread with some advice from Google's Adam Lasnik.

There is a good video out from Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz interviewing Google's Vanessa Fox on these issues. Check out the new video on Social Network Marketing as well. Lot's of great stuff.

Keeping Up With CES

2007-01-10T19:54:00.000-05:00

Just a quick note today to appreciate what Technology Evangelist is doing at CES this year - covering it in ways you couldn't because of the size of the show.

I couldn't make it this year, but already have plans for next year and will be broadcasting from the show. Hope you can join me.

Have you been?

Where to Find Great Backlinks

2007-01-04T20:13:00.000-05:00

Back in August of last year, you may remember I was preaching the value of mining and using expired domains. Naturally, I told you this because, up to that point, for me - they were working. I even cited some examples. However, things have changed.

When reviewing my sites that use expired domain names versus the ones that depend on linking for strength, the linked sites always win. Why is this?

I believe, if you're expecting to get indexed in Google, that your expired domain that carried some page rank and back links, is flagged. It worked for the first few weeks, for me. But soon, the pages were de-indexed. So my advice is to find inbound links.

For me, the jury is still out on inbound links - mainly because the search engines don't go public on what won't work. But there are plenty of blogs out there, and SEO sites that have vast amounts of information.

My studies show that links from sub pages of other site have a little more value than links from a homepage. I mean, think about it - if it smells like a red flag... so links within content, from a content page of a site, linking to one of your inner pages (content), is probably the best link you can get.

So, how do we start? Well, there're a couple of page types I like. First, ask yourself what page on their site is most relevant to the page on the site I want a link to? And, how do I find that page?

In the Google you can search for (site:theirsite.com keyword phrase), to find that relevant page. You do know that relevance is a huge factor in linking. That's why I am not certain those free for all types of links work. Can they hurt? Maybe.

The second page I like is the one with the most "power". These are pages that have reputation - indexed, backlinked, page rank. How do you find these? Let's use Yahoo search.

Here's the syntax - (site:theirsite.com)

Yahoo is cool, because they list pages in their SERP in order of importance. That command may start Yahoo's Site Explorer. This shows the best backlinks on the top. These are the "power" pages.

The homepage is often not the best choice because your shooting for a link from their content to your site - not some simple link in the margin. Try to get the most powerful page when you're asking.

Your comments?

Google Granted Patent for Estimating Similarity

2007-01-02T09:19:00.000-05:00

This one has been in the works for a few years, originally filed on December 31, 2001. Google's Moses Samson Charikar is listed as the inventor of a new method for estimating similarity between web pages and documents - designed to filter duplicate content.

Abstract

A similarity engine generates compact representations of objects called sketches. Sketches of different objects can be compared to determine the similarity between the two objects. The sketch for an object may be generated by creating a vector corresponding to the object, where each coordinate of the vector is associated with a corresponding weight. The weight associated with each coordinate in the vector is multiplied by a predetermined hashing vector to generate a product vector, and the product vectors are summed. The similarity engine may then generate a compact representation of the object based on the summed product vector.

This is designed to reduce the amount of redundant, or nearly redundant documents crawled and returned in response to a user's search query. The method will also dump sites determined to be substantial duplicators of content.

Google's New Software to Find Spam Pages

2006-12-29T12:28:00.000-05:00

In Google's fight to weed out spam pages and honeypot pages aimed solely to have visitors click on ads, they've requested a patent on software that will detect spam documents in a phrase based information retrieval system.

What does that mean?

That means phrase stuffing pages will be nixed out of Google's database as soon as they are "detected". If you are guilty, your days may be numbered.

The patent application came out yesterday.

Pipeline Profits or Pipe Dreams?

2006-12-29T07:33:00.000-05:00

Brad Fallon and Andy Jenkins have done it again - peaking my interest into their product, StomperNet. This time, with a new video from one of their students who devised a way to build an online business without SEO, cpc, ppc, or traditional methods.

It's worth a look, mainly because most AdSense junkies rarely tap into the list building market, and there is money to be made there. Most people on lists are attuned to the pitch.

Here's the link to the video: Pipeline Profits.

After you've watched that, make sure you bookmark John Reese's new site, due out next month, http://www.income.com/

Merry Christmas From Contextual Ads

2006-12-24T18:47:00.000-05:00

Wow! Our second Christmas at the blog and things are simply grand. We're here in Crossville, TN, at my Mom's for a beautiful Christmas. We drove up in one of the best cars I've bought, our brand new 2007 Mercedes GL450.

I don't say that to impress you, but to impress on you how important it is to stay in the game and make each moment count. Now that Christmas is here and soon New Years, you'll have to opportunity to set goals for 2007.

What will 2007 be like? Like 2006?

For me, I truly hope so. This was a banner year - lots of growth both personally and professionally. Remember to work on yourself as much as you work on your business. Spend at least 30 minutes every day listening to inspirational and motivational material. Study your craft. Sharpen the saw... remember what Abe Lincoln once said - about being give eight hours to cut down a tree? He said he'd spend six hours sharpening his axe.

Okay, folks are calling... Christmas Eve here. Time to spend time off the computer and with the family.

I am so excited because I'll soon be releasing my latest ebook on arbitrage using contextual ads. You'll love it!

Merry Christmas from the mountains of Tennessee!

Joel Comm Leads Us Astray

2006-12-18T15:43:00.000-05:00

Unintentional, I am sure, Joel Comm released free Google AdSense templates today which are against Google AdSense Program Policy.

Today, Google's Arlene Lee sets the record straight about having images next to ads, something Joel and others claim was the breakthrough in 2005 for AdSense publishers.

Google gives us these images of ad placement that breaks policy:

and...

Granted, Joel's pictures are better; still they are placed near the ad block in a way that, as Google says:

If your visitors believe that the images and the ads are directly associated, or that the advertiser is offering the exact item found in the neighboring image, they may click the ad expecting to find something that isn't actually being offered. That's not a good experience for users or advertisers.

Joel's AdSense template:

If you're offering this type of page, now might be a good time to clean house.

The Art of Combining Niches

2006-12-17T14:39:00.000-05:00

There are so many flaws in the work of most struggling for any Internet marketing profits, I would love to have a token percentage of money lost to the PPC and CPC advertising giants. Still, I feel the need to help.

It's true that once the cat is out of the bag, the airtight plan you had to retire on progressively spins out less and less fortune. That's why many of us who make a great living off the Internet don't open our hand. You dilute the mix. Just makes sense.

However, I have not been quiet about the majority of my findings that if followed, could set you free. The problem I find time and again is that people are too lazy (busy?) to read it all and follow. We live in a quick-fix world; Internet marketing should reward us for simply participating, no?

One great tip, especially for those who are stating they can't seem to make a profit with AdSense and AdWords, is by combining niches. More on that in a second.

The beauty of the Google AdWords system is that it allows you to create an ad that can be displayed on their Content Network for mere pennies a click. I have several campaigns that run a penny a click on my ad.

But the fact of the matter is that on the Content Network, people are not looking for you.

On the Search Network, they are.

If you can remember that, your chances of success in creating a low-costing ad (0.01 is nice), and sending that traffic to a page displaying ads that pay you $1.00 a click is good. Why?

Because when people are really searching for you or your great ad, IF they click on it, it's only because that barely caught their attention. Remember, they weren't looking for you. You're just comic relief on an otherwise boring page. Or, possibly, a footnote on someone's page. (Depends on where your ad appears on their page.)

So, remember, converting those people who wandered half-awake to your page, is a major challenge. Your ad and your landing page should reflect this. Wake them up with great copy.

With AdWords Content Network groups, you must come up with a quiver of keywords that will help Google know where to serve your ad. For example, if you are targeting mountain bikers, you will be competing big-time with other mountain-biking companies if your keywords have to do with that sport. Chances are, unless few companies are using the Content Network to advertise, your ad won't even show up - unless you fund it well - say $0.10 or more a click.

But then your conversion ratio has to be unbelievably high - around 10% or more - to make any profit.

So what do you do? Well, okay, what else do mountain-bikers like to do? Kayak? Climbing? Adventure types? YES!

I like mountain biking and do read a few sites on wake boarding, because I like that as well. So what if there's a mountain biking ad in my wake boarding site? If I'm bored with the content, I would probably click to find out if I need the latest gizmo in biking. Just a thought... that works for me.

And for all the Keyword Elite users, quit targeting the top money keywords. Start with something smaller - with a low R/S ratio. You'll profit less per click, but you'll get far more conversions.

AdSense Arbitrage Alive and Well

2006-11-28T22:06:00.000-05:00

I just love the software produced by Brad Callen. He has produced useful software for SEO and keyword studies, some I use everyday. As I have always said - you have to put in the work to find good keywords. Most of the lists out there just aren't "fresh".

Today I want to give you a very exciting ebook produced by Brad on how using his software you can make money with AdSense arbitrage.

Why is this exciting?! Because many have been preaching that the arbitrage days were over!

This book will show you precisely how you can find keywords and create content sites. Using Google AdWords, you can buy low cost keywords to drive traffic to your sites.

One fellow made $4500.00!

So grab your ebook here and read through and then put it to work. I use this same method using Brad's software and make a good living. This is your chance to create a great stream of income. Download my gift to you now.

New Linking Strategies

2006-11-21T18:49:00.000-05:00

There are new linking strategies I am experimenting with, which I will begin discussing here. Actually, I've been thinking about creating a new website with SEO for beginners. The more I search, the more I see there are many opinions based on very thin premises.

Of course, that's human nature. One bit of feedback in the positive and we shut the book on our study. Bad move.

Ideally, you first learn from those with a great track record and later you pick and choose what you feel will work for you.

You create goals, then values, and filter everything through those.

Say for instance you happen upon my blog. You start reading through some of the old posts and you begin to like the way I write, the way I bring it down to earth where you can use it. And because you have a goal of creating another stream of income with the Internet, and you want to do it with ads, you find that this blog is worth subscribing to.

I've some great news on linking and you'll be the first to know.

Would be cool to have a live chat session about this. Let me know if you're in.

Google's Landing Page Reviews

2006-11-13T12:25:00.000-05:00

Today, through a live chat with a Google Specialist, I was informed that for one keyword, my landing page had been reviewed. This particular keyword went from .10 to .50. Naturally, I wanted to know why?

Because I practice what I preach, I've made sure since the beginning that if I create an ad about skateboards, the landing page is going to be all about skateboards. What have I been saying over the past year? Quality content is king.

Unfortunately for Google, the Internet is bigger than they can handle. So, they enroll software to check sites for them. Upon asking the specialist, this was my case. As a matter of fact, for my keyword, there is only one advertiser - with an ad that has nothing to do with the keyword!

According to Google, this is fine. As long as they pay the penalty. So, my question was - so it's okay to give the user a bad experience at the cost of the keyword penalty? The answer was - yes. Google thinks this is okay.

How would I do this if I were Google? I would provide a better, easier way for users to provide feedback to objectionable sites. Let them voice their opinion. Then, a scorecard would have to be kept. Much like accumulating tickets.

Imagine if our justice system was run by robots.

I can see where click-fraud could be a problem with a feedback system. However, the same system Google has in place to expose click-fraud could be used to track abusers.

Bottomline, Google needs to get humans involved when good sites and good users are penalized.

Beta Blogger and Trouble in List Land

2006-11-11T22:34:00.000-05:00

Aweber.com isn't at fault, but today when I switched my Blogger blog from blogspot to the Beta, (newer, cooler, better, you get it...) - Aweber's list system sent out around 20 e-mails thinking that all of the posts in the past few weeks were new messages.

My apologies to everyone affected by the multiple posts and I will alert Aweber so they can come up with a fix.

Thank you for your patience and your subscription.

Kind regards,
Dave Jackson
Naples, FL

SEO Tips - Found in Search Engines

2006-11-11T15:55:00.000-05:00

My eyes are glazed over from all the "SEO advice" sent to me and lodged in the nooks and crannies of the web. Take a look - over 9 million entries just in Google. Enough to make your head spin?

I was fortunate enough to hear Mike Murray of FathomSEO talk about his top SEO tips, and since I haven't discussed this in a while, I thought I'd go over what I feel are some of the best. Mike had a list of 8 tips, but I'll make this an even 10, incorporating his with mine.

Before you get into this too much further, let me tell you a couple of things. First, SEO is hard work. It entails a lot of coding, time, and testing. But, the work can payoff... just don't give up, as many do, before payday. And, secondly, don't take my word for it - or someone else, either. Get the general consensus; the collective wisdom of SEO and use that. (That's what I do, so maybe you can follow what I say, he he).

Have keywords in the domain name. This is one that no only works with ranking, but also plays highly with the algorithm AdSense uses to put ads on your page. No, don't forget context/content - but domain name scores higher.
The age of the website. Forget the age of the domain name. It's rather, how long have you had that content up and available on the web? How many quality inbound links do you have? How often do you update your website? I covered how valuable old domain names are - and how you can bypass months of hard work by mining expired domains.
Quality of inbound links. This speaks for itself, but ranks higher than content and Page Rank. My rule of thumb is try to secure links of a PR higher than yours. Make sure that page (link) has no more than 15 outbound links. And above all, make sure it comes from a site on the same topic as yours.
Consistency of source code. If it's just you, you probably don't have to worry because you code all your pages the same. However, if a team works on a site, make sure everyone codes the same - i.e. same URL format, alt text, simplicity - this is so the bots can crawl your site without problem. Inconsistency is a red flag.
The amount of content on your page. There are dozens of opinions on this, but most gurus agree on 350 words. Again, know that because of your high quality inbound links, you can rank right up there in the top for a page with little content.
Work on your home page. If you have little time to work on your website, make it all work on your home page - it's the most powerful page of your site.
Change up your text. Murray says this is useful because you can miss keywords by not carrying another iteration of them, like plurals, etc. Change it up a bit and track your results.
Study page cache trends. Okay, this is a good one because many don't do this. In Google, you can easily see the Cache of the website which is what Google saw on that date. It's cool to click on the text version of the cache to see what the bot picked up. You want frequent caches. If your caches are not frequent it is because the search engine doesn't know your page is there, or because each visit nothing has changed. Pretty soon the visits die down to once a week, once a month.
Title tags. Try different things, keywords. You can get away with saying: Great SEO Tips from a SEO Master. There we used "SEO" twice. Is that title tag stuffing? No. But stay away from something like: Great SEO Tips - SEO Tips - SEO TIPS for you. That's stuffing. I know it's November, but remember - don't raise a red flag or you'll get your turkey cooked.
META tag "Description" formula. Here's my advice, and Murray agrees; Use your keywords, company name, and then why you are different from and better than the competition.

I've followed these rules and found you can get even a Blogger blog ranking high, with a PR of 5 or more, and cached every three days or so. As I look through the logs it's amazing to see where traffic comes from.

For instance, on my post about Sam's Club Christmas Catalog, I noticed a click from Sam's Club home office on the very day of my post, November 3!

Another experiment I did, early on, was to put the words How to Raise a Parakeet in H3 tags and held a spot on page 2 of Google's SERPs until after a few updates concluded there was no info about parakeets on the page. But try the same entry with quotes, "How to Raise a Parakeet", and we're #1 in Google. Of course, nobody searches that way.

Work on these 10 and let me know if you have any questions! Let's get your pages noticed.

Google Website Optimizer Beta

2006-11-10T16:04:00.000-05:00

If you're into analyzing your data, Google's Website Optimizer is a welcome tool, and one that can certainly help you find the best landing page for your site. It just makes total sense. Isn't that exactly what you do when you're tuning a car?

I've always loved working with numbers and patterns. You'll find that if you get enough feedback, you can sit and tweak just about anything to make it give you its full potential.

When in shop class, our teacher always told us that we needed three things for an engine to work: spark, gas, and air. But mainly, he said, spark and gas. There's a bunch more to an engine, such as oil and compression, etc. But if you're looking to get an engine going - check spark and gas, first.

Any auto mechanic worth his salt knows that with spark, gas, and air - just those three - you can tweak, or tune an engine to a soft purr. Likewise, you can get every combination of sputter, backfire, gas guzzling you can imagine.

With Google's Optimizer, or "tune-up", you can change your landing page for your AdWords ads to a point where they are performing best. In fact, you can have many versions of the same page running simultaneously and Google will advise you based on goals you create (sales, etc.), how well your page is performing.

As of this writing, you can sign up for the program http://services.google.com/websiteoptimizer/ and be considered. I strongly recommend this tool. From my experimentation, it works well and ... who wants to run around with a poorly tuned page?

The Vote

2006-11-07T14:12:00.000-05:00

A reminder to my American buddies to go out and vote today. It's drizzling here in Naples, but the poll people tell me that turn out has been great!

Creating a Virus

2006-11-04T11:16:00.000-05:00

I called my Mom yesterday. She could barely talk. The affect of a common virus, the "cold". And yet research tells us that you can never catch the same cold virus twice.

I don't believe that either.

But the way virii spread is by exposure. In other words, if the virus remains in the petrie dish, or say on someone's hard drive, it will be ineffective. And that's the way it is with anything you do in our field - you gain knowledge, yet you never use it - that's probably why things aren't working out for you.

For websites, a most interesting virus is something of great value. For instance, many people visit www.quote.com to get stock quotes. And they tell their friends. And pretty soon it catches on. Fun sites give us entertainment value. You get the idea.

This weekend www.BaristaGuru.com launched some pretty fun web videos that show you how to make a great espresso, or a great coffee. And I like how it's so easy to do this... viral marketing. All they did was video the making of an espresso, along with comments on why you need to use filtered water, fresh beans, fine grind - the whole nine yards - and then uploaded the video to Google Video.

Next, they placed the videos on their website with a simple cut and paste of the script Google Video gives you. Pretty easy. And plus they're in Google Video's directory. Can't get much better than that.

Do you have an interesting marketing tip you could share? If I deem it worthwhile, we'll share it with the list and you'll be rewarded with the extra traffic. Let me hear from you.

Keep working hard and your goals and remember, get out of the petrie dish!

The Sam's Club Christmas Catalog

2006-11-03T17:27:00.000-05:00

It arrived today. Without fanfare. Along with the other mail, bills, etc.

It's this year's Sam's Club - Gifts 2006 Christmas Catalog!

From the outside it is so much like any other gift catalog that I tossed it aside. Then I took it in the bathroom, thinking there might be something new and interesting to see.

On the inside cover, I thought I was reading the Neimann Marcus Christmas Catalog. At first, I thought it must be a model of a Cessna Citation Mustang. Not the real thing. After all, we're talking Sam's Club, where I buy chips and socks and nice Dockers.

But it's the real thing. With a price tag of $2,734,600!

Want one? I do. How cool would that be to fly around in your own private jet? Some of my friends do - but I haven't reached that "level" yet.

There are several other "cool" once-in-a-lifetime packages in the catalog. But, you may be asking what this has to do with making money with contextual ads? Well, for one, I love the content of the new catalog.

I don't normally toss the Sam's or Costco catalogs because I know they'll have something in them of value. This time around Sam's blew my socks off.

The draw is the association with those stores. I go there because they have things I look for (think search/keywords). And when I open the doors or the catalog in this case, I am greeted with something I definitely "click" on - the Citation.

Nice lesson to offer great content that will blow away your audience.

The Importance of Privacy

2006-11-02T10:41:00.000-05:00

Two stories coming out the same week on privacy issues made me curious.

Do the "big brothers" really glean more information than they are letting on? If you think not, I think you're in for a surprise.

Two groups, the Center for Digital Democracy and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group have petitioned the Federal Trade Commission to look into among other things, how software giants track consumers' Internet activity.

And David Faber of CNBC presented his finding in his "Big Brother - Big Business", shows how Google records every search that has ever been conducted by anyone who uses Google. Kinda scary stuff.

Here's what I take away from this.

If you are trying to separate your AdSense sites, make sure you don't provide a back door link to someone like Microsoft (MSN), or Google, by using their Desktop searches. These technologies are linked to the Mother Station and provide it with a list of your sites.

Paranoia? Maybe. But two firms think differently and want the Feds to investigate if our privacy is being jeopardized.

What do you think?

Google AdSense Channels

2006-10-29T14:51:00.000-05:00

I've been asked what are Google AdSense Channels and why would you use them?

First, if you've followed anything that I do, you know I'm into logging every nuance. So, how can AdSense Channels help?

Let's say you run a sports website and you've placed a leaderboard at the top and bottom of every page. To track performance of the ad placement, you create two channels - "top-leaderboard" and "bottom-leaderboard". The channel code goes in the AdSense code on your website.

If you want to hone in on more specifics, say you want to know about the top leaderboard ad on your hockey page, you can do this with what Google AdSense called "Multiple Channels". Up to five different channels can be assigned to one ad block. Now you can assign "top-leaderboard" and "hockey score page" to that leaderboard ad on the hockey score page on your site. No need to generate a separate code for each block. With the Multiple Channels, you can create unlimited combinations to follow your metrics.

Remember that each channel is going to report its own ad impression, so say you have all five channels on one block, you'll get five channel impressions for each page view.

Great tool. Use in good health.

Too Many Leaks

2006-10-29T09:53:00.000-05:00

We have one of the coolest gadgets, in my estimation, in our house. Everyday, like clockwork, a gizmo called an iRobot backs out of its dock and proceeds to vacuum-sweep the kitchen and most of the living room.

Along with the Roomba, as it's affectionately called, comes two virtual walls. This keeps the robot confined to one area of the house. Without them, the Roomba tries its best to clean the entire house. It has a two-hour battery life and is programmed to do four passes over the surface it's cleaning.

Needless to say, without the walls, in any sizable home, you're going to find your iRobot sitting in a corner out of power if you let it roam the house without the "walls".

Those walls help it get the job done right.

Recently one of my students had me analyze his site. He was getting dismal click-through rates on the ads on his pages. Now, sometimes this happens because of the structure of the site. It just looks crummy and people click back before they do anything else. But this site looked professional. Looked like something you would want to spend some time investigating.

But soon I saw a fatal flaw that happens mainly after the site has been online for a few months. People wonder why their click-through rate has dropped through the basement and yet, they keep tweaking and tweaking.

That's the error. They don't understand why the click-through rate is good, and when they go to improve it, they actually "take away a wall".

When Roomba wanders without the walls, the job does not get done. The robot eventually runs out of power and dies. Two bad things.

What are "walls" when we are referring to website design? Walls are simply keeping your visitor on your site and not allowing him or her to click off your site without it benefiting you. In the case of the student, there were simply too many links from the main page that allowed the visitor to wander off on a rabbit chase. What happens next is that the visitor will get lost in the site and eventually lose interest.

So the solution was to use "walls" and keep the visitor in the site. Make fewer deep links to other pages within the site - at least very obvious ones. The obvious should be your contextual ad links (ad themselves). Yes, content is very important - and the visitor should read that, see the pictures, but then the next option should be to click an ad. Something on the same theme. Maybe even more focused.

Look over your sites and see if you need to put up any walls so that the job can be done better. Too many outbound links can be considered "leaks" and should be patched up.

Google's Website Optimizer

2006-10-18T17:22:00.000-04:00

This is a tool that should be able to assist you if you make a living by monetizing your website with contextual ads.

Google's Website Optimizer is a tool that allows you to track variations on your landing page. So, now you'll know if the leaderboard is better converting than the block. Maybe...

I have not been graced with a reply to an invitation I received this morning to check out the Optimizer. My concern is that there will be no way to add an ad click as a conversion URL. However, it's been done with Google Analytics and both AdSense and YPN ads, so maybe the creative Javascript authors will cook up the appropriate code.

This bears checking out because if it does accommodate an ad click as a conversion, it will be very beneficial.

Here's the URL. Let me know your thoughts.

http://services.google.com/websiteoptimizer/overview/

How are your conversions going? Let me know.

Upgrading to Windows Vista

2006-10-11T19:37:00.000-04:00

I want to buy a MacBook or MacBook Pro. If you own one, let me know how you like it. I have an iMac, and absolutely love it. It's such a delight to lug it anywhere in the house, sit down and watch an episode or two of a TV show I missed. Programmers are getting so good with Internet video.

Windows Vista has been sitting on my desk for two weeks. It's been over five years since I did a major OS change and today was the day I chose to see if I could clean up my main PC.

At first, I was going to migrate everything over to another PC here in the house, but that seemed like a lot of work. I may end up doing that anyway, simply to start over.

Remember how we had to do that every few months with Windows 95? Get out a notepad and write down the programs and files you wanted to keep, then format that baby.

Times have changed.

So, I have been installing Vista all day.

But I couldn't use the DVD on my PC, because it doesn't have a DVD drive. However, I knew that there was some way to get an ISO to run from your hard drive as if it were a drive. A few visits to a few forums, and I was downloading some tiny program from Microsoft that creates a virtual drive, and allows you to "mount" the ISO on that drive. I had confirmed that someone was successful installing Vista this way. You can download the Vista Beta at Microsoft.

First, I thought it was hung at "Upgrading Windows..." (which is a misnomer because this OS is not really an upgrade in the true sense of the word - it's a completely different puppy)... "Completing upgrade..."

I looked down at the hard drive light underneath the desk. Only an occasional blip. Okay, we're toast. Hard reboot.

And, before I knew it, a DOS screen comes up with three choices - the default being, we're gonna put everything back where we found it, because your PC has some sort of problem we can't identify.

Poof! as my friend Flavio would say. It rebooted and told me - don't touch anything!! We're putting all your old files back. We'll be done in, say -- half an hour.

Ugg.

So, I fired up CNN Pipeline on the laptop here, and watched the reporting on the small aircraft accident in Manhattan, while my PC hard drive was whirring away.

About 45 minutes later, there it was - Windows XP, just like before.

But, you know me by now - I already blocked out today for doing this; the compatibility gizmo said my PC was in great shape, so, let me at it again - and this time, if it freezes, I'll know to switch the DOS choice to "I'm so sorry I did a hard reboot - pretty please, keep installing", when it comes up.

I can't believe it, but after four hours hung on "Completing upgrade...", it "finally" installed and gave me the "Welcome" screen. I thought, whoa... I must have had a lot on there that needed fixing! Yes, the hard drive was doing something. I was impatient. I did read that many people simply let it "compile" overnight to wake to the "Welcome... I'm done" screen in the morning.

So, now it's time to tinker with it and say goodbye to Windows XP. And, where is that MacBook? I'm tired of waiting...

StomperNet Too Expensive

2006-10-03T15:10:00.000-04:00

Once when I mentioned a certain item was "too expensive" to my friend, he simply replied, "It's not too expensive; you just can't afford it."

With the release of StomperNet today, I couldn't justify buying into the program at some $750/month when I have so many other profitable ventures going on - that take time to keep well greased. StomperNet wasn't a fit.

I wish both Brad and Andy the best as they get into this new venture.

If anything, Andy should be given an award in 'Net marketing.

StomperNet Heats Up

2006-09-30T22:30:00.000-04:00

There was a time in my early commodity trading days that I used a service called Unfair Advantage. The idea behind the software, before the days of the Internet, was that you could have years of data at your fingertips, delivered on CD's. Input that data into software programs and you would be weeks ahead of the competition, sometime.

Of course, in the end, there were SO many other variables out there that the market could deal you a bad hand no matter your unfair advantage.

And that's where trading commodities or stocks differs from what Andy Jenkins and the gang at StomperNet are doing.

Yes, both rely on market rules, but in StomperNet's case, there aren't that many variables. In commodities, you have the weather, the economy, market sentiment, and thousand and thousands of other traders. With the system Andy is promoting, there are only a few variables worth noting - and they cover all of them.

Due out Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006, StomperNet promises to be everything you've dreamed about in making a living on the Internet. Because the fellows have been so open about their system, it bears taking a look at.

In every newsletter and website video you can glean a ton of information, for free. For example, in today's e-mail, Andy talks about how StomperNet's member have an "Unfair Advantage" as well. He says it's SEO Automation, in the form of a linking system that is totally white hat.

And then he explains how it works.

So, take notes.

First, if you want to have great, white hat links, note he calls the system the StomperNet "Content Exchange System" and runs on their own system.

So, from this you get that:

1. Only exchange links with similar content sites.
2. Don't exchange links between any of your sites on the same network.

Okay - more points.

Andy says - Theme and Topic are important. Hosting company and IP are important.

3. Exchange links between similar topics (Andy cites air conditioning and home improvement).
4. Again - keep sites and your external, inbound links on different hosts, networks.

One thing I love about Andy is his ability to explain anything in a sensible and humorous way. He's fun to listen to and you can tell he's genuinely interested in making sure what he says is understood in today's lingo.

I look forward to seeing the whole project and Andy promises us we won't have to sell the farm to afford a seat.

Search Engine Submission Keyword Phrase

2006-09-30T16:32:00.000-04:00

I've found a great way to snag some niche keywords using any keyword extraction tool, such as the one at Overture - and Google AdWords Keyword Tool.

For example, say you wanted to create sites on ATV Tires. First you would go to Overture and find the top searches.

Next, you could put this list into the Google AdWords Keyword Tool and see how much Search Volume versus Advertiser Competition there is.

Why is this interesting?

Because with this tool, you can find niches that have high searches and not much advertising. Advertising generally means that the niche is exploited - so, it's no longer even a niche.

For me, I use this to find areas where I can advertise - using AdWords to send traffic to my site. Say you are selling ATV Tires. You could then see that a top search keyword is atv tires wheels and atv wheels and tires - and not much advertiser competition - according to Google.

As far as I know, this is for all Google's AdWords competition, so you can't break-out just the SERPs.

In any event, with ads I place in AdWords, the ones with low advertiser competition normally start around five cents per click, when you specify an exact match.

Let me know your findings.

New Videos on Organic Traffic and SEO

2006-09-08T19:24:00.000-04:00

A few days ago I was made aware of some very good free videos that help explain how you can get that best of all - organic traffic. These videos are worth a look and start right here:

http://www.convertlinks.com/video1.php?revealed

There are no affiliate links here. The videos are all white hat, "natural" search.

Hope you find them beneficial.

Regards,
Dave in Naples

Best Way to Get Great Domain Names - Part 2

2006-08-30T19:02:00.000-04:00

Tropical storm Ernesto is drizzling down on us. There are a few heavy showers, but nothing to write home about. We thank God for that.

If you're mining old, expired domain names to use for their "reputation", you need a source. In my comments on my last post, I mentioned 1expired.com, and there are others out there that sell lists of expired domain names.

I used these for a bit, but because they place them in tables, (even though they show things like PR and backlinks), it was too hard to cut and paste them into the Domain Grave Digger.

So, somehow, (not even sure how I found this site), I came upon SeguinHost.com. Seguin is great because they offer the domain lists free, and separate them by dot com, net and org. The lists are published each day, and all you have to do is copy them right off the web page.
http://www.seguinhost.com/expired-domains-list.php

But the complete expired list is much too big for the Domain Grave Digger to handle. You'll need a file splitter to split the files into manageable chunks. For this I use the free tool called The File Splitter. After I copy and paste the entire dot com list into notepad, I'll feed that into File Splitter. I'll select "Custom" size for the output (it defaults to a floppy size), and make 20k the size of my files. That's about right.

Next, all you do is open the text files it creates, one by one, and feed them into the Domain Grave Digger. This script works well on most servers that allow PHP, but according to the creator, it has had problems on some servers. You can find the script here:
http://www.myinstantsupport.com/expired_domain.zip

I can't help you if the script does not work for you. The PHP is pretty straightforward. I did put my own Google API key in my version, but it appeared to work without modifications as well. One thing I did find is that the script won't work when archive.org is down for maintenance - and there is no error from the script. It simply says all the domain names are bad (failed).

Once I have good domain names, I check them out at iWebTool.com.

So, there you go - a great way to get nice domain names that people and companies have let expire for one reason or another.

The Best Way to Get Great Domain Names

2006-08-29T10:23:00.000-04:00

I'm finishing up the last details on a family DVD I'm making from our adventure in Grand Cayman last month. The Mac is just an excellent tool for this, and iMovie makes it SO easy and fun. What we did differently this time was to use the small, digital camera to make a few AVI movies as well. Compiling them with the HD video camera makes the movie look even more like a documentary.

On the Windows PC, I am running a few Firefox browsers with a PHP script that checks for great expired domains. All you do is load in around 200 expired domain names and it does the rest. It checks to see if the domain is registered. If not, then it checks to see if there are any pages in the Internet Archive. If there are, then it makes one more check, and that's to see if there are pages indexed in Google.

If the domain name passed the test, when the script ends, it lists the names for you.

What I do further is check in archive.org to see if the domain was used as a Google AdSense Spam site. You don't want to be associated with that, so even if you see your new found name has 100 backlinks and a PR of 6, skip it. Everything linked to that name will most likely be flagged and banned.

Checking two days worth of expired dot com's, (not dot nets and orgs, which are good, as well), I found around 25 PR 3's, 15 PR 4's, 8 PR 5's and even a nice PR 6!

Why do we want these parameters?

Mainly, because of the reputation of the domain name. Many of the "PR" (page rank) domains have been around a long while. I found through archive.org that most were dropped because the company simply had a new domain name and didn't need the old one. Secondly, Google favors what is already indexed. What you add to that domain will get indexed in short time.

Backlinks are a great way to get anything you add to that domain, indexed as well. And old backlinks will take a while to die out, mainly because people don't keep them up to date.

In my next post, I'll tell you where I register most of my domain names and why. And if you're interested in the PHP script, I'll be posting the link to that as well.

Experimenting with Rotating Ads

2006-08-21T10:26:00.000-04:00

My work with AdWords and YPN ads involves a constant checking parameters. These are sign posts I've set gained through experience. Sometimes a glance can tell if something isn't right - for example, the decreasing revenue from one site a few days in a row.

Among all the parameters I use, my rule of thumb is, if any vary by 25%, I revert back to where it was set before. And, I do this with everything; ad colors, pictures above ads, keywords, new templates, etc.

It's important to keep your eye on any changes, but swings of 25% ring my bell.

Since Friday, I have switched "on" the ad rotation in Google AdWords. What this means is that for a given campaign, if you have more than one text ad created, Google will simply serve them up equally. The alternative is to let Google serve them optimally. This means when Google sees that one ad is getting more click-throughs, it serves that one more.

This reminds me of the way in which AdSense works. Ads on that network are served according to which one gets clicked more. But more on that in another post.

You might ask what is wrong with Google serving up your text ad that gets the most clicks? Yes, it means that your pages will gain more traffic, but one other thing comes into play here. And that is - which ad brings you the most sales?

In the case of arbitrage, the question is, which ads bring you the most further click-throughs?

Not all ads are the same. What impresses a true researcher will obviously not be the same for someone simply surfing the net for fun. Let me give you an example.

Here's an ad for a muscle building website you might have:

Greatest Gains in Mass
Muscle Building Technique is
Newest Strength Enhancer!

And another:

Huge Gains Obtained
with our Muscle Building
Technique. Great Pictures!

The first one will most likely snag the person genuinely interested in muscle building, and open to new data. Whereas the second one will probably get many people (females?) interest in looking at great bods.

The second ad MAY not perform as well, because people interested in looking at pictures are probably not the same ones who are again, genuinely interested in your new product.

Which ad would Google serve more?

Naturally, the second one - because it would probably get more click-throughs - based on the fact you put the word "pictures" in there and that most people are "spatial" in nature.

The challenge now is to figure out which ad you are running is performing better. How can this be done? Wouldn't it be great to know exactly which of your AdWords ads is the one triggering the most sales? Just think of the money you could save over time if the ad bringing the most purchases was running. As an added bonus, you could then track other ads as you add them and see which ones are working and which are duds!

In my new report released today, I'll show you exactly how to do this. The report will take you step by step in how to setup your AdWords account. You'll be able to print your findings, sort by percentage of click through's and see at a glance what's working and what isn't.

The report is $17. To order the report, simply use this link. The report will be sent to your e-mail address in comes in PDF form. I hope you will put this to use quickly so you can start saving and fine tuning your AdWords ads.

By the way, this will work with Overture as well. The money you'll save by running the correct ad will more than pay for the report in little time.

AdSense Wealth Empire Videos Released

2006-08-10T16:59:00.000-04:00

Just wanted to post an update on AWE. The new videos that Roy promised have been released and I took the afternoon reviewing the new data.

Roy went over about ten topics in great detail that will help any current user have a better understanding of the whole system, and how to make it work more efficiently.

The videos were a response to questions posed to the team. What I like about them is that you can pause them at any point and "easily" skip back a few frames to repeat an item. This isn't always possible in video - many times the player has to buffer the entire video causing delay and frustration. With the AWE videos, you can click anywhere in the timeline and you are instantly there. Nice.

What this video does is also helps you become more organized with their system. It's a challenge to have websites, directories, links, e-mails, and a myriad of other important keys active at the same time. I am always telling people that it's the discipline that will make you wealthy. Most people see the challenge and decide it's big for them.

My wife and I had a good laugh just the other day over something similar. She has her own business and many times people will ask what she does for a living. Sometimes she says she "has her own business".

She said that recently, and before she could get another word out, the gal shot back with, "Oh, I could never do that!!"

We laughed later, because what if the job was "picking money from a huge money tree", or "collecting golden eggs this goose keeps laying?"

Here's the point...

Something like AdSense Wealth Empire is a big project for anyone. But, so is owning a McDonald's franchise. Yet, the reward is sweet. And the work - as shown by Roy in the AdSense Wealth Empire new videos - can be organized, and taken a step at a time. You'll see a mountain, or an ocean - but both can be conquered in small steps.

You guys know I keep a journal - actually a few. One is a life journal, and one is a business journal, i.e., how things are going with my businesses, notes, observations. I've often suggested to you to grab a journal and start doing the same thing.

So, if you haven't purchased one, yet - this is your goal for the next 24 hours. Get your hands on one and start writing. And, for those of you who have one - here's something you may want to do in the next 24 hours - order the AWE package, if you haven't, and if you have - map out what you are going to do this week.

And here's a tip.

Do this away from the computer. Away from the TV, or other distraction. In fact, if you can, go for a walk with your journal in hand or in a backpack, and spend an hour or some and scheme how you will get going with AWE or any other strategy. You'll find the wide open space will do wonders for clearing your mind.

Let me know how it goes and stay tuned! The best is yet to come.

Danny Sullivan's Best Banner

2006-08-03T18:08:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, when I scanned through my Wall Street Journal, I was excited to see in the Marketplace section, a big article on how MSN is poised to do big business with Video Ads. Have you tried any of the Google video ads on your site?

But this is a little different.

MSN will be competing with Yahoo Video, YouTube, AOL Video, and Google Video. Yes, MSN already has Video - to the tune of 15.6 million visitors a month. That's a ton of exposures!

These are those pesky video ads that begin before you start watching what you want. MSN will be adding those to their videos, soon. The demand is there.

What was even a bigger surprise, was to see Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Watch in the Money section of USA Today, yesterday. WOW! Danny got the top banner! And the story hit home for me because it tells how Danny lives with his wife and kiddos in Chitterne, England - a town so small and quaint, they just got DSL about a year ago (June 2005).

It's a must read for you and am happy to say, is available online to you. Give it a read.

A few friends are headed out next week to the Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo in San Jose, California next week. This is a must attend - and I'm still looking to get out there for a few days. Check the schedule for the next conference and let's go!

New AdSense Wealth Empire Videos

2006-07-28T10:56:00.000-04:00

One thing I like about the team of Roy Oron & Maayan Marzan is that they actually take great pains to keep their product up to date, and to change strategies when industry changes are occurring. This endorses the fact that the AdSense Wealth Empire program works.

There's a cabinet full of other "AdSense" related programs I've gone through which either do one of two things: never update their product or simply tour the country and conference calls as an "expert" on all things AdSense. To put it another way - other guys make most of their money on software sales and ebooks than they do on Google AdSense.

Roy and Maayan, while you never hear them speaking out about the conflict in their homeland - which I'm pretty sure I couldn't keep quiet about, are busy in research and development. When you log into the server while using the products that come with AdSense Wealth Empire, you're often greeted with "There's a Update" to download. Oryah Meir, on the AWE support team is keen to hear every suggestion and quickly assists with going over your gameplan and problem solving any area of your "empire" work.

And today is no different - an exciting new strategy that involves just what I've been discussing the past few days, is about to be released. New videos, to compliment the AWE program and blueprint, will deal with linking and how to correctly structure Page Ranking - plus, what to do with it once you've got it.

The videos, due out in days, will be available to all AdSense Wealth Empire customers.

More information on AdSense Wealth Empire.

From Naples, FL - Dave Jackson

P.S. Please remember what is happening in the Middle East at the moment. I encourage you to switch off the TV and search some of the bloggers who are posting in spite of the conflict in their backyard, for the real story.

The Importance of Inbound Links

2006-07-22T10:50:00.000-04:00

It's raining outside, and my view is no longer of the Caribbean Sea breaking over the reef out front, but of my pine filled backyard in Naples, Florida. Yes, we're back home. Back to the comforts of that two minute coffee, familiar surroundings - you know the feeling.

When you're gone for any length of time, the mail stacks up. One item of vital importance, and why I write you on a Saturday, is something I found from the good people at Fortune Interactive. It speaks of an analysis done on June 30, 2006 of 100 search results and tells us what the search engines find important.

I've been telling you from the beginning how important it is to get great inbound links to your sites, but this report goes even further. Here's a breakdown of the report:

In-Bound Link (IBL) Quality. This is a measurement of key elements on the page containing an in-bound link which, in combination, influence the link reputation for the target of the link. This is the only factor that had the same level of relative influence across the search engines and happened to be the most influential in all cases.

In-Bound Link Relevance. This is a proprietary measurement of the topic/keyphrase relevancy of the content on the page containing the in-bound link. Yahoo™ and MSN™ place the same level of importance on this factor but not as much as Google™.

* In-Bound Link Title Keyword Density. All three search engines differ on the level of importance placed on this factor. Google™ assigns more importance than the others, followed by MSN™ and then Yahoo™.

* In-Bound Link Anchor Keyword Density. Google™ and Yahoo™ assign the same level of importance here. MSN™ places more importance here than the others, the second most important overall among its other factors.

In-Bound Link Quantity. Yahoo™ and MSN™ place equal importance on this factor, but still to a lesser degree than Google™ does. It is worth pointing out that not only is IBL Quality of most relative importance among off-page factors across the board, but IBL Quantity is of least relative importance among the off-page factors across the board.

Title Keyword Density. This is the most influential on-page factor for the competitive landscape in Google™ as well as in MSN™. Yahoo™ assigns the same overall relative degree of importance to it as MSN™.

* The score used here is not the raw value for the measurement, but rather a proprietary formula based in part on the raw values for the keyword density.

So, here's what you need to consider when someone requests a link, or when you go searching for inbound links:

1. Look at the quality of the inbound link. It's got to be related to your page/site topic.
2. The inbound link has to carry some weight. Look for PR 2 - 5, and not above unless your site is very solid.
3. Check their Title Keyword Density. If it is off-topic, your link will probably not be worth as much.

Comments? Let me hear from you.

Nice to be back,
Dave in Naples

Google Page Rank Changes to Note

2006-07-17T22:56:00.000-04:00

Everyone I know has been affected by Google's latest Page Rank changes. Many people who follow what I do are happy to see the shake-out. But, it's been a confusing past seven days.

Pages that have done poorly, gained PR's of 4. Pages that were supposedly quality, dropped to zero. Why?

First, remember that Page Rank is figured by inbound links. The links must be quality links. Google figures that if you have quality inbound links, your page must be important. They know you can't control the inbound links, which is why it really doesn't matter if a bunch of crappy sites happen to link to you.

But Page Rank does care who YOU link to.

If your outbound links tie you to crappy sites, i.e. zero Page Rank with poor quality content, then your score will be lower.

I believe the PR run is almost done now. So, there isn't much to do immediately to improve your rank. However, now is the time to start building a linking strategy - and here's what you should consider:

Find sites that are listed in the search engines.
Sites that have a PR of 2 but not more than 5.
Sites that don't hide their link pages. Make sure a spider could crawl from the home page to the links page without a problem.
Sites on the same topic as yours.
Honest, white hat webmasters. Do a "view source" on their pages and look for no-follows or other black hat tactics.

Next, I'll talk about why some high ranking PR sites show up lower in the search engines than sites with less PR. Until then, start your linking strategy now and be ready for the next Google Page Rank update.

Stingray City

2006-07-16T23:04:00.000-04:00

There's a sandbar off the coast of Grand Cayman locals call Stingray Sandbar. Stingray City, a similar sandbar is deeper, and after Hurricane Ivan, has fewer rays. Check out the action here as we had a fun day today. Later, I'll write about Google's latest Page Rank changes and what you should be doing.

Wreck of the Ten Sails

2006-07-14T15:35:00.000-04:00

I am still in the Cayman Islands as of this writing and I was frustrated that I could not find better information on something that fascinated me as we drove around the east side of Grand Cayman.

The one and only road that parallels the coast, (sometimes the lane is at the ocean's edge!), took us out to East End. We stopped when glancing at the map in the left-hand seat I noticed this was the area of the "Wreck of the Ten Sails!"

We looked out, me in the driver's seat and my wife and daughter in the back, to the reef, almost a mile offshore. I was explaining to my wife that this was where a large sailing vessel struck the reef in the late 1700's.

From shore, we could see the channel markers near the reef. But, there was something else sticking out of the water. It looked rather large - time to get out the binoculars. We peered out and saw pieces of other things, which looked like they could have been from a ship - sticking out of the surf.

Okay, let me read the caption from the Cayman tourist magazine. What IS this out here?

I read it out loud - It was common for merchant ships to carry goods from Jamaica to Britain in the late 1700's. Many times they went in convoys. On February 8, 1794, ten merchant vessels took off during the night and made way by Grand Cayman.

The vessel leading the convoy, HMS Convert, made a really bad mistake misjudging how far out the reef ran from the shoreline.

Boom! The Convert hit the reef! In an effort to warn the nine other vessels, a signal was given (at night) - however, the signal was misunderstood - and instead, the nine vessels thought it was to follow closer to the Convert through this area.

All 10 ships ran aground right off the East End that night.

That led me to think about how much tragedy one error can turn into. I started to make the comparison to much of what is out there on the Internet - many people with books and products to offer as maps to prosperity.

The responsibility is great. Because the Internet is still a pretty level playing field, it is hard to determine if the seller has ever helped anyone become a success like themselves. Customers purchase the goods and follow the "leader" in hopes they will be successful.

Nobody wants to hit a reef.

Okay, so now, how to apply this to what we do here? You and I both know there are a myriad of products and ebooks out there on AdSense, AdWords, CPC's, PPC's, etc. We don't want to miss anything - so it's easy to become fanatical about this and buy everything that comes out - but don't. Do a little homework. See if there is a blog you can read, or a forum. Ask questions - see if they answer.

Ask God for help.

When you choose a strategy, you are following a plan someone has drawn out. It pays to be careful - yes, many make it. Many don't.

The Wreck of the Ten Sails is a fascinating story that ends with heroism. The people living in the East End showed great heroism that night. They heard and saw the wreck that stormy night. They got in their boats in total darkness and went out to the reef and saved everyone.

For this act of heroism, it is said King George III of Britain granted the Cayman Islands freedom from taxes. I could find nothing online that backs up the part about no taxation, even though they have no taxes here. And the other puzzling part is those things sticking up out of the water - which local maps claim to be remnants of vessels from 1794. Doesn't wood deteriorate in the elements in a few hundred years? Plus, you can't see a thing in my picture... and I couldn't find a picture of the Wreck of the Ten Sails, anywhere.

However, after a little more investigation, I found out that what you can see off the reef is the wreck of the Ridgefield, one of the 2700 Liberty Ships that were constructed during WWII. It exchanged a few hands and was a tramp steamer when in 1962 it was traveling from Maracaibo, Venezuela for a Gulf port and lost power and blew into the reef. Salvage efforts proved fruitless.

'Til next time... Dave in Grand Cayman

AdSense Wealth Empire Latest Update

2006-07-11T18:11:00.000-04:00

Have you ever been to a country where they drive on the left-hand side of the road? If you're from one of those countries, than picture driving on the right-hand side.

But for many of us yanks who venture to countries where they drive a little strangely, it takes "some" getting used to.

It's not like you "can't" do it - millions are. It's simply that you are have been programmed to doing it differently. So, when a new way of doing something comes along - even though you end up at the destination just the same - it does take some thinking to get your mind around it.

We're in Grand Cayman for a few weeks and here they drive on the left.

I've never done that before!

So, it's taking some major re-programming. They call it re-wiring in NLP. You take the path that has been ground into your mind for years and suddenly you change it. Your mind keeps wanting to go back to the old pathways. We are not wired mechanically. It is difficult to shut something off - it takes some programming.

But those of you who know me know that I am all for "change" when it means good stuff. For me, driving here is a challenge. It's different and fun. And yes, I took out full coverage on the rental car!

This week, Google came out with a Keyword Quality update. What's in store is that if your AdWords landing page is fluff - be prepared to pay through the nose for your keyword. And, it's about time Google addressed this. In my work, I've seen more and more loss of the top 3 - 5 position on Google's SERPs to spamvertisers.

Now all we have to do is click on the Ads by Gooooogle link and report the fluff and garbage. Will they get banned? Maybe. But, at least Google has promised to take a look at that landing page. And if you're thinking you'll put your competition out of business by doing this - remember that if their landing page - that page that the ad in the search engine takes you to - is quality content, you'll probably flag them as a great advertiser. Remember: Google checks.

In a little while, we're headed out to eat for the first time here in Grand Cayman. And, back again I'll be to driving on the left - this time in darkness. Scary? No - but "challenging". And, that's the way it is with the latest from AdSense Wealth Empire.

New strategies for linking are forthcoming. What is vital is that these links are created in such a way that "you" hold all the power. Isn't that the way it should be?

Imagine your own network of links that you control and you determine where you point them. You give power to your own work. One way quality links that webmasters die for. These strategies are powerful and is what makes AdSense Wealth Empire really work - long term.

Is it "drink out of a coconut" money? Hey, I'm sitting at a resort in Grand Cayman! This is the perfect compliment to what I am doing with YPN. Click on the AdSense Wealth Empire Fast Facts link in the menu column for more.

I'll have more later. Got to get ready to face those crazy drivers.

YPN Ads Performing Lower

2006-07-05T12:05:00.000-04:00

A quick note to tell you I've experienced lower payout in the contextual ads from the Yahoo Publisher Network. That was expected.

When I asked all of my Brazilian friends why the team failed to continue in the 2006 World Cup, they all replied - it was expected. One went so far as saying that, politically, FIFA requested that they not qualify so that another team could win this time. Six is too many.

Hogwash.

But it's fun to dream up all kinds of excuses when you're defeated. In any event, if everyone expected this, why bother to cheer and go crazy when your team scores? You know the outcome.

I've been predicting that YPN ads would lose some value as more publishers joined the network. That seems to have happened.

Here's what you need to do: Continue to add more pages of great content to your sites, and make very sure they are linked properly so that the search engines can spider and index them. Your increased amount of pages and content will offset the loss in revenue.

That's your homework for now. Remember, successful people simply do what unsuccessful people are unwilling to do.

Go Portugal...
Dave

Happy 4th From Naples, FL

2006-07-04T10:07:00.000-04:00

We are celebrating our country's independence today, a birthday for the USA. This time around, mainly because of the weather, we'll be doing a great deal of it indoors. It's hot, even though we're a five minute walk from the ocean.

We'll be grilling up a salmon, since we're fish-a-tarians. And while we're thinking of what it took to make this nation great, we'll be seeing if Germany can pull off a win over the powerful Italians this afternoon.

So many have asked me to explain step-by-step what I'm doing with AdSense Wealth Empire. At the moment, I am putting in place a network of sites that will help strengthen the "AdSense" sites. The method is common, but the way in which the AdSense Wealth Empire gurus go about it is brilliant. While I won't get into specifics, because even though these fellows make good money with ad revenue - they also have a mission for revenues from the sale of the program, I will say that everything done is practically done manually.

And that's a huge clue.

If you've read through the blog, you know that I've never been a proponent for blatant automation. Neither are the major search engines - which is why so many of these methods are a mere flash in the pan.

One the most beautiful things about 4th of July here in Naples, is the fireworks off the Naples Pier. Starting around 9 PM, everyone makes their way down to the beach to see the spectacle over the Gulf of Mexico. Choreographed to music, it's the crown to a wonderful day.

Imagine, if you can, that all the fireworks somehow went off at the same time - one huge boom! Yes, that would be spectacular - what brilliance and sound! However, the effect would be quick and not as rewarding as seeing the fireworks metered out over a half hour or so.

Well, that's the effect you get from tossing a few hundred sites up and expecting to get your fortune. Consumers may see it briefly - but that's not what they want. You may gain something - but soon are delisted completely from the SERPs.

Make it a great day, wherever you are. I am still working my YPN ad network. This (AWE), is a great addition to an already great business.

Regards,
Dave & family

Slow and Steady Wins the Race

2006-07-03T19:25:00.000-04:00

For the past few weeks at the Jackson household a CD has been playing, almost non-stop, with the tunes to a "kids" musical. I can even hear it playing now, from the portable CD player near our piano. Rachel dances to the tunes, sings the songs and even tries her hand accompanying them on the piano. Does a pretty good job, too!

When I was a kid, there wasn't the myriad of summer camps that we have now. We didn't really need them then. Whatever the season, it seemed we found much more interesting things to do outdoors than in. There are probably more cool things to do outdoors nowadays, too - we've just allowed ourselves to become hypnotized by the TV, "now with over 500 channels!"

In any case, at Rachel's age, and with the summer heat, we signed her up for Acting Camp at the Naples Community Theatre. The two week intensive had her singing songs of Aesop's Fables. What a learning experience for us! Imagine hearing the wisdom of Aesop ringing through your house for two or three weeks?

One wonders how one person can be blessed with so much wisdom.

Among the "look before you leap", "don't count your chickens before they hatch", and "never cry wolf", is my favorite and applies in a major way to my work with Google AdSense, YPN or any contextual ad methodology. And that one is: Slow and Steady Wins the Race!

Remember the tortoise and the hare? Who doesn't? Yes, the tortoise won by simply being consistent at the task before him. The hare, on the other hand, wanted instant gratification - but thought so much of his rapid plan that he assumed he had the luxury of taking a nap.

Many moons ago, when a friend and I were creating one of the first radio networks in Brazil, he took me aside and said, Dave - if you climb the ladder too fast, you're going to miss a few rungs and fall. It's best to take each step slowly and solidly. Wow, what great advice - which has helped me through my entire life.

So, please leave with this - this business of building great income with contextual advertising is not something you will make quickly. As a matter of fact, many make some "good" money quickly by using poorly thought out strategies - but end up back at near zero because their system doesn't work long-term.

Remember, you need to build a strong foundation. Machine-gunning hundreds of spammy websites with little content of value is not only a poor game plan, but will get you delisted in days - and all of your work will be in vain.

When you see systems, programs, such as the one I've been evaluating over the past few weeks, (AdSense Wealth Empire), and you wonder how these fellows can possibly make that kind of money with Google AdSense, you must know that they went about the challenge much the same way the tortoise did - one solid step at a time. It takes time to build a solid game plan.

And that's something the hare couldn't appreciate.

Slow and steady does win the race.

Later,
Dave

Two Methods of AdSense Domination

2006-06-30T00:13:00.000-04:00

Just a note to let you know I haven't forgotten you. I am patiently awaiting the "Content Generator" from AdSense Wealth Empire to finish finding a few more articles.

As you may know, I purchased AdSense Wealth Empire at the same time as the Publishing Business Secrets course. The Publishing Business Secrets arrived from Malaysia, first - and I spent a day or so devouring that.

A few days later, the AdSense Wealth Empire program came from Israel. I'm still consuming it. There is a complete mindset to AWE. It incorporates some awesome strategies that completely make sense.

The Publishing Business Secrets goes at winning at AdSense a totally different way. And, that's okay - because there is much to be gained with both systems. I am partial to the AWE system. It is closer to what I am already doing.

I'll post my comparison of both after I make some sites and use the software a little more - but I want you to know I haven't slipped away into Dave's Contextual Ad Labs never to be seen again.

Stay tuned. The info will be worth the wait.

Another Shot at AdSense Wealth Empire

2006-06-12T00:57:00.000-04:00

Do you really believe these dudes make $4000 + a month with AdSense? Their visuals tell it all, yet I find it almost unbelievable that they do it "white hat" all with search engine traffic.

The AdSense Wealth Empire folks did open the window to get the system at half price again for 48 hours and maybe you took advantage of that - if you were following the blog here, you would have seen the links to get the latest update on this - but not sure if you wanted to dive right in.

Okay - the ship date is a week away still. And, I'm not going to Hawaii as many have e-mailed. We are leaving for a nice vacation in Grand Cayman. I found a great B&B and the best fare possible through Spirit Airlines - just couldn't pass this one up.

We went by Costco today and picked up a snorkel set for our daughter - who promptly tried it out in the bathtub. Isn't that so much like human nature? I suppose that's why I want to see what these fellows with AdSense Empire are up to.

If it is new and benefits - saves time - etc, we want to be advised.

Today I was talking with my son, Dennis - about Windows Vista. He tells me that the beta is readily available from Microsoft for download. And that it is SO cool. But, my question to him is - okay - it does really cool visual things. It fades in menus, etc. - yes... But I asked him - Dennis, does it save you time? Can you get things done quicker?

I didn't get a straight answer. I think the jury is still out on his findings. It is slick - I've seen it. And you can download a free Beta version. Kinda cool. Check it out.

So, what's you're homework this week? Okay - you should be tracking your keywords. And, I suggest that today you go through them and make major revisions to the ones not paying - not converting well. It's not that hard to spot them. These are the keywords you spend a lot of money on and they do not convert to clicks.

Say, want to see my "Country" file with Google AdWords? See which countries provide the MOST clicks? Drop me an e-mail and I'll shoot off my list to you and you'll be able to implement it in your studies.

But, I suggest you try as I did - run the "countries" for a week, or more - and see which ones are actually clicking on your ads or goods. It will surprise you that the countries you though would want this most are the dead pans of the bunch.

Great! Hey, a fantastic week ahead. We can make great headway. I have made major revisions to my keyword list with AdWords simply by seeing what's working. Do the same. Write me if you need help in this area.

Take care and stay safe!
Dave

AdSense Wealth Empire Pack

2006-05-30T13:11:00.000-04:00

It was an exciting pre-launch. The countdown clock simply added to the excitement. I just wanted to know what these fellows over on the other side of the globe were doing differently than say Joel Comm or Perry Marshall, or me! For goodness sake...

When the clock struck 10 AM here, a video started to play on the page. This four minute video told me that these guys had all been making AdSense income from organic traffic - free, search engine traffic.

The AdSense Wealth Empire Pre-Launch video was narrarated by a fellow named Roy Oron. Roy seems to be involved in joint ventures (affiliates), and sells things to show you how it's done.

Another name mentioned on the website next to Roy's is Maayan Marzan. Marzan is also connected to affiliate marketing.

The title on the website said "We Made Over $1,000,000.00"... I am anxious to analyze!

The flash video tells you that you'll receive everything they use to make their income - including - five tools that they use each day. I am thinking that these are content generating tools. And, you get over 50 videos. You're told you'll get a 50% discount.

After you view the initial video and order page - you are forwarded to a very long web page that simply pitches you more on the product. They show four screen shots of Google AdSense account. They claim that all of their work is 100% white hat. And something that caught my eye is that they ask that you don't order unless you are really going to treat this venture as a business.

In other words, no "trying" allowed.

Yes, you get a 30 day guarantee - no questions asked, but they want you to treat this as a business. That's very fair. Where else can someone sit you down and show you how to make five grand a day? Not many places.

According to the website - I should get my material mid-June. And, that's fine with me - we should be back from Hawaii by then. It will be good to be refreshed and get cooking on this to see what I can learn and pass along.

AdSense Wealth Empire Review

2006-05-30T10:31:00.000-04:00

I'm sitting in front of my PC and watching an interesting JavaScript clock count down. We have 30 minutes to go on the AdSense Wealth Empire's "Pre-Launch" DVD - which will explain, hopefully, how a couple of fellows are making over $1 million in AdSense.

The link is http://www.adsensewealthempire.com/prelaunch/default.aspx

The background to the page is an AdSense screenshot of a report page listing around $4500 daily revenue from whatever they are doing.

My thinking is that the DVD will sell for about $500+ and they will offer it half-price today for around $250. Not shabby - considering there are many who are willing to pay that price to find out how they made $4500 a day in AdSense.

Yesterday, from a totally different source, I received a document from Patric Chan and Kelvin Hui - I believe Kelvin is the one making the income - with a sneak peek about their sites.

The gist of the article is that they have around 30+ sites using AdSense, started back in 2003, but the breakthrough didn't come until 2004.

So, I'll have an update in a little bit with this launch and some comments. I am always interest and open to new ideas about contextual advertising and making money from it. And I'll let you know what I find on Kelvin and Patric's system as I'm a BIG fan of Patric Chan.

Increase Revenue Using AdSense Tools

2006-05-15T08:34:00.000-04:00

It can be very easy to get lazy about maintaining your campaigns once the money starts to flow in. This is typical in every single home-based business, and most businesses in general. You achieve a little success and get comfortable.

One of my passions is wakeboarding. It's fun and can really wear you out. After a good day on the river, you are dreaming of driving home and eating, then relaxing in front of the TV.

As much as I'd love to do just that, I know that I don't have that luxury. Yes, I have the boat, and the car to tow it. The river is about 45 minutes away. But what has become a ritual with the family is to clean the boat up after we finish.

We do it right there at the river, just after pulling the boat up out of the water. Out come the white towels and spray bottles of white vinegar and water. The hull gets sprayed down and wiped off, taking off any residue from the river. And the boat is readied for the next time we want to take it out.

Now, I don't have to be that picky, but I am. With the great time we have on the river, the last thing anyone wants to do is clean a boat. But it must be done.

The same with your contextual ad campaigns. When the money starts flowing in, you still need the discipline to sit down and evaluate what is happening. Take a look at every parameter you can change and ask yourself if there is any way you can tweak it for the better.

When is the best time to do this? If you work full time, this is something you can do in the evening, maybe in trade for one of those TV shows that is NOT paying you the money your campaign is. And you don't need to do it every day - but every day would be my choice. Things can change rather quickly in this arena.

Lock in a time, and make it like cleaning the boat. It's got to be done in order for you to continue to reap the benefits. Don't get lazy about it.

Another Record Month

2006-05-02T21:59:00.000-04:00

A quick note to let you know that March's revenue from my methodology is over $30k. Those of you employing my methods have indicated that you're seeing banner revenue as well. Congratulations for your hard work. It does pay off.

In March I took a trip to Brazil. There were about two weeks that I had no Internet access. Still, a record month. Truly residual income.

Although I've never shared this, I did grow up on the Amazon River. I was born in the USA and when to Brazil as a kid. Imagine growing up like that? It was the experience of a lifetime. I still want to go back to the Rio Negro near the Equator and see the places I used to play.

I couldn't help myself when flying back to Miami from Sao Paulo to watch the inflight map on the monitor on my seat for when we were over the mighty river. Even though the cabin was completely dark because everyone was watching inflight movies and had the window shades down, I had to lift mine and peer down on the river that was once my home.

As fate would have it, we did indeed fly over the Rio Negro, the largest tributary of the Amazon River. What you're looking at is the river just northwest of Manaus. It's called the "Anavilhanas Archipelago". I remember back in the '70's my Dad would have a river guide steer us up through this area.

Even then, at times the seasoned river guide missed one of the passageways and we'd have to turn around and retrace our way back to entry. As you can see, this could take a few hours.

Eventually we'd get back on track and make progress. When you're out on the water, the jungle all looks the same. It's not easy and I respect those river guides.

What I want you to take with you is the fact that learning how to best monetize your website is like navigating the Amazon River. There are times when the river is wide and you cannot make a mistake. And there are times when you come to an Archipelago and need a seasoned river guide to steer you in the right direction.

Will they hit it 100% of the time? No. But know that nobody does. However, without them, you'd run out of fuel before you successfully made it through.

Speaking of guides, my ebook is chock full of how-to's to get you going in a step-by-step fashion. You'll want to get it as soon as it hits the market. Make sure you are signed up on my e-mail list to know when the launch is. Subscribers will have first shot with a nice discount.

Until next time,
Dave in Naples, FL

Update Google AdWords Position Preferences

2006-05-02T21:37:00.000-04:00

Just an update for my regular subscribers on Google AdWords Position Preferences; I've been running AdWords Position Preferences for three days now and am happy to say that the results are what I predicted. Click to enlarge.

Here you can see from Tuesday's results that ads are being served within the parameters I've set. Initially I had included the number of clicks, impressions, CTR, price, etc, but I'm not sure if that violates the Google AdWords Terms of Services, and really, you don't need to see that. Let me say that the impressions are in the hundreds, and the CTR is around 2.5%.

But the cool thing is that the ads are appearing in the positions I requested. In addition, my YPN clicks have increased and AdWords cost has gone down. Talk about "fine-tuning"!

Let me know if you need help with your settings or if you have questions about Position Preferences and how to use it to your advantage.

Testing Google AdWords Position Preferences

2006-05-01T00:25:00.000-04:00

Hey, one of the most interesting tools to come out of the Google bag of goodies is the Position Preferences setting with Google AdWords. Just what is it?

https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=31788&hl=en_US

Position Preference lets you tell Google where you'd like your ad to appear on Search Engine pages. It doesn't work with the Content Network and could get complicated if you have a ton of keywords.

Okay, here's the deal:

From my findings, position 3 to 5 is the very best. What I am recommending to you is to view all your keywords that are performing lower than 5 and higher than 2. Next, on the ones lower than 5, increase your bid about 6 cents and set your Position Preference to 3 to 5.

Then, on the keywords that are above 2, leave the bid alone and set the Position Preference to 3 to 5.

Watch this over the next three days. If your CTR decreases by 25%, revert back to your previous settings. Remember, my rule of thumb is to document everything and if anything changes by 25% usually within the period you normally check, undo your changes.

Keep testing - that's how I get great results from what I do. I change and watch, test, almost to paranoia - but the payoff is sweet.

Say, my ebook is done and I am now looking into the best way to market it. You will want a copy because it contains tips that I do not include here. With these tips, you can easily increase your ROI and continue to add to your work and bottomline.

Keep in touch!
Let me know how your Position Preferences work out.

Dave