How to Get Them to Click Your AdSense Ad

There must be 100 books (eBooks and otherwise) on how to "cash in" on Google's AdSense program. Many are what may be termed "black hat" ways to gain revenue. Black hat comes from the old western movies where the good guys had white hats and the bad guys, you guessed it, had black hats.

Interestingly enough, the guys making big bucks in AdSense don't stoop to those tactics. They don't need to.

So if you are looking here for a way to create a gimmick on a page to make people click an ad they would not normally, you won't find it. That's against the Google AdSense Terms of Service.

But there must be ways to better your Click Through Rate, no?

Let's look at a few things that have been proven to "improve" your chances.

I am blessed to live in Naples, Florida. A few days ago I walked to the beach (a few minutes from my front door), and took the picture of the fisherman.

Although it's beautiful, the fisherman is frustrated. Several factors were working against him on this day without a bite. The biggest thing was the effect "Red tide" has had on our fish. To date, over 450 tons of dead fish (subscription) have been taken to the local landfill.

So right off the bat, the "content" he is fishing in isn't good. In other words, yes, fish are out there, but they are being choked by the algae bloom. Nothing would interest them right now.

Next, I wandered over and asked what bait was he using. He said shrimp. Now shrimp can be good, and I'm not expert on Gulf fishing, but he wasn't getting any bites at all. Might be time to spruce up the bait a little.

We'll call proper bait the "ad size and placement" in our analogy.

I've seen many fishermen at our pier fish for hours with shrimp and not catch a thing. My thinking is the fish just want something else. They are probably blinded by shrimp bait because everyone uses it.

But the biggest factor with our fisherman is that the overall content was absolutely deadly. The fish didn't want to be there and indeed, many were dying to get out.

So how can we get them to bite at your ads?

First - Don't force the ads to look like ads. I have seen countless, and am sure you have, too; countless pages with Google AdSense ads that are the Google default. Remember that Google provides you with tools to make your AdSense look awesome. The best tip: blend the ads in with your page. Make them appear as an integral part of your site.

Second - Use text ads and not image ads. Text blends better. Fish are blind to the same ol' bait. We are blind to banner ads. Don't go there - your visitors certainly won't.

Third - and lastly for today, create awesome content. Don't give your visitors the "red tide". Keep searching for content and make it of value. Some great sites offering free content are: ArticleCity.com, ValuableContent.com, and EzineArticles.com.

Enough for now. Work on making your ads blend with your pages. Concentrate on delivering great content. That's what draws people to your site. And your AdSense Ads will reflect the content as well. Isn't that what you want?

Increasing Traffic to Your Blog

This can be one of the most difficult parts of monetizing your blog. Yes, you want to have great content. As I posted before, you can use tools such as RSS Equalizer in addition to coming up with great content on your own. These simply facilitate filling out your page.

Initially, it wasn't too hard to get your site listed in the major search engines; Yahoo, Netscape, Lycos, AltaVista, etc. You simply added your URL to their crawler link and wait for inclusion. Things have changed. It's become a science. And, as programming algorithms for searches and related linking, relativity weight, prominence, among other things, it has become difficult even for the most skilled Search Engine Optimization company to stay abreast of changes.

Okay, you say, you lost me at algorithms.

Don't fret, there is hope for you. My study of what brings a steady flow of traffic is having something someone wants to read. Crappy content will get you nothing. For instance, you're reading this blog because I took time to research and provide you with something beneficial. And that's the key word - will your viewers "benefit" from reading your site? Here's the second key word - "value".

There's a great quote by Zig Ziglar that goes something like, "You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want." Work at getting people what they want.

Next, and this one is easy, make sure you have a nice looking blog. Work hard on keeping it looking professional. Don't clutter it up with unnecessary buttons and odd graphics. If it looks questionable to you, leave it off. Too much of anything is bad - Mom told you that, and she's always right.

Okay, one more tip and we're done for today. Be generous with links. What comes around goes around (didn't Mom say that, too?). You'll notice I have a few links in the sidebar. Those will not hurt your Google Page Rank.

I'll discuss this further as there are many more traffic increasing tips to pass along. Don't forget to get back to the basics and submit your site to the search engines manually. Just make sure when you do, you've done your homework to get them looking awesome and remember that "content is king!"

Google Indexing and Page Rank Update

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.

The Art of Combining Niches

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.

Do Link Exchanges Work?

The more I look at Google's latest Jagger Update, the more it appears we may be at the end of the popular reciprocal linking. This was the easiest way to build page rank.

The latest move by Google, called Jagger, is causing quite a stir in the SEO community. Sites, which formally had top positions in Google, because of reciprocal linking have suffered huge position losses.

Here's what I found.

There was a sharp drop in search engine ranking around the first part of July. I estimate the loss to be around 40%, mostly due to fewer links being attributed in the Google search engine. These same sites also showed a loss in duplicate links. Google now reported only one link per domain.

With the implementation of Jagger many complained their links were not counted and their pager and plummeted. One thing that may account for losing links is the fact that with Jagger some sites dropped out of the search engine. Google no longer considered these relevant.

On the other hand, it just could be that Google no longer considers links at all. This makes the most sense to me, because reciprocal links are really a method of falsifying popularity. It's the lazy man's way, or should I say, "was" the lazy man's way to great page rank.

If your site has lost page ranked or popularity with the latest move at Google, I suggest first checking out your links. During the latest shuffle, some links to some pages, have actually returned. Webmasters are telling me that these are on pages that have highly valuable content.

Links that probably won't disappear are those that actually link for a purpose other than page ranking. Those linked for the reason of pointing someone to your great content, those with strong relevance, generally stayed.

So what should you do?

Reconsider your linking. Concentrate on strong inbound links that link to you, because of your strong valuable content. This may not be the fastest strategy to get higher search engine positions or higher page rank, but it's good business practice and is a solid way to put your site on top in the long run.

Google still says on their website:

We understand that these changes can be confusing. If your site's well linked to others on the web, it's likely that we'll add it again during our next crawl. While we can't guarantee that any page will consistently appear in our index or appear with a particular rank, our Webmaster Guidelines, available at http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html, offer helpful tips for maintaining a crawler-friendly site. Following these recommendations should increase the likelihood that your site will show up consistently in our search results.

Should you try to outguess the search engines? No! They change their algorithms more often than you think. You'll never win.

Here's what you should focus on:

Build rock solid links, and keep your content valuable.
Focus on beating your competition by educating your audience.

So it gets back to the basics - keeping content relevant, of value. It's what I've been preaching all along.

Fancy ways to gain popularity come and go, but what will keep you on top are basic principles, and one thing I've learned is that principles...never change.

Dave Jackson
Naples, FL

Create a Newsletter

Perhaps you don't think you can write good copy for a weekly or monthly newsletter, but can you gather information? Most people can use a search engine, and read the trade magazines. And this is what you will need to do to get a newsletter off the ground.

Why a newsletter? Because it's a great way to keep people informed of updates to your posts.

But you must have good content for your newsletter as well. What you can do is use the major search engines to your advantage. Research areas that are in your keyword collection you are using for the topic you are presenting.

For instance, if you wanted to capture a niche on iPods and accessories, it would be very easy to create a newsletter listing places on the web where we could find the latest reviews. If you actually own an iPod, you could write your opinion on a certain feature. This could take up the whole newsletter. It doesn't have to be fancy, just great content - remember - content is king.

Don't copy other people's work. Read it and form your own opinion. That is the very best way to create value - people actually "value" other people's opinions. We value that more than we value the song and dance of the manufacturer.

Here are some fantastic resources for creating newsletters:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA010563181033.aspx



http://advertising.about.com/cs/newsletters/ht/create_newslett.htm


http://www.constantcontact.com/index.jsp



That will get you started. Try Constant Contact, I highly recommend them.

And don't forget the whole reason to create a newsletter: tell others about your blog updates!

Tell me about your trials and success. Let me know how I can help you.

SEO Tips - Found in Search Engines

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).

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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.

Contextual Ad Sweet Spot

In preparation for the new year, I want to give you who are following my posts some insight to my methodology of generating revenue with contextual ads. I call it getting into the "sweet spot".

To me, this represents achieving a 3 to 1 return on investment.

Whatever manner you use to generate traffic to your site, you'll agree you're doing well when you're making a profit. Many people don't include the "time" they spend working to get there. And, I think that's okay. Sure, your time counts as something, but don't beat yourself up if you find yourself taking long hours working to turn a profit.

Before you get feeling all warm and cozy, let me tell you that the better part of this business is duplication. You simply find your system (i.e. one that works for you), and keep duplicating your efforts.

The second part is the hardest; that of finding the right niche/keyword/content/webpage combination. However, if you simply copy someone's success, you will have the same results - given you meet the same parameters for a niche. If you are new, when we talk about niche, we mean a segmented, targeted market you can work with. It has to be focused, yet popular.

And the third part is mental. Most people start out not believing they will do well. You get what you expect in this business. It's a funny universal law that when you set out to accomplish something, if you believe you can do it, the universe itself will assist you. Henry Ford once said, "If you think you can, or you think you can't - you're right."

So your job should be to work traffic to your site full of great context of value and make sure your investment doing that is one third or less of the profit generated from your site. Take time to pencil out what you are spending and chart it against your earnings for one week.

If you aren't in the "sweet spot", read my earlier posts on first, working on getting more traffic, and secondly, on creating great content of value.

It gets even better. Once you're in the search engines, visitors may drop by and make you revenue. That's better than sweet - that's great residual income, and that's what your goal should be, long-term.

Kind regards,
Dave Jackson
Naples, FL

How to Increase Page Rank

I'm sitting in my formal living room, feet up on the carousel table that graces the space between the leather couch and the Yamaha Disklavier grand piano. The bottom of the Compaq notebook (c 1999) is hotter than an iron. My Google Desktop is rotating photos of a recent trip to Chicago. The AdSense plugin impresses me with the clicks, CTR and best of all, Earnings for the hour.

Recently, my daughter surprised me with a "birthday party" in this same room, complete with party hats and cake, and even took the picture. She's only five, and the camera is pretty sophisticated.

It is impressive when you think how far the technology has come to make all this possible.

Google itself has evolved. A news search shows 26,900 entries for "google". They seem to be into everything, with no technology safe. At the same time, everyone wants to be on their bandwagon. Get in good with Google and maybe some of the profit will rub off on you, no?

One of the most coveted pieces of Google is their Page Rank. Now, if you search for "How to Increase Page Rank", you'll get 275 entries. When you search just "page rank", you get an unbelievable two million, 930 thousand. So, obviously it's pretty important. There are ebooks, online courses, programs and teleconferences - more training than you can shake a stick at. So who do you believe and which do you choose?

Interestingly enough, Page Rank was the impetus for the Google Search Engine. Co-founder Larry Page was frustrated that then top search engine AltaVista displayed results, but in no given "rank" or order of importance. The driving factor of getting listed higher was tied to how many of the search keywords you had in your web page (and meta tags).

Larry created "BackRub", software for spidering how many "back" links a site had. Depending on the importance of the web linking to the site, Larry's software ranked that page higher in relevance. BackRub gave way to a new name, Page Rank, named after its creator, Larry Page.

I started this blog on September 11, 2005. On October 21, 2005 the blog had a page rank of 5. How did that happen? In spite of what you read, there are only a few things that will increase your page rank. The first one is something I have preached since the beginning of this blog - and that is, "content". If you've followed the posts, or read the archives, you know I've experimented with some software that posts the headlines related to a topic you can choose. I don't consider this scraping because on none of the sites do I steal or scrape an article and post it as it were my own.

None of these sites rank as well as content that is written from research or from a passion. What other than content? Content of "value". And that is what will drive visitors to your site. When they see something of value, they will stop and read - and most importantly, if they have a website - "link" to you. And just like a newspaper - an ad or two may catch their eye and they will follow it to see what it's about. (Think of how much more powerful contextual ads are when they deal with the same topic as your web page?!)

Content. Content with value. What else?

I also outline early on how important it was to get people to subscribe to your blog, even if it's your friends and family. Every link helps. And even more important is telling the blog search engines like Technorati and Syndica8, where you are. Make it easy for people to find you.

Then, of course, there are "links". When you read how page ranking works, you'll see that most of it has to do with who links to you. The idea is someone would only link to your site if they considered you important.

Let's break it down.

1. Content is king. Write about stuff that is interesting. Make sure it is fresh.
2. Write something of value. No one will hang around for fluff.
3. Get listed. Find the blog search engines and add your blog.
4. Get linked. If you have a site with a page rank, link to it. If you don't, try buying some links on eBay. Try to stay within your category - again, make it of value for someone to bother clicking on your link.

Patience helps. Be patient. Google re-ranks every 80 - 90 days. It may take that long to get "ranked" if you started shortly after they ran their last update.

Ask questions. I will help with what I know, or direct you to some great resources. Experiment. Get in for the long term.

Now, there you go! Once you get it down to a system, you'll have time to have tea and birthday parties on the carpet - and not stress about your contextual ads.

Day Seven - Site Four

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.

The Key to a Great Website

I've always written that yes, Content is King, but I've added that the content MUST be content of value. Well, just what does that mean, "content of value". It is just what it says.

I used to say it doesn't take a rocket scientist to tell between a great website and a website of little value. But the more I am asked to consult sites for AdSense use, the more I am convinced that many people don't "get it".

We recently had a major hurricane roll through Naples. Now we're pretty used to keeping one eye on The Weather Channel here, so when Wilma took a turn for us, we took it seriously. Most boarded up their homes, the rest left town. One thing we could do little about was the trees.

I grinned as I watched my neighbor hire a crew to trim his beautiful trees back to stubs. I thought, Marc, you're over reacting. But guess who did the right thing? Marc's trees didn't fall when Wilma struck. Why not?

Two things I want you to learn here.

1. Many sites have very little value, very little in substance (roots) to keep them solidly placed in a storm of information.
2. Probably the best way to get back to basics is by trimming your site back to a stub. Get rid of fluff - anything that keeps your site from being linear to your visitor.

My trees fell in the storm. Their root system was shallow and Florida is made of sand. I would have been served best to trim them, get them down to a few specific branches with little resistance to the winds of a hurricane.

Make sure your website contains structure. Build on a theme and do not add anything that would deviate from the theme or main idea of the site. Visitors will not tolerate fluff. They want to walk away with "value". Give them value and they'll come back. Become useful.

Tell a friend about these tips, but only after you've taken a look at your sites and done some serious trimming.

Thanks for your time,
Dave Jackson

AdSense Hypocrisy

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.

How to Find Great Keywords

Want to know a free and easy way to find great keywords? Well, one requirement is that you have a valid Google AdWords account, because the tools I'm going to talk about is Google's own Keyword Tool - improved version!

I talk about finding niches in areas you are comfortable writing about. And one of the reasons for this is so you always have great content for your site. What happens when you have little rapport with your subject is your ideas dry up and your site goes stagnant.

One tip I teach is using keyword generators, be they paid for or free; these are memory joggers of the best sort and can do wonders if you can really find out how they will perform in the real world.

As always, I like "real world" examples - so let's try one here.

For the keyword iPod, in the first screen shot, we can see Avg Search Volume (very useful), and Search Volume Trends - plus the highest month. So, for "xplay", I note that January was the month with most searches for that iPod niche word. There's more...

On the next screen shot, (just click on it to make it to where you can read it), you can enter your maximum cost per click that you're willing to pay, and the Keyword Tool will calculate at what position it feels your ad will be placed based on that keyword. Pretty snazzy, but I have found these numbers to be a little low. Plan spending more to get the top spots.


And, lastly, there's a useful screen that tells us how heavy the current text ad competition is. This is good because at a glance you can tell if it's worth considering placing ads.

Remember, we want in the top four spots spending up to five cents per click. Unless the keyword is converting at a much higher rate, it won't pay to get real competitive - and this is where the Google AdWords Keyword Tool helps.

Don't forget, you can then take your new found group of keywords, create an ad and run it for a day or so live in AdWords. Watch your results. You may be very surprised at what you find - a new niche that people are hungry for!

Lots of homework there... we'll talk soon!
Dave

RSS Equalizer Install and Review

As you know, I've been studying how to monetize blogs and web sites using AdSense and other contextual ads. In my search I came across a program called RSS Equalizer. What this program claims is that it can gather realtime updates from RSS feeds and display them using PHP and a MySQL database, on your web page.

This sounds on the surface like the perfect solution to what I want to create; a compendium of news and blog links relating to one topic. The ideas is to create a "convenience store" of sites where the surfer does not have to peruse the 100,000+ blogs and news sources that abound. One thing that caught my eye was a testimonial from Armand Morin. He seems to be a serious player in web promotion.

RSS Equalizer costs $97. It installs fairly easily. I simply uploaded a few PHP pages and created my MySQL database. A great place to get a site where you can have PHP and MySQL is http://www.worldwidemart.com/ They are a web hosting company.

One more thing I needed was to upload IonCube, a PHP optimizer. This was easy and the RSS Equalizer program came with the file I needed, so I didn't need to search the Internet to find it.

Once installed, I did have a problem getting into the program. For one thing, the initial screen says something to the effect - before you go any further, delete the install.php file! So, I did that, and found that the program won't "set up" without it. So don't delete it until you're done filling out all of your initial data.

Then, I did fill in various RSS feeds and tested them. None worked. Not even the biggies like CNN, Yahoo News, etc. What "did" work was the default RSS feed - in case your primaries fail so you won't have a blank page. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me tell you what the program does that I though was of interest.

Okay, if you've played around with RSS and web pages, you know there are many ways to incorporate a news feed into your page using JavaScript. The big problem is, Google and other important search engines only view the code on the page, not the dynamic results we see in the browser. So your AdSense and other contextual ads will typically be about JavaScript programming and RSS feeds instead of your news articles. A work-around is to include enough text in your HTML to trigger the AdSense and other ads to display the topic of your feeds. But then you have stagnant text on your page.

With RSS Equalizer the feed is written to the page in HTML. The problem of Google seeing weird JavaScript is gone. And the bonus is your page is updated every day! I'm getting excited at the possibilities, but remember I've only had the program for one day. Okay, so back to the install.

Remember, none of the feeds I added worked. I looked at the online manual; everything I did was correct. It said to see the support forums that someone might have had a similar problem. I am all for doing a little research before I write support, but in my opinion the forums should be closed because they contain hundreds of unanswered questions! Finally I found the key post which should be plastered as a banner on the forum: Please use our new site http://www.customersupporttools.com/ for all your support requests. Note to RSS Equalizer support - put this link on your home page!

Okay, one chalk mark against them.

So, I opened a ticket and explain my dilemma. The response time was great. What I eventually had to do was send them my login information so they could take a look at my installation. Their final response got me wondering:

Hello Dave,

There was a bug causing similar problems, but sporadically. I've updated RSS EQ to the latest unofficial version (v2.9) and you now have feeds!

Thanks for your patience, have a nice weekend.

Please feel free to re-open this ticket, or open a new one, if we can be of further assistance.

Respectfully, James

Bug?! Don't want bugs. We'll see what happens on my next install.

After tinkering with the software, I started thinking about templates for a site. The reason being is that remember, this program only presents you with RSS feeds that turn into HTML. You can incorporate them anywhere, but you have to create a website. I am thinking that you could use a Blogger.com template on a site not hosted on Blogger.com (that's an option in your Blogger setup). I'd then have to edit the template for that site and see if it works.

Here's the site I am working with. As of this post, there is no fancy template. http://www.neworleansresource.com/ You can see how the RSS feeds display and if you "view source", you can see that it isn't JavaScript. But let me point out that when you view the source of a JavaScript feed, you will see HTML as well. One great tool to see what Google and other search engine see is http://www.gritechnologies.com/tools/spider.go?q=neworleansresource.com. Another is http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html which shows you what your page looks like to a search engine. Or try http://www.yellowpipe.com/yis/tools/lynx/lynx_viewer.php.

I'll post what I find about out about using Blogger.com's template and this software. In the meantime, see what your site looks like through the eyes of a search engine spider.

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What AdSense Formats Work Best?

Our daughter's grade school is right across the street, so it's easy to hop on the bike and with her on the seat tube we have a nice ride to the playground.

When we get close to the school, signs abound telling everyone to slow to 20 mph from 7:30 AM - 8:30 AM. There is the typical school zone sign, and the white lettering on the pavement.

In fact, at the corner there is even a senior citizen crossing guard!

Ever notice how everything ties together? Each weekday morning millions of kids go to school with hardly an incident? How can that be?

Optimization. Based on years of what works and what doesn't, local governments know what signs to place where, what color, size, style of lettering, color of lettering, reflectivity, height, distance from the school, distance to the school, and many other factors that have made school zones safe.

Likewise, there is a pool of experience that can greatly improve the monetization of your pages with Google AdSense ads. If you were starting a new school zone in your city, and you were appointed to create the "safest zone", would you start experimenting around? Wouldn't it make sense to do as much research as possible into what has been successful?

That's exactly what I've done with AdSense.

Lately I've been writing about different tips on how to get more visitors to your site because that is a vital part of the monetizing equation with Google AdSense. It only makes sense that in order to realize any revenue at all with a campaign, you must have someone visiting your pages and viewing the "ads".

But once those visitors start showing up at your site, either through promotion on your own, or by using Google's AdWords to point them here, cashing in on the experience of AdSense pioneers will insure that you're converting those visitors into clicks on AdSense ads displayed on your site.

Now, please review my other posts on this topic if you haven't already.

Back? Great! Let's get on with it.

When I first learned about AdSense, I thought I was dreaming. Here was a company (Google), willing to pay me for the traffic I was already enjoying to my sites. As I related in an earlier post, my friend, Matt Wright, explained to me that he was making well into four figures a month on his sites.

If you're like most of us, you not only want to enjoy the profit, you want to know the best recipe possible to have the best results possible. (Squeeze that turnip, baby!)

I remember when I started drinking coffee. Wow, good stuff! As the years went by, and the event of being able to get better coffee, I learned that the way I was creating my "cup" was really crappy. It was "good", but someone showed me "better". Much better! Soon, I purchased a burr grinder and bought high quality beans.

I experimented with different roasts and found ones I enjoyed much more than others. I found that water played a great part in making that perfect cup. Bottom line, it took some experimentation and following successful recipes of coffee "pioneers" to get me to a connoisseur of coffee.

Let's look at what has worked best with AdSense. Consider this a recipe you should try.

1. Displaying images directly above the "leaderboard" style ads. What happens is the pictures draw the eye to the ads and they become even more appealing. You must be careful that you are not drawing unnecessary attention to the ads. In other words, keep the images generic. Anything that may construe the images as being from the AdSense ads is against the Google AdSense Terms of Service agreement.



2. We've talked about experimenting with colors. Pioneers tell us the very best click thrus are realized when the ad itself blends with the format and colors of your web page.



3. Make sure you have ads on every page of your site. In this case, more IS better. Again, stick with the program rules. Currently you are allowed three ad groups and one text link group per page.



4. Get fat! According to Google, a wider is better because it holds more content and make it easier to read without dropping down line after line. The most effective sizes for click-thrus are 326x280, 300x250 (inline rectangle), 160x600 (wide skyscraper).



5. Guru's say to place your ads in the top section of the page and to the left. Why? Better for maximum eye attention. Visualize the monitor as a piece of paper and cut it in half horizontally. Secret: top left!



6. Did you know you can earn AdSense money with a Google "search box" on your site? For more on this, see:
   
   Google Adsense Tour
   
   Users can search just Google or your entire website. If they click on the ads displayed on the search page, you earn money.



7. Use "link" type ads. These are smaller text ads ranging in six sizes from 120x90 pix to 728x15 pixels. You can add one link unit to the already allowed three ad units per page, giving you a maximum of four ad units on a page. Again, it gives you another opportunity for revenue.
   
   Google Link Units



8. Track, track, track! Use channels to track different ad formats and color schemes you've created to find out which ad units are working best. Then, take that information to tweak and refine your site. For more, see:
   
   What are Channels?



9. Tweak even more by adding special tags to your pages. This assists Google in knowing where the "real content" is on your pages which results in more targeted ads and hopefully higher click-thru rates for you. It's called:
   
   Section Targeting.



10. Never forget that content is king! Think of content as your resume to the world. It doesn't have to be about you, but it should reflect something of value to the end user.

Alas, another ten tips to help you make more. Let me know about what has been working for you, or ask what might be wrong with your placement.

Another Look at Affiliate Marketing

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.

Prince Keeps Us on Our Toes

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?

The Sam's Club Christmas Catalog

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.

YPN Ads Performing Lower

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

Yahoo is Having Problems

Remember I told you that one way to start to get subscribers to your blog is to subscribe to it yourself? There are different accounts you can create, download newsreaders or RSS aggregators, but one of the easiest ways, and fastest I might add, is to subscribe to your own blog through your .NET account at MSN, or your My Yahoo account.

The .NET addition went flawlessly. There is something called My MSN, too. If you use MSN Messenger, you have My MSN, even if you haven't used it.

But adding the blog to My Yahoo was a different ball game.





















You are taken to a screen where you can Add Content.

As much as I tried, it didn't work. And after e-mailing Yahoo, getting their reply and e-mailing them again - that is wasn't as easy as submitting the blog to their database and viola, it would work - they did reply:

Thank you for writing to My Yahoo!. Please be assured that we are aware of this problem and are working to fix it. We appreciate your reporting it to us -- your input helps us identify ways to constantly maintain and improve our services. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, and we appreciate your patience while we correct this bug. Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care.

So, at least I know it's not just my browser or some weird problem on my computer. By the way, I tried adding with both Internet Explorer and Mozilla FireFox. No dice.

Hey, I've found a huge list of place where you can submit your blog. Now some require creating accounts, but most are just - Add your RSS feed here: I'll share that with you soon. In the meantime, keep blogging great content and say, keep praying for the people in the path of Hurricane Rita. This one is a monster.