Posted Wednesday, December 24, 2008 by momscashblog |
The following post is a present from Steve of adsenseaddict.com to help new bloggers better understand how to make money with Adsense. I had some problems with Adsense, but when I found the Adsense Addict I grew to understand it better. I’ve met some great people blogging and Steve is one of the most helpful bloggers around.
Contextual ads do well on any type of blog. Readers are used to seeing text ads on blog and major websites and most importantly, they click on them… so at some point you’re gonna have to learn how to use Google Adsense. As you’ll see from this post, the Adsense Addict makes it very easy to understand but you’ll want to keep reading his blog to know everything about Adsense and how to use it. I am grateful for all the help he has given me and for this helpful post. Merry Christmas, from MomsCashBlog.
Adsense Made Easy
Google Adsense is one of the most popular ways to make money online. You can make a nice little income from Adsense and here are a few tips on how I get the most out of Adsense.
Before you start using Google Adsense you need to find out which keywords pay the most as these are the ones we will target. For this I use Google Adwords Keyword Tool. Let’s say you are targeting the make money niche. Type your keyword in and hit get keyword ideas. This will
bring up a list of keywords we can choose from.
If you look at the first column this will show you the Advertiser Competition. Try to target keywords that have a high level of competition. The other column we need to look at is the Approx Search Volume Month. This show us how many times your keyword was searched for in the last month. For example I will use the “make money” as my niche. After using Adwords Keyword Tool, I have picked 3 key phrases I will use, make extra money, make money fast and make money from home. Now I need to find out how much these pay in clicks. Here I use Google Adwords Traffic Estimator.
Entering my 3 key phrases into the traffic estimator we then need to add our country then continue. The only thing I look at here is the search volume, estimated avg CPC and estimated clicks. Make money fast looks good with an average of 110 clicks and $2.40 – $3.60 per click. (I usually halve this amount as a guide.) Now we have our keywords we will use in our post, the next step is to optimize Adsense so visitors to our site click on our Adsense ads.
Adsense for Content is one most of us have seen on websites which uses text links. Adsense gives us 2 options here with Ad units and Link units. Ad units include banner ads and text links with a description and URL underneath. Link units displays a list of topics that are relevant to your pages. One difference between Ad units and Link units is that if you use Ad units you are paid everytime a visitor clicks your Adsense ad. Link units require 2 clicks, once when a visitor clicks a Link unit on your site and then click this will bring up another page with a series of Adsense ads and the visitor has to click on one of these ads before it is credited to your account.
Once we have decided on which form of Adsense we will use, we need to decide on things like borders and the color of the ads. Most people recommend no borders and I tend to agree here. One thing you need to do with Adsense to get the most clicks is to make your Adsense ads look natural and part of your site. Color is another important factor when using Google Adsense. Blue is the most popular color people use for their ads as this is a natural color for links and some even say visitors to your site are more used to blue links. If blue doesn’t suit your website just try to use colors that you already use and try to blend the ads in.
Another step I usually take is to track which ads I have placed on my site and find which one works best. You need to track your ads using Google Adsense to know if you are getting the most dollars for your clicks. I won’t try to explain here how to set up tracking ads as this is a whole post on it’s own but there is plenty of information on this online.
As an example here is what I might have setup. I have placed Adsense ads on top of the blog post and an ad block in the right sidebar. Google will place the highest paying ads into the Ad unit above my post and the next highest paying ads in the right sidebar. On a site, Google reads your page across the top then left column, middle and then right column.
After tracking the ads we find that more visitors are clicking the Ad unit in the right sidebar and not many are clicking the ads above the post. The higher paying ads are in the top post so maybe you need to replace this with another form or advertising, mayabe an affiliate banner or something.
Posted Monday, December 15, 2008 by momscashblog |
The ice storm hit New England hard and while I was without power I was very cold and very bored. All I wanted to do was go online and get to my blogs. Well, I really wanted to do ANYTHING and everything that required electricity! I wanted to go online, I wanted a hot cup of coffee, I wanted to watch TV, wanted to blast the stereo, wanted to cook up a storm, and I wanted to take a nice hot Whirlpool bath, all at the same time! Since I couldn’t do any of those things without power, I decided to sit down with pen and paper to brainstorm and plan more ways to make money online.
Like many people, I use my computer to write posts and take care of business, but a friend of mine who teaches classes in creativity says that we should make a habit of sitting down with pencil and paper to really get our creative juices flowing. When we sit down to a computer our brain automatically goes into technical mode. Using a pen or pencil switches the brain to a creative mode and makes it easier to think up unique ideas and get them onto paper. My friend’s creativity classes used to be full of artists and writers but over the past 2 years she’s become the “creativity guru” for successful business people who want to become more creative in business and marketing. The best entrepreneurs have ideas that are unique and that’s what gives them the edge over their competitors. If you want to make money online don’t just focus on the technical stuff. You should also learn whatever you can about ways to think creatively. (more…)
Posted Friday, December 5, 2008 by momscashblog |
When I first took over this blog, I knew the basics of PageRank and the Alexa Traffic Ranking… but I wish I had known how important it is for a blogger to be using the Alexa Toolbar! So now I want to make sure that other newbies to the blogging world know why you should install this handy little SEO plug-in even if you don’t have a blog yet.
Alexa collects website traffic statistics for every website on the Internet and displays these stats on Alexa for all to see. At Alexa.com you can look up the stats of your own blog or type in the URL of any other blog/website online to see the Alexa traffic stats for that site. Keep in mind it’s not a true reading of website traffic because most of Alexa’s statistics are generated from Alexa Toolbar users. Basically, it’s a percentage reading of traffic based mostly of those who have installed the Alexa Toolbar plug-in on their browsers.
When you start a blog it will take some time for your website to appear on the Alexa Traffic radar. To help speed things up you need to install the Alexa Toolbar. By installing the Toolbar onto your web browser you’ll be helping your own Alexa Ranking and the ranking of the sites you visit. The more visitors you have using the Toolbar the better ranking you will get with Alexa.
Like Google, Alexa gives each website on the Internet a rank but since Alexa’s numbers are based on traffic percentages the numbers are larger and it ranks from high to low, with low meaning more traffic. The top traffic ranking is a #1 and Yahoo holds that spot right now. In the beginning, your number will be in the millions because there are millions of websites on the Internet that you are competing with. The more visitors your site gets from the Alexa Community (users with the Alexa Toolbar installed on their browsers) the lower your number will get. Having your number go down to 100,000 or even 200,000 is good, and less than that is even better. Here’s one way to look at it: If your blog has a number of 165,000 then you know there are 164,999 sites out there with a better rank than you.
Techies and/or bloggers will be more inclined to install the Alexa Toolbar or other SEO plug-ins that include the Alexa Toolbar, so some say that you’re only getting a reading of the percentage of techies or bloggers that visit your site. It stands to reason that if you have a technical blog and most of the users have the toolbar, you’ll have a good Alexa Ranking, but the system does allow for a small percentage of traffic outside of the Alexa Community. The average web user doesn’t install the Alexa Toolbar so if your blog is about a non-technical topic such as gardening or beauty products you might not have a good Alexa Ranking because most gardeners or women into beauty products would not care or even know about Alexa. It doesn’t mean you don’t have good traffic coming in, it could mean you don’t have many other bloggers or “techies” visiting your site. Even though a good Alexa Ranking will give you bragging rights, you don’t need good ranking to have a successful blog.
MomsCashBlog’s Alexa ranking went so far up (which is not good!) this summer that it was off the chart and was no longer displayed on Alexa! However, at the very same time my other stats told me that MCB had the most REAL traffic in it’s history and I made the most money during the same time period that I lost my Alexa ranking! Obviously, I lost some “techie” visitors over the summer, but I gained some non-techie visitors and I made some good sales. I don’t worry too much about my Alexa ranking because my goal is to make money… and ranking well on Alexa doesn’t necessarily mean you make more money. Still, a good Alexa number gives your blog more credibility so if you have a good rank, be glad! If you don’t have good Alexa, don’t sweat it… just keep blogging, strive for good content, install the toolbar, and the rest will fall into place. (My ranking finally came back up to 210,805.)
You can install the Alexa Toolbar and become a member of the Alexa Community from either the Internet Explorer browser or Foxfire and you don’t need to have a blog to do this. If you want to install it onto your Foxfire browser you have to go to the download page from your Foxfire browser. (The download is on the same page for Foxfire but it’s called “Sparky”.) Upon installing it you’ll have a small bar chart down in the lower right-hand corner of your browser which will change with each site you visit. Some SEO plug-ins have the Alexa Toolbar built in and displays each site’s Alexa ranking along with PageRank and other stats helpful to bloggers. Once you use the Toolbar and encourage your readers to install it, you will definitely see better ranking, so do it now!
