Feb 3, 2009

Google Adwords Learning Center

AdWords is Google's flagship advertising product and main source of revenue ($16.4 billion in 2007). AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text and banner ads. The AdWords program includes local, national, and international distribution. Google's text advertisements are short, consisting of one title line and two content text lines. Image ads can be one of several different Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) standard sizes.


If you're an AdWords advertiser, Google Advertising Professional, or just interested in learning more about AdWords, you can use our free training to sharpen your AdWords knowledge. Google offers both multimedia and text lessons to match your preferred learning style. While lessons are organized to build upon previous ones, you can skip between topics and take them in any way you like. After each lesson, test your knowledge by taking a quiz. Because so much is covered, you probably can't complete training in one sitting (without the help of caffeine), so return often. Content is updated regularly to keep you current.

Do you want to learn more about Google Adwords? Go and click the below link to learn more about google adwords.
Google Adwords Learning Center

Google Adwords Support

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Why donate? Sandeep wants to spend his time directly helping people by creating new blog posts, articles, and podcasts; by speaking to groups; and by conducting public experiments -- always with the primary intention of serving the highest good of all. If you want to support Sandeep in his mission to help people escape fear and live up to their true potential, please make a contribution. Any amount is appreciated.

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Amazon Associates - Affiliate Program

Amazon Associates Program

Amazon’s Associate Program is perhaps one of the most popular ones for bloggers because it is pretty simple to use and has such a wide range of products in their system ranging from books, to electronics, to jewelry, to CDs and DVDs etc. It’s also great because there are many tools that can be used to integrate it into your blog including WordPress Plug ins. Some bloggers even integrate Amazon stores into their blogs (something I need to get set up).

Another beauty of the Amazon program is the variety of ways that they give you to link to their products. Even using just their basic tools on the Associates page you have the option to link to products using text links, pictures, buttons and a variety of keyword triggered techniques.


I personally use Amazon’s program quite a bit on some of my blogs and find it quite effective. While my earnings from Amazon are far less than my Adsense income it’s a nice bonus each quarter (they pay every three months). This quarter (just over half way) my total is just over $900 (USD).

Amazon’s affiliate program pays out in either gift vouchers (to be spent in the store), cheque (check) or direct deposit (if you’re in the US).

Amazon Associates Program Pros:

massive array of products to choose from
reliable payment system
options for different payment types
reasonably easy to use
variety of linking tools
Amazon are fairly well regarded and trusted by consumers


Amazon Associates Program Cons:

only quarterly payments (many other programs are monthly)
commissions can be lower than some other programs (although they have an incentive/bonus program that increases the % when you sell certain targets)
incentive program can be a little complicated to understand
some of their buttons and link methods are a little dated
not great on some products internationally (ie while Amazon will send books and some products internationally some of the bigger ticket items will not be sent overseas. So if you have a non US readership you might have to also sign up for other Amazon affiliate programs (ie they also have a UK, Canadian, Japanese one etc this can get a little messy)).
I’ll share more tips to help maximise Amazon earnings later in this series - but in the mean time I’m sure others have a variety of experiences with Amazon and can shed some light on it as a program for us. Share your thoughts on the Amazon Affiliate program in comments below.


Sign up for the Amazon Affiliate Program here

Feb 2, 2009

Simple Ways to Advertize and Generate Traffic to your Website

Many internet marketers recognize that a membership site is a great way to bring in a comfortable and consistent income. So they find a great niche, set up their membership website and add great content, there is still one major step, getting members to join. At first glance, this often seems a bit overwhelming and is the point where membership site owners often get discouraged. Not knowing how to find members stop many online marketers even before they get started.

Fortunately, it is not too difficult to grow your membership base. As long as you understand that it may take some time. Don’t expect to fill up your site overnight. Instead, shoot for a couple of new members a day. Overtime, you will be able to draw a pretty good income. Below, are some simple ways to advertise:

Start An Affiliate Program: One very effective way to grow your membership website is to offer people (members and non-members) the ability to earn money by getting other people to join. Think about it. If your monthly fee is $29, offering individuals 50% or $14.50 each month for every new member that they sign up would be very enticing. If you get the right affiliates, you may not have to do much advertising at all.

Hang Out Where Your Potential Members Are: Spending time at the same places that people who might be interested in joining your membership site is a really good way to get members. This might include forums and social networking websites.

Try Adwords
: Depending on what niche you are targeting, Adwords may be a great way to get the word out about your site and to get new members. Make sure that you carefully target your audience so that you don’t waste your money and time.

Write Press Releases: Press releases are another excellent way to advertise your membership website. There are a few fairly good options and some excellent paid ones. If you don’t know where to begin, consider Prweb.com. If you optimize your website and choose good keywords, you can get some good rankings for both your sales page and your release.

Forum Marketing: Once you figure out where your target audience spends their time online, it is time to go to them. Often times, forums are a great place to find people that will be interested in your offer. If the forum allows, make a post advertising your membership site. If they do not allow blatant advertising, then create a signature link ad.

Social Networking Websites: Social networking websites are another fantastic, advertising option. Find one that caters to your niche and then create short articles or blurbs that would interest them so that they click onto your website. After you get them there, it is up to you to sell your product. Consider, giving them a few free days or a free report so that they have some idea of the quality of content that you are offering.

Five Ways To Drive Traffic To Your Blog

When you blog for money you need to create your own content (and lots of it!), implement advertisement programs like Google AdSense and WidgetBucks, and last but not least – you need traffic.

In our offline lives we dread it, but online we embrace it. I want to give you 5 ways to start driving traffic to your blog today. With a little time and patience, you will slowly start to increase your viewer ship.


5.) Post comments on other blogs.

Blogs are everywhere – there’s certainly not a shortage of them. You should have no problem finding other bloggers in your niche that are popular and interesting. Bookmark those that you like, follow their topics daily, and if you find something that sparks your interest – comment.

Become a participating voice in the community. The more interesting your comments are, the more likely your peers will follow you to your blog. And who knows – you might stand out among the crowd and be recognized by the author, which can spin off into better opportunities.

4.) Register with blog networks like: Technorati, BlogCatalog, and MyBlogLog

It’s important that you get your blog out there for others to see. You can start the process by submitting to search engines, but that’s just the beginning. Technorati, BlogCatalog, and MyBlogLog are just a few of the high profile blog networks on the web. Register with them, network with other people in your releated area, and get your word out.



When you register with these services remember a couple of things:

1.) Create a detailed profile. Let people know a little bit about you and draw them in. Without that personal interaction people may flee quickly.

2.) Tag your blog properly. Tags are very important – they’re usually one or two word descriptions of your blog. So for example my blog would fall under categories like: Money, Business, and Finance. Dig around the specific service and look for popular tags and try to use those for your blog. It allows people who are interested in these topics to easily find your site.


3.) Register with several forums.

Do a Google search for forums that are related to your niche and register. Try to be an active voice in the community. People will flock to you if you’re interesting. Not only that but it allows you to find out what others are doing and what makes them appealing.

When you register with a forum, make sure to fill out the profile, similar to the blogging services. And equally as important – make a signature that is a direct link to your blog. Your signature is shown in every post that you make – helping you gain visibility. This is all the more reason to create thought provoking discussions.


2.) Social Bookmarking and Article Submission.

Social networking, bookmarking, and article submissions are all the rage today – don’t let it pass you by. Some of the major networks include delicious, Furl, and of course, Digg. These sites will allow you to tag, bookmark, and submit articles that you think are interesting. What’s more interesting than your own work? People should know about it so go spread the word.


1.) StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon really falls into tip #2, but I decided to break it away from the pack because it provides quicker results. Like the rest of the social networking sites, you create a profile and network with others. But what makes StumbleUpon so darn unique, is that you can “stumble” thousands of sites that you’re interested in by the click of a button. So what does that mean for you? Well, you can stumble your own site. By doing this you get into the Stumble rotation, and any people that you network with can stumble across it as well.

In my experience StumbleUpon can bring great surges of traffic for short periods of time. Due to the nature of the service, you’re likely to get overlooked more than not; however, those that do stop – tend to stay. And if they like the site, they can rate it and review it for all the friends in their network to see. Are you getting the picture here? Your viewer ship has the potential to explode!

As with most things in life, there’s no silver bullet for getting traffic. It takes a lot of research, careful planning, networking, patience, and time. If you have what it takes and start using my recommendations, you will definitely start to see an increase. Hopefully that increase in traffic will help you blog for money.

Where Sholud I Place my Adsense ?

In Placing AdSense on Your Blog you learned how easy it was to get your Blogger blog up and running with Google AdSense. Assuming (you know what they say about that) you explored a little, you discovered that moving AdSense sections around your layout is like taking candy from a baby.

But where do you put AdSense!?! Can we just slap it in any old place we like?

Well, you could. And if you’re lucky you might get some clicks by blindly placing AdSense anywhere on your page. But our purpose is to make money from AdSense, so we need to optimize the best we can. Luckily for us, the nice folks at Google have given us a diagram that does just this – optimize.




Google has labeled this their “Heat Map”, and the darker the colors the better the placement. As you can see the best areas for ad placement happen above what’s known as “The Fold”. The fold is the viewing area that is first seen when a user visits your site. Typically this will include the header, navigation system, and some of your content. Therefore you DO NOT want to place your ads in the footer as it’s unlikely your audience will click on those. What you want to do is place the AdSense near rich content areas that readers are going to be drawn to. In most cases (as shown in the picture) this will be near the header, navigation, and content.

Think about it - If you were going to have a garage sale, would you put the garage sale signs in your backyard? Well not if you want to make some money off your 1980’s Prince albums. No, most likely you’re going to strategically place them around your neighborhood; in areas where you will get the most views. Google AdSense placement is no different. You need to carefully pick your spots in a way that will: 1.) Be viewable to the user and 2.) Not be overly distracting. In future articles I’ll talk about how you can further optimize your AdSense, but for now understanding the hot zones is crucial.

Integrating your Blog with Adsense

Let's do a quick recap up to this point in case you have some catching up to do.

1.) Do you know what AdSense is?
2.) Are you familiar with the terms: blogging and bloggers?
3.) Have you successfully setup your very own blog with the Blogger service?
4.) Do you have an understanding of Google's Terms of Service so your account doesn't get banned?


If you answered no to any of those questions, simply follow the link to my post explaining in more detail before you continue on. Otherwise, it's time to put AdSense on our blog and start making money (with some patience, of course)!

The great thing about Blogger is it makes it dead simple to get started. First, head over to Blogger and log into your account. When you do that, it should automatically bring you to your “Dashboard”.

To get started, simply click on the “Layout” link on the bottom right of your Dashboard summary.

What you're seeing here is a high level breakdown of your web design. Most sites (like my own) are composed of a header, menu, content, and a footer (not shown in my picture). To get AdSense up and running on your blog, click any of the dotted areas that are labeled: “Add a Page Element”.

Once you do that, you'll get a pop up (make sure any anti-pop up software is disabled) with many options to choose from. From here, click on the AdSense section button: “Add To Blog”. The icon is marked with dollar bills (Oh yeah!).

We're almost home...

Now you have a screen that let's you choose format options and colors. It even gives us a nice little preview to save us time later on! We'll dissect these options more in future articles, but for now keep the defaults.

Hit the “Save Changes” on the AdSense window - it should close automatically. At this point you are all set! You can click on the “Preview” button on the original page to view your changes or simply refresh your blog. You also have the ability to move the AdSense up or down - or move it to a completely different page element altogether! (Just make sure you preview your changes before you save)

I wasn't lying when I said you don't have to be a web guru to get this setup, was I? Now you have the tools setup to pull in some extra revenue (hopefully a steady stream). Well, not quite. This isn't a get-rich-quick-scheme. It's going to take some time, patience and hard work (I saw you roll your eyes). Nothing comes easy, but if you stick around we can get there together.

What is RSS ?

Making money to blog requires a vast array of knowledge. Of course you need a blog to get started, and then you’ll integrate some ad services like AdSense and WidgetBucks. These ad services will help us generate money with our blogs, but without the readers there is no money. RSS plays a big role in building our fan base.

(Here's my feed if you would like to subscribe now)



Ok great, so what exactly does RSS stand for and why should I care?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. When you create a new post with Blogger it publishes a new RSS “feed”, which is simply a stripped down version of your website. It contains the basic text and any images you display.

I don’t get it. What’s so good about a stripped down version of my site?

In today’s ADD, news-hungry society, RSS has exploded in popularity. People want as much information as they can get their hands on, with as little effort as possible.

With RSS comes “Feed readers” like Google Reader. These applications allow readers to “consume” or subscribe to your sites feed. When you post a new article, the user is alerted. The great thing about these feed readers or RSS readers is that they provide a quick list of your article subjects. So instead of being overwhelmed with a page load of content, they can simply scan for subjects that interest them and then drill down further if they wish.

I’m starting to get this RSS thing… but maybe you can create some analogy for me to make it clearer?

Boy you sure do ask for a lot. Ok – here goes: Let’s say you go to the store and purchase a magazine on computer software. Chances are good that you will flip open a page and have a subscription card fall on to your lap. For this example, let’s pretend it’s a subscription to the latest Microsoft news. Well, if you like Microsoft and you care about their news (I’m an Apple guy by the way) you’ll fill out their card, write a check and send it off in the mail. Now the first of every month – you’ll get a brand new magazine from Microsoft and learn about their many failed attempts to beat Apples’ iPod with their Zune (sorry, I just had to throw that in there). And of course if you get tired or the same ol’ same ol’, you can cancel at any time.

RSS is the same way (Minus the paid subscriptions, thankfully). If you run across a site that you find interesting, you can simply subscribe to that sites feed and you’ll be alerted to anything new coming from there. And of course, you can cancel the site feed at any time.

This was an introduction to RSS. In future articles I will discuss ways we can present an RSS feed for our users to consume. In the meantime, digest this information, because RSS is something you need to know about if you’re going to be a serious blogger.

How to Create a Blog?

Google's AdSense sounds interesting to you. You like the idea of legitimately making money online with advertisements. You even went so far as to read my last post: Getting Started with Blogging! But you have no idea how to get setup - until now.

I do Web Consulting for a living (no, I'm not a full-time blogger… yet). I'd say on a scale of 1-10 of web knowledge I'm probably near a 9, maybe a 9.1. But guess what? You don't have to know squat about web design or web programming. Of course you'll have to learn some web terminology along the way but you can start at ground zero today. The great thing about blogging and potentially earning money with AdSense is that you don't have to be a web guru.

I repeat: you do not have to be a web guru to start a blog and use AdSense.

There is a wide range of blogging tools out there. Some free, some not. If you haven't noticed, I'm using a tool called: Blogger. Before this I had experimented with Typepad and even created my own (this was a few years ago when the term “Blog” wasn't exactly a household name).

Why Blogger? Well for a few reasons: 1.) It's Free! 2.) It's a breeze to setup and 3.) Google owns it. Yeah, the same Google that's helping us earn money through their AdSense program - A perfect marriage indeed.

Ok, so you have your blog topic (or maybe not but you will soon…right?) I'm going to get you hooked up to the service in no more than 10 minutes (times will vary for animals and small children). At the end of this you'll be ready to start writing up some content, free of charge.

1.) Go to Blogger and sign in with your Google account. If you don't use any Google services like Gmail you can create a new account.

2.) Click on the “Create Your Blog Now” button arrow on the bottom right and fill in the information.

3.) Name your blog and give it an address. Make sure the name is meaningful and not too long.

4.) Choose from one of the many templates available.

5.) Your blog has been created!


Now wasn't that painless? In a matter of minutes you have reserved some real estate on the Internet.

I would suggest doing some exploring on your own at this point. Get a sense of the tools available to you and I'll go into further detail in the near future. Have fun!

What is a Blog?

So you’re interested in making money with AdSense? Well join the club. But before we get to the good stuff, we have to build the foundation. Chances are good that if you’re reading this you know what blogs are and how to create them. Good for you! You’re on the fast track to getting started with AdSense. But patience grasshoppa, we must help those who don’t even know what blogging is.

Here’s the definition of a blog from Wikipedia:

“A blog (a portmanteau of web log) is a website where entries are written in chronological order and commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.”


A blog is basically an online diary - A journal written by an author, about the author and/or the author’s interests. The great thing about a blog is there are no boundaries whatsoever. You can blog about your dog, cat, career, relationships, car, favorite ice cream, etc, etc. You have total control to be as creative as your heart desires!

The important thing about this journey is that you blog about something that matters to you. Different people have different interests and you’re no exception. Chances are good that others just like you are ready to delve into your material because they have similar tastes. Don’t hesitate to write about something you’re passionate about - just do it! (like Nike)

If you interested in learning more about blogs and blogging, check out the wikipedia page.
 
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