• RSS
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Business marketing іѕ а marketing practice оf individuals оr organizations (including commercial businesses, governments аnd institutions). It аllоwѕ thеm tо sell products оr services tо оthеr companies оr organizations thаt resell them, uѕе thеm іn thеіr products оr services оr uѕе thеm tо support thеіr works.

  • Google AdSense

    AdSense is not a get-rich-quick program.You have to build a site with lots of traffic to make it worthwhile.This free guide will give you a realistic overview of what you can expect from the program. Don't pay a cent for these "Get Rich Quick" books on AdSense. Many of them are all hype or they're trying to get you to purchase one of their products: Google.

  • Google AdWords

    If уоu hаvе thought аbоut starting уоur оwn website оr аlrеаdу hаvе one, аnd hаvе dоnе аnу research аt all, уоu hаvе read аbоut thе importance оf keywords. Evеrуthіng оn thе web іѕ driven bу keywords. It’s thе fuel thе Internet runs on.Onе оf thе ways tо gеt great traffic tо уоur website іѕ thrоugh thе Google Adwords program. Yоu select thе keywords уоu wаnt tо bid оn аnd set uр thе budget уоu wаnt tо uѕе tо gеt traffic based оn thоѕе keywords frоm websites thаt utilize thе Google Adsense program аnd оthеr sources.

  • Google Tools

    Google offers the widest range of professional tools for marketing, business and media. At the same time has an enviable platform with the full arsenal of hardware and software for optimizing your work:(Adsense,AdWork,Blogger,Email,Marketing Place,and Much more...

    Tuesday, November 26, 2013


    MST | Seo Marketing Tools



    http://mst.marketingseotools.com


    : Internet Marketing with SEO Optimizations and new tools is the best way to make money in the future. It will be the most open to all: school, jobs, business, divertiment, news, and most importantly, it's free and for everyone.
    Here we show that there are ways to make your online business: Marketing, Website or Blogging, Sell or Affiliate and much more ...

    You'll learn how to build a website or blog for your business or your marketing by giving you the information and tools necessary to have a healthy financial activity.

    Marketing


    Learn how to do marketing and express your knowledge, were selling or teach others in your turn to encourage the development, dissemination and use of marketing knowledge.
    SEO

    SEO is a service optimization and positioning on search engines, with exceptional results, here you can find guides, tools and tips on positioning, SEO Tools

    Tools for Marketing


    Marketing Tools are tools that an individual or company uses to sell, promote or educate its products and services. No matter the size of your business, you should employ the use of marketing tools.

    Google Tools


    Google offers powerful communication and marketing tools, including Gmail, Google Docs, Google Talk, Google Checkout and more. Learn more about Google Tools.

    http://marketingseotools.comMST | Marketing Seo Tools


    Friday, July 12, 2013

    The Twitter Advertising Paradox


    In traditional online media, advertising is generally non-intrusive.  Banner ads are off to the side of a website somewhere.  Even if they’re built into the body of a blog post or article content, the text wraps around them with ease.  Even articles or blog posts that are promotional in nature still don’t completely intrude on the reader’s experience, because they should (when used correctly) be relevant to the theme of the website/blog and propose to add value to the reader.  You wouldn’t promote ABC eBook if you weren’t going to highlight the benefits and at least briefly tease the content. Twitter advertisements comprise an entirely new beast.  Here are my issues with Twitter ads: 1) The user who tweets the ad cannot sufficiently describe the benefits of the advertised product or service. Remember, there’s a 140 character limit.  It’s enough space to mention what it is you’re advertising and provide a link to it, but not much more. 2) Making decent money with Twitter ads is paradoxical in nature. What I mean by this is that you’re altering the experience of your Twitter account – the very experience that made you a popular person to follow in the first place.  Think about it.  You need to be popular and provide somewhat decent tweets for people to follow you and to continue following you (celebrities are probably an exception).  If, on Day 1, you constantly spammed your followers, they wouldn’t be around for long. Okay, so you build up your followers because you’re a person who provides value in your tweets.  Now that you have enough followers, you want to monetize your tweets.  The only way to do this is to advertise, which will thus intrude on your followers’ experience of following you.  This is different than putting a banner ad on your blog, because that doesn’t directly impact your content. You need to be popular for it to be worthwhile to tweet advertisements, however you won’t get popular if you advertise often.  And when you’re not popular, you need to advertise often to make any sort of money (since the payout will be much smaller).  If you advertise often, you won’t become popular.  Do you see the problem I’m getting at here?

    How Sponsored Tweets Works

    My criticism aside, Sponsored Tweets is a pretty cool and reputable Twitter advertising platform.  From their website, here is (very simply) the way it works: Unlike MyLikes, you can’t simply select any ad to promote and get paid per click.  When you begin, you get to set the following criteria (the most important one being your price): After you set your price, you’ll see offers that you can choose to accept or reject.  You’ll tweet those ads and your Sponsored Tweets account will be credited with the payment within 24 hours.  Once your account reaches $50, you can cash out.

    How Much Money Can I Really Make?

    The value of a tweet varies greatly depending on your popularity (the number of followers you have) and your influence (the % of your followers who will actually click a link you tweet).  As you can imagine, building a large base of followers is probably easier than actually having influence over them. Right now, My4HWW only has about 400 followers (follow me!), so as you might guess, my suggested charge per tweet isn’t very high: Currently, my account shows 15 opportunities I can take, but all of them pay small amounts.  Here’s a sample:   Obviously, I’m at the very low end of the “potential” for making money with Twitter.  If you have a lot of followers, here’s a peak at what you could potentially make per tweet: As you can see, some people charge a lot more than others among those with a similar number of followers.  This all goes back to influence – great influence over 2,000 followers may be more valuable than very little influence over 10,000 followers.  Sponsored Tweets also shows an influence score so that you can see each tweeter’s level of influence. Just for fun, let’s take a look at the top dogs (most of whom are celebrities): Can you imagine commanding almost $10,000 for a tweet?  It’s crazy.

    Strategy for Using Sponsored Tweets

    I’m all about strategy, even if it’s something as simple as Twitter.  I mentioned at the beginning of this review that the idea of tweeting ads can seriously conflict with your purpose on Twitter in the first place.  While that’s definitely true, I think you can sprinkle in some ads without significantly altering your followers’ experience. I’m not sure what a good ad to normal tweet ratio would be, but I think something like 1:4 makes sense.  In other words, for every four tweets you write, you can tweet one ad.  Inactive tweeters might only tweet one ad per day or one every two days, but active tweeters might tweet several ads a day. I think this is an important plan to keep in mind so that you don’t lose followers or get them to ignore your tweets.  Losing followers is obviously the worst case scenario, but having your followers start ignoring you is just as bad.  Imagine if you regularly used Twitter to get traffic to your blog, and now because of your excessive advertising, your followers began ignoring links to your blog posts.  It’s not a good position to be in.

    Conclusion

    Overall, Sponsored Tweets can offer you a little bit of extra online income if used appropriately.  I would probably recommend working on building your Twitter following if you have less than 500 followers, before you start tweeting ads.  Twitter is still a more valuable tool for building relationships and traffic to your website or blog – income from Twitter advertising should remain a secondary priority. If you are interested, click here to try out Sponsored Tweets. I’d love to hear about any experiences you’ve had with Sponsored Tweets, or other Twitter advertising services. If you enjoyed this article, I’d really appreciate you sharing this post using the buttons below. Also (if you haven’t already), subscribe to the RSS feed so that you can have new posts delivered right to you. Thanks so much!

    Saturday, July 6, 2013

    If you have a website, a blog or any other kind of presence on the Internet, then Google has money to give you. It's called Google Adsense and it's a program that literally makes everyone a winner. 

    Advertisers get new clients or sales through the Adwords program. Google gets money to serve those ads. And you get money when people click on them. How do you spell cha-ching?

    Google Adsense: The Basics



    Using Internet search technology, Google will serve ads on web pages that are based on the specific content of that web page. For instance, if someone is on a webpage that's covering the latest golf tournament, Google will serve ads for golf clubs or golfing attire. If you own that site, you get paid every time someone clicks on that ad. Not too shabby. This is usually called CPC (Cost Per Click) advertising.
    Ways To Make Money OnlineI did a little bookmark scrub this morning and thought I would share the remaining content of my "Online Money" folder.  To warn you,  there are certain things that I don't like and never bookmark so: What's NOT included: Taking Paid Surveys, Getting Paid to Surf the Internet, MLM, Contest Sites, "Buy my DVD, CD, Audiobook", etc.


    How to make money on the Internet? This interesting flowchart from Fast Company offers some ideas other than Google AdSense.

    Make Money Online Working At Home

    It pays to cast your financial net online, where possibilities abound. Monetizing your expertise -- whether in social networking or transcribing -- is one way to make money while sitting at your computer at home. But others also are popping up, such as taking online surveys or even predicting election results. The good part: You don't have to pay a dime. And with some sites, you can start to make money online immediately. Most of these gigs are small, steady streams of cash. But they can add up to steady earnings over time. To avoid scams, forget unknown or untested sites with big promises. "Find out if the site is legitimate," says Nick Mokey, associate editor of DigitalTrends.com. "How long has it been around? And what are they asking you to do?" Also, keep a clock running so you can maximize your income without wasting your time. Follow these rules, and you'll find the Internet awash in moneymaking opportunities.

    Home Jobs Opportunities


    work-at-home jobs opportunities
    • Work-at-home opportunities are not just stuffing-envelope gigs anymore.
    • Web site that tracks at-home jobs finds 57 scams for every real one.
    • Self-motivation, job skills and independence are critical for at-home workers.

    Getting Started Earning Money on the Web:

    There are many ways to earn money in the Web industry. Most people immediately jump to building Web pages for other people, but there are other ways:
    • Advertising
    • Affiliate programs
    • Ecommerce
    • Selling content
    • Freelancing
    • Working for a business
    Earn Money Online workin Home[/caption] There is a lot of work involved in earning money on the Web no matter what path or paths you choose to take. But the great thing about working in the Web industry is that most of these opportunities have very low start up costs. In most cases, all you need is a computer with access to the Internet and a bank account to set up your business.

    It May Not Make You Rich, But There's Some Money In It

    If you hadn't already guessed, the Web is not going to be the wellspring of wealth that a lot of people assumed it would. Some people will get very wealthy, but other people will earn nothing, and, in the nature of business fail and go out of business. However, if your goals are a bit more modest, it is not unreasonable to expect your Web site to bring you some extra cash. Perhaps pay for the Web service it's running on and take your family out to eat once or twice a month. Perhaps more.

    Make Money From Home Online[/caption] The secret to making money isn't working at a high-paying job, it’s finding creative solutions to people’s problems, and it doesn't take a fancy degree to do that. To get your creative juices flowing, check out these common and not-so-common ways of lining your pockets. Below that, you’ll also find more general financial advice as well as some money-making ideas for kids.

    How to Make Money with Free Online Surveys:Looking for bucks in all the wrong places? Online surveys are a great way to pad your paycheck on your own time and with minimal effort. To find legitimate sites, go through the registration process, and become eligible to take surveys, follow these instructions.

     

    How to Make Money with Free Online Surveys

    Looking for bucks in all the wrong places? Online surveys are a great way to pad your paycheck on your own time and with minimal effort. To find legitimate sites, go through the registration process, and become eligible to take surveys, follow these instructions.

    Nowadays it pays to plan before you jump in the deep end, with Teens to Grandmas and everybody else in between producing and marketing their own products and services it is proven that there are ways to make a successful company with a good business plan behind you. One of the businesses that have created self made millionaires such as Crooks & Castles, LRG, Affliction, etc… is the clothing business. Have a great idea for a new clothing brand but don’t know where to start? Look no further we have the Top 10 list on how to start your own Successful Clothing Line!  

    Wednesday, June 26, 2013

    How to make money on the Internet? This interesting flowchart from Fast Company offers some ideas other than Google AdSense.

    How to Implement Google Instant Pages on your Website?
    I have been running an experiment around Google AdSense for the past few weeks, based on the recommendations of RN, and it looks like that the change has had a positive effect on the CPM of the ad unit where that change was applied.
    Service Tax is a form of tax which is levied on any service and is to be paid by the “provider” of the service to the Central Govt. at the rates in force. The provider of the service can in turn collect the tax form the recipient of his service.
    Starting July 1, 2012, India has shifted to the Negative List System which states that Service Tax would be levied on all services except the ones mentioned in the Negative List. Earlier, all services were exempt from Service Tax except those mentioned in the act.
    The sale of advertising space or time slots is included under (G) Section 66D of Finance Act, 2012.

    Service Tax on Income from Advertisements

    The educational guide on Service Tax, released by the Indian Ministry of Finance on June 20, 2012, mentions (page 35) that Service Tax is to be levied on the sale of space or time for advertisement to be broadcasted on radio or television. However, the notification also states that service tax is not to be levied on sale of space in print media, bill boards, buildings, cell phones, ATM Machines & Internet.
    As the new service tax regime has specifically stated that Service Tax is not chargeable on the sale of space for advertisements on the Internet, website owners and bloggers are exempted from paying Service Tax in India.
    In case you have already paid Service Tax on online income from Google AdSense and other direct ad Sales, you can always claim refund of Service Tax.

    Service Tax on Affiliate Income of Bloggers

    The service tax is only exempted for advertising income but if you who are earning revenue though affiliate commissions (like Amazon Associates) or by providing other related services on the Internet, service Tax would be levied on all such services.

    Moreover, service tax is levied on the Gross Amount Received rather than on the Net Income (i.e. Gross Amount – Expenses).
    You can however claim Small Scale Service Provider exemption if the gross value of such services is less than Rs. 10 Lakhs. In other words, you are not required to pay any tax if the gross value of services provided by you is less than Rs. 10 Lakhs.

    Karan Batra is a visiting faculty member at Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and blogs at charteredclub.com.
    When AdSense launched about a decade ago, people mostly accessed websites from their desktop or laptop computers. Fast forward today and all sorts of devices – mobile phones, gaming consoles, ebook readers and even televisions – are being used to connect to the Internet.
    Responsive web design is a simple technique that makes your website look good across all screen sizes – be it the mobile phone, tablets, desktop computer or even the large-screen TV.
    Google DFP, or DoubleClick for Publishers, is a perfect solution in either of the above scenarios. DFP is a free ad server from Google that lets you sell ad space on your website more effectively and also helps maximize your advertising revenue.

    Tuesday, June 25, 2013

    Make Money Blogging


    Monetizing Your Blog Can Make YOU A Mega-Star!

    You’ve taken the leap into “blogdom”…Hoooraay! Keep in mind the phrase spoken by Bette Davis’ character, Margo Channing, in All About Eve — “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night!”
    Please don’t misunderstand. My intention is not to dissuade you from your goal to monetize your blog. In fact, my desire is quite the opposite. I’m delighted to be able to share 3 tips that can make your ride a little less bumpy!
    Make Money Online Google AdSense
    If you’re a blogger or a site owner, you probably have thought about making money online with Google AdsenseBut that might not be the case if you’re an online business owner selling services or products since you want the total attention of the visitor on your products.
    Assuming that you’re already aware about the basics of Google Adsense, let’s discuss how to bring the word ‘success’ into action.
    Following are some real ways, which Google prefers and encourages bloggers to make money online with Google Adsense.

    Teliad: Another Great Place to Generate Blog Income

    There are lots of sites that allow you to generate an income from your blog or outsource SEO services to help you save time, but not all of them actually pay you what your blog is worth or live up to their promise of providing lucrative offers.Teliad.com is one of those sites that I almost overlooked.
      I signed up a couple of weeks ago and totally forgot I had even set up my account when I got my first offer.  I had to go and dig out my log in information and figure out where the offer was coming from – I know it was a serious “duh” moment on my part.  I almost missed out because the email was buried in my inbox over the holiday – I guess I’m just not used to getting worthy offers that quickly.

    Make Money Online With Freelance

    One of the advantages with certain types of freelancing is the ability to be able to do so without being tied to any particular location.
    By taking up one of these vocations one can choose to work from locations where the living costs are cheaper and the climates warmer.
    Here is a list of several lines of work that one could explore if they are attracted to this idea.
    Are you a blogger who has some decent traffic visiting your site regularly? Then you absolutely need to consider how to monetize that traffic! Your following not only respects what you have to say, but will likely also be interested in what you have to offer from a product or service standpoint.
    Making money online from your blog should be easy if you have a reasonable following

    Monday, June 17, 2013

    AdSense today have added the ability for publishers located in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain to view AdSense reports in Euros as well as USD. They write:
    “If you’re located in one of these five countries and make this update, we’ll convert your earnings to Euros on a daily basis using the prevailing market rate from the previous day. With earnings converted daily, you’ll avoid the risk of currency exchange fluctuations between USD and the Euro. You can still choose to receive payments in either Euros or U.S. Dollars and select from a range of payment methods as well. “
    There are some new terms and conditions to go along with these changes that publishers will need to agree to.
    Update: I’ve updated this post below with an update from AdSense. Please read it.
    AdSense have today announced a new type of ad – Expandable Ad Units.
    I’m pretty sure that I’ve seen these ads being tested on one of my sites (although bizarrely I am not able to use the ads as I’m not located in a country that they are available for – see below) and they are basically an ad that looks like a normal image ad but which expands when a reader interacts with it (by clicking it).
    AdSense say that these ads are served on both a CPC (cost per click) or CPM (cost per impression) basis (advertisers choice). If they are CPC you only get paid if people click the ad and visit the advertiser (I have a bit of a problem with this – see below).
    Ads will only be available to publishers meeting all of three criteria:
    • If they’re located in North America or Europe, with a website in Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, or Spanish
    • If they’ve added the AdSense code directly into their site’s source code
    • If they’ve enabled image ads
    OK – interesting. On one hand I think this is cool, while AdSense don’t say it I suspect these ads could pay more than normal ads. They’re rich media and in general advertisers wanting to use these sorts of technologies are willing to pay a premium and are generally top tier advertisers with recognizable brands and good budgets.

    AdSense today announced at Adspace and on their blog that they’re developing a much requested feature for publishes – category filtering.
    “Category filtering will give publishers the ability to block ads that fall into specific categories such as dating, religion, and politics. Regardless of how ads are targeted, they’ll be filtered if they’re within one of the selected categories. We’ll also show the percentage of recent revenue that ads in each category generate, so publishers can predict how filtering selections will impact their revenue.”
    The feature is being launched as a beta test to a small group of publishers so don’t expect to see it too soon unless you’re in the test group.
    Here’s a screenshot of what the feature currently looks like (click to enlarge):
    Looks like a useful feature – particularly for those who regularly get irrelevant ads on their blog.
    If you run AdSense on your blog and are looking to attract advertisers to target it specific with their ads then you’ll want to check out a new tool that AdSense have just announced on their blog –Google AdPlanner’s Publisher Center.
    Ad Planner is a tool that advertisers use to find sites related to their ads and this new publisher center you can have some say over what they see when they’re looking for sites to advertise on.
    First you need to claim your site (there are two methods either through Webmaster Tools or if you’re a DoubleClick Directory User) and then you can customize the description for your site, highlight the ad types that you run, share Google Analytics data (if you wish – this will replace the estimated traffic numbers that Ad Planner currently gives advertisers), choose categories for your site etc.
    See more about Google’s Ad Planner Publisher Center in this video:

    AdSense Font Size

    One of the more commonly requested features that I see AdSense publishers making is for the ability to be able to change font size in their ads.
    The AdSense blog today announces this change:
    “The font size you choose will be applied to the body of the ad, with the title scaled appropriately. In order to fit the ad text correctly, the actual font size will vary for each format size, font face, and user-specific settings such as browsers and operating systems. In addition, some formats sizes currently have very limited room, so the font size application will be most apparent in cases where the number of ads appearing in your ad units varies automatically in order to maximize your performance.
    Your ads are currently set at the default size for AdSense, which is the equivalent of ‘small’. You can select a new font size on an account-wide basis in the Ad Display Preference section of your My Account tab, or on an individual ad unit basis for new and existing ad units.
    If you’re creating new ad units, you can choose between the AdSense default font size, your new account-wide font size (if you’ve selected one using the instructions above), or a separate size. To update existing ad units you’ve created using the Manage Ads feature, visit the ‘Manage Ads’ page under your AdSense Setup tab. Any font size changes you make on an individual ad unit basis will be maintained even if you change your account-wide default in the future.”
    Also announced in the post is that the default size for ads will soon be automatically increased from ‘small’ to ‘medium’. This is due to testing that they’ve done which shows that larger size is performing better.

    Doubled My Adsense Revenue

    In this post ATUM from Home Construction Improvement and Today’s Green Constructionshares how he doubled the AdSense revenue on his blog with a few simple changes.
    Several simple changes in my Adsense approach and layout have almost doubled my blog’s revenue. The results were so drastic and eye opening that I convinced a friend (www.oneprojectcloser.com) to make the same changes to his blog with even better results. The changes involve two simple ideas that can be easily incorporated into any Adsense monetized website or blog.
    I’ve been blogging for over two years now and growing traffic, authority and readership slow and steady. Along with the steady increase in traffic the site has continued to increase it’s Adsense revenue at a similar pace with no sudden increases regardless of all the changes and adjustments I’ve made. That was true until I took the time to study many different published Adsense approaches. As I read all of these different approaches three distinct ideas came to the forefront.

    Three Important Adsense Approaches

    • Less is More – This concept is really simple yet I hadn’t really given it much thought before. First off the top ad is the highest paying ad and you want that in the best possible position.
    Secondly, if you’re using all three of the allotted Adsense units on a given page then there are quite a few ads all competing for attention or a click through. However, if you only use one Adsense unit then you’re limiting the number of ads served and improving the likelihood that one of those ads will get clicked. Therefore, the theory is that an advertiser will be willing to pay a higher rate for less competition.
    • Size Matters – If you read enough Adsense guides you’ll find that the 336 x 280 Large Rectangle is the most effective Adsense unit. It typically offers four ads and they are likely to be very related to the topic based on the position between the post title and body.
    • Position, Position, Position – Placing your Adsense unit above the fold is imperative for success. This makes sense to me for one reason. Every day my site (and I assume most sites) gets a majority of it’s traffic from search engines. This traffic is generated from people searching for something. So when they land on my page and they decide that it’s not the content they were looking for then I want them to see the Adsense unit right where they land so that becomes an “outclick” option.

    How I Doubled My Adsense Revenue

    In order to understand the approach I used to double my Adsense revenue I’ll use two graphics that show the same post before the changes and after the changes. First – the before shot:
    And here’s the after shot:

    My Old Adsense Layout Included:

    1. 468 x 60 Text Only Unit located in the header area of my page.
    2. 468 x 60 Text Only Unit located between the post title and the body of the post.
    3. 468 x 60 Text Only Unit located at the end of the post before the comment section.
    Revised Adsense Layout Includes:
    1. Remove the old 468 x 60 Text Only Unit completely and replaced with an affiliate banner. The idea here is to remove some of the units in order to address concept #1 of Less is More.
    2. Replace the old 468 x 60 Text Only Unit with the 336 x 280 large rectangle unit. This unit is above the fold between the post title and body which makes it a very prominent position. This change addresses both of concept #2 and #3 for Size Matters and Position.
    3. Remove the old 468 x 60 Text Only Unit completely. I actually replaced this with the new Chitika Jumbo unit which is also performing quite well. Again the removal helps address the Less is More concept.

    Immediate Results

    If you look at the graph of my Adsense revenue over the last two months you’ll see that the increased revenue was immediate. The changes were made as indicated by the Red Circle #1. As you can see my revenue went from under $150 per week to almost $300 per week. Immediate should be taken with a grain of salt, the increase happened over several days and it’s likely to take some time for Adsense to incorporate the reduced number of ads being served on your site.

    Summary Of Improved Adsense Layout

    While I’d be naive to think that this will double any and all Adsense revenue for any site I think the principal is worth evaluating on all sites. The concept is really simple; make one large, well positioned ad do all the work. This will make your page look cleaner and it’s likely to improve your revenue immediately. It’s also important that you follow some of the basic suggestions of blended ads that match the color and fonts of your site. So far I’ve done this on two of my sites and a friend’s site with the same result, improved Adsense revenue.
    Note from Darren: I think that the key with optimizing a blog for AdSense (or other ad networks) is to experiment. The best thing that Todd did here was to try something new and to track the results. What he’s done has worked for him but it might not work for everyone – the key is to keep trying different combinations of numbers of ads, ad sizes, ad positions, ad design (color, fonts etc) and to try different ad types until you find what works best for your blog.

    Keep an AdSense Account in Good Standing

    Over the last week or two there’s been an increase amount of chatter on forums and blogs about invalid clicks and AdSense. Some of the talk has contained information that has been a little confusing and perhaps even ill-informed (and some ‘influenced’ by companies with their own agendas) – so I got in touch with AdSense and asked if they had any information to help their publishers protect themselves against invalid clicks.
    The following is what they replied with – in their words it is ‘a concise guide to how to prevent and monitor invalid clicks, and keep an AdSense account in good standing.’ I hope that it is helpful to AdSense publishers everywhere:
    The Google AdSense team has heard many concerns about how Google treats invalid click activity on publisher’s sites, and there have been questions on how to keep your AdSense account in good standing. The Google Ads Quality Traffic Team wants to help all publishers keep their accounts in good order, so here are some tips to keep in mind.
    We understand that it’s not always possible to control the behavior of your users, but you can be proactive about monitoring your traffic, and you can take steps to ensure that your site provides a helpful and safe environment for users and advertisers. Here are some top tips for keeping your account in good standing (which you may have seen before):https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=23921
    Expanding on the tip “Be aware of how your site is promoted.” we’d like to remind you that, should you purchase traffic to promote your site, you do so at your own risk. There are many site promotion services out there that appear to be legitimate PPC advertising companies or search engines, but actually may be sending artificial traffic to your site for their own gain. (For legal reasons, we’re not allowed to disclose the names of such services.)
    To combat this, we highly recommend that you use channels to segment your traffic by source (e.g. a channel for your site’s Google AdWords traffic only). If one channel’s reports look particularly suspicious, you may want to consider unsubscribing from that traffic service. We also recommend using Analytics to slice and dice your traffic reports further to ensure that you’re receiving clicks from users who are genuinely interested in your ads.
    Though we encourage you to be proactive about monitoring your site and ad traffic, we highly discourage the use of click tracking via third-party software or custom ad implementations. These methods may:
    • inadvertently disclose sensitive information about you or your site to a third-party
    • disrupt Google’s ad delivery or click logging in a way that violates our Terms and Conditions
    In addition, click tracking may not provide you with significantly more information than you can already find in your AdSense or Analytics reports. We believe that the creative use of channels can help you gain detailed insights into your account.
    If you see unusual activity on your account, feel free to submit this form to let us know:https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/request.py?contact=invalid_clicks_contact Please note that we will only respond if we find a significant issue with your account.
    Invalid clicks can come from many sources, as described athttps://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=16737. While we’re unable to go into the details of our monitoring system, you should know that invalid clicks don’t always mean clicking on your own ads or using click bots. Our Ad Traffic Quality Team looks for numerous types of activity that may inflate advertiser costs, then takes the necessary actions to protect our advertisers.
    That said, we still find that many publishers are clicking on their own ads, possibly because they feel that Google is disregarding those clicks. Keep in mind that even though we filter the revenue from an invalid click, we don’t ignore it completely. If we detect significant invalid activity on your AdSense ads, we may take action on your account to protect our advertisers from inflated costs. Here are some examples of situations in which clicking your own ads is prohibited:
    • Clicking out of interest in the ad content
    • Clicking to see an ad’s destination URL, such as for filtering purposes (we recommend trying the AdSense Preview Tool, available at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=10005)
    • Clicking to ensure that Google is properly registering clicks on your ads (we log all ad clicks, but it can sometimes take up to 24 hours before your reports are finalized)
    • Clicking to test your website
    For general invalid click questions, you can find more information athttps://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/topic.py?topic=8426

    For questions about AdSense accounts disabled for invalid clicks, you can find more information athttps://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153.

    AdSense Costing you Money?

    My journey into affiliate marketing.
    Before I start, I’d like to make two disclaimers:
    1. I don’t hate google or AdSense—this article isn’t a rant against either.
    2. I recognize that every blog is different—what I’m about to say may not apply to your blog. Regardless, I think you should ask yourself the question I’m presenting here.
    Disclaimers finished; let’s get to the point:

    The Parable of the Lemonade Stand

    Imagine a lemonade stand. The entrepreneurs get the ingredients, start up their business, and have dozens of customers per day. It earns twenty dollars a day. Not bad for a humble lemonade stand, right?
    Now, let me throw in a twist: imagine the before-mentioned entrepreneurs are in their 30’s. They own the lot on which the lemonade stand is located. The lot is located along a major highway in a rapidly growing suburban area. All adjacent lots have businesses making thousands of dollars per day. Suddenly our lemonade stand seems rather silly.
    This concept is called opportunity cost—the economic consequences of choosing one thing over another. I’m learning about this the hard way — I’ve been making pennies per click when I could have been making dollars per click.
    Let me explain in a little more detail. As I’ve mentioned before, strongandfit.net is the first profitable blog I’ve ever had. As my traffic increased, so did my AdSense earnings. A few dollars a day ads up, so I was finally seeing checks come in at the end of every month (I’m new to making money online, so I’m easily amused).
    But I started noticing something: a few products in particular kept showing up over and over on my blog (in the AdSense widget). “Wait a minute,” I thought to myself, “these products obviously convert well if someone is willing to spend money promoting them.” I realized I had inadvertently put myself at the bottom of the economic food chain: I was getting paid a few cents per click while someone else was earning commissions on sales produced by these clicks.
    I did a little research and started directly advertising these products with affiliate marketing. So far it seems to be paying off—my blog is making more money.
    But there’s another benefit: I have complete control over what gets advertised on my blog. It’s turning into a win-win situation: my readers are referred to high quality products, and I earn more in commissions.
    I still use AdSense, but I’m devoting more of my prime “real estate” on my blog to affiliate marketing. Maybe you should also consider doing this.

    A Note from Darren

    Like Kevin says, I don’t have anything against AdSense either. In fact I find that it works quite well on some of my sites. For me the idea of ‘Opportunity Cost’ is a powerful one. For every decision you make to use ANY type ad unit on your blog (whether it is AdSense, some other ad network, an Affiliate product, an ad sold directly to an advertiser, an ad for a product of your own there is a potential opportunity cost of that decision.
    The key is to test different options. Kevin has had success in substituting affiliate ads in the place of AdSense, for others affiliate products might not work, but an ad for your own product might. For others it might be about swapping ads to Chitika or another ad network. For others it could monetize better by selling ads directly. For others still it could be better to not have ads at all but to sell yourself on your blog as a consultant.

    AdSense Earnings In 30 Days

    I have been using Google AdSense to monetize my blogs and websites for as long as I remember. In fact it was the first method I ever tried (I made a whooping $15 on my first month… back in 2005). Over the years I migrated to other methods (e.g., direct sponsors and affiliate marketing), which made AdSense become merely an inventory filler. I was still making around $1,000 monthly from it, but whenever I could I would use other methods over it.
    Then some months ago I started noticing an upward trend on the CPC of my sites, and I figured that I should give AdSense another try. I started applying some tricks here and there, and the next month I made over $3,000 with it (that is combining all my sites). I was pleasantly surprised, and I decided to keep using it actively on some sites.
    In this article I want to share with you the tips and tricks I used to triple my AdSense earnings in one month.

    1. I added units to my Big Websites

    Daily Blog Tips and Daily Writing Tips are my largest websites in terms of traffic. They are getting close to one million monthly page views (combined). Despite that I was not using AdSense on them, mainly because the direct sponsorship model was working relatively well.
    Some months ago I decided to load some AdSense units on the sites, however, and the results were very positive. Around 70% of the boost I generated to my earnings came from these two sites. At the same time I managed to keep the other monetization methods working fine, and no reader ever complained about the new ads (more on that later).
    Even if your blog is already making money with direct sponsors and affiliate marketing, therefore, you could still manage to increment your earnings by strategically adding some AdSense units.

    2. I added units to my Small Websites

    As many webmasters do, I have a bunch of small websites scattered around the web. Some are on free hosted platforms like Blogger, and others are self hosted sites that I abandoned along the way. Most of these sites still get traffic, however. Not much, but combined the numbers get decent.
    I figured that adding AdSense units to all these sites could yield some money, and I was right. The main reason is that, since these are abandoned sites and don’t have loyal visitors, I can place the units very aggressively. The result was a very high CTR (Click-through rate), which compensates the small traffic levels.
    Don’t underestimate the earning potential of small websites, especially if you are willing to place AdSense units aggressively.

    3. I used the Large Units

    If you want to make money with AdSense you’ll inevitably need to use one of these units: the 336×280 large rectangle, the 300×250 rectangle, the 120×600 large skyscraper or the 728×90 leaderboard.
    Whenever I tried to use smaller units the results were disappointing. Even if I positioned them aggressively the CTR was just too low.
    All four units mentioned above can produce good results, but the best performing one is by far the 336×280 large rectangle, and that is the one I used to boost my earnings.

    4. I placed the Units above the Fold

    My first trial was to place the 336×280 large rectangle between the post and the comments section of my blogs. The results were OK. I then decided to try placing them below the post titles for one week, and the CTR skyrocketed. In fact I still need to find a placement/unit combination that will beat placing a 336×280 unit below post titles.
    I knew this rule, but I guess I needed to test and get confirmation. The rule is: if you want to make money with Google AdSense, you must place your units above the fold.

    5. I Focused on Organic Traffic

    My main concern with adding a large AdSense unit right below my post titles was that some of the loyal readers could get annoyed with it. At the same time I knew that loyal readers become ad blind quite fast, and that the bulk of my money would come from organic visitors (i.e., people coming via search engines to my posts).
    To solve this problem I decided to display the large rectangle only on posts older than seven days (using the Why Do Work WordPress plugin). It worked like a charm, as loyal readers don’t even notice the ad units when they are browsing through my recent posts, and organic visitors almost always see the ads because they usually land on posts older than seven days.

    6. I started using AdSense for Search

    I was not sure how much money I would be able to make with AdSense for Search, but I was not happy with the search results provided by WordPress, so I decided to give it a shot anyway.
    Currently I am making around $60 monthly with AdSense for Search. It is not much, but if you sum it over one year we are talking about $720. On top of that the search results are as relevant as you’ll get, so it is a win win situation.

    7. I started using AdSense for Feeds

    Another AdSense product I decided to try was the AdSense for Feeds one. I opted to display the ads below my feed items (you can also place them on top, but this would be too intrusive in my opinion). The results here were pretty good, both in terms of CTR and earnings.
    You obviously need a large RSS subscriber base to make this work, but I am guessing that even with a couple thousand subscribers you could already make $100 monthly from feed ads.

    8. I played around with section targeting

    Section targeting is an AdSense feature that allows you to suggest specific sections of your site that should be used when matching ads. You can read more about it here.
    I found that on niche and small websites section targeting can help a lot. Often times Google was displaying unrelated ads on these sites because there weren’t enough pages. After using section targeting I managed to increase the relevancy of the ads and consequently the CTRs.

    9. I tested with Different Colors and Fonts

    If you enabled both image and text ads on your units you should be able to customize the colors and fonts. I did some testing with both of these factors, and it helped to increase the numbers. Nothing dramatic, but it was definitely worth my time.
    You just need to track your CTR for a couple of weeks. Then change the color or font and track it for another week, seeing if you can beat the original CTR. If you can, keep the new format. If you the performance decreased, try a new color or font and track the CTR for another week, until you find the optimal combination.
    On my sites the best results came from making the ad units merge with the look of the site, but on some sites contrasting colors perform better, so testing is a must.

    How to Make Newsletter Readers Do Click Ads

    I recently attended an event where a presenter talked about the reasons that they didn’t use email marketing as part of their online business. One of the main reasons that he presented was that he didn’t think that people coming from a newsletter would click the ads on his site.
    His reasoning was that people coming to his site week after week from a newsletter would become blind to the AdSense ads he was using (his main source of income). So rather than working on building loyal readers he put all of his efforts into SEO to generate one of readers.
    There were lots of nods in the room from attendees – on one level what he was saying did make some sense – but for me it didn’t quite ring true.
    You see my biggest days of earnings from AdSense are always the day I send out my newsletter. It drives a lot of traffic but also does seem to convert in terms of income (all kind, including eBook sales, affiliate promotions and AdSense).
    Today I decided to dig a little deeper into my Google Analytics stats (which now integrates with AdSense) to see if what he said was actually true. Here’s what I found when it comes to AdSense earnings on my photography site from different sources of traffic over the last 3 months.
    I’m not able to share with you actual eCPM (earnings per 1000 impressions) or CTR (click through rate) as I think it’d break the terms of service with AdSense – but I think the chart speaks pretty clearly for itself.
    ‘Aweber’ is the traffic coming from my newsletter and I’ve included a number of other sources of traffic to compare how it performs. You can see on both eCPM and CTR that Aweber out performs not only Search Engine traffic but traffic coming from different types of social media and referral traffic from other sites.
    Newsletter traffic is certainly converting on both CTR and eCPM. This is confirmed when I look at other newsletter traffic (for example traffic coming from AOL and Yahoo’s mail servers) which is similarly higher than other types of traffic both in terms of eCPM and CTR.
    What I also found interesting in these results was traffic coming from sites like Facebook and Flickr which both again out performed Google traffic on both CTR and eCPM. I had always assumed that social media traffic didn’t convert as well as other types of traffic but at least on these results it seems that not all social media traffic is alike. On that topic – Twitter didn’t convert anywhere near as well as Facebook.
    Of course these sorts of results will vary from niche to niche. Perhaps because my photography site is not specifically a ‘product’ site but is a ‘how to’ site the traffic from Google is a little more general and less in a buying mood which could decrease the conversions – but for me at least it is an indication that I’m on the right track investing time into growing my newsletter list!

    Which Is Worth More to Your AdSense Earnings?

    A few days back I shared a little analysis of my AdSense earnings as it related to sources of traffic and looked at how – for me – traffic from newsletters was actually the most valuable traffic that I get on my photography site.
    This dispelled the myth that loyal readers to your site become blind to ads and are not likely to click them – but I wanted to dig down a little deeper to look at the difference between first time visitors and repeat visitors and how they interact with ads. Here’s what I found when I looked at the last 3 months.
    In addition to those coming from newsletters repeat visitors on my site would include RSS readers, visitors from social media (facebook and Twitter).
    This makes sense – those there for the first time are probably clicking around more, exploring and looking for things to click on. They’re also seeing ad units for the first time and are likely to click them.
    However repeat visitors are not far behind. I’m not allowed to share the exact figures but the difference in CTR was tiny and the eCPM difference while noticeable was not huge. Repeat readers are still valuable – particularly as many of them are coming back on a daily basis so on a per visit basis they’re not earning as much but over a year they’re earning considerably more than a one time visitor.
    update: I should say that one of the reasons that I suspect AdSense is better at converting for repeat visitors these days is that they not only rely upon CPC (cost per click) ads but also use CPM (cost per impression) ads which means that people no longer need to click ads for you to earn anything.
    Over the last few days, I’ve been experimenting with monetizing my blogs for mobile readers who view mobile versions of my sites.

    Monetize Mobile Traffic on My Blogs

    Those who read ProBlogger on an iPhone, Android phone, Palm, or Blackberry Storm will know that you’re given the option to view this blog within a theme designed for mobile devices. I use WPTouchto serve this up—it’s a WordPress plugin that I’ve found incredibly easy to use. I have it installed both here on ProBlogger and on Digital Photography School.
    I had to switch it off recently while making some server changes, and I was amazed how many complaints I received. It seems a lot of readers these days read my blogs on mobile devices!
    WPTouch offers a lot of great features that I won’t go into here, except to say that it lets you customize your display far beyond what I’ve done to date.
    One feature that I will mention quickly is that the plugin offers those who view your blog on an iPhone a way to actually add a web app to their iPhone homescreen. This will increase the number of people checking out your blog on mobile devices.
    One of the other great features WPTouch offers is the ability to monetize your mobile theme with advertising. Once you’ve got it installed on your WordPress blog, all you need is to open up the WPtouch area, and look for the Advertising tab.
    In this view, you can select a variety of options. You can see here that I’m testing AdSense, and that I’ve put the ads below the header (you can also put them in the footer), and that I can select a variety of positions for them.
    I did try the ads in the footer area initially, but they end up so far down the page that I doubted they’d ever be seen (note: it’d be good to have the option to display ads in the header and footer).
    The ads are not the prettiest in the world, but here’s how they look on both the home page of the theme, and in individual posts.
    The ad position is prominent, yet they don’t completely take over the page, and the ads are contextual—all a good recipe for performance (at least, it is in theory).
    WPTouch also gives you a way to use AdMob ads on your blog, or even to show custom ads (so you could advertise your own products or sell ads directly to advertisers—something I’m yet to test.
    I’ve had these ads working on the ProBlogger and dPS mobile sites for a few days now, and the signs are promising. Obviously their success on your site will depend a lot on how many readers you have and how many of them are reading your blog on a mobile device. However, already I’ve seen my ads earning more for each day of my test than I’m earning through RSS ads with AdSense.
    In fact, the eCPM that I’m seeing is around five to six times what AdSense earns on normal ads on my pages. While the actual traffic numbers to my mobile site aren’t as high as traffic to the blog via computers, I’m excited to see the potential of this tool.
    I’m averaging around $30 per day so far in earnings from mobile visitors, so the WPTouch plugin paid for itself in 24 hours. While that revenue figure isn’t huge in comparison to other earnings on my blogs, it adds up to over $10,000 a year. That’s $10,000 which was gained simply by installing a plugin and adding my AdSense account—certainly some low-hanging fruit that I’ve been overlooking.