Adsense in Blogger posts (the basics!)

Like many bloggers, I see no harm in including AdSense (and affiliate ads) in my blog, as a way of making a little money to help me pay for my blogging costs. This short series of posts will explain methods you can use to feature AdSense in your Blogger blog, including how to feature ads in the body of your posts.

Google's AdSense seems to be the most popular system of advertising in blogs. This free service for web-publishers is easy to use, especially as ads are contextual (they change depending on the content of a particular page to display relevant ads for your readers). Most bloggers are eligible to sign up for AdSense, which you can do using this link.

Ensure you are aware of Google's policies for AdSense publishers, including sites which are prohibited from featuring AdSense, site and ad behaviour, and the number of ads allowed in a page.

How many ads can be displayed in a single page?

In any single web page, you can have:

• Up to three ad units
• Two AdSense for search boxes
• Up to three link units
• A maximum of three referral units

These regulations can be especially important for bloggers who choose to include ads in their posts, since the main page of your blog can feature a number of posts, and you cannot feature ad units in all of them. However, there are methods of displaying ads in posts only on post pages, as I will explain in a later installment.

How does Google decide which ads to display?

Keywords from your title and blog posts are used to determine the most relevant ads to display. It's best to try and keep each blog post on one particular subject and include relevant keywords in the title and at least a few times in the article itself. Problogger features some great advice on ensuring relevant ads are displayed on your site.

How do I place ads in my blog?

Blogger now has widgets you can use to include AdSense in your sidebar. You can configure the colour schemes and size of these ads to suit those of your blog.

Alternatively, log in to your AdSense control panel and click on the "AdSense setup" tab at the top of the page. You can then choose the type of ad you wish to use and get the relevant code, which you should then paste into your template where you would like the ad to be displayed.

Next: How to display ads beneath post titles or at the bottom of posts.

Technorati Tags: google adsense blogger advertising

Basic Adsense Tips

by Aditya Bagaskaradish

Once in a week, i will publish my personal article about an advertising program which is Adsense. For those who still don’t know what Adsense is, it is a pay-per-click adevertising program which website publishers can use to menetize their websites.

The first thing you need to know about Adsense is it is not a program where you can earn money esily. Well to said, your website or your blog need lots of traffic to take full advantage of this program. Now, you must be wondering on how to improve your website traffic. From my experience,for the first time my website receive very little hits per day which is about 30-50 hits. Its really bad and to solve the problems, I have use these methods:

1) Add good content

2) Do a SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

3) Improve the site layout

When I added good content to the website, website traffic increases to 100 hits per day. Website visitors is always hungry to find new information in the net. Regardless what is the type of your website/blog is, you must create a truly original content for it. Don’t spend your time searching for free artilces because Adsense really don’t like duplicate contents.

Another tips is let your visitors know what your website/blog offers to its visitors. Create a section for your new website visitors what they can gain by visitng your website/blog. Suggest them to comment on your entry so that they will feel they are belonging to your blog/website.

From their comment and suggestion, you can improve your website/blog more. Now, thats for the section for getting website traffic.

The next factor that you must take care is SEO which means Search Engine Optimization. Search engine that we will focsu is Google. Google receive million search per day. you can imagine a lot of people go to Google everyday to search for infromation. If you’re lucky they will find your website. But it’s not an easy way to do because SEO need lots of hard work and patience. The first thing you need to do when you have a website/blog is by giving its url to Google so that its crawler can search your pages and then include them in Google search engine. For lots more information about SEO, go to our Webmaster Section. i have post lots of good tips for SEO there. Another tips

Another way to make money.

Helllooooooo do I need to tell you about Google’s adsense? I guess so, or you wouldn’t be reading this. OK. I won’t hold your hand. Hit in any search engine, preferably Google, “Adsense” or “Google Adsense” and then follow the easy, fruitful way to net money making. It’s really that easy. [https://www.google.com/adsense/]

Another way to make money. Ask for money. It’s a simple concept really. If you have like, a hundred people looking at your charismatic prose every week, or say, more, then if you guilt them into giving you a dollar for each time they view, that’s, well, at least a hundred dollars. You have to be forward and guilt them. It has worked in the past. It can work for you.

Another way to make money. Sell something. Disclaimer Sell something LEGAL! Well, selling something illegal is moneymaking too, but getting caught is so messy. Why bother. However, maybe you can rot in jail and still blog and make money, but then again, do you really want to spend your six figure income on buying dresses for a guy named “Thor” or buying a banjo so you can have sing-along sessions with your block mates? No. That’s crazy talk. So sell something legal and be ethical.

On your blog, you can sell whatever you want. I know a ton of people, myself inclusive, use [ www.cafepress.com] Café’Press. Basically, you choose what you want to sell; you design it online in about four seconds, and poof! Like magic you are selling personalized stuff. Everything from coffee cups to thongs. You choose the mark-up and you make the money on whatever you marked up.

Banner advertising is also a great way to make money. You charge others for the banner to be on your site and you do nothing. It’s like web slum lording; how fun is that!

If you want to know if blogging works, check these fantastic case studies

http://www.backbonemedia.com/blogsurvey/
44-Case-Studies-Annies-Homegrown.htm

They sell themselves!

Enough about how other people have done this, or the little nuances of blogging. Let’s get to the meat of how you can possibly make a very good living by blogging.

Think of blogging like any small business. Don’t blog if you hate computers or typing. You must have a true Internet interest. You also must blog about something you really enjoy or, yourself – but only the latter if you want to gather (or have enough) friends, family and networking opportunities to get the ball rolling. If you have one sibling and no friends, I would say that a personal blog isn’t for you. Catch my drift?

Anyway, get a free blog. Have the passion in your life explode on that blog. Start piggybacking banners, ads and some sales opportunities within the blog. Ask for money. Ask for donations. Have a membership mailing list that people pay for. Do what ever it takes to generate interest and charge for it.

Blogging isn’t old but isn’t new. A set of rules does not exist to a master plan of making money, and so far, I haven’t become a bazillionaire off of blogging myself; but I do know this. If you are interesting (or think you are) and have enough ovaries (or you know what) to ask for money or to demand ad rates and, if you have networking skills – you just may be a thousand dollar blogger.

Please send us successful blogging stories for fun, entertainment and sharing. We may post your blog info and blog!

Get a blog. Obviously.

You can do this by doing a quick search and you will find that there are free, yes, and free blogs. It’s easy, fast and fun to get one. Just make sure you have a unique name, because everyone else knows that it is free, fast and fun also. More than likely you think that you found a really creative, witty name, only to find that so did about seven hundred million other people from here to mars. Here are a couple I like…not that my opinion means anything, but since this is blog-like writing, it is self-important….enjoy-[www.blogger.com, www.livejournal.com

Another article on how to make a poop-load of money by blogging

The digital pioneer, as he is often called, Clement Mok had it downright right when he said “Five years ago, we though of the Web as a new medium, not a new economy” (of course he didn’t say this very recently).

But ain’t that a ring of truth? Who’d a thunk that the Internet would be a great way that a slacker could sit home, play global games, write a self-important blog about their miniscule life, try to sound witty and to boot, make a few bucks?

But alas, this is the case. We live in a world where blogging makes you seem social and communicative when the reality is that you probably spend more time in isolation than your non-blogging counterparts.

Yes, the buzzword today ladies and gents, is “Blog”. We’ve all heard it and some of us are very familiar with it; even having one or two of our own. If we are really sociopaths and pathetic, we have more. If you haven’t really heard of it, right now you are thinking, “What the hell is she talking about?” (yet, you are still reading because the “poop-load of money” caught ya) … and to add salt to the wounds, I’m writing blog-style. It’s a new, trendy, sarcastic, self-ego stroking way to write. This alone is another reason to blog; it feels good and, I guesstimate that blogging will soon negate the need for therapy.

Are we really isolated, ego-freaks of society if we blog? Or perhaps, we are actually the movers and shakers of the virtual future….hmmm.

But I digress. Let me first; quickly yarn the story of the history of blogging. So sit back, get some popcorn, and enjoy the ride.

Once upon a time, in a far distant land called Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, a young prince-like man by the name of Justin Hall became one of the pioneers of what is now known as blogging. He began an Internet journal and made public his ditties…and all the villagers and townspeople in all the world of Internet enjoyed his web-based journal, and so blogging was born.

The technical, not cool, nor hip actual description of blogging is “Weblog” according to most dictionaries and anal people. Usually the blog (I am hip, so I’ll use “Blog”), can be anything from commentaries to diaries, and can contain links, photos and more. But you and I both know why you are reading this article. You don’t give a rat’s arse about opinions; you want to know how to make a poop-load of money from blogging. Now that the wee history lesson and such is out of the way, we can delve into the goal of making six figures, or well, at least a few dollars while having fun, impressing your friends and wowing the masses with your witty, entertaining blog.

5 Tips To Increase Your Adsense Revenue

The brain trust over at Google has come up with a little wacky, off-the-wall idea about Internet ads. Make them less annoying.

No, that’s it. That’s the whole plan. Seems like someone should have thought of that one a little earlier.

But bloggers can cash in with Google’s AdSense network. Instead of posting blinking lights, cheap animation and a bobbing and bouncing monkey (or the paper football, although I totally rock at that one) Google matches vertical or horizontal blocks of text with the content of the web page. The ads don’t blink or jump around. Instead, they match or relate to the topic at hand, so the reader isn’t seized with the immediate need to get it off the screen right now no matter what it costs.

Traffic goes up, income goes up. Making money on the Internet - it may be the World Wide Web’s Holy Grail. Still, despite the simplicity, there are several steps savvy bloggers can take to give AdSense added oomph.

Here are some other almost obvious tips:

* Don’t make it boring. Boring equals bad. More importantly, boring drives readers away in two clicks. No one wants to read for three days straight why organizing your closet via season, not color, makes sense. Try to keep content fresh and continually updated. The more often people check in to see what else is going on in your world, the more often you hear cha-ching. Wash-rinse-repeat a few times, and you have created a loyal and happy reader.

* Make it easy to read. People cannot read blue text on a black screen! Keeping the layout simple and clean is the easiest way not to screw anything up. A general rule calls for placing an advertisement “above the fold,” or in place on the first portion of the screen before any scrolling is required.

* Think about ad placement. Don’t try to squish a horizontal advertisement into a vertical one. Google provides plenty of ad options from including a link to placing an ad in the middle of some text so no need exists to use the wrong ad. If you don’t know what size to make an idea, going too wide will look the best.

* Listen to your readers. Most of them are not to hesitant to give an honest opinion of a new advertisement type or content or anything else for that matter. If moving all your ads to the bottom of a rambling ode to your dead parakeet causes income to crash, then, well, maybe you shouldn’t do that. Consider making small, gradual changes and watching your traffic numbers.

* Remember why you started blogging. Bloggers blog for fun, for release, for a creative jolt and any other number of reasons. But, usually, not because the idea of sitting at the computer makes them think of a dentists’ drill. If it stops being fun for you, your readers will likely realize it. And who wants to be around that guy? If you find your self in a slump, give yourself permission to take a day or two off. Then, think about why you do this and what you want out of it. Plus, it’s totally an addiction, so after a day or two you will be itching to get back.

Just because it took surfers years to almost literally rising up in arms against pop ad is no reason your blog can’t start earning money now. Follow these tips and let Google’s AdSense do most of the work.

Simple Ways To Make Your Website Load Faster

by Jason Smith

Creating a website that loads quickly is important for you and your business. If you have a website that loads too slowly, potential visitors and even customers will simply give up and click away. Internet users have a variety of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and some still use a dial-up connection, which is frustrating in the first place. The last thing they want to do is visit a website that takes too long to load. Your website could even load slowly for those who are using a DSL or cable connection.

If you find that your website seems to be getting hits on your home page and nothing else, your load time could be the problem.

Giving your website a fast load time is vital to you, your website and your business. There are even studies that show that users will click away from your website if it does not load in ten seconds, and sometimes less than that.

To make your website load faster, you need to know the size and download speed of all of the pages on your website.

Here Are Some More Things You Can Do To Increase Your Load Time -

How are Your Graphics?

Graphics can take too long to load if not used properly. If you can take away some graphics, you will begin to increase your load time. If you take a look at the graphics you have on your web pages, you might realize that you have way too many that are not necessary. Only leave the ones that you absolutely have to.

Big to Small Graphics:

Make your necessary graphics smaller by using your graphics editor, such as Adobe Photoshop. Making them smaller creates a faster load time. Every little change helps.

Check out Your HTML:

You might be surprised to find that there are html codes in your web pages that are not necessary for your website at all. Always try to use CSS when designing your website. This will create a faster loading time. Try using HTML Tidy - an html cleaning tool that can help clean out any unnecessary html coding that is hidden in your web pages.

How Fast is Your Web Host?

Even your web hosting company can play a part in how fast your website loads. If you have completed all of the changes to make your website load faster and you find that it still loads too slowly, it could be your web hosting company. Before going to your web hosting company to find out what the problem is, test your website (all of the pages) on different computers with different Internet connections. If it is still too slow, it could certainly be at the fault of your web host. As your web host could be having a small problem, email them about your concern and give them about a week. If nothing changes in that time period, it may be time to switch web hosts.

Keep your website load times running fast and you will find that more and more people will visit your website and stay longer, which can mean a substantial increase in sales!

10 Tips On Promoting Your New Blog

One great way of getting more traffic and more importantly, making the traffic come back to your site over and over again, is by having your own blog.

The term, ‘Blog‘, is becoming more and more popular, and these days most online companies have a blog.

How can you promote your blog? Once you get your blog known, if you have good enough content, then it will promote itself, thats the amazing thing with blogs.

Heres some quick tips to help promote your blog.

1. Allow your blog readers to subscribe to your own RSS feed. Subscribe with Feedburner. Feedburner allows blog owners and podcasters the ability to manage their RSS feeds and track usage of their subscribers.

2. Always set your blog to ping ‘update services’. What is that? If you use the Wordpress software, here is a great explanation, http://codex.wordpress.org/Update_Services.

3. Take full advantage of Technorati. For a full explanation of what Technorati is and how it works, take a look here, http://www.technorati.com/about/tour.html.

4. Use the power of social netwroking sites, such as digg.com, reddit.com and del.icio.us . If you write a great article, submit it to these sites, if they get picked up by them, you will see a massive increase in traffic to your blog.

5. When writing a post, always make sure you link to as many related sites and blogs. Many blogs have a ‘trackback’ feature enabled which can see what other blogs, like yours, are sending visitors to their blogs. They then usually link back to your blog automatically for free.

6. Get your blogs web address in as many places as possible. Use forums, and put your blogs address in your signature.

7. Submit your blog to as many blog directories as possible, such as blogcatalog.com

8. Link to your blog from your websites homepage, and also in the footer of every other page on your website.

9. Get tips from 2 pro bloggers, such as problogger.net and shoemoney.com

10. Finally, and most important, write great content that is relevant to your website, and you will then find your readers will do your promoting for you.

How to Start Video Blogging?

by Kanicen Nichathavan

Videoblogging is the next generation of posting ideas and products over the internet. Everybody knows about textblogging. Now they use videos for a better way of expression. This form of communication may entail a lot of resources, but it is all worth it. If pictures say a thousand words, videoblogging exceeds that by far.

A videoblog requires larger disk spaces on websites, a faster server, and a whole new set of programs to support it. Videoblogs can be fed through RSS. This is technology of syndicating your website to other RSS aggregators.

Videoblogging works with people on the internet expressing their selves. Now if you put this on a business prospective, you are up to a lot of benefits. Think of it as a powerful tool in making showing your prospective customers your line of products or your services. It’s just like showing a commercial all for free. And if you videoblog through RSS, then most probably you are getting your target market.

People like to see what they are going to buy. Some would like to see proof and be sure that they are getting their money’s worth before shelving their dimes on it. All of us know the influence of a thirty second commercial. The effect of videoblogging is similar to that. You show your product, people watch it. If they like it, they buy it. If you present it good enough, they’ll buy the product even if they don’t need it.

Now on the web, things are pretty much static, unlike in television in which all are moving. If you post something that is mobile, it would most likely catch attention. Now imaging your product parading in all it’s royalty through videoblog. You’ll get phone call orders in no time.

If your business is just starting up, you can create a videoblog right at your own home. All you need is your web camera, microphone, video software, and lights. For as long as you know how to use your camera, then you can create a videoblog.

Invest in a good web camera. The higher its resolution is the better the output. And you like to present your goods in the optimum way so get the best one possible. Make a short story, or just capture your goods in one go. Just make sure you are getting the best profile for each. Get those creativity juices flowing.

Lights are important in a production. Make sure you illuminate entirely the area you are going to use to create videoblog. The brighter the area, the crispier the images will be. You can also use lighting effects for added appeal to the presentation.

Should you require sounds for your videoblog, you need a microphone. Record you voice as a voice over for promoting the product and its benefit to consumers. Sounds are as important as videos on a videoblog. It is advisable to make your sound effects as enticing as the video.

Your video editing software can be any program. You need this to finalize your work. You can add sounds, delete some bad angles, or insert some still pictures in there too. Some programs are user-friendly and can be used even with zero knowledge on video editing. Even simple video editing programs should do the trick. Select your background carefully too. The light affects the presentation so make sure that the background and the light complements each other.

Videoblogging is a great tool but it also has it downside. It may slow down the computer so other may steer clear of it. Download time may also be time consuming especially if customer is still on a dial- up connection.

But don’t let those stop you. Let videoblogging be an alternative for you, though it is best to still keep the text and pictures present in your presentation to accommodate all possible viewers of your site.

Nowadays, the more creative you are in presenting your product to the market, they more you are likely to succeed. Videoblogging offers an interactive way of selling. You involve the customers. You instill in them the advantage of your goods. And at times, those are enough to make a sale.

Blogging Will Take Over The World

by Chris Everson

In recent years, it’s been pretty obvious that “blogging” (Web + Log = Blog)has simply taken over the internet.

Early blogs were first used by creative (bored?) indivuals, and larger news companies. http://info.cern.ch/ was one of the earliest blogs, followed by NCSA’s “Whats New” and also NetScapes “Whats New” blog. After this point the blogging scene exploded.

What exactly is blogging? Many consider blogging in it’s truest form a type of internet diary. In it’s most pure and basic form its simply a single, scrolling webpages with a few links on the side, and an archive table, and larger, prominent updates in the center of the pages. Users usually post small excerpts about daily life, recent events, or news.

Creative writers often attract groups of people, who will pursue and follow that blog, often posting comments on updates. Some writers write outrageous, offensive things that also attract readers. Some people write about personal experiences, and some just flat out write whatever they want!

RSS, (really simple syndication) also started directly because of blogs. Rather than visit an indivual site over and over again to read the updates and posts, coders started using xml to enable these updates to be available anywhere in the world. In response, RSS has created a whole new chapter in the SEO world, all because of blogging.

Many people have begun to weave affiliate links and even sell there own products through their blogs, relying on their dedicated readerbase to generate huge conversion rates. Programs like WordPress can generate ENTIRE web sites simply by advanced forms of blogging. One of my own sites, www.emoneyreport.com utilizes this program. Instead of bloggin real life experiences, we blog our article updates and program reviews. Very nifty!

Even major search engines are taking part in the blog scene. Most noticably, Google, purchased the site www.blogger.com. Now google controls the largest, most successful blogging site to date! Google indexes and spiders every post created on this site, EVERY day. It’s common practice to create a blog, write small posts and link to your own site through the blog, and doing this you can get spidered and indexed within a day!

We have to ask ourselves, whats next for blogging? Will blogging become the next form of linking? Who knows? All I know for sure is that I like what blogging has become, and that it allows my site to generate income for hundreds of people all over the internet.

Google Doesn’t Care About Website Design

by : Stuart Mortimer

You may not be aware of this and im sure you’ll find it very interesting! Despite the time and effort that your web designer has put into creating a beautiful website for your company, Google - the biggest search engine in the world doesn’t even care what it looks like! This may seem like a bold statement, but this article will explain to you exactly why it is true; Google and all the other big search engines including Yahoo and MSN cannot even see what your website looks like!

So, in order to explain, let’s start at the beginning. It’s important to know exactly what Google is and why it is there in the first place. Google is a huge network of linked computers dotted around the planet in locations called data centres. The purpose of these computers is simply to visit as many web pages as possible and store the text content that they find there so that it can be used to power their search results.

The sole aim of search engines (aside from making money) is to return useful and relevant results from user searches for specific keywords. For example if I were to type ‘web design Barnsley’ into Google, they would want to return the most useful websites that were genuinely relevant to the search key phrase ‘web design barnsley’.

In order to perform this task, Google and the other search engines employ software programs on their computers called search engine robots or ‘bots’. The purpose of these bots is to follow the links between web pages that they find on the internet, extract the text content that they find on each page and then move on to the next web page on its ‘to do list’. At no point during this process does Google or any other search engine stop to check out the intricacies of your company logo or stop to admire the lovely lighting effects that have been designed by your website designer. They simply take the text content, store it and move on! Think about it. Consider the mammoth numbers of websites on the internet, search engines don’t have the time to stop and think - they have more sites to visit!

Still not convinced? Let’s look at something else. Your website is made up from programming code called HTML which is used to structure the text and images that you have on your web pages. If you select view > source from the toolbar above you can see the HTML code that is used to make up this page! This is similar to what Google sees when it arrives at your site and this is where your optimised search engine content has to go in order for you to be able to rank well in Google and the other search engines.

Conclusion:

By considering the differences between the way the search engines view your site and the way you and I see the site, you can begin to appreciate the need to build content rich websites which provide search engines with the useful content that they are coming to your site to find. Of course having an attractive website is important. It will allow you to portray a professional image and encourage users to make online orders and enquiries. It is more important in my opinion to realise that without useful content, which is focused around your target key phrases, having a beautiful website design will do you little good, since the search engines will have no reason to send any traffic your way.