Pay Per Click | Adsense | Adbrite | Affiliate

What They Never Told You About Adsense!

2008-07-18T22:20:00.011-07:00

That's right! Many webmasters are getting suckered into joining adsense in hopes of earning quick cash. What they aren't being told is that it's harder than that.

Though google adsense is still one of the best programs out there to earn revenue from your site, there is more to it than that. For example if you think you can just past the links in your site content and watch the money flow in well... In truth few people ever get that lucky some of have to work at it for a while before we get our cash. One of the few mistakes people ever make is thinking google adsense does all the work for you.

Of course we all know that adsense has the most features out there and that it is the best in customer support. Still though if you have a hard time getting clicks off your adsense account, you are not alone. Truth is even though most people may find the ads relevent, many surfers out there have caught the anti-ad bug. This is due to the fact that most ads on sites always misleed you. Everyone knows free hats,free ps2s, and just about free everything. Wich in reality you won't get the said materials. So even though they see an ad they what to click they will not click on thinking that it will mislead them.

This is partly due to the fact that many ads are circling the net with false promises. There exist no way to get past this except fooling the users into thinking that the link is not an ad but a link written by you. Though this is hard hence the ads by gooogle label that goes with every adsense advertisment. But that's why most people get more clicks by blending their ads with their content. Though they the ads by google they believe the links are not misleading since the sites are part of your site.

It's like soldiers when they wear camo. They want to blend in as much as possible. Well try it and see what you get!

What The Adsense Top Earners Are Doing To Constantly Increase Their Earnings

2008-07-18T22:20:00.009-07:00

It is really frustrating, is it not, to log into your Google Adsense earnings and find that you've had yet another disappointing day. Another day of making nothing or just a fraction of a penny.

More so when you continue to read about those guys making five figure monthly incomes from Google Adsense every day. Google Adsense terms and conditions require that earnings are kept secret. Still some of these guys claim that they obtained special permission to spill the beans. One of them recently revealed that they had made $45,000 in just one month. Perusing through the statement, there were single days where they made as much as 800 bucks. Can you imagine that?

Sorry, it is not my intention to make you feel worse than you already are so I will stop there and get on with my findings.

This article is based on my investigative journalism skills. Yep, some of us are still using skills we acquired years ago from our offline days. My objective was to find out as much as I could about what these top earners were doing different from the rest of us.

High Adsense Earners Do Exist

But first I had to establish whether these high earners existed at all. After all anybody can get online and tell all sorts of lies about anything. My investigations started off trying to separate the hype from the facts which is an almost-impossible task these days. I have read several articles by sceptics which clearly state that most of these so-called high earners do not exist.

Well the truth is that despite the high number of hype peddlers out there, these guys are for real.

Without disclosing too much about some of my sources whom I intend to use in the future and can therefore not disclose, there are several pieces of evidence that point not only to their existence, but to their growing numbers.

The first is the amazing pace at which Google earnings from this business is growing. Check any top affiliate program and compare their figures to Google Adsense and you will begin to see what I mean. Google is a public company and their figures from earnings are widely available.

Adsense Keywords Do Matter

High traffic is important and effective online traffic tools are well known. They include for example PPC ads, including the very same Adsense ads. Articles are increasingly important because when it comes to traffic, the numbers are not enough, the quality of the traffic is also very important.

But the absolutely critical factor in achieving high Adsense earnings is not traffic. It is actually the keywords used. With the difference in earnings from a click ranging from a fraction of a penny to $100, you can begin to appreciate what we are saying here.

This is the reason why almost everybody else is selling those lists online these days.

My investigations unearthed evidence that those top earners are constantly researching new keywords. They spend a lot of time doing that (more time than they spend doing anything else) and to pay for some of their wasted efforts (every genuine research effort will have plenty of that) some of them are peddling the lists that they have graduated from or do not need anymore. Before you get upset please remember that this is standard business practice. A smart entrepreneur always minimizes on wastage of any kind.

Generally there are some keyword topics that pay more than others. To give you just two examples, health and electronics generally score much higher across the board than other areas of interest in terms of high earning keywords. The top earners are using this information

Hire an Adsense Expert

This is the most amazing aspect my research unearthed.

By Christopher Kyalo

How to Increase Your AdSense Revenue Stream

2008-07-18T22:20:00.007-07:00

Google's AdSense program is one of the best, if not the best, revenue programs for web site managers. While the program has certainly created wealth for many site owners, there are opportunities for you to increase your wealth if you follow these important strategies.

1. Increase Your Content. A small 8-10 page site can generate AdSense revenue particularly if the information is up to date and the site is well maintained. A better option: increase your site's size by at least tenfold and include AdSense ads on those pages as well. So, you're not a writer? Don't let that stop you! There are plenty of article submission sites on the internet which will allow for you to take their content and include it on your site as long as all the links listed within the article remain in place.

2. Experiment With Ad Placement. Ads that are clean, borderless and above the fold of the screen are certain to get noticed. Google has some wonderful tips on their site outlining the best strategies for ad placement; incorporate their suggestions and your revenue will increase.

3. Wrap Your Article. Your ads can appear right in the middle of your article [actually, to the left or to the right of it] and the text of the article will wrap around your ad. Guess what? Because Google does such a superb job of serving relevant ads, your readers will notice that the ads served match your content. They will click for more information it they notice the ad.

4. Declutter Your Site. An overcrowded page will look too busy, distract your readers, and cause them to move on without clicking on your ads. Make your site as visually appealing as possible; use Verdana or Arial as your fonts, black or navy as the font colors, size your fonts appropriately. Have your ad match your page color, omit borders, and go for a clean look.

5. Use Channels. Google has this to say about channels:Channels provide you with a way to view detailed reporting about the performance of your pages. By assigning a channel to any combination of pages, you can track a variety of metrics across your sites. Track your leaderboard performance versus the performance of your towers, or compare your motorcycle pages to your automobile pages, by assigning each group of pages to a specific channel and comparing results in your custom channel reports. You can even assign a channel to each of your separate domains, to see where your clicks are coming from.Naturally, by utilizing channels you will learn the specific amount of income generated by each page and then be able to adjust your pages accordingly.

6. Include High Paying Keywords. Some keywords pay more than others, much more in fact. You may be generating steady income, but at a nickel or dime a click that does not translate into much money. Learn which words pay more and include content containing those words.

AdSense revenue can vary greatly from month to month and you will even hear stories of people making a living off of Adsense. You can, but you need to do plenty of work by building a site that is relevant, AdSense popular, and loaded with content.

By Matthew Keegan

Internet Advertising Options

2008-07-18T22:20:00.005-07:00

Your online business will likely require more advertising than a contemporary business downtown, yet some new to the world of online business do not spend the time and money to advertise their business appropriately and are, in turn, losing money. Your online business is crammed into the world wide web along with thousands of others selling the same product or service as yourself. Consider this scenario: In your hometown you want to open an art supply store. In that same town there are thousands of art supply stores. In order for your business to be successful, it will have to stand out in some way from the others. This is exactly what is happening when a business is opened online. There is so much competition, that you must take drastic measures to ensure that you are getting noticed. Advertising can be done in so many ways online. These are some of the most successful ways that you can promote your online business.

Advertising in e-zines is a popular way to promote your online business. Ezines are the magazines of the internet; they written on a particular subject and read by those interested in that subject. Therefore, ezine readers are already potential customers and advertising your site in ezines that are related to your business is almost guaranteed to help drive traffic to your site and increase sales for your product. You should be sure when advertising in ezines that you are not advertising along side competitors. Ask the ezine producer if there is a policy concerning posting competing ads. It is also a good idea to subscribe to the ezine before making a decision about whether or not to advertise in it. An ezine that runs fewer ads is a better choice than one that runs many ads. You can look at the online Directory of Ezines to find publications that are relevant to your company.

Pay-per-click programs are an excellent way to advertise your business without taking a risk that you have advertised in the wrong place. With pay-per-click, you can advertise you site and only pay for those who click the link and go to your site. Another popular pay-per program is the pay-per-lead program that allows you to only pay for leads. Usually this means that you pay for only those who download a trail, fill out a form or enter a sweepstakes; whatever you choose. Lastly you can display pay-per-click banner ads in which your company would be allowed to place a banner on their site and you will be charged for every click that your banner receives.

Opt-In email is a great way to advertise your business, however it is expensive and it can be misused very easily. Using opt-in emails, you would submit your sales copy to the company that will in turn email it to those on their mailing list. You should be very careful since some of the companies that advertise their mailing lists as opt-in email service is sometimes really SPAM. It is essential that you have a perfect and effective sales letter when using opt-in mailing lists. Without and effective sales copy your money and time have been wasted.

Advertising Click Fraud Rampant Online?

2008-07-18T22:20:00.003-07:00

"Pay-per-click," by far the most popular form of online advertising, recently came under fire as charges of rampant "click fraud" gather steam on the Web.

Google and Yahoo! earn the majority of their money through sales of advertising to tens-of-thousands of online merchants, companies, and professional.

In fact, some estimate that 99% of all Google's revenue comes from advertising sales. Unfortunately, allegations of click fraud may well rain on Google's otherwise sunny parade and cause a whole scale revamping of current online advertising practices.

Pay-per-click advertising does exactly what it sounds: advertisers pay for each click on their ad, usually mixed in among search engine results or displayed on relevant websites.

"Click fraud" occurs when, for whatever reason, an ad gets clicked by someone or something (usually an automated "bot" that simulates clicks) with no intention of ever buying anything from the advertiser.

The sole intention of click fraud is to simply drain an advertiser's budget and leave them with nothing to show but an empty wallet.

Who commits click fraud?

Usually an unscrupulous competitor who wants to break a rival's bank, online "vandals" who get their kicks causing other people grief, or search engine advertising affiliates who want to earn fat commissions by racking up piles of bogus clicks.

Regardless of who does it or why, click fraud appears to be a growing problem search engines hope stays under their advertising clients' radar.

This problem isn't exactly news to the search engine giants.

In fact, on page 60 of their 3rd quarter Report for 2004, Google admits that they have "regularly refunded revenue" to advertisers that was "attributed to click-through fraud."

Google further states that if they don't find a way to deal with this problem "these types of fraudulent activities could hurt our brand."

Bottom line for Google and Yahoo! (which owns Overture, the Web's largest pay-per-click search engine): as word of click fraud spreads across the Web, they must act quickly to calm the nerves of advertisers who could well abandon them over doubts about the veracity of their advertising charges.

The search engines all claim to carry measures that identify and detect click fraud, but details about how they do it and to what extent remain sketchy.

They claim revealing details about security would compromise their efforts and give the perpetrators a leg up on circumventing their defenses.

This sounds good, but affords little comfort to advertisers who feel caught between losing out on their best traffic sources and paying for advertising that won't result in revenue.

One way to protect your business against click fraud is to closely monitor your website statistics.

Look for an unusually high number or regular pattern of clicks from the same IP address.

If you need help, enlist the aid of your hosting provider to aid you in spotting suspicious trends in your website traffic.

Also, a number of services such as ClickSentinel.com have sprung up online to help advertisers spot and quickly analyze and compile the data necessary to effectively dispute fraudulent click charges with the search engines.

By Jim Edwards

How to Beat Your Rivals on Google AdWords

2008-07-18T22:20:00.001-07:00

Google AdWords is a great tool for driving traffic to your site; but you need to know how to make the most of the system. Many people just find they end up spending loads of money bidding on super-competitive keywords and sooner or later their ads get disabled for under-performing. While your competitors seem to be getting the top spot time and time again! Want to know how to beat them? Read on..

1. Always specify negative keywords. For example, if your product requires payment, include -free as a negative keyword; that way your ad won't be shown to people who include free in their search and you won't have to pay for visitors who have no intention of spending any money!

2. Bid on AS MANY relevant keywords as possible. If you're only bidding on a dozen keywords then you're probably bidding on the same ones as all your rivals and you'll end up having to pay too much per visitor. If you can think of interesting new combinations of keywords that none of your rivals are bidding on, you'll be able to get high up the results very cheaply. Of course, these less common keywords get searched for less often and will therefore bring in less visitors, but because you're paying less, these visitors are potentially more profitable.

3. Try to split your keywords into groups of similar words and then create a separate campaign for each group. In each campaign you can reword your ads so that they are exactly relevant to those keywords. This will dramatically improve the click-through rate. If you Ad contains any of the exact words which the person searched for, then it makes those words bold, and they are more likely to be clicked on. So make sure that each campaign's advert is very closely relevant to the keywords/phrases you bid on.

4. The higher your click-through rate (CTR), the higher you ad will be shown. Even if you are bidding less money than the person above you, if your ad gets a higher CTR Google will show yours higher. If your ad does not get at least 0.5% CTR, google will disable your ad; so do not bid on keywords that are not directly relevant to your adverts!!

5. For every keyword or phrase you bid on, you should also bid on "keyword" and [keyword]. Putting the keyword or phrase into "inverted commas" means that your ad will show any time someone searches for that word/phrase as part of a search with other terms included, putting it in [square brackets], means that your ad will show when someone searches for that phrase and NOTHING else. Google prioritises ads that are closely targeted to what people have searched for, so this will help you get higher up the results.

6. Always run at least two, differently worded, ads for each campaign. Google will automatically show both adverts alternatively, and you can then see which advert gets a higher CTR (i.e. which ad people are more likely to click on). When you've had a good number of clicks you can decide which advert is most effective and delete the less effective one. Then create a new second advert and see if you can get a higher CTR with a different type of wording. This way you are constantly improving the wording on your adverts to make them as attractive and effective as possible.

By Steven

AdWords: Setting Your Max Cost Per Click

2008-07-18T22:19:00.017-07:00

We've received many emails from customers over the past several years asking how high we recommend setting AdWords' max cost per click. Generally, we recommend that our customers set the price somewhere moderately high, between the "base" rate and the max rate suggested by Google. For this entry though, I've decided to discuss a few options that may help you decide where to set your max cost per click to get a maximum return.

What kind of competition do you have?

Before you start, you'll need to do a little experimenting with the keyword tool and traffic estimator to see how high you'll need to bid. If the price to get your ad listed number one, in my opinion, it's a no-brainer. Bid what you need to bid to make sure that you have that number one spot. It will bring you the most visibility and generate the most clicks for your ad. Generally, the higher the ad, the better "quality" your clicks will be as well.

If the cost is relatively low, don't even think about it. Set your ads to be number one and then, if you're working with a limited budget, set your daily max spending limit to a number that is comfortable for you. It's generally better to have fewer clicks of "higher quality" than lots of clicks from "lower quality" traffic.

What if your keywords are highly competitive?

Some keywords in AdWords or in Overture (Yahoo Search Marketing) are incredibly expensive. Terms for gambling, web hosting, insurance, credit cards and many affiliate program related topics are very, very expensive. It's probably just not feasible for you to get the number one slot. If your budget is limited, you might get one to two clicks a day before the budget is gone. In these instances, you're going to need to pick a bid level that is comfortable for you and work on making your ads better. You aren't going to be able to get the top slot by bidding, so you'll need to increase your ad's click-through rate and make it more attractive to the viewers who do see it.

Experiment and decide

Ultimately, the decision is yours. I've found that it pays to have higher placed key words when possible. They seem to convert better than lower placed ads. You're going to have to experiment with your ads though to see what works best for you. Experiment for several days with different maximum click prices to see how your clicks and conversions rank. Only then can you make an educated decision for your website.

By Chris Burgess

How To Find Your Own Valuable Adsense Keywords For Free

2008-07-18T22:19:00.015-07:00

There's tons of money to be made from the Google Adsense program for web masters and blog owners. That's why "the vultures are circling" and folks are getting sucked in with all sorts of offers that promise instant high Adsense revenue. One of the top-selling products these days are those lists with the highest-paying Google Adsense keywords. Many people are desperately searching out for these lists and many will not hesitate to pay for them, especially because there are some keywords that are reputed to be capable of earning $100 per click.
I'm not saying all the lists are bad? In fact a good number of them are genuine and are created by high earning Adsense webmasters looking to maximize on their profits and to get something back from their time-consuming valuable keywords research efforts. Nothing wrong with that, in fact it makes perfect business sense. Except that you don't really need those lists, there is a better proven way to increase your Adsense earnings.
The Adsense Secret Is All About Finding A Niche
The most important Adsense secret you will discover is that to make money and be successful, all you need to do is to stick to the basic rules for success in online marketing. The basics are that you need to find a niche that is not so competitive and one which you can contribute something special to based on your past experience, knowledge and skills. Everything else will then fall into place after this. Virtually every subject and topic you can think of will have relevant and valuable keywords.
This is in sharp contrast to the approach being encouraged by list-sellers. Which is to start by finding high-paying valuable keywords and then creating sites or blogs based on them. To start with Google do not like the idea because one of their rules is that you should not create a site or blog for the sole purpose of making money from Adsense. Of course it is easy to get round this one by quickly creating some products around your site and you really don't need to care whether they sell or not, but who are you fooling?
The World Wide Web is increasingly busy and increasingly competitive and what this means is that niches are becoming increasingly vital and critical to online success.
You Will Earn More From Adsense With Multiple Sites/Blogs
Once you've found your niche, you can create a number of different sites narrowing your niche even further in different directions. I've used this strategy very successfully and I find that I am constantly coming up with new ideas for new sites without leaving my area of expertise. Of course I create relevant links between my different sites so as to maximize on the traffic that I receive. The important word here is "relevant". There is nothing that puts off folks more than clicking on a link only to find that it is barely relevant to the information they are seeking. You're wasting their time and they will not appreciate it. Better not to link at all in the first place.
What some high-earning Adsense folks have done is to create numerous blogs (some up to 50 and even more.) This strategy makes sense because the more pages you have with Adsense ads on them, the higher the chances of somebody clicking on some of the ads and therefore the higher your potential income. What I can't imagine is how they manage to keep all the different blogs fed with quality content. I once tried this strategy with just one or two sites and it was very exhausting getting content for sites outside my area of expertise. There are increasing reports of incidents of pirated online content and I guess you now understand part of the reason why.
When you stick to one subject, keeping all your blogs fed with content becomes a breeze. You simply take one idea and modify it or slant it differently for the different sites. Even more important, it is easy to use the same valuable Adsense keywords for all the sites as you discover them.
A Free Tool To Help You Find Valuable Adsense Keywords
Here is a valuable tool that I use myself to constantly research valuable Adsense keywords. While you do not need those valuable Adsense keywords lists, you need to constantly research valuable Adsense keywords for yourself. Top Adsense earners spend a vast majority of their time doing this. You need to do the same if you want to be earn a serious income from the Adsense program.
By Christopher Kyalo

Google Adsense: What You Need to Know!

2008-07-18T22:19:00.013-07:00

We read about how to develop a Google AdWord campaign, but where do these ads get featured? To think that the advertisements feature only on Google depending on the keywords searched by users is not true as that isis only part of the ad exposure. Google AdSense can be considered the other half of AdWords. AdSense allows website owners to feature relevant Google ads on their website which matches user profile with the profile requirement of each ad and also allows website owners to EARN revenue via the traffic generated by website.

So if you have a website which attracts decent number of hits every month, Google AdSense is probably a good revenue generation model for you and the below mentioned benefits should be effective to get you convinced:

Add a revenue stream to your business:

Google AdSense provides an added revenue stream to your business which is very easy to set up and has a robust backend application which delivers the most relevant ads to the most relevant target group.

Set up procedure is very simple:

You do not need any technology know-how when it comes to signing up with Google AdSense. A simple sign up process, subsequent approval, and copying some basic html code onto your website will get you started with Google ads on your site right away.

Immediate advertisers on your site:

Since Google already operates a very successful AdWords program, where thousands of advertisers sign up, you get immediate advertisers who would like to be featured on your website. No sales or marketing is required by you to get advertisers at any stage.

Continuous Technology enhancement at no cost to you:

Google research team spends thousands of man hours in improving the AdSense programme so that users are directed to the most relevant ads and all this is available to you with no cost.

Don't fret if you don't have a high viewer ship rate on your site: You can still earn via Google AdSense. You can feature the Google search box on your site and the subsequent page displayed with the search results has ads featured on them which can be your revenue generating AdSense Campaign.

No Junk ads displayed on your website:

If you are concerned about displaying junk advertisements which might have no relevance to your website visitors, then Google AdSense is for you. Only relevant ads are displayed to users and that is picked by both the profile that you put together as well as the content on your website. A number of well defined filters work behind the AdSense programme allowing the application to be 'intelligent'.

Find Google ads a tad boring?:

You are not the only one. Even Google engineers realize that the ads need some colour to them and you can add that to the display option. This does not eat into the users' bandwidth and yet displays using a good colour combination on the website.

Google also operates a premium program for webmaster for the AdSense program if your website is attracting more than twenty million page views and five million search queries per month and this is known as AdSense Premier.

Getting started is easy:

It is difficult not to be convinced about the AdSense program, and you can start off quite easily with a single page form which requires basic information about the type of account you would like to have ( business or individual), website information, select product ( AdSense for Content or AdSense for Search) and contact information. Login needs to be created simply with a valid and frequently accessed email address. All the information submitted is sent to Google for approval and on approval, you receive a link to fetch code from which you need to post on your website and you are ON!

AdSense is an easy program to understand and implement and has already provided a steady source of income for many a net entrepreneurs! What are you waiting for?

By Matt Bacak

Google Adwords: Here is Why It Can Explode Your Business!

2008-07-18T22:19:00.011-07:00

The beauty of Google Adwords set up is its simplicity. Google programmers seem to be a close follower of the maxim taught by Edward Debono when it comes to simplicity. Signing up and getting started is very easy and takes a few minutes to get your campaign rolling.

If you are new to the Google Adwords programme, all you need to do is relax, and go through the simple steps mentioned below to get you started off on one of the most technically advanced advertising plans on the internet:

Step 1: Define the eyeballs:

The first step would be to define the target group for your advertisement. There are multiple fields to select from which help you get the geography and language preference of the audience set up so that your ads are shown only to the relevant audience. This process results in an Ad Group, and you can define multiple Ad Groups for various campaigns.

Step 2: Word your ad:

All Google ads are text based and they are displayed in varying font sizes and color to define order and importance. Once your Ad Group is defined, you need to start putting the advertising message together. This is a bit tricky as you need to get the communication within preset character limits. You can write a headline of up to 25 characters, and a two line message of 95 characters. It might be a good idea to take a look at other Google ads in order to understand the choice of words for the ad. After the descriptions are done, you can enter a display URL.

Once the ad itself is put together, you can select the keywords for which the advert should show up. You need to careful with your selection here as your selection of keywords is going to be the key to success (as well as critical for your billing at Google) of your campaign. You can get a lot of help from the keyword tool which helps you find alternate keywords as well. It is recommended that you start with a few keywords in the first place and then proceed to add keywords as the campaign progresses.

Step 3: Define the commercials:

Here's when we need to start sorting out the preferred currency of billing and display. Google does not allow you to change currency of preference once you have set it so you need to be sure which currency you would like to be billed in.

Google Adwords allows you to set pricing of each click. The system would suggest you a maximum cost per click (CPC) which you can choose or define a CPC which you are willing to spend. The 'Traffic Estimator' allows you to see a hypothetical scenario of the traffic you can expect with each type of CPC you choose along with the cost of campaign. This helps you in choosing the keywords effectively.

The commercial section does have a number of sub steps to follow! You now need to finally define what you would like to spend on the campaign. Google will display your ad only till such time the budget permits and then inform you about the expiry of budget. This feature allows you to stay within a pre-defined budget. Google Adwords also recommends a budget based on your previous selection. You can set your budget based on this recommendation.

Once you have completed setting your preferences on the system, Google Adwords gives you an opportunity to review all the details and then click on the final process of signing up for the service.

Step 4: Signing on the dotted line:

True to the rest of the process, the signing up process is really quite simple. All you need is a valid and frequently accessed email account and set up a password and you are ready to roll.

Getting started on Google Adwords is quite simple as you can see from the above steps. All the best with your online marketing campaign with Google AdWords.

By Matt Bacak

Pay Per Click Advertising and Article Marketing Compared

2008-07-18T22:19:00.009-07:00

At first glance, Pay Per Click advertising seems to be the fastest way to send targeted website traffic to your websites online. You choose some keywords and add your website's url and you are done. However, with most things online the competitive search terms are often very expensive and you spend lots of money to win the Pay Per Click wars. This article will list five reasons why article marketing may be better than Pay Per Click Advertising.

Permanent links

Anyone knows that once you stop paying for your pay per click results, you will stop getting website traffic. Articles on the other hand always stay on the pages of a high traffic website if added. This is like opening a shop in a busy shopping mall. You get more targeted website visitors this way quite easily. Once readers read the targeted articles and then click through to your website, they are in the mood to read whatever offers that you can sell and you tend to make more money this way as they treat you as an expert if they like your article. Thus in article marketing, you get traffic on a continuing basis and not just when you pay for it.

Viral effect

Not only that if publishers like your work, they put it on all their websites and send it to their newsletters with many readers and some of these readers will start clicking to your website and signing up or purchasing whatever you are promoting. Some readers if they like your article will forwarding the email to their friends and make you even more money. Some other publishers will start adding your article to their blogs and generate even more website traffic for your website that you are marketing. The more targeted website traffic the more money you will start making.

Page Rank

The basis of Search Engine Optimization ("SEO") today is based on PageRank and website traffic. Granted that you know how you get added website traffic with article marketing, we now turn to SEO. The major search engines today looks at the number of inbound links from targeted website pointing to your website. This means that if you have a cooking website, the more links to your website from cooking websites the better. Article marketing works in the same way as if your business is on health for instance and you write health articles, your publishers are going to be health websites and your PageRank due to the number of inbound links pointing at your website will increase. Your search engine rankings will also start climbing and you will start getting more targeted website traffic and make more money.

Price

Writing your own articles and publishing them can be free as compared to paying for Pay Per Click Advertising and the more articles you write the more well known you will be and the more targeted website traffic you will get. Why spend hundreds each month on Pay Per Click advertising when you can start getting website traffic for almost free by writing articles on topics relevant to your particular internet business. But that said, time is what you will be spending so if you want the easy way out, get someone to ghost write an article for you. You can get it for $5 per article or less at websites like Elance.com or getafreelancer.com.

In conclusion, this article highlights four reasons why Article Marketing is a good way to consider especially if you are on a tight budget and its ability to send your website continuous targeted website traffic is something that you should consider carefully if you want to use this method of online promotion.

By Joel Teo

Pay Per Performance Web Traffic

2008-07-18T22:19:00.007-07:00

Why should you pay to get web site traffic, isn't SEO enough?

It's a fair question - after all most businesses on and offline have tight budgets to play with and need to make each and every penny count. So why should you as a business pay good money to drive targeted traffic to your site?

Perhaps there's a clue in the last question.

What other options are there?

You have 3 basic choices to get traffic to your website:

1. You pay - using PPC, ezine ads, banners etc...

2. You borrow - constructing Joint Ventures and endorsed offers with partners

3. You grow your own - with natural search engine optimisation

So which is the best?

Well they all do a different job and have different characteristics, perhaps the best information source you could hope to find on the subject is found here: http://www.trackingandtesting.com/dystatic/TrafficGeneration.php

But why PPC?

You need PPC because you can:

* Control the flow of traffic to your website

* Target buying customers and those most likely to buy through correct keyword targeting

* Test different offers

The last benefit above is perhaps the most important. Remember a page on a website doesn't have to stay recorded online forever...

Just because you've completed your site in terms of the pages you want to add (although in truth you'll never be finished as you can continually add more related content), this does not preclude you from testing other pages...

The value of testing

Simple scenario: You want to test 2 price points for a product/service. (Yes you can do this and people don't have to know about it so don't be worried).

With a PPC campaign you can have your normal web page (Page A) sitting as normal at the well known web address with all of your normal links pointing to it.

You 2 price point test pages (Page B & C) are a different kettle of fish - they sit off to the side and you push traffic to them using PPC to quickly determine which is the winner.

You can do this for any test you dream up, the bottom line is you can quickly determine what is working and what is not in your marketing.

Knowing what's not working is more important than what is (particularly if you are sailing close to the wind) because you SAVE money you would otherwise have thrown away.

The Affiliate Advantage

When you have a website that is converting well, you will be able to attract many affiliates (and even super affiliates if you are doing a good enough job and providing a good enough incentive package).

Affiliates can make your business explode overnight if you have done your homework and have the site converting well.

If you have not you may attract them, they may pump some traffic and then they will disappear to pastures new when they see you are not doing a good job.

In summary

If I could give you one reason why you should use PPC and in particular Google Adwords as part of your internet marketing campaign it would be this:

"Feedback fast, feedback cheap"

Yes you may spend a little money up front, but you can save yourself a whole lot of heartache on the back end.

By Tom O'Brien

Cost Per Click Bid Management

2008-07-18T22:19:00.005-07:00

Cost per click or pay per click is a common phrase among internet marketers. It is fast catching up the SEO world. Here is an introduction...

What do you mean by Pay per click (PPC) Search engine marketing? When you ask a Internet surfer about cost per click search engines they view it as a search engine where you search for information. But when you ask the same question to a person who runs paid inclusion in search engines it is an inexpensive way to drive targeted traffic to their website.

This is how Pay per click works, if any one wants to bid on keyword in search engines for their website they open an account with these search engines which needs some amount as deposit to start with. After creating the account with search engine the next step is to enter the URL of the website, a creative Title, and a description and bid on keywords. The keywords are identified and researched carefully before bidding. So every marketer chooses the right keyword to target.

So when a visitor searches for a certain keyword for example "shoes" the information you had given appears in the sponsored links of that search engines. Sometimes your website would be displayed above all the organic listing in the search. So in that way you website is found by the visitor who is intending to buy "shoes".

Major PPC search engines?
There are numerous search engines out there but the top ones are Google Adwords, Overture and Findwhat how has got a major share in the PPC search engine market.

Initial investment for starting a PPC Campaign - There is nothing like minimum investment expect some amount for activating your account you can start the campaign for which ever amount you want even with Dollar Five. And the price of your keyword can be decided by yourself. Also you can adjust the price of the keyword according to your requirements. If the keyword you have picked doesn't gets your enough satisfaction you can drop it and pick a new work which works for you.

The bottom-line is Bidding the right keyword for you PPC campaign is key for a successful pay per click search engine marketing.

This article was written by Thomson Chemmanoor

Campaign Strategy for Paid Placement

2008-07-18T22:19:00.003-07:00

Campaign strategy for Paid placement:

A Paid Marketing campaigns provides immediate search engines rankings for your most important keywords. It doesn't determine weather it is a dynamic, static or flash based website. A paid PPC Marketing campaign should be well versed and knowledgeable based marketing that fits your requirements. Your PPC campaign should be unique and designed to your company's marketing objectives.

Understanding the objective of your Pay per click campaign management should be your first goals. During that state you should determine which PPC search network is a best suit for your which return maximum cost-per-click for your selected key words and key phrases and aim at getting maximum return on investment (ROI)

Goals for PPC Marketing campaign Strategy:

1) Your first goal is to generate leads, increase sales and signup for your businesses.

2) What is the rate of clicks you receive per day per week and per month from what search network and also from which keyword phrases?

3) How does it cost for you per lead from the clicks?

4) What is your cost per acquisition per click?

5) How many order do you receive from your PPC Marketing campaign?

6) What is the conversion rate per click?

7) How good is your profit for PPC Bid campaign and how much is the margin

8) Who are your competing websites?

9) Cross check your campaign with other PPC campaign if you are running one.

The bottom-line is monitor your PPC campaign which is key for a successful pay per click search engine marketing.

This article was written by Thomson Chemmanoor

How You Can Make Serious Money Self-publishing With Adsense

2008-07-18T22:19:00.001-07:00

Some folks may think that self-publishing began with the invention of the PC (personal computer) and others may be convinced that it has really taken off with the arrival of Adsense.

It is important to understand what self-publishing is and its' enormous potential to fully appreciate and indeed take advantage of Adsense. Actually self-publishing (the act of producing and marketing your own writing) is as old as America. It is an American tradition that is very much part and parcel of the American dream. Ben Franklin was one of the first Americans to self-publish and many others have followed since. Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn was self-published. As was Ulysses, Lady Chatterley's Lover and the Tarzan series amongst a host of other popular classics that would never have existed without the authors ignoring publisher's rejection lips and taking the bold step of publishing their own work.

There are thousands of other examples from recent times that we can mention here but the point is that a few important developments in recent times have only helped to fuel the power of self-publishing but did not trigger off this revolution. The personal computer put a very powerful publishing tool on the desktop for the first time allowing the easy setting of type and design for publishers at a tiny fraction of what is cost previously.

Then the World Wide Web came along and proved to be many wonderful things to a self-publisher. They could use it to promote their work and sell millions of copies of their self-published work all over the world. Suddenly there was no niche that was too small to be viable. Then the Internet could also be used to publish online at a cost that was very close to zero.

Still, as wonderful and revolutionary as these developments were, none of them comes anywhere near what Google Adsense has done for self-publishers world-wide. Understanding this will open your eyes and enable you to fully cash in using Adsense as an key part of your online self-publishing efforts.

With Adsense, Traffic Does Not Matter In Online Self-publishing, As Much As Relevance And The Right Well-paying Keywords

I often wonder if those guys at Google fully understood the impact of what they were doing when they decided to open Adsense for smaller sites and blogs with very little traffic. Sure, they must have done it knowing that it would have an impact on their bottom line, but did they know that it would start an online revolution with far-reaching effects and impact? I doubt it.

You will already be aware of the fact that thousands of online concepts were dead in the water as far as making a profit online and this situation has been changed dramatically by Adsense.

Now anybody with a site online can apply to Adsense to carry their ads and within no time, the new revenue stream will be putting money into their pockets. You will of course need to do a lot of work to get to use the highest-paying keywords for every content written for your site. But the really exciting bit for online self-publishers is the fact that even a few visitors every day, clicking on high-paying Adsense ads will earn them lots of cash.

But let's be extremely careful here because Adsense rules do not encourage folks to start web sites or blogs with the sole intention of making money from Adsense ads. And if truth be told, anybody who does this is leaving a lot of easy money on the table.

Why It Is Important To Combine Adsense With Other Profit Centers In Self-Publishing

What Adsense has done, is introduce a revenue stream that helps a site focus more closely on its niche subject, and actually sets it up for success.

By Christopher Kyalo

Three Google Adwords Secrets for Massive Online Profits

2008-07-18T22:18:00.007-07:00

If you know anything at all about Internet marketing, then I'm sure you're aware of how powerful a tool Google Adwords can be. At the same time, if you're like most marketers, you're still looking for a way to really cash in on this fantastic marketplace innovation.

Google Adwords is more than just a tool for earning affiliate commission through a one-time sale. I'll show you how to go much further, and to develop revenue streams that grow bigger and bigger year in and year out.

1. Have your cake and eat it too. When promoting merchant sites, set up your Google Adwords campaign so each person who clicks on your ad is taken to a newsletter sign-up page. Then be different from the majority of newsletter owners by giving them valuable information and making a genuine effort to help them succeed.

Recommend quality multi-tier affiliate programs and residual income opportunities to grow your downline, then take them by the hand and aid them in developing strong online incomes, which will help you to succeed as well. By doing so you will earn their trust and give them something to lose, and they will be your subscribers for life!

2. Give away a free viral special report and give them a huge incentive to give it away. Remember, every time something with your website address on it is given away, you're getting free publicity, which ultimately means more hits on your website.

You can use this free special report as an incentive to sign up for your newsletter, but another method is to give away the free item first, and then entice them to sign up for your newsletter within the ebook by offering them another freebie; if you play your cards right you'll be able to monetize them from both free items, and through your newsletter for as long as you provide them with valuable content.

3. Write an article about a creative marketing concept, and then tie in two to four affiliate links to products that help them to monetize this unique idea you are proposing. Try to make this article 1000 to 1500 words, long enough to go into some detail, but not enough to give the whole concept away.

Through this method you will be able to monetize your readers from, 1. the "sleeper links" in your article, 2. a ten to fifteen page viral special report that they can get by subscribing to your ezine, 3. your ezine, of course, and 4. the people who eventually receive the special report through the actions of others.

You can even capture the e-mail addresses of these people as well. Your profits are limited only by your thinking, so try to come up with some creative ideas to continue this profit cycle for as long as possible!

All three of these simple concepts have one thing in common: making a concerted effort to give your visitors something valuable that they can immediately apply to start profiting from it. Also remember never to share every marketing secret known to man with them; leave the meatiest information for the ebook that you'll sell later!

**Attn Ezine editors/Site owners** Feel free to reprint this article in its entirety in your ezine or on your site so long as you leave all links in place, do not modify the content and include our resource box as listed above.

Feel free to substitute your referral link in place of ours in the resource box. Thanks!

By Wanna

Broad, Phrase, Exact, Negative - Four Google AdWords Terms You Must Know for Advertising Success

2008-07-18T22:18:00.005-07:00

A few days ago, I was setting up my latest Google AdWords campaign. My brother was watching me work through the process, and he asked me:

"Why do you put quotation marks and square brackets around some keywords?"

I was a bit surprised to realise that I couldn't actually answer him - not in any definite way, at least. So, I set to work finding out what the matching options mean, and how they affect results.

First up is the default, Broad Match. This is where a keyword phrase is written as is, for example: google adwords

This method means that your Ad will potentially be shown to anyone searching for 'google' and 'adwords', in any order and possibly with other terms. So, anyone searching for 'adwords google help' could see your Ad.

Next is Phrase Match. This is where a keyword phrase is enclosed by quotation marks, for example: "google adwords"

This is essentially the next step up from Broad Match - your Ad could be shown to anyone searching for 'google' and 'adwords', but only in that order, and possibly with other terms included in the search. So, 'how to start a google adwords campaign' could trigger your Ad to be shown.

The last in the 'positive' matching options is Exact Match. This is where your keyword phrase is enclosed by square brackets, for example: [google adwords]

This is the most specific of the three types. In this case, your advert will only be shown if somebody searches for 'google adwords' in that order and with no other terms.

These options each have their own merits, but generally, the more specific the search term, the higher your CTR (Click Through Rate).

If you have a small niche to start with, then Broad Match will give you the most exposure. The downside is that the large number of triggering phrases could push your CPC (cost per click) up, as a result of competition.

Larger markets require highly-targeted Ads, and this is where Exact Match (and Phrase Match, to an extent) comes into play. Imagine trying to get clicks from keywords such as 'car parts' compared to 'ford fiesta rear wheel bearing'. Obviously, the more specific your keyword terms, the more likely you are to get an interested visitor to your site.

The last of the keyword matching options is Negative Keyword. This is where a keyword is precluded by a minus sign, for example: -tricks

This stops your Ad from being shown if somebody searches using that term. For example, 'google adwords tricks' would stop your Ad from being shown.

This is useful for prequalifying prospect clients - if you are trying to sell something, then '-free' would be a good term to include in your Keyword list.

Of course, as with any marketing campaign, which of these methods will work best for you is unpredictable, so always remember to test, test test!

If you need more help with setting up your Google AdWords campaign, this particular resource is one that I found useful when starting up: Adword Equalizer - http://www.rob-barrett.co.uk/recommendations_marketing/google-adword-equalizer.php

Best of luck with your Google AdWords campaign!

By Rob Barrett

6 Easy Ways to Increase Your Adsense Revenue

2008-07-18T22:18:00.003-07:00

How much revenue do you generate from Google Adsense?

Recently there has been a lot of discussion about people who earn over $10,000 a month just from Adsense. Furthermore, there are rumors of a few individuals who earn over $1 million a year just from using the power of Google advertisements.

So what is Google Adsense and how can you use this program to earn a six-figure income?

About two years ago, Google created this program to help websites to monetize their web-traffic.

Here's how it works:

Webmasters obtain a special code from Google which then displays targeted ads on their website. Whenever a visitor clicks on one of these ads, the webmaster earns a commission. Unlike other online businesses, there is no selling involved. All you need to do is get people to click on the ads.

Although this is an excellent way to generate an income, many websites are not effectively maximizing their Adsense potential. As a result, they are leaving a lot of cash on the table.

The question is how can you increase your Adsense revenue without increasing the number of web visitors?

The key to earning an income with Google Adsense is to have your ads match the rest of the site, making them look like part of your content. Your focus is to avoid having the Adsense blocks look like blatant advertisements.

The following are six ways that you can do this and increase your revenue at the same time:

1) Find the right place- Most website visitors read content that is in the middle of a webpage. As a result, the best place to put your Adsense block is in the top part of the page, at the beginning of your web content. You want to weave the Google Ads into your web content to give the appearance that they are extra links which expand on the information of the page.

2) Use the Large Rectangle-With Google Adsense, you have the option of picking different ad formats. Most of the time people opt to use the Leaderboard (728x90) or Wide Skyscraper (160x600) style ads. Unfortunately, this is the wrong choice, because both look like blatant advertisements. Instead smart webmasters have found that using the Large Rectangle (336x280) yields the best amount of click-thrus.

3) Ditch the border- Many people experience a sharp increase in Adsense revenue when they changing their border. What they change is very simple?they get rid of the border on their Adsense blocks. This is another way to make the advertisements look like useful web content.

4) Adapt the font- Whenever you write content, it should be the same font size and style as your Google Adsense block. This will help make it appear that the advertisements are a natural part of your website.

5) Match the colors- In addition to changing the fonts, you also should match the colors of your website. For instance, if your content is written in black, and your hyperlinks are blue, then the Adsense blocks should also be the same color. Again, this helps the advertisements appear to be normal web content.

6) Don't have too many distractions- On a webpage, it is important to give web visitor a limited number of options. By having too many links and graphics, the web visitor might go to a section that doesn't help increase your profits. While it is important to inform and entertain your web visitor, it is also vital that you monetize your site. So if the main focus of your site is to earn an income through Google Adsense, then get rid of all non-essential links and graphics.

By taking the time to implement these six simple steps, you'll see a dramatic increase in the click-thru ratio of your ads. If added to all of the content of your site, your Adsense income will skyrocket!

By Scott J. Patterson

Work Your Google AdSense to the Bone!

2008-07-18T22:18:00.001-07:00

You got your website, you got your AdSense account, you have updated and published your new pages with AdSense code all over it and you are starting to see a little bit of money trickling through - and it is not what you were expecting!

Like you, I thought I would be rolling in the AdSense money so fast that I already had my resignation letter printed and signed. That did not happen (yet). Well, that does not mean I have to throw that letter away, I will just have to backdate it for when I can do it.

When you are faced with this predicament, which I think everyone will come to at some point; you will need to separate yourself from the AdSense pack! You will have to transform yourself into an AdSense scientist and experiment with your website to get the best results possible! You might try some of the following:

Let's say that you are getting decent traffic to your website, so therefore you are getting a lot of AdSense impressions, but with little or no clicks. The symptoms could be related to a lack of relevancy with the AdSense ads. Go to your website and view, but DO NOT click on, your AdSense ads. Now, imagine you are one of your visitors to your website; do the ads seem relevant to your site? If you think there is a relevancy problem, you can do two things to combat it:

Look for a common thread among the AdSense ads and see if there is a term in your keywords or content that relates to it. If so, you might want to change the words to eliminate the connection.

Look at the web addresses at the bottom of the AdSense ads, you might consider blocking those web sites from your AdSense account, by doing this you will eliminate that ad from showing up again, but realize that you may get a similar ad to take its place.

Create more pages and add more content that is relevant. Make your website stickier. Make the visitor want to stay on your site longer.

Try not to think of AdSense first when putting your content together, think of your visitors and giving them something worthwhile, the AdSense stuff should just be a bonus, that is why it is considered passive income, it means you are not supposed to think about it!

Make sure you have positioned the ads well, do not hide them, do not be ashamed of them, you got them there for a reason!

Ensure that your site is well optimized - that everything it pointing to one thing - your targeted subject matter.

The problem could be that your keywords are just not that "lucrative", get yourself a listing of top paying keywords to ensure that you are using appropriate keywords that will bring in more money per click.

If you are consistently making a couple of bucks, a day or a week then replicate it. Create other web sites on different topics, different keywords. Make a couple of bucks a day or week with that one, and then continue to make another and another. Compound your efforts until you are making the kind of money you want to make.

Look for ways to increase traffic to your site, but keep it targeted and keep it relevant for your visitors and for your AdSense ads.

Make sure that the pages within your website are well linked; there is nothing more frustrating then not knowing where to go or where you came from.

Open a Google AdWords account and run ads to direct traffic to your site. Make sure that the margin between what you are spending on AdWords and what you are making on AdSense is significant enough to make this worthwhile. The great thing about traffic from your AdWords is that the visitor has shown a tendency to click on these ads already; they have pre-qualified themselves to do it on your site. You will hope that they will repeat their efforts on your site. To learn more about creating well targeted AdWords, click here!

That is it, do whatever strategy you can to work your AdSense to the bone! Make sure you do things legitimately, don't scam your visitors or manipulate them to make a few dollars with AdSense or any related program, the internet society has grown far too sophisticated to fall for anything like that, your site will be ignored and forgotten. Therefore, be a professional, treat your website like a business, and give your customers something relevant - then as an added bonus your AdSense ads will work with you.

By John Pignanelli

How to Boost Your Adsense Revenue?

2008-07-16T23:59:00.009-07:00

By using this tutorial you will learn how to increase web traffic and click-through rates. In short you can increase your Adsense income by increasing Impressions, Click-through and Effective CPM. Improving your web statistics in any, or preferably, all of these three key areas will increase your Adsense revenue.

Increasing Impressions (Increasing web traffic)

Basically the impressions are the number of times your web pages with Adsense ads have been viewed. So it is directly proportional to the number or visitors to your web site. So, you can increase Impressions by increasing traffic to your web site. Learn our tutorial http://www.roseindia.net/webpromotion/webpromotion.shtml on web promotion, which explains how you can increase your web traffic. In short here are some of the best ways to increase targeted traffic to your web pages:

More web pages means more traffic. So, create more web pages, with relevant, laser focused content.

Increase the link popularity for your web site

List your website/s under relevant categories in more directories

Set up a directory of relevant sites on your website and accept relevant reciprocal links

Write articles relevant to your web site and submit in the article directories

Increasing Adsense click-through Even if your web site is receiving a lot of traffic, you will be earn only if your visitors clicks on the Adsense Ads and visits the advertiser web site. Clickthroughs are nothing but it is percentage of viewers who click on your Adsense ads. You can increase click-through by increasing the relevance of Adsense ads on your site, and by tweaking the format and placement of your ads. You can try different placements and colors of the ads, but be careful that the ads mixes with the content of your web site style.

Try to make the different pages with different kinds of content. And make sure that these content pages are very clearly focused. Then Google will be able to serve highly relevant AdWords to your visitors. And in this way your visitors will be more interested in the ads, which results in higher click through rates -- and more money for you!

Increasing Adsense CPM

You can also increase your Adsense income by increasing Adsense CPM. The effective CPM is a measure of your average earnings, per thousand clicks. The CPM can be increased by selecting topics (keywords) that attract high bids from Adsense advertisers in your web pages. You can use overture bid tool http://uv.bidtool.overture.com/d/USm/search/tools/bidtool/ to find the bid amount for your key words. On the internet there are a number of keyword research tools available, both free and paid, that you can use to find the high paid key words.

In short here is steps that you should follow to Increase your total Adsense revenue:

Develop your web site using high paying key words

Design layout of your web site and put the ads focusing on the maximum click-through

Top 5 Secrets to Making Money with Adsense

2008-07-16T23:59:00.007-07:00

Did someone tell you you can make money easily with Google Adsense? Did they tell you that to put up a site and people will click on the ads and you can make hundreds of dollars per day?

Maybe that's true, for them, because they have a system to make this happen. They may have omitted how to make and Adsense site successful. In this article I will highlight the most important points to make your site successful.

5. Position your ads so that they look as if they are part of the content.

Position your ads so that the ads are in the visitor's field of vision. Although, you might think that putting the ads in the right and left columns keep your site clean, the clickthrough is not as effective as putting them in between the content. Look at your newspapers classifieds. Notice how many of the ads are surrounded by the actual articles? Same concepts apply here. At the very least do some of both.

4. Don't make the ads look like Ads!

People get turned off by ads with borders. We are psychologically trained to think that anything surrounded with a border is probably an ad. Look at all the print media and all over the web, and you'll notice that most ads have borders that alert visitors that they are ads. This is NOT what You want to do!

Go in your Google Adsense Layout tool and change the border colors and backgrounds to match your website colors. This will make them look like they are part of your site not ads. I cannot emphasize this enough.

Removing borders will increase your clickthrough rate immediately!

3. Add a Google Search Box on your website.

Such a simple thing but often overlooked. Did you know that if your site visitors use your Google Search box you get credited with a click? People surf the web for one primary reason -- to find information. Your website provides information. However, it is rare that we find what we want on one website. And, if we want more info we tend to want to search for more. How convenient to have a Google Search box at the end of your article!

2. Provide good content.

You may be tempted to put little content on your site. After all you want people to click on the ads not stay on your site. This may have some truth in it, but think of it the other way. Having valueable content on your site means that your visitors are more likely to bookmark your site, and the search engines will like your site better.

1. And the NUMBER ONE secret to Making Money with Adsense....

Put up as many sites as possible! Yes, this is what is never told to you. Why invest all your energy trying to get traffic to one site? What if the topic you chose is not a very popular one or has so much competetion that you get little traffic? A well known strategy is to put up as many sites as possible and then monitor the results to see which ones work and which ones don't. With the ones that do, put in extra effort to get more traffic to those sites.

To do this without buying a domain name for each one, get an account at a web host that allows unlimited subdomains. When you register a name get something general for each theme. Then use subdomains to make all the related sites.

Finally, if designing web sites is not your strong point, you can get pre-built sites and/or templates which are already layed out with the techniques I described. That will get you up and running pretty quick. Take a look at http://www.instant-adsense-websites.com.

Much Success!

By Frank Mamone

Seven Strategies to Bolster Your AdWords Campaign

2008-07-16T23:59:00.005-07:00

So, you've tried all the marketing techniques you have read about, and you're now ready to dabble on some pay per click magic. But this form of online wizardry needs more than just a sleight of hand, as it requires careful planning and a good sense of what should be expected.

We're talking about AdWords, that Google program that allows you to advertise your site through a link that is displayed prominently in every page of a search performed on keywords relevant to your business. The way it goes is that people would bid or certain keywords. The winner of the bid would have the link to his site attached to every query that contains the said keywords.

The bid price is not the only consideration in awarding keywords. Your Click Through Rate, or CTR, also plays an important factor. CTR is acquired by dividing the number of times a user clicks on your link whenever it appears on search engine results. Whenever your site's link appears in a search query, the event is called an impression. To illustrate, supposing your site's link appears 200 times in several searches. Your impression would be 200. Supposing further that 2 users click on your link during this period, your CTR would be 2/200, or 1%.

The best thing about AdWords is that the winner of the bid only has to pay when a user actually clicks on his link. This method has given birth to the term Pay Per Click, or PPC.

Here are some strategies to help you develop a strong AdWords marketing campaign.

1. RESEARCH YOUR KEYWORDS WELL. If you have an existing business, make sure that the keywords you will choose are widely used words or phrases that people type in their search queries. If you have yet to setup a business, make sure that the keywords you are considering are actually profitable, meaning, they cater to a market with a high demand.

2. CONSIDER CREATING MULTIPLE ADS FOR EVERY KEYWORD. By having several ads appearing for the same search query, you would be able to determine which works best. The ad that performs best should be used as a model for subsequent ones.

3. DO YOUR ACCOUNTING AND SET A BUDGET YOU'RE WILLING TO SPEND PER DAY. Google allows you to set a cap on the number of hits you could generate in a day. Study your finances and come up with a ceiling that would not eat up a substantial portion of your projected earnings.

4. WRITE YOUR ADS WELL. Make use of words that would attract the readers' attention. The words should be powerful without being flamboyant. The ad should also read nicely, with a good flow and accessible character. Do not write more than what is needed nor less than what is required.

5. ALWAYS STUDY YOUR ADS. Even if they are prominently being published on Google's search pages and producing passable CTRs, you should always take time to study and refine your ads. Changing their structure from time to time would also help in winning back the attention of those who have viewed them before. Dispose of the ads that are not performing well and design new ones.

6. TRACK YOUR ADS. There are many tools available on the net that would allow you to track which of your ads produce the most visitors. These tools would help you a lot in weeding out non-performing ads and discovering a pattern that makes your successful ones tick.

7. DESIGN NOW, ADJUST LATER. Since Google considers CTR before awarding a keyword, it is required that you produce a site that is rich with informative content. Content is what attracts visitors and increases your ste's CTR. Once a keyword has been awarded and your ads are producing a consistent number of hits, you could adjust your landing page to include a sales copy that would convert your visitors into successful sales. A good sales copy can also be informative despite being a sales pitch.

It has been said the Google AdWords is a fair playing field where the system does not choose between the rich and poor webmasters. But you could always play it smart and get the most out of AdWords.

By Dave Drake

Pay Per Click and Search Engine Optimization - A Perfect Marriage

2008-07-16T23:59:00.003-07:00

Pay per click or search engine optimization, which one should you use? Many view PPC marketing as a colossal waste of money while others disdain search engine optimization. In reality, the two marketing strategies form a perfect marriage.

Pay-Per-Click - PPC

PPC marketing is a love it or hate platform. For the "love it" crowd, PPC marketing is a way to get instant exposure and feedback on site designs. In a matter of minutes, you can start receiving traffic and adjusting your site to convert the traffic at the best rate possible. For those in the "hate it" crowd, bids are to high and one never knows how may of the clicks are fake and worthless.

Search Engine Optimization - SEO

As with PPC, seo marketing has its proponents and detractors. Those who love it look at the free traffic and glorious profitability of a site that converts the traffic at a decent rate. Detractors view seo as an unnecessary waste of time since it can take a year or more to get high rankings, particularly on Google. Detractors also argue that high listings are subject to changes in the search engine ranking process, which means you can lose your rankings.

So, who is right? In truth, both sides make accurate arguments. PPC is expensive and click fraud is a monstrous problem. Seo produces free traffic, but it takes along time to get to the top and rankings are subject to the whims of search engine ranking changes. The truth, of course, is both marketing platforms should be used whenever possible.

Marketing Marriage

Every site is unique, but most should combine PPC and seo marketing as part of an overall internet marketing strategy. When starting out, the PPC campaign is critical for getting immediate traffic and tweaking the site to maximize conversions. At the same time, a seo campaign should be undertaken. As the site rises in search results, the PPC campaign should be fazed out for the relevant high listings.

PPC and seo marketing are not mutually exclusive. When married together as part of an overall marketing strategy, both platforms will deliver the goods.

By Halstatt Pires

10 Great Things NOT to Do with Google AdSense

2008-07-16T23:59:00.001-07:00

There is no question that you can make some good money with Google AdSense, but you're setting yourself up for disaster if you make any of these Top 10 mistakes!

1. Do not use fake information when opening your Google AdSense account.

Google says that's a no-no and they will cut your account off and keep all the money you may have earned. Besides, trying to hide your true identity can cause serious problems with the I.R.S. or whoever your tax authority is.

2. Do not hack or modify Google AdSense code other than to change the parameters that Google authorizes you to change.

Any attempt to bypass Google's built-in algorithms not only poses a danger to the integrity of the network, but it threatens the financial modle that Google operates under. You're not dealing with some Mom-and-Pop company here, and Google has the legal muscle and deep enough pockets to drag you through every court in the land if you damage their business with your hacking antics.

3. Keep AdSense ads off of your registration, confirmation, and all "thank you" pages.

Don't ask me why you can't put your ads there. It makes sense to me that those would be wonderful locations. Google thinks otherwise, however, and doing so is a hanging offense according to their Terms of Service.

4. Do not display AdSense ads and a competitor's ads (like Overture's) on the same page at the same time.

That just makes plain good sense. Google doesn't demand 100% SITE loyalty from you, but they do insist that their own ads not be cluttered up by offerings from their competitors.

5. Don't "beg for clicks" or provide any incentive for clicking on your Google AdSense ads.

This is a biggie and you see this rule violated all the time. Any of the "get paid to do stuff" sites that put Google ads in the member's control panels are walking the plank and they don't even realize it. Even those sites with the polite little messages asking you to "help keep my site running by clicking on our sponsor's ads" are asking to be cut off if those happen to be Google ads.

6. Never click on the ads running on your own site, even if you are genuinely interested in the product or service and are thinking of buying it!

Nothing screams FRAUD louder than a webmaster running up his or her own click counts by happily clicking on ads fromtheir own site. The Google Gods can track this activity and it won't be long until you find yourself getting a goodbye note from their fraud team.

7. No misleading labeling

Google is very specific about what text can be placed around their ads. Their Terms of Service state: "Publishers may not label the ads with text other than 'sponsored links' or 'advertisements.' This includes any text directly above our ads that could be confused with, or attempt to be associated with Google ads."

This is to keep visitors from becoming confused and barking up Google's tree when they clicked on an ad that led to a porn site instead of the recipe site they were expecting to visit.

8. Avoid keyword spamming and other divisive tricks

You may be tempted to buy one of those "generates thousands of key-word rich pages in seconds" programs that are so popular these days but I'll tell you this: Their days are numbered. Google is wise to such shenanigans and they will be hot on your trail. Other prohibited gimmicks include:

? "Sneaky" page redirects that send a visitor off to a different site then they were expecting to visit.

? Multiple sites, domains, pages, etc. which have substantially duplicate content.

? Hidden text or links of any type.

? Excessive outbound links on any page. Google recommends no more than 100. I'd keep it way below that.

? And here is a nugget of wisdom straight from Google's mouth: "Do not participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web as your website may be affected adversely by those links.

9. Don't advertise anything on Google's prohibited items list.

It's a lot shorter lists than PayPal's or eBay's, but it includes a lot of the same stuff like hacking/cracking content, porn, illegal drugs, gambling sites, beer or hard alcohol (I guess wine is OK), weapons, and the other usual stuff.

10. And the 10th dumbest thing NOT to do with Google AdSense is to let the other nine things stop you from running an honest site that's designed to make the most out of this very profitable opportunity that Google offers!

Adsense Tricks to Explode Your Profits

2008-07-16T23:58:00.019-07:00

Lots of people say to make your ads blend in. However, some people are having a lot of success by making their links stand out. The most effective style seems to be having your links blue, while your other links are a less-noticeable color. A good example can be seen at www.lockergnome.com

- Place images directly above your ads. This simple technique has been known to increase CTR by 400%. To keep the images fresh some people randomize related images on their site using PHP code. You can see an example of these images at

http://www.how-to-make-money-online.info/

- Google has cited the 336x280 large rectangle as the most effective ad size.

- Place ads where your visitors will likely be focused.

Check out this heat map by Google -

http://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html

- Weave your articles into your content. This is shown at lockergnome.com

- Place link units in the top left-hand corner. This part of the website has shown to be clicked on more than any other part of the page. You can see an example at lockergnome.com. (Look at the links at the top, towards the left in blue.)

- Take advantage of the "alternate URL" feature to avoid Public Service Ads that seep money away from your website.

- One of the best things you can do is add additional pages to your site. A web site with thousands of pages and tons of content often does very well in the search engines. You can get free content from article directories. You could also use public domain content, which is a favorite tactic of John Reese. Or, you could use content in the creative commons. This is getting easier than ever now that Yahoo and others have created a search engine specifically for content in the creative commons.

Succeeding with adsense is largely determined by the amount of traffic to your site. However, there are many adsense tricks that you can employ to get the most possible out of your site. Often times, this means doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling your earnings. The key is to find out what works for your web site. Testing and tracking is the key to increased revenue!

By Alli Ross

When AdSense Goes AWOL

2008-07-16T23:58:00.017-07:00

No matter how hard you work to optimize your page, there are going to be times when Google just can't figure out which AdSense ad to deliver, so it defaults to delivering a PSA (Public Service Ad) instead.

Now I don't have any problem with charities, but I give to the ones that I choose to give to. Since I don't have a non-profit license of my own, the goal of my web site is to make money and I depend on Google AdSense revenues to help pay my bills. Someday I want it to fund my retirement as well, so I can't afford to have non-revenue PSAs showing up on my site.

The good news is the Google understands the human's basic greedy nature, so it provides us with an alternative to donating our precious web real estate to charitable organizations. That alternative is known as AdSense Alternate Ads.

As strange as it seems, this feature allows you to let Google competitors into your site. Don't worry, Google is allowing it with their eyes wide open. They even tell you how to set up the alternate ad code to work on your site and they let you do it right in your AdSense control panel.

Once you add the code to your site, Google will pull ads from whatever service you defined rather than serve a PSA. Google will do that even if those ads are coming from Yahoo, or Overture, or your grandmother's attic.

This goes a long way towards ensuring that you never lose an opportunity to monetize a visitor's time spent on your site. How nice it is of Google to gives us that opportunity.

Who do you choose?

Ah, now that's the big question. Most people head straight for Overture or Yahoo, but there are other fish in the sea worth considering. In fact, some of these fish make their living almost solely by serving replacement ads for PSAs. Run this search (http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official_s&hl=en&q=google+psa+alternatives&btnG=Google+Search) on Google and you'll have plenty of options to choose from.

Why bother?

Sometimes Google doesn't have any ads in its inventory to match your site's keywords. Sometimes Google gets confused and can't figure out which ads to deliver, so it grabs a PSA ad.

Google also has a not-so-readily-available list of what it calls "stop words". When the Google AdSense spiders detect these words on your page they automatically trigger PSAs. Some of the more commonly known words include severe profanity (think: George Carlin's 7 Words You Can't Say on T.V), as well as other words which may very be quite legitimate for your site such as pharmaceutical, drugs, death, dying, abortion, and the list goes on and on. At least we THINK that it goes on and on but no one really knows for sure outside of a trusted few Google staffers.

But no matter what the reason, you don't want non-revenue ads running on your site. There's no excuse when Google makes it so easy to keep the revenue flowing.

A Smart Trick for Attracting Higher Paying AdSense Ads

2008-07-16T23:58:00.015-07:00

There are no guarantees in life, so I don't guarantee that following these tips will bring you more money every time. However, I do guarantee that they will greatly increase your chances of pulling more of the top-paying AdSense ads to your site than if you don't follow these suggestions.

Enough with the disclaimers, let's get down to the business of making money. Google lets advertisers bid anywhere from a minimum of .05 per click right up to a whopping $100. It should be pretty obvious that you're not going to get rich running .05 cent ads on your site, but getting a few $100 ads, or even some $10, $20, or $30 ads can't be a bad thing, right?

Now the problem is, Google is pretty closed-mouthed about who is paying what for their ads, and there is no real way to determine which words pay the most per AdSense click.

But ah, far away in a parallel universe we find another Pay-Per-Click provider called Overture. It seems that Overture is less sensitive about releasing their top-priced words and anyone who cares to find out what web sites are paying for words and phrases can do so by simply using Overtures tattle-tale special pricing tool (http://www.pixelfast.com/overture/). And it couldn't be easier to use. You simply type in a key word or phrase and the tool returns a list of advertisers using that word and how much they are paying. It even shows you the actual ad.

Oh what a treasure trove of wealth-grabbing results this can be if you know what can be done with that priceless information.

Consider this possibility

Any key word or phrase that's worth big bucks on Overture is probably worth big bucks on Google as well, maybe even more, right? So try this experiment:

Enter the phrase "SEO Services" without the quotes in the Overture tool (http://www.pixelfast.com/overture/). When I entered that phrase on the day I wrote this article, I was found a company called SEO Inc. that was willing to pay $8.01 per click, followed by SEO Advantage at $8.00, and Online Web Consultants at $6.50. Other bidders appeared below them in the $3.00 range straight on down to some who wouldn't pay more than a dime per click.

Now, if a company is willing to pay that much money for a click on Overture, it is probably willing to pay that or more on Google. Even if that particular company isn't advertising on Google, you can be pretty sure that the same key phrase is drawing near the same bid price from other companies who do advertise on Google. So what that means is there is no way that you can possibly afford NOT to have some web pages posted somewhere that are targeted to those sweet-paying words.

All you have to do is use Overture's pricing tool to find the highest-paying key words that are related to your site and then optimize those words to start pulling similar ads. If all goes to plan, you can perhaps double, triple, or even quadruple your AdSense revenue without needing any increase in traffic or click-through rate.

How to Make Every AdSense Ad on the Google Network Pay You!

2008-07-16T23:58:00.013-07:00

Wouldn't it be great if every keyword in Google's entire inventory could be relevant to your site? Imagine that no matter what any person searched for, all of the ads that came up in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) paid you whenever someone clicked on them.

Sound good to you? That's great. I think it sounds pretty cool as well, so let's get busy making it happen for your web site.

Here's a very much overlooked opportunity for AdSense users

That opportunity is called Google Search and this is how it works:

Tucked inside of your AdSense control panel is a section for creating a Google search box. Most AdSense users don't even pay attention to it, and that's a shame because hidden inside of that box is a lot of money that's wanting to be yours.

When you add that search box to your web site you are creating an instant portal into Google's entire keyword inventory. Any time a visitor runs a Google search from your site, every resulting AdWord ad that appears on the SERPs is tagged back to you. That means that no matter which ads they click on, money goes in your pocket. Got that? What an amazing earning opportunity.

By combining AdSense with the Google search box you open yourself up to an incredible opportunity to monetize your site. In fact, many AdSense users say that they earn more money from searches then they do from AdSense ads on their own page. And it makes sense when you think about it.

A clever idea gets even better

Just as you would expect, Google doesn't leave you hanging without support or some great ways to make even more money. Take a look at the features and options that you can set up right from within your AdSense control panel.

Customized look and feel

You can grab the standard Google search box and be up and running in seconds. Or you can add your logo and make the box match your site's color scheme with over 200 available colors.

Control the scope of your user's search

You can configure the search box to search just your site or the entire Google network. It's your choice. You can even provide your visitors with radio buttons that let them perform either search. No matter which search they choose, you're making money every time they click on an ad.

Google will even host your internal site search result pages for you so you don't have to spend a penny buying extra bandwidth or disk space from your ISP. How's that for user-friendly?

Online Tracking Tools

Of course, Google also provides you with online tracking and reporting tools so you can see how well your shiny new search box is doing for you. You can see your queries, clicks, click-through rate and total earnings just like with your AdSense for Content ads.

So if you're not earning money from every ad in Google's inventory, log into your AdSense control panel and make it happen.

By Diane

Tips for Maximizing Your Google AdSense Revenues

2008-07-16T23:58:00.011-07:00

Despite what you may hear, the Google AdSense program is not for everyone. There are some types of web sites that do poorly no matter how hard the owners try, and there are others that should be doing well but the webmaster simply isn't putting in the effort to make things happen.

Here are some tips to make AdSense work better for you. If you do them all and you're still not having any luck, then you just might be running one of those sites that don't make money

1. Determine if your visitors are "in the mood"

Like I mentioned at the top of this article, some web sites just don't work with pay-per-click programs. The best performing sites fall into one of these categories:

? Sites where users go and expect to buy something while they are there. E-commerce sites fit the bill here..

? Sites where users go to find specific information on something that they want to buy now. Music and video review sites, vacation information sites, resume building sites, etc. You don't have to actually be selling these types of things; your site can just be a mecca for information pertaining to these things. Then, when the visitor comes to read your content, they are more likely to click on your ads.

? Sites where people who have disposable income and a credit card like to visit. This includes sites with money management, investing and lifestyle content.

? Sites that draw a large amount of new users every day. Free coupon sites and "How to" sites are good examples.

? Sites where people go who expect to read ads. Classified ads and shopping comparison sites fit into this category.

2. Make sure that your visitors don't feel that you just want to grab their money

Give them plenty of relevant and well-written content. If writing isn't your best skill then hire someone to do it for you. Good content brings steady traffic and steady traffic pays the bills.

3. Play by the rules

Google has some very specific Terms of Service (https://www.google.com/adsense/policies) for participating in their AdSense program. Learn those rules and follow them so you don't lose all of your investment by getting shut out.

4. Use the tools that Google gives you

Google gives you tools for determining the best keywords for your site, measuring ad performance, and setting up different ad "channels" for fine-tuning ad results. These guys and girls are the 800 lb. Gorillas in the Pay-Per-Click market. They didn't build these tools just to keep their programmers busy. Take advantage of their knowledge for they are very big and you are not!

5. Tweak, fine-tune and then tweak again

You should never be happy with your AdSense performance. If it's good, then you need to make it great. If it's great then you need to make it amazing. If it's amazing then you need to take it to the UPS club. The UPS club? Google sends all checks over $10,000 per month to the webmaster via UPS overnight delivery. Now there's a club that I wouldn't mind belonging to.

6. Get more traffic

No matter how much traffic you have, you need more. More eyeballs translate to more clicks. Even if you're only pulling a 2% click-through. That's a lot of clicks when you have thousands of visitors each day.

7. Experiment with new keywords

New keywords can bring new ads and new eyeballs along with it. Set up some new pages on your site and experiment with different content. Once you get something that's working then refer back to Tip # 5.

You can see results in near real time when you use Google's AdWords. Don't be afraid to be different. If something that everyone else is doing doesn't work for you, then invent something that does work and get it on your site.

5 Top Tips for Maximizing Your Adsense Profits

2008-07-16T23:58:00.009-07:00

1: The ideal Google AdSense page should have great content about a very specific topic. Take pains to be very clear about what the topic is, and carefully choose the keyword (or key phrase) describing the topic. Users don't like vague pages that don't make it very clear what the page is all about.

Don't even think about trying to 'trick' AdSense. (They have penalties, including getting kicked out.) Don't create a page on one topic and give it a file name about a different topic-that's too confusing.

In a nutshell, you want to make sure the page you create offers great value to people interested in the topic. When you provide excellent information on a specific topic, your visitors will benefit and will be more likely to click through to relevant AdWords.

2: Everyone's seen way too many horizontal banner ads up top. Thus, Google recommends you choose the vertical -- not horizontal -- format to display your AdWords. I agree. People have become "banner blind" to a horizontal format. Plus, Google has "trained" us to click on relevant text ads on their own site and they use the vertical format.

3: It's to your financial advantage to put the AdWords near the top of your page on the right. Make sure there is enough "breathing room" -- i.e. white space around the ads -- so that they will easily attract your visitors.

4: The latest marketing tests have revealed that placing pictures beside, or above you're a ads can have a massive impact on click-thru rates. This is because the eye is immediately attracted to the picture, once they see the picture, they see the ad!

5: I know it's tempting, because it seems so easy and it's just sitting there waiting for you to do it, but do not click on the AdWords displayed on your own site to increase your revenue. Google (rightfully) frowns on this.

Plus, Google has some of the smartest engineers around, and they are very good at detecting this kind of fraud. And really, for an extra $1, is it worth getting kicked out of a money-maker like AdSense? I think not?

By Gary McCaffrey

Meet Adwords, AdSenses Fraternal Twin

2008-07-16T23:58:00.007-07:00

AdSense is one of the best ways to monetize your web traffic. People see those little "Ads by Gooogle" tidbits and they click like crazy. Or at least that's the plan. But have you ever given though to where those ads are coming from? That would be AdWords, the Pay-Per-Click program for people who want to advertise their products on Google.

They are the fine men and women who are willing to part with some coin of the realm every time a visitor to your web site chooses to click on an AdSense ad. Google grabs the cash from the AdWords' member's account, keeps some of it for themselves, and gives the rest to you. How much they keep and how much give away is a State secret, but who cares; just as long as we're getting ours each month.

How AdWords Works

AdWords provides pay-per-click advertising to merchants who are willing to shell out anywhere from a minimum 05 .05 per click all the way up to a maximum of $100 per click. Can you imagine anyone paying $100 just to have someone click on an ad?

Anyway, the advertiser joins the AdWords program and gets a control panel similar to the one that we AdSense users get. They can write their ads, pick their keywords, and establish an advertising budget. They get tools to track performance as well as to help them pick keywords. There are no monthly minimum spends required and they can turn their ads on and off at will.

Once an advertiser is happy with their ad, it gets released to the network and shows up on web sites like yours and mine. That's if the keywords on your site match the keyword requirements of the brand spanking new ad, of course.

They can't "buy" their way to the top

Google doesn't simply push the people with the highest paying ads to the top of the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). They use a rather fair methodology that takes into consideration not only the maximum CPC (cost per click), but also includes a secret recipe for determining an ad's placement based upon the number of clicks the ad receives. So, at least in theory, an ad paying .05 per click could rise above one paying $5.00 per click if it's more popular with Google's audience.

I say "in theory" because if the owner of the $5 ad is paying attention then he or she will see that they are being bested by a lowly nickel ad and do some serious rewriting to get back up to the top where they belong.

Personally, I'm not sure that I have the guts to invest a lot of money into hoping that people who click on my ad will actually buy something, since I still have to pay Google whether I make a sale or not. But, as a dedicated AdSense user, I'm sure glad that my AdWords brothers and sisters have more nerve than I do. And you should be thankful as well.

Dynamic Resource for Adsense: 3 Practical Models Quickly Earn & Maximize Google Adsense Revenue

2008-07-16T23:58:00.005-07:00

Looking back in time, I could still remember standing in awe and reading the exploits of one adsense guru who was starting a membership service for people keen to maximise their earnings as a google adsense publisher. He claimed to be making over $40K a month from his google adsense revenue and an almost equal amount from affiliate products.

In my mind,I could not help but believe that if he could be so successful, I could also be successful...and everyone can also be equally successful in developing content websites and allowing google adsense to be published on these websites.

Months followed later where I carried out research on Google Adsense, talked to people who were successful publishers, joined a couple of memberships sites myself, read a few ebooks on the subject, spent hundreds of dollars on tools and webpage generating software...the whole works.

My aim was simple - uncover the successful methods and make at least one of these techniques as mine and be equally successful , if not better.

What were my results? Briefly, there were 3 models that could lead to success. There might be more, but these 3 models figured prominently as I carried out my personal private research.

The Content Model
----------------------------------

In the content model, a mini site is developed for a niche project. Generally, you would find the keywords for niche topics with a low R/S value, build a theme around these keywords and work out a mini website of around 20 to 50 pages.

The key to such a website is written content.

In many cases, I found reprint rights articles were also used and these were also sites that were successful in bringing in consistent traffic and revenue. Each page is normally written around just one keyword and the entire webpage is tightly SEOed (search engine optimized).

THE SINGLE-PAGE MODEL
--------------------------------------

In the second model, a one page article forms the website with google adsense on that article.

In order to feature prominently, website promotion is necessary for this model. This is effected by submitting articles to many article depositories and ezine publishers using automated softwares and gathering links in return.

THE NUMBERS GAME MODEL
---------------------------------------

This is by far the model that was reported to be widely successful.

This model is based on the concept of " Build, Build and Build!". In other words, an incessant non-stop drive to keep on building websites and treating the business as stricly one of providing workable content sites for publishing adsense. However, care must be exercised at all times to follow Google Adsense Terms of Service.

A prominent feature of this model was to use some form of auto generating software such as softwares that can generate directories or portals, the use of RSS and blogging to maintain and update the sites on a daily basis or a series of rotating templates.

Care must also be keenly exercised that the sites must have content, and not merely appear spammy with results scrapped from search engines. One piece of advice from a veteran adsense publisher was that he would run over his sites such that he was clearly satisfied that the web pages were actually pleasing to a visitor and that the webpages were designed for humans.

Often quoted by proponents of Model 3 is that the key to maximizing google adsense revenue and indeed affiliate revenue was to engage in a "numbers game". The more websites you build and commission, the higher is the revenue provided your keyword research is well done. In one case, one publisher claimed that his 65 years old mother could also work on this model by using a RSS system and was earning a good income just a few weeks into the model.

To avoid being a "thin affiliate" and risk being penalised by Google, most sites would add in advertisements from Amazon, or Clickbank and a host of other affiliate programs.

Which of the three models is applicable and useful to you? Are you in for the long term as a serious adsense publisher?

Above all these, you will need a compilation of good resources to assist you in your business as an adsense publisher. Gather the correct resources, personalize the good information and keep working on your model until you reach a good measure of success. Be of good faith, do not falter and you will reach success.

By Peter Lim

Top Paying Keywords: How to Increase Your Pay Per Click Returns

2008-07-16T23:58:00.003-07:00

There is no doubting the success of Google's Adsense program. Even Yahoo! and Kanoodle have joined in on the game, offering to join publishers with advertisers. Given the right circumstances, its a win / win situation for both.

There have been many sites that promote Top Paying Keywords and how if you add these keywords you can instantly improve your Adsense revenue. However, if you really want to see a dramatic increase in pay per clicks, you need to ensure 2 very important areas are addressed. They seem very obvious, but many site owners miss the opportunity to attract higher paying ads simply because they ignore these two areas.

Optimization

Many "would be" web designers decide to build a site around the highest paying keywords, yet, forget to optimize their site around a specific keyword. Instead, they forget the basics of how to properly create a title tag, page description, keyword density and having clean search engine spider friendly code. Remember, it's the source code that the Adsense and Kanoodle programs are using to decide what ads will appear. If your top 2 keywords are "insurance" and "downloads", you may find that you end up with ads regarding "insurance downloads" which of course will not pay much.

Also, having a high keyword density score for the keyword can get you into trouble with the search engines (specifically Google). Keywords spamming is never a good idea.

Optimize your page and you will search more hits to that page and not confuse the bots that create the ads for you.

Content

This is by far the most important and most missed tips. If you are going to include top paying keywords on your site, remember, if you want to attract high paying ads, you need to be selling your visitor on what your advertiser wants. Your content should sell to the visitors needs. Why should your visitor consider car insurance? What are the benefits of car insurance? Where can they get the best quotes? If you pique the interest of your visitor, they are more likely to click on your ads than if they feel that they are not getting the information they came to your site for in the first place.

Your content should have a specific flow to it. If you start jamming keywords into your content, your visitor will automatically suspect that you are trying to deceive them. Once you do that, they are gone! Why waste your visitors time after working so hard to get them to your site in the first place? Well optimized, focused content will always produce better, higher paying ads. That is why you are a publisher: you want those high paying ads on your site. What use though are those high paying keywords if your content doesn't pique your visitors curiosity? Be passionate about your content, and the click through rates will skyrocket!

Its also important to make sure that you are using the right number of ads per page, but that is for another article!

By Christopher Smith

Wheres the Best Place to Put Google Adsense Ads?

2008-07-16T23:58:00.001-07:00

Why, on your web pages of course. Ok, just kidding. The real question should be: "Is there really any truth to the rumors that where you place those Google AdSense ads can actually improve response?" According to my best information, the answer to that question is: Yes.

Google's own AdSense experts say that that there is a direct correlation between the placement of the AdSense ads and the resulting clickthrough.

When ads are placed in "content zones", rather than in "advertising zones", response rates on Google AdWords goes up. There are also indications showing that ads appearing on the right side of the page get clicked more than ads appearing on the left side.

Advertising analysts with degrees in human behavior and psychology have spent thousands of man-years (people-years?) studying how people read printed and Internet content and what it takes to get them to respond to ads. While some of these studies are proprietary, or are only available to anyone with $10,000 or more to spend on a copy, other studies have been made public and can be read by anyone who is interested.

Google themselves has released some relevant information which is focused directly on increasing your Google AdSense response. You can read their findings Here

Of course, all of the studies in the world aren't worth a hill of beans if the findings don't work on your web site. That's why it is important to test, test and test again. Experiment with your Google AdSense placement and track the results over a period of time. Google provides response tracking tools in your AdSense control panel. Learn how to use them. As you begin to see what may be only subtle differences in response, you'll be able to determine what works best for your particular site. But don't get complacent. What's working for you now might not work next month if you change your site design or content.

One of the most important factors in determining placement of your ads is the type of content that your site delivers. If you are primarily an e-commerce site, and you have a lot of pictures and ad copy for your own products competing for attention against AdSense ads, then it is going to be a particularly tough challenge getting any kind of decent Google AdSense clickthrough. It is situations like this that require very thorough testing and a lot of trial and error.

Blogs seem to have a lot of success generating high response rates to Google AdSense listings. Perhaps it's because blog readers realize that ad revenue is the only way that their favorite blogmaster can keep the lights on, so the readers think of clicking on ads as a way to make a donation.

Regardless of what the experts say, your best bet is to tailor your Google AdSense ad placement to what your own experience shows works best for you. In the end, you're the only expert who matters.

Yahoo! Publisher Network - The Next AdSense?

2008-07-16T23:57:00.021-07:00

Yahoo announced that their Publisher Network, formerly available in the US for large websites, will be extended to small and medium-sized websites.

As stated by Yahoo representatives, this will allow the whole publishing community to take advantage of Yahoo's products and services through what they have described as an "easy-to-use self-serve platform".

Although it will initially be available only in the US, expansion is expected through use and projected increase in popularity.

What Yahoo will offer is very similar to Google's AdSense to start with: Content Match (tm). This will allow publishers to place content-relevant listings on their sites and receive a part of the revenues that they generate.

However, that's not all Yahoo has to offer. In the near future, additional features will be added "to enhance the visitor's experience".

In an interview with Will Johnson, general manager of the Yahoo! Publisher Network self-serve offering, what makes the Yahoo! Publisher Network different from Google AdSense is:

- Additional controls for publishers,
- Providing superior customer service
- Focusing on the development of a high quality network

In the longer term, they plan to differentiate by providing integration with other great Yahoo! content and services. This includes web search, RSS ads, shopping, travel, and in the longer run, music and video.

The main idea, as with AdSense, is to offer publisher's with a means of generating additional revenue, as well as engaging their users.

According to Yahoo!, the Yahoo! Publisher Network platform enables you to "generate additional revenue from your site, take advantage of Yahoo! Publisher tools, services and programs and help shape what Yahoo! offers the publishing community."

By John Tulus

How to Help Google Make Up Its Mind

2008-07-16T23:57:00.019-07:00

As an AdSense sponsoring web site, your goal is to have contextually relevant ads displayed whenever a visitor comes to your site. That's the goal, and it sounds simple enough, but sometimes it seems that Google is bent on not cooperating with you in the least.

If there are times when your web site is displaying apparently random ads which have no relevance to your site at all or worse, it's displaying non-revenue Public Service Ads (PSA), then that's a sign that you need to work harder to help Google make up its mind.

Google uses a pretty effective set of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to sniff the content on your site so it can serve up the most relevant ads out of its extensive inventory. However, since no humans are involved in this process, it's actually pretty easy to lead the poor spider down the wrong path.

It's not enough to simply depend upon your site's keywords to pull the right ads from Google; you have to pay attention to the context in which the key words are used as well or you could get some surprises.

For example, suppose that you have some text on your page that reads "I love Guns 'N Roses". There is a good chance that you will either end up with PSAs, because "Guns" is a known Google "stop" word that triggers PSAs, or ads from 1-800-Flowers thanks to the key word "Roses". But if you modify your content slightly to have it read something like "I love the heavy metal and hard rock bands like Guns 'N Roses", then you should start pulling ads that match your site's theme.

The words "heavy metal" and "hard rock" are called supporting keywords. Their job is to help define the context that the actual key word is being used in.

When the Google spiders are fed both supporting and actual key words they are better able to make the right decisions on your behalf.

The position of your key words also plays a part in pulling the right ads. Words that are closer to the top of the page have more "weight" than those that appear farther down. Tags are also important. < H1 > and < H 2 > tags have a higher precedence over < P > tags, and < B > tags are significant as well.

The key to getting the right ads to appear on your site is to fine-tune the supporting key words and tweak your tags until you are seeing what you want to see.

Once you reach that goal, you can read our article on Smart Ways to Attract Higher Paying AdSense Ads, and Tips for Maximizing Your Google AdSense Revenues for even better results.

Sometimes it seems that the Google spider is doing all it can to not get along with you. The next time you have that thought, stop to consider the possibility that the Google spider is having the same thoughts about you!

What is Google AdSense?

2008-07-16T23:57:00.017-07:00

AdSense may be one of the fastest and easiest ways to monetize traffic to your web site whether you have products or services for sale or you simply provide free content to your visitors.

Simply stated, Google AdSense enables website operators to place some code on their site that connects to Google's ad server content database and pulls keyword-relevant advertising onto the web pages. The webmaster gets paid a percentage of the fee that Google receives from the advertiser every time a visitor clicks on an ad. There is no charge for the webmaster to participate in AdSense. All costs are covered by the advertiser who participates in the AdSense sister program called AdWords.

Google's sends out digital "robots" which use proprietary algorithms to parse the host web page and analyze the content in an effort to determine what keywords are relevant. It reports its findings back to Google's ad server which then serves ads matching those keywords. Given that the entire process is automated, the "ad robots" do a pretty good job of getting the advertising content right most of the time.

The History of Google AdSense

Google AdSense has its roots in the old "Google Content-Targeted Advertising" program which they introduced back in March of 2003. Although this program was similar in concept to AdSense, there was no automated way of participating. Each webmaster negotiated a deal directly with Google, and websites that served less than 20 million page views per month were not welcome to participate.

As Google grew, they began to see how much money they were leaving on the table by excluding the smaller sites, which greatly outnumbered the sites serving over 20 million hits that were willing to serve other people's ads. Their answer to that problem was AdSense which has no minimum traffic requirements and is open to all sites meeting Google's content and decency requirements.

How much can you make running Google AdSense?

The answer to that question depends upon three factors:

1. How much traffic your site draws
2.How many visitors click on your ads
3.How much those ads pay per generated click

With some ads paying as much as $5 or more, it's possible that you can generate a serious income with AdSense. There are relatively well documented cases of some people earning as much as $500 per DAY and more. Numbers like that are rare exceptions however. Even so, there is no reason why you can't earn somewhere around $1,000 per month, or more, once you get the hang of it.

How to get started using Google AdSense

Make a visit to Google's AdSense Site (https://www.google.com/adsense/) and sign up. Make sure that you read their Acceptable Use Policy and that you follow their content requirements. Google has their own "AdSense Police" who will have no problem booting you out of the program if you fail to walk the line.

Using Google AdSense on your site is like collecting free money. There's no reason not to do it and potentially thousands of dollars worth of reasons to do it.

The Truth - Adsense Click Fraud Can NOT be Stopped

2008-07-16T23:57:00.015-07:00

Your probably reading this article because you use Google Adwords to bring traffic to your website, or your a click fraudster yourself, wanting to see what kind of information I have for you. Most of you click fraudsters will think that I have no idea what I am talking about, and that I do not know your methods. Well, trust me buddy, I KNOW ALL ABOUT YOU AND WHAT YOU DO.

If you are new to the click fraud scene, here is an example:

1. Scumbag puts Google Adsense ads on his website.

2. The scumbag then proceeds to cheat Google Adsense by creating false clickthroughs and impressions, in return earning him a pretty nice profit, because he isn't even working on his website, just generating false traffic.

All of you people that run campaigns through Google Adwords are thinking, "This guy has no idea what he is talking about, Google has everything under control and they even state so publicly!"

WOW! What kind of pay per click company would admit that they DO NOT have click fraud under control? I wonder what would happen to their business immediately following that statement.

Estimates say that nearly 20% of all clicks for Adsense are illegitimate. In my honest opinion I believe this number to be around 30-35% from some of the things I have seen.

Alrite, now the big question, how are they doing it?

There are a number of ways that people are cheating, including the 'click groups' from India that click on your ads for you and create big pay checks as long as you pay them their $0.50 an hour so they can buy bread for their family.

But I'm going to show you the technical way that Google Adsense is cheated, not poor people clicking ads. I'm talking about extremely smart programmers that create hitbots to cheat Adsense. And, NO, I'm not talking about that piece of garbage 'CACA' or Clicking Agent that you find on Google. I am talking about PRIVATE programs and scripts that are only used by private groups.

How do these scripts get away undetected you ask?

Simple, let's actually take a look at Google's click fraud protection (This is what I have summed up, I seriously don't believe they have anything other protection because people are still cheating using these methods as you read this article.)

If you actually take a look at Google's Adsense code when it is on your webpage you will find the URL that is used to retrieve ads. (Right-Clck your ad Iframe and click 'View Page Information' or something similar.)

Here is an example of the URL that you will find:

http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/ads?client=ca-pub-2521202633232871&dt=1124847235453&lmt=1124631699&format=468x60_as&output=html&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.yoursite.com%2F&color_bg=ECF8FF&color_text=000000&color_link=0033FF&color_url=0033FF&color_border=DDAAAA&cc=59&u_h=768&u_w=1024&u_ah=738&u_aw=1024&u_cd=32&u_tz=-240&u_java=true

Now let's decode this up a little bit, shall we?

client=ca-pub-2521202633232871 - Your client code, this tells Google who to assign the click-through money to.

dt=1124847235453 - Javascript, if you use the command google_date = new Date(); document.write(google_date.getTime()) --- Which generates 1124847235453.

This shows you the number of milliseconds since midnite January 1, 1970. This is what seems to be Google's biggest automated proxy clicker fraud prevention. Doesn't seem too hard to generate with 2 lines of code now does it?

lmt=1124631699 - The last time your webpage was updated. LMT stands for Last Modified Time, pretty easy Javascript to generate this one too - document.write(document.lastModified); --- Which generates 1124631699.

(Notice I'm skipping a bunch, that's because they are just showing the type of ad, colors, and size that you are using.)

cc=59 - Seems to be some random number based on the screen width, height, and color scheme. I've seen this number go from 20 all the way up to 400. I'm sure they don't use this to reliably track click fraud.

u_h=768 - Height of your screen settings.

u_w=1024 - Width of your screen settings.

u_ah=738 - Your available screen height.

u_aw=1024 - Your available screen width.

u_cd=32 - Color scheme on windows, e.g. 32-bit.

u_tz=-240 - Your monitor refresh rate or something else that isn't important, I've never seen it not -240.

u_java=true - Just seeing if you have java enabled.

There are some other variables that are sometimes in the URL such as 'u_his=' this means how many pages you have visited since you started up your browser. There's also some MIME type checks and how many plugins you have installed, but these variables come up very rarely. I think they are only meant for Netscape/Firefox browsers.

Now that we have 'decoded' the supposed unbeatable Google Adsense code, what do you think about click fraud? You still think it is rare?

After randomizing all the data and sending an automated query to their Adsense URL, all the scumbag has to do is parse out all of Google's click URL's and click one of them, giving him a click through. This can all be easily faked with even a Visual Basic program. A newbie programmer could in-fact cheat Google Adsense without much knowledge.

Alrite you say, they beat the javascript code detection but doesn't Google use cookies so they can't do this?

No, Google does not use cookies for Adsense.

Well what about IP-tracking? Someone can't have that many proxies!

There are click groups that leave these programs running on their computer. They each randomly click each other's URL's automatically. The person running the program doesn't even have to do anything, but he is still contributing to the success of their group and himself.

Does that sound too far-fetched? I am telling you that there are click groups that do this now and have been since the old Linkshare PPC days in 1999. Yes, if you were an advertiser on Linkshare back around 1999-2002, you got RAPED.

And that isn't all. I have read on the internet that there is currently over 100,000 people infected in the United States alone with trojan proxy servers. These proxy servers run on random ports so that Google can't just do a simple port 8080 or 80 check on it to see if it's a proxy. The majority of these proxy servers are used for credit card fraud, but a lot of them are also used to cheat Google Adsense and other pay per click programs. These proxies are at-home users that look like normal dial-up, cable, and dsl users from all across the world, but mainly United States. There is NO WAY to prove that they are a proxy.

Random User-Agent strings is another tactic that is often used by click fraudsters. This makes Google think that a lot of different browsers are clicking the links, just keeping them further from finding out the truth.

On a side note, you may be thinking that the new Yahoo! pay per click program may be the way to go. I checked into their protection and guess what? They are only using ONE of Google's protections and that is the Javascript GetTime. They are still in Beta though and this may change, but who knows?

To the cheaters: The benefits of cheating are short. Eventually you will be caught for what you are doing and maybe even sued by Google. There is a ton of money to be made legally with Adsense and I suggest that you stop cheating. Who am I to tell you to stop? I use to be one of you! Back when I was 13-14 I was making programs like the ones you guys are using now. You guys probably used one of my programs at one time. I am happy to say that those days of mine are all in the past now, and I am making a good amount of money LEGALLY with Adsense and other affiliate programs. Work hard guys and you will reap the benefits 100 times what you make cheating.

To the advertisers: You people that use Google Adwords now see that it is actually not very hard to cheat you out of your money, so be careful and MAKE SURE that you use a click fraud protection script such as ClickDefense. To lower most of your click fraud, just don't put your ads in the Content Network, only stay on Google's sponsored search results. Only Google gets paid when someone clicks the search results sponsored ads and nobody wants to cheat to make Google anymore money do they? Check the stock, it's currently at 279.58 a share.

To summarize my article I just want to state that no one should use this information for cheating Adsense and I am not responsible for your actions if you choose to do so. You will be caught because Google will evolve and get smarter, eventually.

By Joseph Tierney

$1 Million in Google AdSense Earnings

2008-07-16T23:57:00.013-07:00

They are calling him the million dollar man. Jason Calacanis recently revealed in his blog that he is on track to earn a million dollars from AdSense over the year ahead.

And if that number doesn't wake you up and have you sitting on the edge of your seat, consider for a moment that he reached this level in less than a year. His company only started using AdSense in September 2004.

Calacanis runs Weblogs Inc., a network dedicated to creating trade weblogs across niche industries. And he's quickly proven that AdSense is a credible advertising partner.

As their network has grown, so has their AdSense revenue. In January 2005 they earned an average of $580 per day. In March it was $737. In May it was $1,585. One day in July, just before he made the blog entry referred to above, they earned $2,335. Remember that is just for one day. If they can take that daily average to $2,740 they'll be earning a rate of $1 million for a year. And Calacanis predicts that reaching daily earnings of $3,000 or even $5,000 is quite achievable.

That's quite an achievement. Keep in mind that Calacanis has 103 bloggers on the payroll and nine staffers. Even so, many webmasters would give an arm or a leg to have even a third of that.

Google's AdSense has been revolutionary. It has become firmly established as the darling of the online advertising industry. Although rumors are heard of major competitors launching a similar service, AdSense's premier position seems secure for now.

In essence, AdSense has made it possible for almost anyone with a web site or blog to earn some revenue from advertising, without having to employ sales people or spend precious time searching for advertisers.

AdSense works like this. Webmasters sign up for an account in just a few minutes. They receive a small snippet of code to include on their web pages. Google will then automatically serve advertisements that are relevant to the content on the webmaster's pages. When someone visits the webmaster's site and clicks on one of Google's AdSense advertisements, the webmaster earns a fee. Advertisers can pay anywhere from five cents to a hundred dollars per click, and the webmaster receives a percentage of that fee.

Many webmasters are content with earning five to ten dollars from AdSense to cover the cost of web hosting. But many, unsurprising, have higher ambitions. At a popular WebmasterWorld forum, participants share tips and encouragement on reaching a goal of $300 per day from AdSense. So it is no wonder that Calacanis created quite a buzz when he made his million dollar blog entry.

Google have proven once again that they excel at designing innovative Internet services. If you are in the web industry and have not yet used AdSense, then perhaps you should try it out. Or if you are already using it, perhaps Calacanis' impressive results will encourage you to track the performance of your AdSense units more closely, fine tune their positions and formats, and take your earnings to a new level.

Calacanis' million dollar blog entry can be viewed at:
http://calacanis.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000403051129/

By Scott Adams

10 Inside Secrets to Google Adwords - Part 1

2008-07-16T23:57:00.011-07:00

Let's face it... Google Adwords is not the only source of traffic on the internet, nor is it free. However, if you cannot convert the traffic you get from the pay-per-click traffic on Google Adwords, your site surely won't convert the casual visitor who may or may not be ready to buy what your are selling.

When spending money for pay-per-click (PPC) traffic, whether it is from Google Adwords, Overture, or a 2nd-tier PPC network, the key is to track your traffic to see if it converts into sales. There are many software products and online services that can track your traffic. For a recommendation, visit: http://www.superiormarketingpartners.com/adtracking.html

Many people that have tried Google Adwords have lost their shirt, so to speak. Some keywords on Google Adwords are cheap (keyword phrases start at a nickel per click). Some keyword phrases on Google Adwords can cost tens of dollars per click. If you end up paying high per-click prices on Google Adwords and don't sell a high-ticket item on your site, even the most enviable sales conversion rate won't turn a profit.

There are several tricks to advertising on Google Adwords that unless you know them, it becomes almost impossible to turn a profit on your advertising.

Secret #1 - Only bid on exact match keywords

Google Adwords has a few different 'keyword matching options' available. When a keyword is placed in brackets like this: [keyword], it is called an 'exact match.' This means that only when someone enters that EXACT keyword phrase will your ad appear. It might occur to you that by limiting your keyword(s) to only exact match, you are eliminating all those people that may be searching for the phrase "cheap widgets" or even "widget" singular, since only the keyword "widgets" plural is an exact match. Believe me, this is exactly what you want. Sure, it will take extra time to create an adgroup within the Google Adwords system for each keyword phrase you want to bid on, but you will know with 100% certainty which keyword(s) are converting into sales this way. If you do NOT use the exact match option in Google Adwords, then there is absolutely no way to know which keyword(s) are resulting in sales on your site.

Secret #2 - Bid to be in position #2 or 3

When someone searches on Google for your keyword, the first page of search results are going to reach the most people. What you want to do is position your ad in one of the top 3 spots. You don't want position #1 necessarily, because that position costs the most and doesn't give you much more benefit than being in position 2 or 3. You pay less for these spots than position 1 and gain most of the benefit.

By being in one of these top spots, your ad gets a higher 'click-thru rate' (CTR). This is good is because the Google Adwords system actually rewards you for having an ad with a high CTR by charging you less per click! Google Adwords exists to make money for Google. If they have two companies advertising for the same keyword, and your ad pulls a 10% CTR and your competitor's ad for the same keyword pulls a 5% CTR, then Google Adwords makes more money from your ad. Google Adwords rewards you for this higher CTR by charging you less per click than your competitor!

Secret #3 - Negatively qualify your ads

Admittedly, the problem with having an ad that has a great CTR is that it gets a lot of clicks! Unless your traffic converts into sales, it's hard to turn a profit on your Google Adwords ads. The key is to put words in the ad that DISCOURAGE people from clicking on the ad unless they 'pre-qualified' to convert to a sale. For example, if you have site that sells widgets that cost $10.00 each, then put something in one of the lines of text in your ad like 'Widgets cost only $10.00.' The only catch is that if your ad isn't getting a very good CTR in the first place, then a negative qualifier is only going to reduce your CTR.

Your next step? There are many more techniques to learn that will increase the profitability of Google Adwords campaigns. The above tricks will start you off towards making Google Adwords work for you. Check back for Part 2 in this series. You can get a complete course that covers every tip and trick you will ever need by visiting: http://www.superiormarketingpartners.com/adwords.html

By Ron Isaiah

Success with Adwords

2008-07-16T23:57:00.009-07:00

Google's Adwords service has brought success to many businesses by providing them with a large amountl of highly targeted traffic from as little as 2 cents per visitor. However, there is probably an equal number of webmasters who have paid for adwords and seen little benefit or have indeed made substantial losses. If the latter applies to you, then the following may be of some benefit -

1. Design

First of all, decide how the layout of your ad will appear. Secondly, you should consider what you want to be included in the title and what keywords or details you wish to present to potential visitors to your site. Ensure that your text will encourage only targeted visitors to your site in order to avoid the expense of wasted clicks. Read through all the Google TOS and guidelines before placing your ad or else you risk having it disabled which can lead to charges.

A fair proportion of internet surfers are still very experienced and click on adwords without even realising what it is. Therefore it is a good tip to list prices in your text, so that you can put off clicks from those who would have no intention of purchasing your product or service in the first place.

2. Brainstorm

Before beginning a campaign it is advisable to write down as many keywords and phrases as you can think of. The most popular terms are likely to have been bid up to a high price, making all your click-throughs expensive. Think about what your prospective customers would type if they were looking for what you were offering.

When you have thought of as many words as you can, glance over your list and rearrange what you have into new, useable phrases. Some will be way off target and discarded instantly, amongst the others choose the one that sounds best and you should have a great sales pitch that won't break the bank.

3. Optimise

Do not go along with google's suggested cost per click. This is always far higher than necessary. Many advertisers do not understand that their click through rate affects their position to the same degree as how much they pay per click. For example, if you pay 5 cents per click for the phrase "page rank" and your competition pays 10 cents and achieves a click through rate of 0.5%, then in order to surpass this person in position you will only need to double your click through rate, to anything above 1%, whilst still only paying half of what they are Generally speaking, I would always recommend paying half of the google suggested figure for your clicks, the exception being if your business is in a highly competitive field in terms of adwords marketing use.

Now that you have your keywords and pricing in place, you should set your daily budget relatively low for a short time, allowing you to see how successfully this campaign is running, without risking too much money. Leave your campaign to run for a few days, and take good care to note which keywords are leading to sales or enquiries.

4. Experiment

You should continually monitor the performance of your keywords and Ad groups and try to change tiny details from time to time, perhaps one word here and there occassionally. Changing even one word can have an affect on the success of your campaign, either positively or negatively. If you find google disabling your ads because you are failing to obtain enough clicks then go back to brainstorming and generate another set of keywords and phrases which may work better for you.

Even if adwords are working supremely well for you, constant monitoring is important. If other people realise you are generating high profits then it is likely they will start to tap into your market. Continue to experiment with your campaigns to ensure you stay at the forefront of your field.

By Lee Munson

Local Business Advertising & Google Adwords

2008-07-16T23:57:00.007-07:00

"I don't need the Internet to advertise - I'm a local business!"

Okay...

If you could spend £0.04 (or $0.05 in the US) and have a new customer - what would you do with your local business advertising budget?

I hope you would spend that money again and again!

Granted this is the ideal example and you are likely to pay much more then £0.04 per customer you acquire, BUT - herein lies the rub for local businesses:

An internet presence announces your business to the world.

When you are online, you have little control about where traffic is coming to you from (if you are not actively driving traffic that is), but what if you could make sure that people who lived in your area, who buy your goods and would make ideal customers could be targeted!

Google Adwords can help you target local people, not people from New Zealand if you live in the UK - but people close to you.

Pinpoint geographic targeting of prospects is an optimum use of your local business advertising budget.

Is it 100% foolproof?

Alas no, but it's a good start.

How do I do it?

Well the easiest way to do this is as follows:

Create a national campaign with your search terms and your location terms - eg: If you're a plumber in Poole then "plumber poole" would be a good keyword.

Create a geo-targeted campaign (this can be done in a couple of ways - I'll leave the nitty gritty details out for now) which means your ads are served to local people when they search for your keywords.

So in the plumber example if a local person types in "plumber" and doesn't mention anything else, your advert will be shown.

So goes the theory anyway.

Does it work all the time?

Like I said - Not always very well.

This is because Google uses IP addresses to determine location and this method is somewhat of a cleaver when a scalpel is required.

It all depends how diligent ISP's are when allocating IP addresses to their customers, the only way you can know is through empirical means.

What if the regional targeting is producing no results?

If this is the case then a national campaign with location terms included (as mentioned above) is your best bet.

If you were to run a national campaign on the same keywords without the location terms, you will be competing with other players who have a national presence for your particular product/service which could prove very expensive.

Your local business advertising budget spend should at the very least give Adwords and PPC advertising in general a tryout. Remember there are an infinite number of keywords in any target market.

Just because the big boys may have a stranglehold on the 'obvious' terms does not mean your market is saturated.

By Tom O'Brien

AdWords Campaign Set Up Tips - Part Two

2008-07-16T23:57:00.005-07:00

Ready for more tips on how to make your AdWords campaign work more effectively for your business?

Start with a Modest Budget

Just as you should start with a smaller geographical region, start with a modest campaign budget. Spend a few days or a few weeks fine tuning your ads before you really decide to pump up the budget. The more "finished" and tuned your ads are before you start spending serious amounts of money on advertising, the better.

Patience in building a strong ad group before you expand will benefit you and your bottom line.

Remember Your Audience

Write ad text that will appeal to your audience and bring in the traffic you want. If your products appeal to hobbiests, use terms that hobbiests would understand. If your products are directed mainly at younger customers, use youthful verbage and terms that will draw their attention.

You only have your ad text to convince the "right" customers to visit your website. Make those words count by making sure that you target the message toward them.

Attract the "Right" Customer

There is a fine line between writing ads that appeal to customers enough to get a high click-through rate and writing ads that merely draw anyone. You want to have a high click through rate on your ads, since it will get you higher placement and save you money. You don't want to attract customers who won't ever becom customers though.

Use strong action words in your ads. Include powerful selling points and benefits. Try to stay away from phrases that will draw everyone though such as "free" and "bargain." Write an ad that will bring you viewers who have a good chance of becoming customers too.

By Chris Burgess

AdSense - 7 Keys To Empire?

2008-07-16T23:57:00.003-07:00

There's a lot of buzz around about how you can make a quick and easy fortune using this AdSense course or that tool or this book.

And they show you their incomes from AdSense too (though not necessarily THIS month). Now, is it just me or is something a little odd in all this?

Say, I'm making $5000 - no make that $15,276 a month from AdSense on my sites. And now I'm going to sell all my secrets on how to do that for $67 or $97 or whatever.

So what happened, did I get all bored with my filthy riches and decide to become a philanthropist and sell stuff that makes me 15K a month for a pittance? Or is it something else?

Am I saying it's impossible? Certainly not. I know people who make that more.

But a little reality. Those people don't have 5 or 6 or 50 sites. They have maybe 500 or 3000 or more. Few sites make 20 or more a day. Very few. Average income is probably less than a dollar a day. So with 500 sites at a dollar a day, you've got your 15K a month.

Now the domain names cost you maybe $3500 to $4500. Then you need hosting and somehow you've got to build the sites and get traffic to them. There are excellent tools but the ones that will let you do this kind of thing in a reasonably short time are also very (very) expensive.

And you are continually dealing with sites that don't get indexed or get de-indexed or even get banned. Traffic today, gone tomorrow. Plus, if you're not real careful with those tools you may get an unpleasant letter from Google about a DMCA copyright infringement which could cost you your AdSense account.

You can make money, you can build an empire. But it isn't easy or quick no matter what you hear. And it really isn't a business. It's not a long run proposition, it's not stable. You need to keep creating more sites as older ones fail - or you need to be smart and use those AdSense revenues to build an enduring business.

You put up with this down to here, so here are the real 7 "secret" keys to AdSense.

1. The best performing AdSense type is the large rectangle. This has been tested over and over.

2. The best colors are blue for the link - surfers know that blue means click me. And darkish almost black and grey for the text and url. No borders. The same background as your page. Will it merge into your content? No, that's bogus. There are maybe 4 surfers in this galaxy who can't tell a Google ad when they see one. They are not going to believe it's part of the text. Wake up, OK?

3. Another format which is being reported to more or less work is the full wide banner type layout with text ads and images directly above the links. Try it and see if it works for you. Maybe it's a fad.

4. Keywords and related content are critical if you want targeted ads. If you want high paying clicks you need to target the costly keywords AND have content that supports the keywords.

5. You need traffic interested in the ads. Which means your traffic generation techniques have to be targeted not scattershot. You might hear that 1% or 1.5% clickthrough rate is OK and 3% is good. Nonsense. Really successful people get CTRs that are often well above 30%. Even with modest efforts you should be getting an average 6 to 15% CTR (per ad impression, not pages).

6. You have to track what you're doing and you have to test variations in ad layout, placement, color and related content to optimize your income. No one can tell you how to do it except the traffic coming to your site. If you don't test and track, you're flying blind.

7. You need to keep building new sites.

You are now a member of the AdSense Illuminati. Quite possibly you already knew all that. So why are you looking for something else? Really. This is all you need to start doing it.

Probably any course or book can help you if that's what it takes to get you moving and doing. Ultimately, no one can really show you exactly how to do it. You're going to have to learn the ropes and put in the time.

Like everything in life - the greatest traffic generator, the ultimate course or the super MLM opportunity, if it sounds too good to be true, then it is. There's no magic bullet, no ultimate secret to buy. There's no easy, painless, work free, certain road to riches (except, maybe, inheriting it and that can be very hard on the heirs).

Whatever you do on the net, do it wide awake and with your brain actually functioning. The final un-numbered key is that a technique, a shortcut, an idea that will make what you do easier, faster, or more profitable - one single tiny thing - is worth more than any book or course costs. One useable idea and you've gotten a great deal. If you learned something you didn't know or had forgotten, then it's worth much more than you paid. There may not be any magic solution out there, but there are useful concepts, techniques and ideas. You just have to see them for what they are, and then get busy and really use them.

By Richard Keir

Easy Clickbank Management with the Right Tools

2008-07-16T23:57:00.001-07:00

Clickbank has been around for years and has earned an excellent reputation online. They make it easy for anyone to be able to take credit card payments from their websites without the hassle of obtaining a merchant account. It also has a built in affiliate program. For their trouble they take a small percentage of each transaction plus a 1.00 service fee.

The problem with Clickbank is they're lacking in the "user interface" department. They have a simple log in that will show you your sales but as far as powerful options to analyze and manipulate your data, they have none.

Lucky for you other software developers have stepped up to the plate and come up with some pretty cool options to enhance your life as an online Clickbank merchant.

1) CBExtract: http://CBExtract.com

A powerful piece of software that gives you several ways to manage and manipulate your sales data. You can analyze sales trends for a specific time period, details of profits for the fiscal year, even send an email to all of your clients. CBExtract can manage multiple Clickbank accounts and even shows you who your top affiliates are.

2) ClickSalez: http://Clicksalez.com

Another powerful option but at this time not taking on any new customers.

3) EasyClickMate: http://EasyClickMate.com

A Clickbank tool that helps you to manage your army of affiliates. Some of what it does; allows you to give your affiliates unique url's for each different product that you sell. All of the unique url's will link to your domain,not Clickbank's which will increase your link popularity which is excellent for your search engine ranking.

This product also will give you marketing statistics such as click throughs, sales and conversion ratios for all of your affiliates and show you who your top sellers are. It sends out automatic emails to each of your affiliates every time they make a sale. The cost is only 67.00.

4) CBCourier: http://CBCourier.com

A free product which is useful for a Clickbank Affiliates and Merchants to automatically receive sales notifications and associated data straight to your desktop 24/7 365 days a year. This software is courtesy of JoePro.com and sits in your window system tray and it flashes every time you make a sale.

Merchants can see at a glance who their best affiliates are and affiliates can watch their own progress and keep track of what they've sold. This software also has the ability to change skins and rebranding is available to merchants for a small fee.

If you'd like to stay on top of the latest ClickBank developments or you have questions about ClickBank I highly recommend this forum at http://www.ClickBankSuccessForum.com run by Harvey Segal.

If you're worried about your ClickBank "Thank You" pages being passed around the Net and others downloading your products without having paid for them, there's a no cost PHP script that will help you with security http://www.jumpx.com/tutorials/clickbank

By utilizing 3rd party software with your ClickBank data, you can take a "plain jane" system and turn it into a powerful workhorse, that will in turn help you in your day to day business decisions as an online entrepreneur.

By Merle

How to Use Pay Per Click Marketing, the Emoneyreport Way!

2008-07-16T23:56:00.009-07:00

The cycle of affiliate programs and money making ventures goes something like this:

John Doe makes niched website.

John Doe inserts affiliate links.

John Doe waits a week, gets no sales, he soon realizes that he has little to no visitors!

John Doe doesn't have time to build traffic the SEO way, and decides to start with some PPC campaigns.

John Doe decides to use Overture, and spends almost a 1.07 a click for "blue widgets".

Spending over 22$ his first day, he recieves 20 clicks, no sales, and wants to quit his website permanently.

DON'T GIVE UP YET!

Don't be another John Doe. John's main mistake was that he didn't go into his campaign with a plan. He just slapped some bids on his most important keywords and watched his money fly out the window.

1. Determine your keywords. Programs like WordTracker are good for this, as well as the even more free Overture.com tools. Rather than focusing on paying big for the most clicked on keywords, try to get positions 1 - 5 on many smaller, more targeted keywords. Rather than drop 2$ on "blue widgets", you'd be better off spending .35 on "Buy Blue WIdgets", or "Cheap Blue Widgets". Sometimes you simply have to outsmart and outwit the competition.

2. Set your bids and spending limits low! You don't want to spend more than 5$ a day when you first begin. Set all your bids to at least show up on the first 15 result pages. You don't want to pay for position one when position 2, 3, 4 and 5 are 20 cents cheaper, and will still get massive clicks.

3. Carefully write your ads. Get your ad message out there! Don't be excessive on the capital letters or exclamation marks either. If your ad is targeted to your keywords you'll get more targeted clicks. If I was selling blue widgets I would rather have clicks for "Buy Cheap Blue Widgets" than "Blue Widgets". Only keep one keywords active at any one time, as you want to see how they react in terms of sales!

4. Monitor your results. Keep an eye on what keywords are getting the most attention, and which ones seem to be converting the best. The rule of thumb is that you can judge a keywords (or anything really) performance after 36 clicks. From here you can determine what's doing the best, and keep with it.

In conclusion, by using the 4 steps listed, you can set yourself a bit ahead of the competition. The only way to make it on the internet is to outsmart, outperform, and outlast your rivals.

Replacing AdSense Defaults with Paying Ads

2008-07-16T23:56:00.007-07:00

Many online ad programs, including AdSense, will sometimes show default ads, or public service announcement (PSA) ads, when they have no paying ads to show. This can happen for many reasons, especially when their spiders crawl your pages for content.

What many webmasters do not realize, however, is that you can easily replace those unpaid ads and earn bonus revenue from your website. All you need to do is make a simple change to your ad codes.

In the case of Google's AdSense program, this is done by adding an alternate URL to your code. Using their online wizard, you simply add an alternate URL to your code, then copy and paste the new code into your pages.

You can view a sample of an AdSense alternate URL integration process here: http://www.alternateurl.com/demo

Once you have made the change to your ad codes, you will show an alternate ad in place of the PSA ad that would normally have appeared. Alternatively, you may also select to show a simple background color in place of your PSA ads, but be aware that won't earn you a dime and it can look strange to display a blank space on your pages, whatever the color.

So you've decided to add an alternate URL to replace unpaid ads. That's smart. Now, the challenge for many webmasters is how to make a "URL" appear as an ad. It's actually not that difficult, and there are a couple of ways to go about it. Let's explore your options now.

One new program that was recently created to address this issue is AlternateURL.com, where you can create an alternate URL ad in just a few easy steps in any of the standard AdSense supported sizes.

Once created, you can embed the AlternateURL into your AdSense code. It's a simple solution that relieves webmasters from having to tinker with iFrames, CPA networks, or other systems to create an alternate ad for their Google ad codes.

Other options include adding "house ads" or ads that link to internal areas of your site. Remember, since you are adding a URL, you have to ensure that the page that opens will fill the correct size of the PSA ad you are replacing. Thus, if you are showing a 468x60 banner, you create a page that has a div or an image in that size. Be sure to left and top align the elements on the page, and ensure there are no margins or borders, etc.

Alternatively, you can create a page that displays an iFrame, which will fill the ad slot to be replaced. In either case, the question arises about what to actually place. Ideally, you'll want rotating ads, and stats on how many you are showing, and what return in effective CPM revenue you are generating.

Some sites show Clickbank or other CPA network offers as their alternate ads. You can play around with various solutions to find the one that best suits your site and creates maximum revenue as well.

There's really nothing to lose by using an alternate URL, and a lot to gain. For more information, login to your AdSense account and review the procedure to add an alternate ad URL to your ad code. Or visit the AdSense Support site here: https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/topic.py?topic=153

You could be wasting a lot of adviews - and a lot of money - by not replacing AdSense PSA ads with an alternate URL. The method you use is up to you.

By Bruce Whitehead

Creating Revenue Without Much Effort, Set It And Forget It Online

2008-07-16T23:56:00.005-07:00

Earning more revenue from your website is the goal of most webmasters. However, this is time consuming and with so many things to do options are what you need.

There are so many great ways to increase your sites revenue. To name a few: Adsense, Adbrite and BlogAds. These sites all provide third party sponsored link programs. You run the ads, people click and you get paid. Seems simple right? Now it's time to get creative and make even more money while offering a great service.

Rather than creating daily articles so your site has enough pages and content find yourself a feed to automatically generate page content for you.

Lets say your website is only 10 pages and you don't have the time to create more pages to expand your site. There is a creative soluation. First, you need to locate a content feed so you have enough pages on your site. Next, you need to find a third party sponsored link site who will deliver text or banner ads.

If you are still with me you will have two snippets of code provided by two services: a content service and a sponsored link service. Two services working together to make your site money.

By Andrew Hillman

How to Take Advantage of the New Google Adwords Changes

2008-07-16T23:56:00.003-07:00

On Friday, July 15th all Google advertisers got the email message entitled "Google AdWords(TM) Announcement: Keyword Evaluation Changes". Now, I don't know about you, but whenever I get a message from Google concerning Adwords, everything else seems to take a backseat.

So we've decided to give you a heads up on what you can be expecting in the future, how you can expect these new changes to effect your advertising efforts, and what you should be doing to make sure that you can compete after they've been implemented.

First, here is a brief summary of the changes so you understand what exactly is going on:

1. Keywords will simply be active or inactive, instead of Normal, in trial, on hold, disabled.

2. There will be a minimum bid for each of your keywords based on the keyword's Quality Score which, in turn, will be based on your ad's click-through rate. The higher-relevant, more targeted, ads will have higher Quality Scores and lower minimum bid amounts. The less-relevant and less-targeted keywords and ads will have higher minimum bids. Now the difference from Google's old way of doing things is that you can now activate your keywords no matter what. Before, it was up to Google. They would simply place your keywords on hold, and you didn't have a choice, but try to optimize your ad. Now, you can get that keyword to run, regardless of its quality score?but you'll have to pay a much higher price per click.

What does all of this mean for the advertiser? Well, it means a few things, and it would be foolish to say that these changes were all good. They are definitely all good for Google, and that is to be expected.

1. Google says that they believe these changes will result in higher-quality ads. Maybe this is true, and maybe it's not. What is true is that the educated advertisers will save money under the new rules. People that know how to group ads and get higher CTR's will have to pay less for the same ad rank as those advertisers that do not know such techniques. That's a good thing for small advertisers who spend time organizing their Adword accounts.

2. But? on the flip side, it also means that big advertisers with big budgets can now come in and write ineffective ads and get good placement. Notice above, we didn't say that this change was all necessarily good for small advertisers. What is true is that small advertisers will have to become more educated to compete. Big advertisers care about branding. They want to have the number 1 ad slot, and most of the time, they don't really care what it costs. Now, in the old days, if their ad wasn't getting clicks, the ad simply wouldn't get shown (good for the small advertiser). But now, they can just pay more to have their ad shown. This was a good move by Google to get a lot more money in their pocket.

3. Conversion rate becomes the key. If your site converts, you can afford to pay more per click, in turn, you can compete. If your site doesn't convert, you'll be eliminated by the big advertisers and/or the smart advertisers. That's the bottom line. The first step is not getting the traffic to your site like so many teach. But conversely, it's getting your site in a position to support the clicks.

Here are 3 action steps you can work on to make sure that you will be competing in the Adwords game for some time to come. We realize that each of these steps can be broken down into months of work, but don't let yourself get caught up in too many details. Just focus on these three things before you start getting too in depth with changing your Adwords accounts around, give each of them a quick rehaul, and make sure you know your numbers.

1. You need to get educated and learn the system. Grouping keywords, writing good ads, keyword selection, it's all equally important and will play a large role in the future of your Adwords campaign.

2. You'll also need to get your site converting well enough to support these clicks. Otherwise you'll lose money very quickly. The formula is [number of sales made / visitors to your site]. On the internet you should realistically be aiming for about 1%.

3. Finally, you need to determine the visitor value of your site. This will tell you how much you can afford to bid on clicks. The formula is [dollars made by your site / visitors to your site]. Plan on bidding about 50% of your site's visitor value.

So, in summary, if you want to compete in the Adwords marketplace in the future, you need to take action, actively monitor your account, and know your numbers. Your goal is to run a profitable business. If you focus on the three action steps above you'll know your place in the market, you'll be ready to compete, and you'll make money using the new Adwords system.

By John Rooney and David Nevogt

PPC Advertising Explained

2008-07-16T23:56:00.001-07:00

Advertising on the Internet has always been a bit of a minefield for people being new to online advertising. Banner advertising, text link advertising, CPM, CPA, PPC, email advertising, SPAM - finding the way through this minefield can be very confusing and expensive if the advertiser does not what he is doing. When Pay-Per-Click advertising entered the market the advertisers gained a big piece of control.

With Pay Per Click advertising, the advertiser remains in control of the advertising campaign. He is able to target the audience and to set his own price per click (pay per click). Most PPC Advertising Networks provide the platform to specify the target audience by geographic location and topic or industry. The advertising networks have websites of publishers lined up where those ads will be displayed.

In PPC advertising the advertiser creates his ad and sets a limit per click that he is willing to pay. Most advertising networks provide tools to see how that pay per click limit applies to other advertisers bids for the same audience/industry. This will allow the advertiser to see if his pay per click limit is competitive and if his ad would be shown at all. The advertising networks will display those ads up on top of an ad location that pay most per click. The higher the bid, the better the chances of an ad to be seen.

On the first look PPC advertising sounds expensive. What would happen if you have somebody going rampage and clicking on the advertisers ads repetitive over and over again. Imagine your competition ruining your business by clicking your ads like crazy. In theory this could bump up the bill for the advertiser dramatically. But advertising networks usually have some sort of protection build in to recognize click fraud. That way the advertiser can rest assured that his money is running down the drain on fraudulent incidents. The advertiser also has the opportunity to set a daily budget for his ads. Once the budget has been fully used his ads will no longer be displayed until either the budget is increased or the next day starts. Pay Per Click advertising offers the advertiser the opportunity to advertise to a world wide audience without ever going over his budget, no matter how small the budget is.

Depending on the advertising network ads will be displayed in search engines or on regular websites.

Although relatively easy straightforward to set up, PPC campaigns are not easy to be measured in terms of success. It takes many hours and days of research into your business and competitors to find the right combination of pay per click limit, ad copy and target audience. Running PPC campaigns can be a full time job by itself. That is why some companies choose to completely outsource their campaigns to PPC Management companies, in order to get the most ROI (Return of Investment). Usually these are players with large interest in a certain market and with pockets deep enough to pay for this kind of service.

Advertising via PPC is different but then it is not. It gives the advertiser more control in many directions. The advertiser can react faster to trends and respond better to changing market conditions.

By Christoph Puetz

How Naming Schemes Impact Adwords Campaign Management

2008-07-16T23:55:00.013-07:00

Improving Adwords Campaign Management

Adwords Campaign Management - Naming Schemes

Keep your campaigns and naming schemes simple and readable.

Dull as ditchwater it may be but when you expand your Google Adwords advertising you will as a matter of course have multiple campaigns and within each campaign multiple ad-groups.

Google Recommended Limits

Googles recommendations/limits are as follows:

25 campaigns

100 ad-groups/campaign

750 keywords/adgroup (although they will allow up to 2,000)

Although you will have a theoretical total of up to 5,000,000 keywords, you will never get anywhere near that.

Why?

This is a performance and scalability issue for Google - the more keywords in an account, the more processing power is required to see what keyword/advert combination should be shown.

If Google were to allow everybody to utilise their full complement of 5,000,000 keywords, Adwords quite simply would not work, screeching to a halt due to excessive load placed on their servers.

This is why in practical terms you will be limited to a fraction (perhaps 50,000 to 100,000 - somewhat more if your account is a 'good performer') of the possible total.

Regardless, even 50,000 keywords can lend itself very quickly to a lot of complexity so always rename your ad-groups and campaigns from the provided defaults to reflect 'their nature'.

"Campaign #1" tells you exactly 'what it is' but what you want to know is 'what it does'. Adwords Campaign Management becomes proportionally more difficult the more campaigns and ad-groups you construct.

Some people maintain a spreadsheet with notes indicating what each campaign and ad-group relate to. This is commendable but unnecessary.

Having the discipline to do this every time you construct a new ad-group/campaign doesn't take much time or effort but will save you a lot of headaches in the long run.

By Tom O'Brien

Discover How to Create Ads Which Give Incredible Results!

2008-07-16T23:55:00.011-07:00

Many people decide to spend a lot of money putting their advert all over the internet in the hopes that their web traffic will sky-rocket. Most people end up disappointed. This is usually due to the fact that their ad is just not appealing enough to a scrolling browser. The key to creating an advert which is constantly clicked on can be found by fulfilling these 4 criteria:

Getting the reader's attention

Getting the interest of the reader

Sparking desire within the reader

Getting the reader to take action

Getting the reader's attention

This is often the hardest part. Increase the chance of getting a reader's attention by having a large headline, which is short and to the point. Make it simple so that the reader knows exactly what he or she is looking at and make it sound exciting. Arousing excitement in a reader will encourage them to read further into your ad. Your headline should use very positive, catchy words too. Words such as 'profits, breakthrough, discover, guaranteed and exclusive' all sound attractive to a reader. Apart from the headline, make sure your ad is well formatted and is spread out, with not too much information crammed into a small space. If you can, try to use a unique font which will stand out because you have to bear in mind that your ad may not be the only one on the same page. A unique font will get readers' attention over other ads.

Getting the interest of the reader

Once you've done the hardest part; getting the attention of the reader, it is essential that you keep the attention of the reader by interesting them. Tell the reader about what is in it for them. Tell them how your product or service will make their life better. If you can, try to make it sound as though your product or service will make the reader's life easier. People love to know about what will save them time and effort. Tell people about how your offer is unique and of the best value possible. People like knowing that they've got the best value for money and so one of the key purposes of your ad is assuring people that better value for money can be found nowhere else. Tell readers that satisfaction is guaranteed. This puts them in a win-win situation and this is the position that they like being in. They will immediately warm to your offer and will start thinking very seriously about your offer.

Sparking desire within the reader

By this stage you are close to getting the reader to take action. However, the reader will need just a little bit extra to persuade them to buy. You need to provide this, and make your offer sound extremely impressive. One of the best ways to spark desire within your reader is by making your offer sound exclusive. Make it sound like there is nothing else on the internet that compares to your offer. This will make the reader feel like this is an offer just too good to miss. Alternatively you could use curiosity as a motivation for the reader buying your offer. Do this by telling the reader about your offer and using phrases such as 'ultimate secrets will be revealed' and 'discover the hidden ways'. Offering added bonuses is also another very effective way of giving that extra bit of motivation to a reader to take action. Ebooks make very good bonuses because they are cheap to produce and easy to send to a customer. Using a 'mystery bonus' is a great way of arousing readers' curiosity so that they buy.

Getting the reader to take action

Once your reader has decided to take action, they need to know how to contact you and how to order. Make this process very easy for your customers. If the process of ordering is long and complicated, this will look unprofessional and could lead the reader to lose their trust in you. Within your ad, include your email address, your website URL, and all other information that the reader might need to place an order. I thoroughly recommend including a phone number too, because when people have problems ordering they want to talk to someone about it and they do not want to have to wait 24 hours for an email response.

And then you're there, your ad has brought you a sale. Just keep swapping different ads around and keep trying new things. See which ads bring in the most sales. This way you will know what type of ads to use to make the most profit. Remember, creativity is a very important part of online success.

By William Johnston

Adwords & Adsense: A Beginners Guide

2008-07-16T23:55:00.009-07:00

The Mechanism
First a brief glossary of terms:
Adwords: The program advertisers use to make their adverts.
Adsense: The program Website owners use to display the adverts
CTR: Click Through Rate (the number of page impressions the number of clicks on a advert)

The most effective methods of advertising on the internet are Google's Adwords program and Overture which is now officially called Yahoo Search Marketing but still universally known as Overture. This method of advertising is called Pay per Click or PPC. The concept is incredibly simple; Google and Yahoo provide listings on a Per bid basis. You bid a certain amount of money for your specific keywords when someone types in a keyword and you have the highest bid then your advert shows up. On Google the adverts show up in the Adwords column on the right hand side of the page whilst Yahoo shows them as sponsored links at the top of the page. If someone then clicks on your advert, they arrive at your web site and you are charged the amount you bid. So, for example if you bid $.10 per click on 'widgets', and that's the highest bid, you'll show up at the top if It's the second highest bid you'll show up second etc. If 100 people click on your advert, then the search engine or PPC service will charge you $10.00.

Using Adwords to your Advantage
So now that you know how Adwords work you can use this to your advantage when building websites. If you build a site about a specific subject you can then use specific keywords to attract adverts. The best way to ascertain which keywords to use are by signing up for an Adwords account you will then have access to Google's Adwords tools which will show you which keywords are highest paying for a particular subject. In addition it will suggest alternative keywords. At this point it is probably wise to point out it is against Google's Terms of Service to specifically create a page just to target Adsense, Obviously if the site has lots of unique content then you are entitles to tweak the keywords to maximize your revenue.

Making Adsense pay
There is very little point adding Adsense to a page with no traffic. It is best to build your site and spend a couple of months driving traffic to the site, once you have a regular amount of people being driven to your site by the search engines then it is time to add Adsense. It is not just a case of putting Adsense on your site and waiting for the money to roll in. You should place the adverts carefully to maximize exposure whilst not impacting on the browsing experience of your viewers. Leave the Ads in position for a week or 2 and monitor the performance, also known as CTR. The change the position of the ads and the color and monitor this for any improvements. Publishers have been known to improve their CTR by up to 4 times by employing small changes. So time spent tweaking Adsense is time well spent.

By Mark Thompson

How to Make More Money from the Google Adsense Ads on Your Blog

2008-07-16T23:55:00.007-07:00

Numerous bloggers these days are looking to earn extra cash through the google adsense ads that they post at their sites. Actually the spreading of pay-per-click ads by leading search engines in recent times to smaller sites and blogs has had a major impact on the net. Firstly it has helped to improve on the quality of content on sites as webmasters pay much closer attention to their content so as to attract the right kind of high value google adsense ads that will earn them more revenue.

Still one needs to know how to maximize on their google ads revenue. There are a number of things that you will need to do regularly to ensure that you keep earning a good regular income from google.

Check the value of keywords before posting new content

It is not too difficult to insert most keywords in your area of specialization into your article while leaving your article attractive and useful to readers. You may require the services of a writer, but this should not be a problem as online writers are very affordable.

Do not spend money buying a list of valuable keywords, this information is available for free online. What's more in your initial experimental stage with keywords buying a list will not be a prudent thing to do. One of the reason is that there is no guarantee that your using certain keywords will automatically and quickly attract the desired high value click ads. There is no certainty in these things. However by consistently using high value keywords you will ultimately enjoy a much higher income than somebody who does not.

Here is a useful link for checking keyword values. It is an overture tool but will also give you a very good idea of what their competitors Google charge for the same keywords.

http://uv.bidtool.overture.com/d/search/tools/bidtool/

Write interesting relevant content

Writing interesting, relevant and captivating content for your website or blog will yield many useful benefits that will ultimately impact on your google adsense earnings. To start with, it is a well know fact that the longer you can keep your visitors in your site, the higher the chances of you selling them something. The same is true with clicks the longer you can keep them wandering around your site the higher the chances that they will end up clicking at some of your google ads and thus earn you something. Well written, relevant content will also make cause your visitors to return again, another vital and highly desirable reaction that makes a website successful. It is much easier to attract back a previous visitor than to win over a new one.

Having interesting and relevant copy at your site is the most effective way of attracting visitors and keeping them longer at your site. Interesting content will also cause your visitors to return again and again. All this will have a very positive impact on your google adsense earnings.

Post your content elsewhere

Posting your quality, attractive content elsewhere will increase the number of quality links leading back to your site. This will help build up the traffic to your website which should have a direct bearing on your google earnings. The higher the traffic a site has, the higher the clicks and this means higher earnings.

The position of your adsense ads matters

Do not ignore advice given by google to affiliates on where ads work best. For example posting them on the left is always better than the right because the eye' attention will always be caught by the left before the right. Another good place to post ads is at the bottom of the page.

By Lois S.

How to Quickly Create an Adsense Site That Brings In the Bucks

2008-07-16T23:55:00.005-07:00

One of the hottest crazes for online marketers is Adsense sites. These marketers trade in information and build sites that are tightly focused around one small niche. To build an Adsense site, all a marketer needs is a Google Adsense account, a website (or even a free blog account), and some articles. When the marketer makes his site live, he includes the Adsense HTML code so that it serves ads alongside his content.

These sites place well in the search engines because they are content-based. Most often, articles are keyword-focused, meaning each article focuses on one word or phrase. Once the sites are indexed by the search engines, and once marketers drive traffic to the site, they leave it alone, let it run itself, and create another Adsense site. It isn't unusual for a marketer to have 50 or more of these sites scattered all over the internet.

The way the marketer makes money from these sites is via the Adsense ads. Because the ads are served based on the content, the ads are targeted. That means that if someone finds your site from the search engine, they are interested in your niche (because they were the ones searching!). Thus, they are also interested in the ads on your site. When they click on one (or more), you are paid a fraction of the advertising cost Google takes in.

For example, suppose you set up a site focused on baseball. You choose to target the "American League East Division" as your focus. You could put up one article on each team-Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, Baltimore Orioles, Toronto Blue Jays, and Tampa Bay Devil Rays-and an RSS feed that collects news on each team. Put this feed on each page, so each page is constantly updated (to bring readers back). Then, add your Adsense code. Likely, the ads will be about baseball apparel or tickets, things people interested in this topic would be interested in.

As people interested in baseball, and especially AL East teams, find your site, they will read and possibly bookmark the site or add it to their RSS reader. Even better, they will probably click on your ads and you will make money.

You can set up a site like this in one day-get a web host, an Adsense account, and put up five articles. That's it. If you don't have articles or don't want to write them, you can inexpensively pay someone to write them for you.

Put it together, then move on to the next site.

How To Win The War of Pay per Click Advertising.

2008-07-16T23:55:00.003-07:00

Do you know what is the most important question among most internet marketers specially newbie's. It's "How to get highly targeted visitors to there site?" Believe me, I know it because I received this question from my subscribers almost daily.

Well, earlier when I started my internet business I also faced this problem. I tried safe-lists, I bought so called guaranteed visitors, even I blast my ad to 10 million (Yes, you are right. It's 10 million) sites but couldn't make a single sale.

Than I changed my strategies and get this problem solved by finding a right solution, and that is "Pay Per Click Advertising". Pay Per Click Advertising is a great solution for traffic worries which directs a highly targeted traffic to my site. Yesterday only I got around 280 visitors and I made 24 sales.

Pay-Per-Click is a simple type of paid advertising that most search engines, including some of the largest ones, now offer. It requires a bid for a "per-click" basis, which translates to your company paying the bid amount every time the search engine directs a visitor to your site. There is the added bonus that when a per-click site sends your website traffic, your site often appears in the results of other prevalent search engines.

As with all marketing campaigns, there are pros and cons. Where there are flowers there are thorns also. what you have to do is to protect yourself from thorns and let only the fragrance touch your inner sense. I am going to tell you advantages the Pay Per Click Advertising.

One of the greatest advantages of PPC is that you never have to tweak your web pages to change your position in search engine results, as you must do in a typical SEO campaign. What you do have to do in a pay-per-click campaign is pay a fee.

Another advantage is the simplicity of the pay-per-click process. You just bid and you're up and running. It doesn't demand any specific technical knowledge, though the more you know about search engines and keywords, the easier - and more effective - the process will be.

Now came the very point in your mind that what is bad about Pay Per Click Advertising. The downside is that PPC is essentially a bidding war. A higher bid than yours will lower your position on search engine results. This means that you will have to raise your bid to regain your position - which can obviously become quite expensive, especially if you are bidding on a popular keyword.

In order to determine if pay-per-click is a cost effective form of marketing for your business, you must do some computing to figure out how much each visitor to your site is worth. You can compute this value by dividing the profit you make on your website over a given period of time by the total number of visitors for that same time period. For example, if your site made $5,000 in profits and there were 10000 hits, each visitor would be theoretically worth 50 cents. The basic formula is profits divided by visitors.

Be aware that the most popular keywords often cost considerably more than 50 cents a click. The only way around this is to bid less for these phrases or you will be paying too much for each individual hit.

Since when you are doing the business for earning money and you are losing a heavy part of it then you must have a plan in place to closely track the effectiveness of your keyword. It is advisable to monitor your keywords on at least a monthly basis.

The only way to assess your success in this field is monitoring, not only monitoring but careful monitoring. You can easily analyze it by visitor behavior which can produce invaluable knowledge about consumer motivation, habits, and trends. Expert monitoring and consumer analysis is essential to your overall business needs, and pay-per-click campaign is a must for this.

By Raamakant S.

The Truth About Pay-Per-Click Ads

2008-07-16T23:55:00.001-07:00

Are pay-per-click ads the best method of getting customers to your website?

Essentially there are two ways your website can get to the top of a search engine's results:

* Pay-per-click ads, where you pay for your site to appear in the "Sponsored Links" area on the right side of the results page

* Search engine optimization, where your site is optimized to be at the top of the natural/organic results on the left side of the results page (link to our SEO page)

JupiterResearch analyst Niki Scevak stated that one in seven searchers click on a paid/sponsored link. If you do the math, that's only 14% of searchers who are choosing the pay-per-click ads to get to the information they are searching for. It also means, if you concentrate all your search efforts on pay-per-click you will only be reaching 14% of your potential customers.

So while pay-per-click methods might get your listed quickly they may not be driving as much traffic as you want. That is why investing time towards a solid search engine optimization and link management campaign is needed to get your site listed highly in the natural results is a step that cannot be ignored. It helps you reach more searchers.

By Shell Harris

AdWords Campaign Set Up AdvancedTips

2008-07-16T23:53:00.005-07:00

Make Your Ads Different

Your completed AdWords ads are going to run right along side everyone else's. You need to use words that will make yours stand out. Again, here is where you need to look at your competitors ads to see what they are saying. Once you've done that, you need to figure out how to make yours stand out.

Don't use the same terms at beginning of titles and sentences. Think of synonyms for more commonly used words. Think of different ways to say things.

Whatever you do, make your ad different. If it stands out, for the right reasons, you will get more clicks.

Run Several Different Ads at Once For Each Ad Group

AdWords allows you to run as many ads as you would like for each " Ad Group" (keyword group). Take advantage of this feature. Don't limit yourself to only one ad. Run two or three different ads for each Ad Group.

Experiment with different wording in titles, different text in the ads themselves and different "Destination URLs" to see which ads get the highest clickthrough percentages and which have the highest conversion rate.

Keep the ads that make you the most money and delete the other ones. You can then try other variations of the ad that converted well to make it even better. Always run more than one ad, even if the "different" ads are very similar.

Even a change to one word can increase your conversion percentages dramatically at times.

Consider Using Different "Destination URLs" for Your Ads

Your website's main page may not be the page that best "converts" viewers into customers. If you're trying to sell one specific product with an ad, don't send people clicking on your ad to your website's main page. Send them directly to the webpage for that product.

You might also consider designing specific "splash" pages for each Ad Group you run. Each of those splash pages can then use the terms you're including in that Ad Group. If your customers see the same terms on your web site that made them click on the ad in the first place, they'll be more likely to buy your product.

By Chris Burgess

AdWords Ads: To Syndicate or Not to Syndicate

2008-07-16T23:53:00.003-07:00

When running ads on the AdWords network, one of the first decisions you will need to make is on which network or networks your ads will run. You can run your ads on either the Google "search network" (Google, Earthlink, AOL, AskJeeves, etc), the Google "content network" (About.com, New York Times, Lycos, Business.com, Infovillage, etc) or both. There are plusses and minuses to both that you will need to weigh before you decide.

What's the Difference?

Google's "bread and butter" is their search network and the ads running on those sites (Google, Earthlink, AOL, AskJeeves, etc). Customers who are viewing pages on those search engines are looking for information or products. Your ads in front of their eyes seems like a good fit, and in many instances, it is. In my experience, ads running on the search network have a much higher click-through ratio than those on the "content" network. Conversion percentages (the percentage of clicks that turn into sales) is roughly the same, though there may also be a slight edge to the search network there as well.

Google's "content" network is somewhat more complicated. People viewing the New York Times or Business.com may not necessarily be looking for a product to buy. Often times, they're simply looking for information or entertainment. The ads I've run on the content network have had lower click-through rates, usually as much as 50% to 75% as high as those on the search network. You can find quality, converting customers, but it seems to take more money to do so (i.e. more clicks).

It Might be Worth a Shot

Google states that a lower click-through rate for your ads running on Google's content network sites will not penalize or otherwise harm the rankings of your ads running on the Google search network. Basically, running your ads on both the search and content networks cannot "hurt" your ads rankings and therefore your sales.

If you have a little extra budget, you might want to give the content network a try, especially if you're trying to target readers of the New York Times or Business.com. It might be a great fit. If you have a smaller budget and you're looking for more steady traffic, go with just the search network.

By Chris Burgess

Adsense, Boost Your Payout 400%, No Really

2008-07-16T23:53:00.001-07:00

How?

Dead easy.

I implemented this tactic myself yesterday on one of my sites and my CTR has gone up 300% and it hasn't been 24hrs yet. Needless to say I'll be spending the rest of the morning making changes to my Adsense ads across my site network.

What is it?

Sorry can't resist a little intrigue.

It's very simple. Using the Leaderboard banner 728 x 90 I added small images/photos above each ad at 140 x 100.

These photos are broadly related to the ads and draw the eye of the visitor to the ad. Which the ad alone maybe would not do. Once their eye is drawn they read the ad text below the image and they are much more likely to click.

Google already knows of this tactic and I know a number of people have approached them via email before implementing the images. Obviously nobody wants their account suspended. The good news is Google are fine with it, for now at least. Although a few warnings have gone out with regard to animated images not being appropriate. So no flash or animated gifs!

You can view this in action on one of my sites - http://www.how-to-make-money-online.info/

You can't fail to see it at the top of the page.

Now I hope this is new information to you. If so I know it's going to be damn useful. :) And most of all profitable!

The benefit of this over Google's own 'image ads' is, you choose the image for one and the basic text ad appeals for another. As I'm sure you're aware text ads work better than image ads. This seems to work better than both separately by combining them together, the major boost comes from you being able to select the most relevant image to your site content.

By Darren Yates

3 Tips For Adwords PPC Management

2008-07-16T23:52:00.017-07:00

Adwords PPC Management Tip No. 1

Setting up an account

If you live outside of the US, different minimum bid prices hold true given the different currencies involved.

Let's take the UK for example - in the UK the minimum bid price is £0.04 whereas the minimum bid price in the US is $0.05.

This means the cost of bids in the UK when currency is converted is significantly higher (July 2005), therefore it may be wise for you to setup an Adwords account which uses USD.

I say may because you will incur charges for currency conversions with your bank so you must look at your own particular financial situation to be sure. The new

So, if you have yet to create an Adwords account - or indeed even if you have an account (you would have to shut it down before reopening another) - sign up at http://www.google.com (not your local Google portal - eg: .co.uk) and specify dollars as your account currency. It Ccould make a significant difference to your PPC management costs.

Adwords PPC Management Tip No.2

How to increase your business profitability by hundreds of percent

Ok,

So you get a mere 4 lines of text to play with in Adwords so every single line counts. Even more than that every single letter counts (even the Capitalisation of letters will make a difference to your click through rates believe it or not).

But what's in a name?

Your name in your ad is of course your URL. When crafting an ad, most people spend a lot of time concentrating on the headline (well worth doing as it is the most important part arguably) and on the ad text (also a good thing but not as important as you'd think).

After the headline, the next thing that prospects eyes are drawn to is...

Yes you've guessed it - your name - your URL

But what can I do with my URL I hear you say?

Just because you have 1 domain name doesn't mean you need to use it. There is nothing in Google's T&C's that prohibits you from using a different display URL to that of your destination URL (although you will have to own the display URL and it must resolve to a pertinent page - i.e. If you're advertising pet food, it must be about pet food and not resolve to another address dealing with a different subject entirely.

Hundreds of percent more profitable?

We have conducted tests outlined above with some of our clients. Results have ranged from 46% through to 76% more profitable domain names. These results are applicable to your bottom line profitability - remember 76% more traffic will result in a like for like increase in bottom line profits.

Your results are equally applicable on and offline, whatever grabs attention online will do likewise in offline print media.

We have also seen a 113% improvement on one of our tests (with a small sample) but we stopped the test early because our results were not statistically significant and waiting for a larger sample was a moot point.

Pop Quiz - One of my clients Jonathan Stanley has graciously allowed me to show you the results of our tests with him. Consider the following adverts and their display URL's:

www.TalkingLeadership.com
www.ThisIsLeadership.com
www.LeadSuccessfully.com
www.MyLeadershipCenter.com
www.LeadingEffectively.com

Which of the above display URL's was the winner and which do you think was the loser and which one do you think was the winner?

Well, the results are as follows from worst to last:

MyLeadershipCenter.com 9 clicks
LeadingEffectively.com 17 clicks
LeadSuccessfully.com 18 clicks
ThisIsLeadership.com 21 clicks
TalkingLeadership.com 37 clicks

Who would have thought it? I certainly wouldn't but then that's the point you will never know until you test.

My thanks to Jonathan Stanley once again at http://www.TalkingLeadership.com for allowing me the use of this example.

And what else can you do with your text? And even if you want to use your existing domain there's plenty you can still do - remember CAPITALISATION? And then there are sub-domains or even appended directory names.

All it takes is a little creativity and you'll find your click through rates reaching new heights with your Adwords PPC management.

Adwords PPC Management Tip No.3

Keyword Resources

It's easy to think you have a great list of 50 or 100 keywords and stop there but you'd be missing out on the thousands of other keywords your competitors may have researched.

Brainstorming Resources Here are a few keyword brainstorming resources you should try to increase your keyword list:

http://www.kwmap.net
http://www.trackingandtesting.com/dystatic/AdwordsVolume1Wordtracker.php
http://www.lexfn.com
http://www.goodkeywords.com
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
http://www.trackingandtesting.com/dystatic/AdwordsTip1NicheDB.php
http://www.nichebot.com

A little note on thousands of keywords: In theory you have 5,000,000 keywords available to you in your Adwords account. In practice this if used would 'annoy' Google as their servers would grind to a halt. Having thousands of keywords is not a good idea from a testing/tracking or PPC management perspective unless:

* You have a large number of people to conduct said tracking/testing

* You have the requisite tools to analyse results

* You are extraordinarily disciplined (along with all the people you have under your command) in implementing correct tracking URL's

Google will cap the numbers of keywords in your account around the 50,000 level - they may allow more if your account history is good.

So don't get too hung up on constructing thousands upon thousands of keywords - find the ones that work as quickly as you can and focus on conversion, your time will be well served.

Bonus Tip

Are you looking for somebody to help you with your Adwords PPC management? Well, perhaps before you decide upon who should help you, type in the following phrase into Google:

"bad ppc management"

Hmmm, makes you think doesn't it?

** Note: This article is spam friendly and has received a low (safe) rating from Spam Assassin.

By Tom O'Brien

The Future of PPC Advertising

2008-07-16T23:52:00.015-07:00

For those of you who haven't used a Pay Per Click advertising platform like Google Adwords or Yahoo! Search Marketing, take notes.

Pay Per Click advertising refers to a style of advertising where the advertiser pays to display a link, an image, or text ad based on the number of clicks. Specific keywords are bid on and results are displayed, and advertisers pay their click prices to have their ad displayed for their selected keywords (Sponsored Results or Sponsored links).

PPC programs can deliver instant targeted visitors to your website in streaming amounts, but what are the downsides?

Click fraud.

It has been estimated that up to 38% of all clicks through PPC advertising are fraudulent. Allegations have even been brought against the major search engines for not doing their part to control the click fraud issues, and critics are quick to point out the fact that search engine companies earn 99% of their income through this advertising method.

Industry analysis's predict a change in the next few years as PPC advertising shifts to CPA advertising with search engines. This will eliminate the click fraud issue, because advertisers will began to pay for actions instead of clicks. This form of advertising will become the most dominant form of online advertising.

That being said, is it still possible for a company to profit from PPC advertising?

Certainly!

A properly managed PPC advertising campaign can still be the most effective online advertising method for a company. It IS still possible to achieve a great ROI for a particular product or service, and will continue to drive the most traffic, clicks, and sales for online advertising for years to come.

By Evan Ernst

3 Adsense Tips To Dramatically Increase CTR

2008-07-16T23:52:00.013-07:00

Here are three Adsense Tips, together with the required HTML code, to dramatically increase CTRs and Google Adsense revenue.

1. Correct HTML Code to Include Images or Graphics Above An Adsense Leader Board Block:

Expert SEO Forums have been abuzz over a new Adsense tip which has seen a dramatic increase in CTR's.

Many webmasters have reported increases over 400 percent after adding four images, expertly positioned horizontally over a 4 block Adsense Leaderboard, with no border.

I don't see any reason why this would not work on smaller blocks, but you would have to alter the following HTML accordingly.

Here is the HTML code you should use to align the images directly over the ads -- please be cautioned, so as not to breach Google's TOS, you should not use any other text around these images, apart from the required Adsense code:

[table cellspacing="0" width="728" border="0" cellspadding="0"]
[tbody][tr]
[td width="182"][img src="X" /][/td]
[td width="182"][img src="X" /][/td]
[td width="182"][img src="X" /][/td]
[td width="182"][img src="X" /][/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td colspan="4"]
GOOGLE AD CODE HERE 728x90
[/td]
[/tr]
[/tbody]
[/table]

NOTE: Please do change all [ ] brackets above, to the required HTML brackets < >.

Here is one of the relevant threads at SEO forums that has a clear "graphic" example, with before and after pictures clearly depicting how to add these images:

Forums Digital Point - Quadrupled Adsense CTR's thread

A website with thousands of drawings of little Piggies, was responsible for starting the above thread!

2. Maximize Google Adsense CTRs using the Competitive Ad Filter to exclude low-paying Blog related URL's:

Have you ever had days where 50 clicks would pay you the grand total of $1.50 - well that's the combined power of 3 cent clicks or low-paying Blog related ads. working against you.

This post Maximise CTR with Adsense for Blogs at the Shaolin Tiger blog gives you a good list of around 50 URL's to include in the "Competive Filter" of a Google Adsense account:

This will naturally filter out the low-paying Ads which Blog software and related domains seem to serve up.

3. Adding a Double Block of Large Rectangle Adsense Blocks at the End of each Post or Webpage

A number of the high-trafficked blogs, add a double block of 336x380 "Large Rectangle" blocks at the very end of a Post or Webpage, just as the visitor is about to leave.

Makes sense - a visitor is about to leave, and has one of two choices:

(a) visit another page on the site, or

(b) click on a high "paying" Google Adsense ad, prior to leaving the site

Serving them with a wide-choice of Adsense ads in the format which is statistically proven to have the best CTR, is an obvious choice. Trialling this placement has made a dramatic improvement in CTRs for the Marketing Defined blog.

So go ahead, use these 3 Adsense Tips to make a dramatic increase in your CTR's.

By Roseanne van Langenberg

Adsense Marketing: Brand Performance

2008-07-16T23:52:00.011-07:00

Google developed a prime product, Adsense. Marketing your website through key words, brand performance, and Adsense is an entirely new means of promoting your focus. As the rest of the world wonders what happened, those with an understanding of the particulars, in this case, KEYWORDS, trump the market.

Traffic to your site requires keyword rich content that will not only get the reader there, but keep them there, and bring them back, frequently. The trailer of this market is a resounding thud against equality, and packs a punch recognizable due to strategic style and market abundance. Where do you get your traffic?

What keyword wraps your business website in functional traffic building content? Recently, I started focusing my interests on keyword profiles and optimal qualifiers. This process moves my articles, my websites, and my work into the forefront of marketing, bringing more traffic to my site. By branding my site, and my work with keywords, the content become rich and recognizable by web crawlers bringing even more traffic.

The depth of focus brought to my sites at this point in time, means my plan is working. More clicks equals more bucks in my pocket.

So, what's in it for you, my reader?

More clicks. By reading and understanding how to work the system to improve your visibility through marketing keywords and content rich information, your site gains traffic and you earn more money.

Strategy:

1. Have a website oriented to market your product with keyword rich content relating to your product and your market.

2. Promote your focus with keyword rich articles written specifically for your market niche.

3. Promote link back capabilities with the articles you write.

4. Develop traffic promotionals that bring back your client time and time again, encourage them to send friends to your site, and provide content interesting to new clients.

5. Be recognizable. Have brand recognition by narrowing your scope to a specific niche of the market.

Capitalize on the market available to your niche by using relative keywords focused specifically to your content and product. This brings readers who are interested in your product to your site, and helps narrow the lineup, while promoting your product to more of those who are interested in more information. A focused customer with a specific interest in your product and service is far more likely to hang around and purchase something off your site than one who accidentally came across your site while surfing the net looking for something unrelated.

Select your keywords with care, to bring in specific people to the site. This helps focus your readers, and your articles to better serve the common good of your web design. Broad scopes just don't work. Get a niche and stay in it.

By Jan Verhoeff

AdWords Campaign Set Up Tips

2008-07-16T23:52:00.009-07:00

It's easy to overlook the basics of a strong AdWords campaign. Without them though, your AdWords campaign can be doomed from the very start. Follow these tips and you can be sure that your campaign will have a strong foundation for both short term and immediate success.
Use Proper Grammar and Spelling
It may sound basic, but ad text that uses slang, has misspelled words or doesn't read clearly isn't going to get clicked. If anything it makes your business seem unprofessional and could actually harm your business' reputation.
Make sure that you spell and grammar check your ads. You might also have a friend, co-worker or employee read through the ad text to make sure that it reads smoothly and makes sense. Input from others is invaluable when creating AdWords ads.
Start Small With Geographical Targeting
If you're just starting out, try limiting your ad's distribution to one or two regions (e.g. for businesses based in North America, limit your initial distribution to the U.S.A and Canada). By starting with a smaller distribution area, you will be able to keep your costs lower and "fine tune" your ads and keywords before you start to expand.
When you feel comfortable that your AdWords ads are profitable, start to expand several countries or regions at a time.
Scout the Competition
Chances are, no matter what kind of product you are selling, you will have a competitor who is already selling something similar and advertising it on AdWords. Search for the terms you wish to use on Google to see what kinds of ads your competitors are writing.
You might even try a tool like GoogSpy to see exactly what terms your competitors are buying.
Pay close attention to the terms they use, the deals or incentives they offer and the titles they use. You can learn a lot from your competitors. You don't want your ads to be exactly like theirs, but you can use elements from each competitor to make your ads perform even better.
By Chris Burgess

The Basics Of Pay Per Click Search Engine Advertising

2008-07-16T23:52:00.007-07:00

Not long ago, Forbes magazine has reported that pay per click ad sales are expected to increase to at least $8 billion by 2008.

There are three fundamental elements that form the basis of a successful pay per click ad program and they are constant monitoring, response analysis, and refinement.

Pay per click search engines offer a way to buy your way to the top of search results for any term you wish. With proper management, and a clear focus, pay per click search engines can offer some of the most well targeted and economical advertising on the Internet.

Pay per click advertising works through a bidding process, and the ads appear prominently on the results pages of search engines such as Google and Yahoo. The highest bidder for a particular word or phrase receives top placement, and depending on the engine, the top three to five bidders also generally also receive placement on the first page of unpaid search results.

Fundamental questions to be addressed when formulating a pay per click search engine strategy include the following:

When is the top pay per click bid necessary for highest conversion, and when will bidding for a second or third place position create a more attractive return on investment (ROI)?

How can you keep your PPC bids from cannibalizing your search efforts on other (non pay per click) search engines?

What percentage of your pay per click budget should go to each search engine?

Does either Google Adwords or Overture work better for your particular product or service? Or, perhaps neither one is appropriate from a return on investment (ROI) perspective.

It is of critical importance to focus sharply on identifying the search terms that convert most frequently for your particular site, eliminating those that don't perform, and most importantly, calculating and maximizing your return on investment.

The cost structure of pay per click is action-driven and each time a user clicks your ad, the pay per click engine deducts the amount of your current bid from your account. Pay per click offers a high level of assurance that your ad is reaching the proper target.

Pay per click campaigns, however, are not perfect. Without CONSTANT monitoring, you sometimes risk incurring advertising costs that can spiral out of control, focusing on terms that don't convert well for your product or services, or falling way down in position during a bidding war.

PPC advertising can be a great help to a site's success, but only with very close supervision and a thorough knowledge of the unique characteristics of each PPC search engine.

By Kirk Bannerman

How to Use Pay Per Click Advertising to Increase Web Site Traffic

2008-07-16T23:52:00.005-07:00

Have you ever imagined what it would be like to get hundreds, even thousands of targeted visitors to your web site each and everyday?

If you could increase web site traffic by a factor of 3, how much more money would you be making? I can tell you that your profits would grow exponentially!

So how do you drive those targeted, ready to buy, visitors to your site? I am going to outline the keys to winning the Pay per Click game. If you will implement these strategies, I can guarantee you that you will have more traffic to your site than you ever imagined!

So, let's get started increasing web site traffic, shall we?

PAY PER CLICK SEARCH ENGINES

This is one of the most obvious and misused traffic generating strategies on the web. If implemented properly, this can be a profitable way to get laser targeted traffic to any web site.

If you are just starting a web site, then this is where you need to start generating traffic. There are two reasons for this: the first, you will get immediate targeted traffic and secondly, paid traffic is predictable. You will be able to count on this traffic while you develop your free traffic strategies and implement them.

If you already have a site that is not doing well, then paid advertising is a great way to increase web site traffic immediately and start making sales. Our goal is to make sales profitably, and the following guidelines will help you do that.

KEYWORD RESEARCH

The key to successful paid advertising is developing a large number of highly targeted and relevant keywords. Keyword research will make or break your paid advertising campaign. There are a number of tools that can help in developing a list of keywords; I have mentioned a few below:

Overture's keyword search tool - This is a free tool that can be found at inventory.overture.com. There is NO http or www just inventory.overture.com

Wordtracker - Wordtracker costs a few dollars to use but it is a great tool. Word Tracker

Adword Analyzer - This is my personal favorite because it provides the most information and I use it everyday. Ad Words Analyzer

You need to develop a short list of about 100 keywords for your ad. You will eventually build this list into about 1000 but 100 is a good place to start.

SET UP YOUR ADS ON GOOGLE ADWORDS

Now that we have our keywords, you need to set up an account with Google Adwords. The reason we want to start with Google is they will produce the most traffic and we can test ads. We will discuss testing a little later, because right now I want to focus on setting up our ads.

This is NOT rocket science, just follow these easy steps:

1. Pick the countries and language that you want the ads to run in. I usually select the U.S and Canada with English as the language.
2. Now it is time to write the ad itself! With Google you are limited on space so make every word count. You will need to write a headline and two lines describing your ad.
a. Headline - This must be an attention grabber and it is critical that you include your keyword. I have also found that placing the headline in the form of a question helps with your click - through rate.
b. Description - Briefly describe what it is you are selling and explain how the reader will benefit from your product or service. You need to include your keyword in the description as well. (Some keyword phrases are awkward and trying to use them in the context of the ad is hard. Don't get frustrated by trying to make it work. If the keyword flows naturally in the ad, then use it!)
3. The next step is adding your keywords and keyword phrases. Google Adwords allows you to enter keywords 3 different ways:
a. Broad Match - A broad match will trigger your ads anytime one of your keywords is within a search. So if your keyword is "golf" and someone searches for "the best golf club" then your ad will be triggered. Broad match will deliver the least amount of targeted traffic and is not highly recommended.
b. Phrase Match - To enter your keyword as a phrase match you need to put quotations around the keyword like "golf equipment". This is a slightly more targeted way to get traffic.
c. Exact Match - Exact match keywords are the most targeted and they are entered with brackets, like [golf equipment]. The only way your ad will be triggered is by someone typing in the exact keyword you are bidding on. In our example, if someone typed in "golf equipment" then your ad will show up as a sponsored ad. This is the most effective way to get targeted traffic to your site!
4. Now it is time to test your ads! You need to write two ads for every ad campaign you have. Only make slight differences in the two ads, just change one word for example. Let the ads run for about 500 impressions and then see which one gets the highest CTR (click through rate). When you have determined which ad is the best, then change the ad slightly and run another ad to see if you can make it better. Always keep trying to produce better pulling ads, because Google Adwords will reward you for a high CTR.
5. The last step is setting your bid price for your ad campaign. I suggest a little trick that will help your conversion. Bid your keywords to get into first position and let your ads run in first position for a few hours or up to one day. Then reduce your bid price to place yourself somewhere in the top 8 ads. This will help your CTR and you will get a higher position for less money per click!

Once you have some proven ads that are pulling in the profits then start placing them on the other Pay per Click Search Engines. Always start with Google Adwords because they are the only company that will allow you to test ads.

Let's recap our list of things needed to effectively run a PPC (Pay per Click) campaign:

1. Build a good keyword list.
2. Write effective headlines and descriptions.
3. Test your ads trying for a higher and higher CTR.
4. Monitor profitability!
5. Take proven ads and expand your paid advertising to other companies.

If you will follow these simple steps, I guarantee that you will increase web site traffic and drive more targeted leads to your site than you could ever imagine. These targeted, ready to buy customers will convert your products into cash. Just remember that this is a business like any other business and tracking your ad effectiveness and profitability is vital to your internet success!

By Mark Williams

Successful Pay Per Click Ad Copy

2008-07-16T23:52:00.003-07:00

Writing outstanding ad copy for pay-per-click advertising campaigns is critical if a webmaster wants to be successful. Why waste money on clicks from people who aren't going to buy what a webmaster has to sell? To be as targeted as possible descriptive titles and effective ad copy are needed. Since the webmaster is paying for each click it's very important to have ad copy which conveys the right message to the right person. The challenge is the small area available from most advertising networks like Google (AdWords) or Yahoo! (Overture).

Successful PPC advertising campaigns should be made of at least 3-4 different versions of an ad for the same product. Advertising via PPC is not a "one size fits all" procedure. A webmaster should make sure he/she defines the right target groups before getting into the process of writing the ad copy. Studies have shown that if important keywords are included in the ad title and the body the conversion rate is going to be higher. This is going to be a challenge in many cases as the ads in pay-per-click search engines offer limited space. Google AdWords as an example allows for the following character limits"

Headline = 25 characters
Line 1 = 35 characters
Line 2 = 35 characters
Display URL = 35 characters

Other advertising networks have very similar limitations in place. The art of writing successful ads is also the art of fitting a message into these limits. The key to writing successful PPC ad copy is to write something that will stick out from the competition. An ad should pre-qualify the visitors. Well written ads are clear enough so that a potential visitor can already decide if he wants to click or if the offer does not really apply to him. The webmaster would waste a lot of money if the ad does not allow to make a decision if the advertised product or service will be of interest for the potential visitor. This pre-qualification through the ad copy may lower the click through rate, but a webmaster will be getting higher quality visitors in return.

Each PPC ad should be combined with a targeted landing page. A webmaster should not send visitors just to the homepage as the homepage could be too generic. Using the homepage as landing page has been proven to get lower conversion rates. A landing page should be the matching counterpart of the PPC ad. Highly targeted and filled with keywords and information relevant to the ad and the product a webmaster is trying to sell. The landing page should be easy to navigate and the 'sales message' needs to be highly visible. If a visitor needs more than 3-5 seconds to find what he is looking for, the chance to convert the visitor into a sale is going dramatically down.

By Christoph Puetz

PPC Search Engines Revealed - 5 Things You Need to Know

2008-07-16T23:52:00.001-07:00

The pay per click (PPC) search engines have created a new way for websites to advertise and increase traffic to their sites and it is very affordable. There are a variety of things about PPC search engines you should know so read the following suggestions and educate yourself on PPC advertising. Once you know how pay per click advertising works, you will be able to utilize this affordable advertising tool to increase your website traffic.

Tip #1 - PPC Search Engines

Also known as pay per click, these networks allow websites to place ads on their search pages targeting a particular keyword or keyword phrase. The website owner does not have to pay for the advertising unless a visitor actually clicks on the ad and is taken to their web page. Because of this, these search engines and advertisements are known as pay per click because you only pay when someone clicks on the ad.

Tip #2 - Bidding for Advertisements

Generally, when it comes to PPC advertising, you will submit your maximum bid for advertising based on the keywords you are interested in advertising for. You will then be listed on the search page when your particular keyword or keywords are searched for. However, where you rank in the bidding process will depend on whether you were the highest bidder, second highest bidder, and so on and so forth. For this type of marketing campaign it is important that you are close to the top, at least within the top four, so keep this in mind when bidding.

Tip #3 - Choosing a PPC Search Engine

Many search engines offer PPC advertising, but to get the most exposure you will obviously want to advertise with the larger, more popular ones. You can do some research online to find out which are the best and then submit your bid for the keywords you are interested in buying advertising for. Remember, the bidding process is more competitive with the larger search engines, so keep this in mind.

Tip #4 - Click Fraud

Since you pay per click with this type of advertising, you can run into a situation known as click fraud. This happens when your competitors click on your ad as many times as possible in order to run your account dry. This eats up your advertising budget and does not allow you to reach people who are really interested in what you are selling. If you suspect this is happening, inform the PPC search engine immediately as there are things that can be done to help you.

Tip #5 - Keywords

So you know the keywords that are the most used to search for your product, however they are really popular and you find yourself entering a bidding war on a small budget. Do not do this. Instead, switch to cheaper keywords. You will still get many hits and you won't deplete your budget.

By Michael Turner

How Do You Make Money From Google Adwords?

2008-06-29T21:54:00.011-07:00

Can you really make money from this?

Late 2003, I think was the first time an ebook popped up that claimed that one could make money from Google Adwords.

The main method that was revealed involved combining Google Adwords and the Clickbank affiliate program, to make money, online, everyday almost on autopilot.

Please allow me to very quickly outline how you can make money on the internet, using this system.

Here are 2 things you need to get started...

1) You need a Google Adwords account.

=> http://adwords.google.com

2) You also have to sign up as a Clickbank affiliate

=> http://www.clickbank.com

Ok, so how does it work?

Well, you simply go to clickbank.com and on the main page you click on "Promote Products" on the right. You will be taken to the index page of all products being sold via clickbank. Each product is listed with a short description and the percentage you make as an affiliate.

Just select the product you wish to promote, grab your affilate promotion URL, by clicking on the [earn 50%]. Your personal affiliate link will pop up, just copy and paste that, into a text editor like notepad.

The next thing I like to do is visit the main sales page of the product I have selected, and select some benefits from the sales copy, I can then use these to write my Google Adwords Ad.

Alright then, how do you write your Ad?

The general profitable Google Adwords format that has seemed to work for many is like this. Line one your heading ask a question, line two mention a feature of the product or ebook, line 3 give a benefit, then line 4 your websites address goes there.

Once you have selected your budget and you submit your ad, it will probably start showing on the Google network within the next 10 minutes.

When searchers see your google ad, they click on it and google will charge you for every click, according to how much you bid on a particular keyword.

If the searcher who clicks on your ad, then goes ahead and buys from the site, you will receive the respective commission from Clickbank, and you can check your earnings when you login to your clickbank account.

However, There's 2 things to watch out for...

Your Return On Investment(ROI) and your Click Through Rate(CTR).

The ROI helps you determine how profitable your Google Ad is, when you subtract the cost of running your ads from the amount earned in your clickbank account.

The CTR helps you fine tune your ad so you can increase the number of people clicking on it especially if its a profitable ad, if more people are clicking on the ad itself it would probably result in an increase in your affiliate income.

That is a quick look at the "How to make money with Google Adwords System". If you would like to get more detailed information on this system, I would highly recommened you grab yourself a copy of this ebook...

How You Can Earn $1,758 a Day with Google Adwords??

=> http://Google123.ontheweb.nu

In Conclusion...

You can also use Google Adwords to promote your own websites and other non clickbank products too, you just need to adopt and adjust the system I have outlined above.

By Munya Chinongoza

The AdSense Formula for Making Money

2008-06-29T21:54:00.009-07:00

I often get asked what the secret is to making money with Google's AdSense program. This often comes from people who are dreaming of setting up websites chock full of high-paying keywords for particular niche subjects and then sitting back and watching the money roll in. "What's the magic formula?" they ask me. If they're non-technical, I point them straight to my book, Make Easy Money with Google, and assure them that they'll learn everything they need from it. They may think it's hard, but it's not.

But what about the technical people? By this I mean the people who've already set up a blog or website, who have registered domain names, who are comfortable with basic Internet terminology and concepts. What is the "AdSense formula"?

The only AdSense formula that you need to know is this:

earnings = number of clicks * average price per click

This is what I call the Fundamental AdSense Formula because you can derive almost every AdSense "secret" directly or indirectly from this formula. Do you want to earn more with AdSense? You have two ways of doing it:

1. Increase the number of clicks, and/or

2. Increase the average price per click

Your earnings will only go up if you do one or the other, and ideally both. It's an obvious formula, yes, but it's amazing how many people lose sight of it in their quest for increased AdSense earnings.

Increasing the Number of AdSense Clicks

Increasing the number of times the ads on your site or blog are clicked is the most obvious strategy. There are two general strategies you can follow:

1. Increase the traffic to the site, and/or

2. Adjust the ads to make them more "clickable"

Getting traffic is hard and takes time, so don't look at it as a quick fix. The best way to get traffic is to provide useful, unique content and to rank highly in search engine rankings for keywords related to that content. In other words, use standard search engine optimization techniques. DO NOT "buy" traffic or use "link farms" or other dubious techniques. Other tips for getting traffic:

1. Publish articles, even free ones, with links back to your site.

2. Include a link to your site in the signature at the bottom of your emails or in any forum postings you make (if the forum allows it).

3. Participate in forums/groups related to the content of your site or blog. The key is to participate, not lurk, and don't just post messages promoting your site.

4. Add comments (relevant ones only, please) to other blogs, you can usually link back to yours. (This won't help your search engine rankings, but it may allow others who are reading those comments to find your own site.)

5. Syndicate your content (trivial if you have a blog) and make sure that the content is registered with syndication aggregators.

6. List your site in relevant directories.

Adjusting the ads is something you can do almost immediately:

1. Position the ads on the page in order to make them more noticeable. Google even publishes a helpful heat map (see https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html ) for AdSense publishers.

2. Choose the best AdSense ad format that works for your site.

3. Change the ad colors either to make the ads blend in with your site or to make them stand out. Again, it varies depending on the site.

Whatever you do, DO NOT ENTICE VISITORS TO CLICK THE ADS. Google is very strict about this, see the AdSense program policies (found at https://www.google.com/adsense/policies ) for the details.

Increasing the Average AdSense Price Per Click

Increasing the average price per click you receive from AdSense is the other strategy for increasing your overall AdSense earnings. You can do this by:

1. Carefully targeting your content, and/or

2. Filtering out and avoiding low-paying ads

Content targeting isn't just about creating relevant, unique content. It's also making sure that that content is written to target the higher-paying keywords associated with a given topic. This means:

1. Figuring out which keyword variations for that topic pay more. Often the more specialized variations and phrases pay more than the "generic" terms.

2. Ensuring that the keyword density of the content favors the higher-paying keyword variations. See http://www.MakeEasyMoneyWithGoogle.com/vioxx-lawsuit.html for an example of well-targeted ads due to appropriate keyword density.

And to reduce the occurrence of lower-paying ads, consider these two strategies:

1. Use AdSense's competitive filter mechanism to screen out the ads that you don't want.

2. Show fewer ads on a page. The fewer ads you show, the more the higher-paying ads get displayed and clicked.

Many publishers also report that their earnings increase if they remove ads completely from pages with few or no clicks. Again, the "less is more" strategy favors the higher-paying ads.

There's No Magic

As you can see, there's no magic involved to increasing your AdSense earnings. The Fundamental AdSense Formula is easy to understand, but that doesn't mean it's easy to apply the formula. It takes time and effort to do it, just like most things.

by Eric Giguere

Google Adwords Guide II - Why Use Negative Keywords

2008-06-29T21:54:00.007-07:00

When you are running a Google AdWords campaign, it is important to include negative keywords. You should consider the use of negative keywords if some of the keywords or keyword phrases in your campaign are broad and generic. Negative keywords will prevent an ad from being shown on a publisher's website if the negative keywords are in the search phrase/text area that Google uses to match ads and content.

By using negative keywords you will reduce the number of click-throughs that would not convert to sales anyway. In addition to that - the overall CTR of your ad (click through rate) will be much higher because there will now be a smaller number of Internet users be viewing your ad but not clicking. The higher CTR will cause the ad to receive a higher position without the need to work with higher CPC (cost per click) bids.

In your Google Adwords campaign you can add negative keywords by following the link "No campaign negative keywords. Add". On the next page you can add your negative keywords. The negative keywords you select in this section will apply to all Ad Groups within this campaign. So, you want to be careful selecting the negative keywords to avoid negative impact to your overall campaign.

An example for negative keywords to use would be as follows. Let's say you are selling cloth diapers for babies. Using the Overture keyword tool you search for diapers and get the following results.

183844 diaper
80390 adult diaper
74619 diaper bag
19184 diaper cake
13684 diaper girl
12509 cloth diaper
3968 diaper punishment
3108 huggies diaper coupon

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Assuming that the word "diaper" would be one of your keywords that you use, you can tell that it would be involved in keyword phrases not applying to the product you are trying to sell "cloth diapers". Therefore it would be recommended to add anything to your negative keyword list that absolutely does not match your target group. In this example I would recommend to exclude "adult diaper", "diaper punishment" and "huggies diaper coupon" and set them as negative keywords. Nobody searching for adult diapers would now get your ad served and therefore you would not run the risk that such a search would end up in clicking on your ad and you wasting your money.

By Christoph Puetz

Independent Search Engine & Directory Network (ISEDN) - Breaking News!

2008-06-29T21:54:00.005-07:00

Watch out for a shift in the pay-per-click (PPC) industry, happening right now! This shift is finally going to give smaller search engines and directories the ability to tap into the PPC market, currently monopolized by the big guns online (Google, Yahoo & MSN). They will attain this lofty goal by banding together and delivering paid ad placements on a mass community scale for a fraction of the cost.

More and more advertisers are going to want to advertise through the ISEDN because of the sheer amount of exposure that they will be able to receive through all the search engines and directories partnered together through this network.

I was able to be the first to interview Mel Strocen, CEO of Jayde Online, Inc., the parent company of ExactSeek.com.

The Independent Search Engine & Directory Network (ISEDN) was an outgrowth of ExactSeek's commitment to bring affordable and effective search advertising to the web community. Although ExactSeek was successful in partnering with a number of search engines and directories, it became apparent that popularization of a new pay-for-inclusion program would be better served by an active and independent association of search engines and directories than by a single engine.

Here are some excerpts from that interview:

Martin: "When was the ISEDN formed? ( http://www.isedn.org )"

Mel: "The organization was officially founded in June of this year, although the idea for a network of this kind was being discussed for several months previous to that. The ISEDN website, however, is only a few days old."

Martin: "How many members does the ISEDN network have right now?"

Mel: "47 members at the moment, but the network has been acquiring new members at a rate of 3 - 5 per week."

Martin: "What kind of market reach can the network deliver?"

Mel: "It really depends on how big the network becomes. Some search engine and directory members have reported 10,000,000+ searches/month but, given the rapid growth of the ISEDN and the fact that it's only a few weeks old, we really haven't had the opportunity to determine the total number of search impressions the network can deliver. We expect to receive specific numbers from the members in the coming weeks which will enable us to provide a more accurate picture of the network's search reach. My best guesstimate right now is that pay-for-inclusion listings are displayed approximately 120 million times per month. Of course, that figure will grow as the ISEDN grows."

Martin: "Why should advertisers choose the ISEDN network over Google or Yahoo?"

Mel: "The most obvious reason is cost. An advertiser buying a 3 or 12 month listing is looking at a cost of $3 - $4 a month. I'm not aware of any other engine that can match what the ISEDN offers in terms of value or exposure. Where else can you buy targeted keyword terms for less than $5 a month and get top 10 exposure for your site listings across 45+ search engines and directories?"

Martin: "You're right, that is amazing!"

Martin: "Because of the sheer distribution size this could potentially have, what preventive measures are being implemented for click fraud?"

Mel: "In the ISEDN advertising model there is no incentive for click fraud to occur. You pay a one time fee for your selected keyword term and that's it. Competitors or bots could click on your ad repeatedly and it wouldn't cost you a penny more. With the monetary motive for click fraud removed, it's unlikely to be a problem."

Martin: "What does the future hold for the ISEDN?"

Mel: "It's a little early for me to speculate on how the ISEDN might evolve. ExactSeek is just one member. Future plans will depend on member participation and input in the coming months. What I would like to see is for the ISEDN to become a counter weight to the gradual monopolization of search on the Web by engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN. I would also like to see the ISEDN contribute in other areas related to search such as search relevance and possibly the support of open source search software. In the long term, I believe the Web and searchers in general will be better served by diversity than by monopoly."

Martin: "Are members going to decide the future of the network?

Mel: "The short answer is yes, they will. To function effectively, the ISEDN will in time need to implement some kind of governing structure that determines the organization's future course. What that structure is and how the ISEDN evolves will depend on input from the members. Initially, direction and objectives will most likely be determined by majority concensus.

We've just added a private member discussion forum to the ISEDN website which will allow members to voice their views on issues such as the network's direction, objectives, online advertising, governing structure, network promotion and other topics of relevance to the membership.

Martin: "So will any of the discussions from the network forum be opened up to the public?"

Mel: "Eventually, yes. Assuming public interest, we'll setup discussion forums that allow webmasters and/or siteowners to ask questions and provide feedback to individual ISEDN members or to the membership as a whole. If we go this route and, I expect we will, it should help to improve communication between searchers and search providers. It should also help raise general public awareness of the many excellent directories and search engines on the Web that currently are under the radar."

Martin: "So how does the advertising portion work?"

Mel: "Every ISEDN member is provided with an XML feed to implement within their search results or directory listings. The feed can be modified by the individual members so that pay-for-inclusion listings are displayed in a way that matches their site look and feel, but regardless of how the listings are displayed, advertisers are guaranteed top 10 exposure across the entire ISEDN network. Premium placement of this kind is made possible by the fact that we limit the number of times any one keyword term can be purchased and because all paid listings are rotated in the SERPs (search engine result pages) on each individual engine and directory.

Surveys have consistently shown that few searchers look at more than 30 search results for any given search query. The ISEDN advertising model takes this into account and limits the sale of any keyword term to 30. If a keyword term has been sold less than 10 times, the paid listing almost always appears on the first page of search results (depends on how many listings an ISEDN member displays per page) although not always in the same position. If a keyword term has been sold more than 10 times then paid listings begin to rotate between the SERPs. On sold out keyword terms, the worst case scenario for an advertiser would be that his listing would appear on the first page of results roughly once of every 3 searches on his keyword term. This is somewhat offset, however, by the fact that the system supports broad keyword matching as well as exact keyword matching.

Martin: "With this first come, first serve program - Are you worried that bigger companies will buy out all the keywords available?"

Mel: "Not really. There are literally millions of keyword term combinations available. As the more obvious terms are bought out, it might require more creative thinking on the part of advertisers to come up with good searchable terms, but other than that, I don't anticipate a problem. Based on current trends, many buyers either forget to renew their keywords or simply let their listings expire. The end result is that thousands of keyword terms will be rolling over on a continual basis. In the event that the program becomes so wildly popular that keyword availability does become a problem, we may have to look at changing the parameters of the system to accomodate demand, but that's unlikely in the forseeable future."

THIS IS AN ADVERTISER'S DREAM!

Anytime a PPC or paid inclusion ad can get distributed through an entire network of competitors, it has the potential to be very powerful and deliver a lot of quality results. Personally, I would much prefer to advertise within 100 websites rather than just one. The power of advertising is in the numbers!

This couldn't have come at a better time. The SEO industry is crying for quality PPC alternatives. Google's recent battle with click fraud has left many advertisers world wide wondering if they should really keep their entire internet advertising budget within one basket.

Increase Your ROI Through Smaller Programs Online:

More and more, Smartads is recommending paid advertising in smaller, more tightly knit search engines and directories to our clients. ROI (Return on investment) is very important to the adverising industry, and we have found that advertising in smaller ventures rather than the bigger gorillas online, brings better results.

The reason for this is simple:

* - Less competition * - Greater targeted audience * - More local opportunities * - More exposure for your money

In the old days, creating smaller, more targeted PPC campaigns used to be a lot of work for the marketing professional to research and maintain. The ISEDN has made that job a lot easier for us to maintain on a larger scale. Why would spend hours trying to find smaller directories and other programs, when you can find them under one umbrella?

By Martin Lemieux

Secret Reasons Why Some Businesses Can Afford to Bid Ridiculous, Amounts On Pay-Per-Click Keywords

2008-06-29T21:54:00.003-07:00

The other day I was talking to one of my consulting clients on the phone about the return on investment from his Google Adwords campaign. And, he asked me a question that I get several times a week from clients and other online marketers.

His question was?

"Eric, how on earth can my competitors afford to bid over $4 per click for the number one position on the top keywords for my niche?! I can't make a profit on those keywords at just $2.00 per click!"

His concern is a common one among businesses that use pay-per-click advertising to generate traffic. It seems that the top positions in most competitive markets are reserved for businesses with more money than sense.

I explained to him that short term his best strategy is to just cast a broader net with his keywords by expanding his keyword list to include thousands of less competitive, yet still targeted phrases, by using tools like WordTracker or Ad Word Analyzer.

However, to remain competitive long term he needs to address the real reason that his competition can afford to bid $4 per click and still make a profit?

There are only 4 reasons that another business can bid higher than you on pay-per-click ads.

They have very deep pockets and very dumb marketing managers. You usually find this in businesses that are used to blowing their offline marketing budget on unaccountable "image advertising". While there are a few like this in every market, these are not the ones you need to be concerned with. The dangerous competitors are the next two?

They earn more profit from each sale than you. If you are making a $10 profit selling an ebook, yet your competition is earning a $100 profit selling a set of DVDs and a printed manual, then (all else being equal) your competition should be able to afford to bid 10 times what you can per click.

For example:

Site "A" is making a profit of $10 per sale and converts 1 out of every 100 visitors. This site can afford to bid only $0.10 per click to just break even.

Site "B" is making a profit of $100 per sale. If they also convert 1 out of 100 visitors, then this site can afford to bid $1.00 per click to break even. (Better yet, they can bid $0.50 per click and earn a 100% return on investment!)

They are making their real money on the "back end". It is not uncommon for savvy marketers to sell a lower ticket item up front, and only break even or sometimes even take a loss, when they know that they can then upsell a good percentage of those customers on a higher ticket item later. Using pay-per-click advertising as a lead generation or list building method for future follow up is actually one of the most effective uses for this method of marketing.

They convert more of their traffic into buyers than you do. Even if you are both selling the exact same item at the exact same price, if your competition converts 5% of their traffic into sales and you only convert 1%? Well, it's no wonder that they can afford a $5 bid on "blue widget" when you are loosing money bidding $1.25.

You can get a pretty good idea who has the best converting website in any given market by watching the Google Adwords listings in that particular keyword niche for a few weeks. Unless they are one of those "more dollars than brains" marketers, the sites that constantly stay near the top long term are the ones that are generating the highest value per visitor.

The only way to compete long term on the super expensive keywords is to maintain a continuous focus on improving both conversion rates and average profit per sale.

By Eric Graham

Run a Profitable Google Adwords Pay Per Click Campaign

2008-06-29T21:54:00.001-07:00

Google and Yahoo-Overture control over 90% of the PPC market and as such you should seriously consider using them if you want the maximum possible exposure to targeted web traffic through PPC advertising .

Sign up for the Google Adwords program is free but they require a $5 USD deposit before they will start to display your ad copy. Google provides an excellent interface to work with. A pleasant modular design groups all of your work into nice "containers" that can be manipulated and viewed in a variety of ways.

The system reporting is by no means real time but the delay on their results display is palatable when comparing them to the other major PPC provider, Yahoo-Overture.

A nice feature that sets Adwords apart from other PPC providers is that your ads display almost instantly after you place them in their system. They have built a lot of their editorial guidelines into the ad entry system.

Their system will flag your ad before you can enter it if it doesn't meet their terms of service . That is a lot better than waiting 2-5 business days to find out if your ad had a problem or not. Time is money.

Also provided with your Adwords account are a number of free tools to help you with your campaign management.

While several of these tools are great starting points I have found the need to augment what Google provides through my own online research, tools and software as well as e-book purchases.

The lesson learned, everybody that uses Google Adwords has access to the same tools that you do, including your competitors. It goes without saying that if you want to get an advantage here you will need other resources to supplement your knowledge other than what Google provides.

Having said that the Google Adwords system is still extremely powerful . Providing you with keyword suggestions, automated bid management, campaign optimization (by Google staff), geo-targeting, roi tracking, and all the reporting you can handle, their system allows you a b level of control over your spending and the ability to truly identify who your customer really is.

What I really like about the Adwords system is the fact that the guys with the most advertising dollars are not guaranteed to win any particular market.

Google tracks the Click Through Ratio (the percentage of people who see your ad and click on it) for each of your ads and keywords. Their system gives you a better position in their display listings if more people are clicking on your ads.

Why do they do this?

To reward people who take the time to write relevant ad copy and marry that to a tightly relevant keyword list.

You see, Google will reward you for doing your homework . The time you invest studying and learning their system will save you money , which can be just as rewarding as making money.

Hey, if I could afford 5 dollars a click I would pay it, but I can't. I need to lower my advertising costs while at the same time generating as much targeted traffic to my site as possible.

Unfortunately, my experience with their support system does not paint as rosy a picture of the mighty Google . In general, their online information is pretty good. It will solve your routine questions such as "when exactly does my credit card get billed? ) " quite well.

Google's support system seems geared towards keeping you off the phone with them. They like to refer to their repository of online documentation and use template driven email communication.

In instances where I needed specific information (i.e. why is this keyword disabled even though I created a brand new campaign to put it in?) I received "canned" emails with my support persons name "pasted" into the email.

Often times I was required to send them another email asking if they had even read my first one and to get the answer I was REALLY looking for.

At the end of the day I was left feeling that eventually my problem was going to be solved I just wasn't sure when that was going to be and how many times I would have to contact them in order to get the answer I really wanted.

Typical Costs associated with Running an Adwords Campaign

There's two ways to approach this:

Are you going to manage your own campaigns?

or

Do you want to leverage someone else's experience and invest money in a company that can manage your Adwords campaigns?

Let me suggest that you manage your own accounts at least in the beginning . Start small and start collecting reference materials while you learn how the system works.

Search for other products and resources that can help you but keep in mind some of them won't work out . Don't let that stop your research, there is material out there that can truly help you and save you a lot of money.

Investing in a $40 e-book is a lot cheaper than blowing $500 or more with Google while you are learning the ropes .

Having said that if you want to get a successful campaign started now you can enlist an SEO company to manage your Adwords campaigns.

The question is: How will you know who to trust?

You can burn several thousand dollars for overpriced, untargeted traffic if you let the wrong companies manage your campaigns. How can anyone honestly know what to look for in an Adwords Management company if you haven't even tried the system out for yourself? Food for thought. If you manage your own campaigns at first you will get a feel for the system.

Campaign Costs

Ok, let's talk about the typical costs you can expect running a Google Adwords campaign. The good news is Google Adwords gives you the potential to reach millions of surfers in a matter of minutes for pretty much as little money as you want to spend.

The bad news is after the novelty of having an Adwords account and setting up your first few campaigns wears off it can begin to feel like a ball and chain. There are a lot of monotonous tasks that have to be managed daily and it can be a tough thing to manage unless you are a disciplined person.

Before you spend money on campaigns and resources acquire this mental discipline. Realize before you begin that it isn't going to be fun after a while. Google Adwords is a business tool, one of many, and as such it has it's advantages and flaws . It can make you a lot of money or it can cost you a lot of money and create a lot of stress for you depending on your ability to consistently manage your campaigns.

Ok, your minimum initial deposit is $5 to get started as we learned above. Start here, and I suggest resisting the urge to JUMP in and start spending like crazy... stay at or near this $5-$50 level of investment until you use it up .

You're not going to see any returns on this investment financially but you will gain valuable knowledge of how best to use the Google Adwords System to generate income without learning the hard way.

You have a lot of learning to do before you want to start pouring money into your account. Google is in the business of making money and their system makes it "REALLY" easy to spend as much as you want.

Minimum bids start at a reasonable $0.05 USD. After developing your keyword list and dumping it into Google's system you have to start making financial decisions.

If you take Google's suggested bid prices for your keyword list you can pay a lot of money for your web traffic depending on how large your keyword list is and how much traffic these keywords generate.

Rest assured Google's system will provide you a lot of traffic quickly if you want to pay for it. It's not uncommon for Google's big management system to suggest max bids in the $20 - $30 range.

You don't have to accept these outrageous suggestions of course so your first big money saver is to lower the max bid to something you find acceptable and enter it for all of your keywords.

Please note Google's system will not charge you this full amount unless someone else is willing to pay that much for the keyword. Leave this number set higher if you want to produce a lot of clicks quickly.

Bidding into position's 1-3 will deliver the most traffic, but will be less targeted than position's 4-6.

Position 1 will get the most clicks but many of these clicks will be untargeted "impulse" clicks. Taking the time to scan all the way to position 6 in the listing and click on the advertisement at that position suggests that the searcher is extremely interested in the subject being advertised.

Over time you will learn which keywords are making you money and which one's are simply too competitive for your budget. Google's campaign tracking abilities in conjunction with other 3rd party ad tracking software can help you identify these profitable keywords and track your website visitors.

Unfortunately every system can only provide so much traffic and you will find the larger companies can afford to bid pretty high for more general, high traffic keywords because they can afford it.

Large companies will pay $5 for general keywords like "credit cards" because they know over the lifetime of using a credit card they will recover their investment.

The big boys can squeeze you out of the Google Adwords World just as easily as in the "real world". Of course it's not all "doom and gloom". You still have a powerful and relatively inexpensive tool in your hands if you can exploit niches and find the "bargain" keywords.

Google's system of tools leaves you high and dry in this respect unless you have a lot of money to blow on "throwing out a wide net" by trying a large keyword list and then refining your campaigns as you start to get clicks and track your conversions.

You can get a lot of garbage clicks by bidding your way to the top for general keywords . This is expensive, less targeted, and lower converting than if you bid to position 3-5 or spend time finding the less expensive niche keywords (using your third party software or e-book techniques).

Chances are when bidding on more general high traffic keywords you will be competing with large companies and competitors using SEO company services to manage their campaigns.

These companies can afford to pay a lot more than you or I for their clicks. In order to counteract this you need to tightly target your campaigns and find niche keyphrases to be profitable with Google. I can't stress this enough.

To make proper decisions you will need to gather as much data as you can on how the Adwords system works. Obviously, you won't have this data until you run a campaign or two which is why I suggest running your own Adwords Campaigns for a while to get familiar with their system.

Study the stats provided by Google which are really quite good in conjunction with one or more 3rd party stats tracking packages.

You will start to notice trends in the numbers which will allow you to make more effective use of your time and money by bidding only on the keywords that are generating sales.

Analysis may also prompt you to tweak your site content if you notice a niche you want to start competing for (better yet start up another site or tier two web page on your site targeting that niche and remove these keywords from the original campaign moving them into a new campaign pointing to your new content).

Minor tweaks can save you BIG money using Adwords

Some Notes on Scalability:

Google allows you to bid on 3 types of keyword matching options which immediately gives you three times the keywords to bid on without any more brainstorming on your part.

Each matching option provides different results and should be managed on a keyword by keyword basis.

Google also provides two methods of displaying your ad on their network: Content Match Listings and Search Network Listings .

Effectively this allows you the potential to be noticed by:

1) anyone searching on Google's portal

2) anyone searching portal sites that get their search results from Google

3) anyone viewing a site displaying Google's ads that has content related to the keywords you bid on.

4) anyone reading an email with content related to your keyword at Google's free email service Gmail.

That's a lot of options and a lot of potential exposure. Tweaking to find the right combination for your particular situation and spending requirements is something you simply have to do on an ongoing basis. I think the benefits are obvious to you by now.

A final word on costs. You may have noticed that I didn't use a lot of numbers in my discussion of campaign costs with Google. What I think I have illustrated is a Google campaign truly can cost as little or as much as you want it to.

It can get you as much or as little traffic as you want it to. What kind of traffic it brings and how much it costs is up to you.

Where will your ads be displayed? More places than you might think:

At the time of publication AOL, Netscape, Ask Jeeves, AT&T Worldnet, EarthLink and Excite all get some or all of their search results from Google.

Content Match Listings vs. Search Network Listings

When user's do a search on one of the Google family of portal sites your paid listings appear either along the top of the search results highlighted as sponsored listings or to the right of the actual search results in text boxes.

Your position on these search pages is determined by your keyword list and your bid for that keyword.

Your results with the Search Network Listings can be quite successful as long as you manage your account using some of the techniques suggested in this article.

Use the included Geo-targeting capabilities built into the Adwords system to ensure your ads display only in areas that are potential customers for you.

Content match listings appear as inserts on web pages not in search engine results pages. My experiences with the content Match Listings haven't been as successful as with the Search Network Listings although I still use this option for some of my campaigns.

Google's system analyses the content of web page and serves up ads to those pages based on the what it feels the page is about . A web page on motorcycles may feature ads about buying motorcycles, motorcycle catalogues, parts distributors ... I think you get the idea.

And this idea is a good one since the ads it displays are usually pretty close to what you would think they should be. When you display ads on your website using Google's Adsense program for example, you are effectively joining their content network.

A drawback to the content matching system is you can't really know who is clicking on your ad. It could even be a competitor clicking on your ad from their own site! Google gives you the option of disabling either of these display methods if they aren't working out for you with the click of a button.

You can do this on a campaign by campaign basis only enabling/disabling what is working for you. If you want to minimize your risk but still utilize the Content Matching system you do have an option.

You can set up a separate campaign with lower bid prices for your keywords and only enable content matching for this campaign. Remove the content matching option from your original campaign and voila! you've minimized your risk.

A few more notes on Google Campaign Optimization

I can't stress enough the importance of getting a good Click Through Ratio (CTR) for your best target keywords. Google has really offered you a chance to save some big time money if you know how to get a good CTR for your ads and keywords.

Getting a good CTR allows Google to sell more ad space which makes them more money. Google transfers some of this money to you the advertiser by increasing your ranking within their search results it displays for your keywords, at no additional cost.

That's right, if you can write relevant ads for your target keywords you don't necessarily have to pay the higher bid prices for those keywords that your competitors are paying. More money saved!

Advantages of the Google Adwords System

- Highly configurable system with an intuitive web-based interface.

- Reporting system is near real-time so you can tweak campaigns on the fly

- Since their system is web based you can access your account at any time.

- Good list of Free tools and guides (although third party tools may still be required)

- Rewards advertisers that pay attention to providing relevant content to their search clients not necessarily the highest bidder. Get a better CTR and your ads are cheaper.

- Geo-targeting capabilities. Target by City, Country or display your ads Globally.

- Multiple ad delivery systems. Content and Search listings, Partner Network listings, Email.

- Multiple keyword matching options including the ability to 'filter' keywords.

- Reasonable minimum startup cost of $5 with no monthly minimum spend requirements

- They have licensed their search results to several other large search engines improving your web site's exposure to people that don't use Google as their main search portal.

- Free ROI tracking tools.

- Minimum bid is a reasonable $0.05 USD.

Disadvantages of the Google Adwords System

- Learning curve can cost you a lot of money.

- Not the most expensive PPC search engine but certainly more expensive than all other PPCs except Yahoo-Overture

- Click fraud is an unavoidable risk.

- Content matching system does not always deliver the same ROI as their search listings. If both ad delivery systems are enable for a particular campaign the content match results can lower your overall campaign CTR and get keywords disabled.

- Support system is email template driven. It can take you a few tries to get the information you REALLY need from Google's support.

- Interface does not indicate what your competitors are bidding, only the maximum bid for any particular keyword, making the implementation of bidding strategies much more difficult.

Google Adwords Resources: Google Adwords Homepage

By Michael Lawrence

How to Save Money on the Adwords Network

2008-06-29T21:53:00.009-07:00

Over the years I have had many accounts with Adwords, spending a small fortune with the Adwords service. So naturally I have picked up many cost saving tricks. I am aware that most people feel Adwords costs too much and delivers little results, this is completely untrue. Adwords is a service that is here to help us, so I have written this article to help web developers make the most out of the service.

1) Set your currency,
First and foremost, select the currency of which you locally trade in. You may think its wise to start your Adwords account in USD, but if you do not live in the USA you may get a shock when you find how much you have been charged.

2) Use negative keywords,
You are using the Adwords service to generate website traffic, so obviously you want the right traffic to generate revenue. Start by using negative keywords for people whom you do not want to click on your advert, the best place to start is the keyword "free". As I doubt you want to waste money on traffic that will not generate revenue.

3) Make a strict daily budget
Make sure you have set out a daily budget, Adwords generally advise a way out of proportion budget. After all most new Adwords customers have no idea how effective the advertising will be. Do not start off with a bang, your pocket will feel it.

Just as important as the budget, be careful with the CPC rate. I advise you to start with a low number, each click soon adds up very quickly. I actually found that by lowering my CPC rate by 50% I doubled my visitor count?

4) Check those clicks!
One of the most talked about problem with Adwords is, click fraud. There are two main types of click fraud: the first is when any one starts clicking away at your advertisements trying to waste your money. It is very hard to stop this kind of fraud, if you are a victim stop your ads and file a report to Google ASAP.

The second main issue is now that google allows Web Developers to earn money off their websites by placing ads (Adsense) .some Web Developers try to cheat the system by clicking on their ads as much as possible. The best way to stop this kind of fraud is check your page log, Adwords allow you to block out websites that you do not want your advert to be placed on.

Adwords does not have many protections against Click fraud, although they do disable Adsense accounts who cheat. Google are very hesitant to refund the victims, if at all. Reports tell many organisations are actually suing Google to get their money back, so be careful.

In this article I have illustrated some of the most beneficial ways to save money when advertising with Adwords. My main advice to you is, do not go crazy with your spending. You may not see the results you are after, it does take a while to get to know Adwords. I have had many successful ad campaigns using the Adwords network. However I do advise to look around, with the ever growing popularity of MSN search you may actually find it much more affordable.

By Steve

Google for Resellers: Leveling the Resell Playing Field

2008-06-29T21:53:00.007-07:00

With so many people trying to make money on the web and so many products being sold with resell and master resell rights, it's a wonder anyone can make any money at all at it!

Indeed, most people don't.

Why?

Sometimes it's because people get in on the tail end of the product being sold and start trying to resell it just as the original creator decides to start giving it away for free. Generally this is 3-4 months after the product debuts.

But lots of times people actually learn quickly about a new resale product, but don't have a mailing list or website with lots of traffic to advertise the product to.

So what are you to do if you're one of these folks? You use Google Adwords as your new best friend.

Notice that I said AdWORDS, not AdSENSE. What's the difference? Adsense is the big thing those marketing gurus have recently been talking up. You know...make a web page specifically designed for a search term, put Google Adsense on that page, and make tons of money when people click on those ads. (Yeah, right, sure. They don't happen to mention that you need *traffic* before you can get clicks.)

AdWords, on the other hand, are those ads themselves. Where YOU are the person paying every time someone clicks on one of them. And I have found them to be the #1 way to make money with short-term resell products if you don't have a decent mailing list.

Steps and Rules of Thumb

Here are the steps and rules of thumb I use to achieve good to great profits on short-term sales items - those products that will be sold quickly then given away free within 3-4 months - practically every time.

#1 ~~ I do a Google search on the product name to see if the market is already saturated (not all 'new' products are actually new), to see if the product is already being given away free (most end up this way), and to see what the Google Adwords competition looks like.

If everybody and his brother are already selling or giving it away, I look for a new product.

#2 ~~ Assuming there's an opportunity here, I use the Overture Keyword Bid Amounts Lookup Tool < http://www.pixelfast.com/overture/ > and FindWhat.com, as well as Google Adwords itself, to see what advertisers are paying for various search words and phrases, and compare the cost per click to the sale price of the item.

Rule of Thumb: I don't spend more than 1/100th of the price of an item on a click.

That means a $10 item couldn't cost more than $.10 a click or a $37 item couldn't cost more than $.37 a click.

#3 ~~ I determine who my audience is and write my ads and choose my keywords accordingly. For example, a lot of products include resell or master resell rights. If you look at the sales web page included, you'll see that is seen as a selling point. But I never mention that in my Google ads. Instead, I choose to sell to people for whom the product would be useful by itself. I've even rewritten the sales page copy to remove most resell rights information and instead emphasize the usefulness of the product itself. Plus, when I include bonuses, I only include those bonuses that enhance the product.

#4 ~~ I set an initial budget and time period that I will give the ad in which to make money. I know that I probably won't get my ad worded perfectly right off and will need to tweak it before I start attracting the right type of buyer and start making sales. But I can't tweak the ad until I start advertising and see the statistics that Google provides. Depending on the product price, I will give myself 2-3 weeks to maximize the ad.

Rule of Thumb: ALWAYS put the price of your product in your Google ad.

You don't want just anyone clicking on your ad because each click costs you money. You want to let people know up front that you are selling something and for how much. They won't click if they aren't willing to spend that or if they don't think they can get something for free.

#5 ~~ I always quit when I determine by results that the product is no longer selling sufficiently to justify my continuing to pay Google. I never assume that things will pick up after my cutoff point.

Rule of Thumb: Once I stop selling 2 items per week, I quit selling the item.

The first sale is to cover the price of the ads. The second sale is to cover other costs as well as give me a profit. If there's no profit, there's no point in advertising.

[By the way, you have the option of your ads showing up just on Google search results or also on people's websites. I've found I generally do better just advertising on Google, but it depends on what you're selling.]

Conclusion: It can be hard for people to quickly break into the reselling world, even with a great product, without a large mailing list or a website with lots of traffic. Using Google AdWords can seriously level the resell playing field and help *you* make a profit!

(This article include full reprint rights as long as you do not change the article and include the byline box.)

By Kendall Simmons

Click Fraud - Threatening the Internet Economy

2008-06-29T21:53:00.005-07:00

One of the most popular forms of Internet advertising is pay-per-click (PPC). Merchants place ads with search engines like Google or MSN and the ad appears whenever someone enters a relevant search.
If the ad is clicked the merchant pays a fee - anywhere from 5 cents to $100. It's a fabulous idea - ad campaigns targeted at your most likely customers.
It's such a fabulous idea that Google, the king of PPC, grossed $1.24 billion in the first 3 months of this year - most of it from advertising revenue.
Watch out, though. There's trouble in PPC land. The flip side to PPC is a phenomenon called "click fraud" or "click spam."
There are two types of click fraud. The first type occurs when someone maliciously clicks on your PPC ad to drive up your advertising costs. It could be a competitor or a disgruntled former employee.
The second type of fraud involves clicking on affiliate ads to generate income. Affiliate ads are placed on third party web sites and each time someone clicks on an affiliate ad the web site owner receives a commission.
Industry observers believe that affiliate click fraud is the biggest problem of the two. Either way, the result is the same - advertising budget depletion with little gain for the merchant.
Either type of click fraud can be accomplished with the use of automated "robots" or by hiring an army of workers. The India Times reported in 2004 that a "growing number of housewives, college graduates, and even working professionals across metropolitan cities are rushing to click paid Internet ads to make $100 to $200 per month."
How serious is the problem? It's hard to judge exactly, but click fraud is commonly estimated at 20% to 35% of all PPC ad campaigns.
A recently launched lawsuit alleges that Google is aware of the magnitude of click fraud and does not do enough to alert advertisers of the problem.
The class action suit launched by Click Defence says that "Google has an inherent conflict of interest in preventing click fraud since it derives the same amount of income from each fraudulent click as it does from each legitimate click."
The $10 million lawsuit quotes Google Chief Financial Officer George Reyes as saying that click fraud is "the biggest threat to the Internet economy."
Click Defense is a Colorado company specializing in click fraud detection. They claim that they themselves became a victim of click fraud when they advertised with Google's Adwords program this year.
They are seeking damages for breach of contract, negligence, unjust enrichment, and unfair business practices.
A Google spokesman said that the case is unmerited and that Google will defend itself "vigorously."
Copyright 2005 by Ross MacIver
This article may be redistributed freely on the Internet or in ezines as long as the resource box and hyperlinks remain intact.
By Ross MacIver

How to Skyrocket Your Paid Search Profits

2008-06-29T21:53:00.003-07:00

Faced with a mediocre or worse performing paid search campaign and the pressure to allocate resources elsewhere, many businesses choose to drop their paid search or scale back their budgets - leaving ripe buyers waiting to be harvested by their competitors.

If you face paid search challenges, before you decide to drop or scale it back, try these proven strategies to skyrocket your profits.

A. Get "Down and Dirty" with Keyword-Level Tracking

Track your paid search campaign at the keyword-level. To manage an effective paid search campaign, you must know your "per click" results from the money you have spent.

For example, if you have 1,000 keywords active in your paid search campaign and you spend a total of $3,000 a month - do you know which of the 1,000 keywords generated your sales?

What if 80% of your sales came from 20% of your keywords? Moreover, what if this 20% accounted for just a small percentage of your $3,000 monthly cost?

Without keyword-level tracking you will not be able to make financially beneficial assessments. Time-tested experience shows that the 80/20 rule applies to pay-per-click marketing.

WARNING: Beware of Matching Options!

Although matching options (i.e. broad, advanced, exact, phrase and so on) offered by Google Adwords, Overture and other paid search engines provide "convenience" they unfortunately skew your keyword performance results.

If you setup a "broad-match" for the keyword "real estate", you will attract visitors who have entered any possible variation of the term "real estate" including geographically specific "real estate" keywords like "Arizona real estate" that may have absolutely no relevance to your product or service.

Although it takes more time to add exact (or standard) keywords to your paid search campaigns, you will reap significant rewards and a quick payback from the profits generated through understanding your individual keyword performance.

B. Developing Custom Landing Pages

I have written a great deal about landing pages lately. Why? Because they generate profitable results through converting paid search visitors into customers.

Paid search marketing is unique compared to natural search. In part because you have the convenience to select specific keywords, write specific ads and direct the click-through to a specific web page (a.k.a. landing page). This "connect-the-dots" process creates the need for consistency among a visitor's expectation from the keyword they enter to the ad that draws their attention and down to the web page, they "land-on". Relevancy and consistency are essential for an effective paid search campaign.

When I review a marketing plan and its associated strategies with clients, they often laugh because I get passionate about the power of landing pages. I get passionate because they work so well at generating leads and sales that I can't believe everyone is not using them!

So what are landing pages? A "landing page" is a custom web page developed exclusively for a paid search campaign. It is highly keyword relevant (so you may have multiple landing pages tied to different sets of keyword themes) and they focus a visitor's attention on one call-to-action (e.g. requesting a visitor to take immediate action). The sales copy (content) on a landing page connects the visitor with the paid search ad and keyword they searched for and clicked from.

The copy is strongly benefit-oriented (e.g. communicates the value the visitor will receive from your product or service). A landing page's layout and graphics relate and support the keyword and paid ad.

For instance, if a visitor clicks on your paid search ad for the keyword "website conversion" in Google and arrives at your landing page, the landing page will clearly communicate "website conversion", how website conversion will benefit them and presents a call-to-action like a contact form for them to complete.

It may also contain a "secondary call-to-action" which could offer a lower commitment action like an email opt-in in case a visitor is not ready for a higher commitment action (e.g. request a phone call) yet still wants to begin a relationship with the business. Testimonials, case studies, and graphics all support the benefit and value of "website conversion". In essence, the whole visitor "experience" created by the landing page is "website conversion" and its value to the visitor.

For example, if a visitor expects to find "real estate book" as demonstrated by their keyword search, your landing page should present a "real estate book", (relevancy), offer a consistent message with the paid ad that attracted the visitor to click-through (consistency) and communicate your product or service benefits to fit the visitor's needs (connection). If you get these three right (assuming that you have a quality product and a fair market price point) on your landing page, your leads or sales will skyrocket while your costs drop.

One of the reportedly major reasons why paid search campaigns fail is because businesses direct all of their click-throughs to their home page. Since most businesses' home pages are designed to serve mutliple audiences (i.e. media relations, investors, current clients, potential prospects, customer services, etc.) they do not provide the level of relevancy and consistency expected from a visitor.

C. Luring Buyer Intentions with Keyword Selection

Keyword selection is important. The keywords you select provide access to "pools" of visitors at different stages in their buying cycle. By selecting the right keywords for your products or services, you can open a completely new market of ready-to-buy visitors.

You see - results from advertising occur through relevancy, connection and consistency. In search whether paid or natural, the visitor (search user) drives the process. By entering a keyword into a search engine, the visitor is telling you what they want to find. From a marketers' perspective - this is a dream come true! A potential buyer telling you what they "expect" to find on your website and what they are considering for purchase.

So when selecting keywords, make sure you thoroughly canvass your marketplace using strategies such as:

? Your competitors' websites
? Your website's copy
? 3rd party tools- (e.g. - Overture's Keyword Suggestion Tool)
? Website metrics (find "natural search engine" keyword phrases)
? Search engines like AskJeeves (suggest keyword variations)

Most importantly, "THINK" but never "ASSUME" about which keywords your potential customers may use to find your products or services. Never give up searching for new keywords to setup and test. Both seasonal and even weekday keyword performance fluctuations should be analyzed and studied in addition to potential associations people make to find your products and services.

D. Performance-driven Bid Strategies

All paid search engines possess bidding nuances. However, for the two largest, Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing, do not get locked into the top bid position. Test how each keyword performs against your website's sales or lead conversion metrics up to the seventh bid position.

Depending on your product or service, you may be amazed how bid position six attracts less click-throughs but produces higher sales or lead conversions on your website. Test, test and test - the outcome may mean lower costs and higher sales conversions for you.

E. Writing Negatively-Qualifying and Appealing Ads

Finally, always test different ads by interchanging words in the title and description. For Google Adwords, try split-testing two different titles and descriptions and add a unique tracking code to each one so you can identify which one causes the best sales conversion increase. In order to split-test at the keyword-level, you must structure your campaign correctly. If you are tracking at the keyword-level then this will be automatic, if not, get some expert help. Notice that I did not state, "the best "click-through rate increase".

Why?

Because "a lot of nothing" (i.e. a lot of traffic without sales or lead conversion) is not a financially effective strategy. Consider that even a single word change in your ad can create a significant jump in your paid search profitability.

Follow these strategies immediately to send your paid search profits soaring!

By Kevin Gold

Google AdSense Fraud - Deep Insight

2008-06-29T21:53:00.001-07:00

It's worthwhile to examine Google's definition of Google AdSense and Click Fraud, before delving deeper into "AdSense Fraud".

Google AdSense fraud is one of the diseases that plague the Ad Words advertisers. The AdSense program essentially allows website publishers/owners to sign up with Google, enabling them to display Google Ads on their sites. These publishers essentially act as "Google Partners". The ads chosen by the Google bot for display are contextual and the ads are related to the contents of the publisher's website, more specifically that particular web page. The intent for Google is to capitalize on the traffic to these (in practice) niche sites and provide highly direct targeted traffic to the advertiser. A subset of the users of the Google Partner website, click on those ads and Google charges the advertiser per click. Google shares the booty with the website publisher but the revenue sharing ratio falls under Google's "undisclosed "criteria. While the exact amount can be reverse engineered, the take home lesson is that the filans a course of action. He "invests" in a clickbot software( a simple google search reveals many) and gets a list of anonymous proxy addresses. He then goes to register a few domains and hires someone off of elance to create a "network of sites"and " click bot " . He hopes that the interlinked sites will provide each some "link popularity" and increase his page rank. If only it were that simple! He then proceeds to use the $30 clickbot to start clicking on the sites. Or he could click on them himself manually using the proxies. We don't call him click monkey for nothing. He clicks and clicks all the way to see his account getting banned. No banana for this monkey! His calls of despair to google fall on deaf ears. This person is likely to quit, but sometimes retries to get up the food chain, the Wanna -Be-Fraudster.

Wanna -Be Fraudster ( aka BOZO):

This girl searches for high paying keywords like "home loan equity" (current ad words rate: $45), or "web hosting" (ad words costing $20). She correctly guesses that the AdSense payout is proportional to what Google earns and therefore homes in on such words. Her strategy is to make a page with contents that are appropriate for the targeted high payout keyword. She moves ahead by clicking on the link multiple times and recruits friends and family to give them a click. Or ten!

Little does she knlans a course of action. He "invests" in a clickbot software( a simple google search reveals many) and gets a list of anonymous proxy addresses. He then goes to register a few domains and hires someone off of elance to create a "network of sites"and " click bot " . He hopes that the interlinked sites will provide each some "link popularity" and increase his page rank. If only it were that simple! He then proceeds to use the $30 clickbot to start clicking on the sites. Or he could click on them himself manually using the proxies. We don't call him click monkey for nothing. He clicks and clicks all the way to see his account getting banned. No banana for this monkey! His calls of despair to google fall on deaf ears. This person is likely to quit, but sometimes retries to get up the food chain, the Wanna -Be-Fraudster.

Wanna -Be Fraudster ( aka BOZO):

This girl searches for high paying keywords like "home loan equity" (current ad words rate: $45), or "web hosting" (ad words costing $20). She correctly guesses that the AdSense payout is proportional to what Google earns and therefore homes in on such words. Her strategy is to make a page with contents that are appropriate for the targeted high payout keyword. She moves ahead by clicking on the link multiple times and recruits friends and family to give them a click. Or ten!

Little does she know that Google has a 45 day inspection period before she get her nubby little fingers on that cash. With little to no knowledge of Click through Ratio , her greed couples with her ignorance. Seeing her ill-gotten paper wealth multiplying in her AdSense interface, she increases the clicks. Google however inspects the CTR and throws a fit when they see a CTR exceeding 20%. Furthermore, Google notices clicks mostly originating from a few IP addresses and that essentially seals her fate (or rather docks her earnings). That virtual cash is now just some deleted bytes on a hard disk on Google's servers. She moans, nay she rail against the cruelty of Google's policy. Some of these people wisely cease and desist such activities, perhaps philosophizing about the NFL (no free lunch) theorem. Others however see it as ground school for the next stage of nefarious behavior. The Almost-There Fraudster.

Almost-There Fraudster ( aka SmartAlec ):

The archetypical ATF is supremely confident in his ability to fool Google. Like the BOZO, he looks for high paying keywords and makes appropriate website(s). Let's assume that he is in a third world country, just to make the case more interesting. The case described here is 1 year old news. He has read this article and taken the learnt the subsequent lesson . He knows that that the clicks from the IP Addresses of USA, UK & Canada are worth much more than the clicks from the IP Addresses from the third world countries. He therefore seeks to befriend people from such IP addresses by logging onto messenger services.

This way, he gets the unique, unrelated IP clicks and (he hopes) that Google is fooled. Remember "creature of the night". Well, these people typically are more than a few time zone removed from the US or Canada and therefore are up at odd hours whenever they feel that their targets are most likely to be active. Plus they sometimes have to deal with "inconveniences" like a day job.

AT fraud thinks that the clicks he obtained by trolling on these sites is a job well done. He has got clicks from the IP address of his choice .. An interesting factoid is that for AdSense, state also matters. Clicks from Washington and New York State have the highest payout for AdSense Fraud.

He has just one problem. His tragic flaw. While he worked so hard to get the unique IP and high earnings, he is not able to maintain a good CTR. He is likely to cross the limit of 30-40% of daily CTR and 10-20% of overall CTR. He ends up in the same purgatory as the BOZO. The account is banned, and he gets the abominated email. Yes, the "AdSense account closure". Almost-There is never good enough in this nether world of AdSense gaming. Although it is possible that he would have made a few thousand dollars before the punishment catches up to his crime. Crime doesn't quite pay, now does it? Well, gentle reader, unfortunately crime _is_ paying to the next category. Fraudster Maestro ( aka Satan's Spawn).

Fraudster Maestro ( aka Satan's Spawn):

This category of fraudsters is the most sophisticated and rarely gets caught by google . She has researched the high paying keywords as well as the CTR issues well. She has the smoothest lines in the business of soliciting clicks. She can flirt online, and ask to click the "link" for her picture. Or she may claim that clicking the link causes the hungry child to be fed in Ethiopia . Let's follow a typical "simple" chat session:

AT Fraud: hi

US User : hello

AT Fraud: what are your coordinates, handsome?

US User : NY , NY

AT Fraud: Oh! Wish I could be there. Can you help out a damsel in distress?

US User : sure

AT Fraud: I have made a site and want to see if all the links on this page are working or not. Can you please click on the links and see if the other page loads?

US User: Sure. Link?

AT Fraud: www.fraudstersite.com/high-value-keyword-page.html

US User : wait! Yes I checked all the links and they are working fine.

AT Fraud: Thanks

US User : so can we talk about you now? ( Message Not Delivered as the fraudster has blocked the User and is busy looking for a new victim)

And she has lots of tricks up her repertoire besides chatting up strangers. She knows about opt in lists, usenet and blogs where she can snare the victims. Technically savvy and able to empathize with her victims she doesn't let arrogance get in her way to success. Since she is very mindful of the CTR issues she has a secret weapon. She has optimized her site for some low paying keywords which are really not competitive. She organically gets lots of traffic (but for things unrelated to those competitive high paying keywords). In her website, she may be giving away free greeting cards Or free screensavers. End result is a fabulous impression count. The second step for her is to makes unrelated pages on the same site and these pages pertain to the high paying keywords. These keywords are used to attract the victims of chat sessions. The process of getting the clicks is different but the results due to CTR are very lucrative.

So, how does all this geek talk affect the PPC advertiser? It's a $5 billion+ dollar market(for exact projections onto the future, please check out our FAQ, and with a 20% + fraud rate, we are talking about a 1 BILLION dollars fraud per year. Even Dr. Evil may be impressed by such a number. It's greater than the cumulative GNP of a few banana republics. And a fair chunk is ending up in the coffers of these fraudsters. We know from anecdotal evidence, how people are clearing up to 20 grand a month. All, courtesy of the hapless PPC advertiser.

We want to emphasize that there are lots of authentic sites serving genuine content. But unfortunately the existence of these people (as discussed above) reduces the ROI of many advertisers to the extent that they rethink their interest in PPC. In the word of one of our organic SEO customers, with PPC "you always get a little less back than you put in". It needn't be that way, if you watch carefully where your ad words traffic is coming from and take some steps (such as traffic analysis or at the very least a log file analysis) to protect arm yourself with data for a refund claim for google. Another thing to keep in mind is to stay nimble. Convincing search engines to refund money is a lot tougher and a lot more work than proactively watching for problem visitors and warning them of the repeated clicks and how they are being monitored. Our experience shows that all but the hardened criminals are deterred(reducing the adwords wasted burden). Remember, an ounce of prevention?

By Aamir Farrukh

AdWords Work: They Really Do!

2008-06-13T21:20:00.003-07:00

In 2003 I was accepted by Google into their AdSense program. Without a doubt, it has been a profitable relationship for both parties as they continuously serve up high paying content related ads and we share in the spoils. Still, AdSense does not bring me new customers, but AdWords does. Do AdWords work? Yes they do. Let's take a look at some of the benefits of running a cost effective AdWords campaign.

So, what are AdWords? AdWords is a Google product for web advertisers. Ads are written by advertisers who determine how much they will pay for each click [or impression] on their ad, where the ad will run, and for how long. The ads appear on Google's search results, on websites, virtually anywhere a web page can be served. No, they do not appear on adult or hate sites nor do they appear on any site that Google deems to be unacceptable.

The cost of running AdWords is fully under the control of advertisers. You can select payouts of anywhere from a nickle to $100. per click and budget the daily amount you want to spend. You can run one ad or multiple ads and have several campaigns running simultaneously. You can also change your ads or campaigns midstream or pull the program altogether. At the beginning of the month Google will bill you for the ads clicked; this step usually occurs as a debit to your checking account.

Do AdWords really work? Yes, they do. Several months after being accepted by Google into their AdSense program I decided I needed to launch my own ad campaign. Naturally, Google was the choice as I was benefitting from AdSense and I wanted to help Google out even in a small way. For the past eighteen months I have been running campaigns on and off and have learned the most cost effective -- as well as market penetrating -- ways to reach my customers. They include:

1. Run short campaigns. I keep my campaigns to a week or two before pulling them. If I am interested in going further, I usually rewrite my ads or change my target audience. I check my keywords and toss those that are ineffective.

2. Low CPCs. For awhile Google was receiving reports of illegal clicks to advertisers' ads. Many advertisers found their budgets depleted within days of starting campaigns and complained loudly to Google. For their part, Google repaid advertisers for invalid clicks, but the problem of click fraud continues. I have found that offering ten cent bids for clicks helps to bring adequate traffic to my sites; I don't seem to suffer much from invalid clicks, but when I do the loss is minimal. Many advertisers are lowering their bid amounts -- to the chagrin of publishers -- to avoid being the victim of invalid clicks.

3. Low budgets. I generally budget between $1-$3 per day for my campaigns. If I see a problem with invalid clicks, I change the campaign and notify Google. Google is very quick in amending problems for their advertisers.

4. The Googlebot. Yes, if you run AdSense ads, the Googlebot will visit your site as does Google's regular page indexing/spidering robot. I cannot prove it, but I seem to have generated better indexed pages with Google since incorporating AdWords. They send the traffic via the ads and my pages are moving up in the ranks.

You will need to experiment to find out what type of campaign works for your business. Keep a close eye on the reports made available by Google for AdWords advertisers and look at your webstats reports for changes in traffic. Above all, ask your new customers how they learned about your business and chances are a significant number will mention that they clicked on a Google ad to find your site. If that is the case, your campaign is a success and you will soon agree with me that AdWords does work, indeed!

By Matt

Surefire Google Adwords Formula

2008-06-13T21:20:00.001-07:00

Success with Google Adwords isn't quite as easy as some would have you believe.

Still just about anyone who is persistent can succeed if they'll but implement a consistent testing program. Since testing can produce a nearly constant improvement in your click through rate (CTR).

Here's the surefire three-step formula that's as easy as one...two...three.

Surefire Step #1: Develop Your Initial Test Ads

Notice I said ads not ad.

You want to present two competing ideas to your market right away. Letting your prospects tell you which they prefer.

Tip: Test headlines first while keeping the body copy the same. Headlines can have a huge impact.

Tip: Set it up so Google serves up both ads equally. Otherwise Google will present the ad that's producing the most click throughs more often which will skew your test.

Surefire Step #2: Monitor Results

After 40 clicks review your results. Google displays the ads under your listings. Showing the number of clicks each ad got.

Here's early results from a campaign I tested:

High PR Reciprocal Links
Easily Get More Traffic Fast!
Access Directory of High PR Sites.
HighPRLinkClub.com
39 Clicks | 1.4% CTR |
Served - 49.5%

High PR Reciprocal Links
Boost Search Engine Ranking Fast.
High PR Links Equals More Traffic.
HighPRLinkClub.com
26 Clicks | 0.9% CTR |
Served - 50.5%

Each ad was served up half the time. Yet one outperformed the other by more than 50%. As one had a 1.4% CTR. While the other only .9% CTR. So by doing nothing more than setting up two ads I found one was clearly a winner.

In case you're wondering I have no idea why one ad worked better. And really don't care. Marketing is about "what works" not so much "why it works".

CRITICAL STEP: You've got an ad that produces clicks. Now you want to improve on that without wasting half your impressions on an idea that may or may not work. So here's the trick.

Surefire Step #3: Duplicate the winner. Add another contender.

With three ads being served up equally the winner will be presented two-thirds of the time. While the test ad will only be shown one third of the time.

From here on wait until the challenger accumulates 40 clicks before deciding if it's better or not. (Unless it's dramatically out performing the reigning winner.) If so it's the new champ. If it is, or isn't, repeat Step 3 trying another idea.

CTR Boosting Ideas to Test

Here are five known CTR boosting tactics you can test:

? Put the target keyword in the headline. Google will bold it to draw attention to your ad.

? List the big benefit on the first line of text followed by the features. Does this generate more response than an ad that simply lists various features?

? Capitalize the first letter of each word verses using all lowercase.

? Do action inducing words like...sign up, new, right now, today, buy now, save now, apply here ...impact response?

? Qualify by including the price.

Result? Over time you'll improve your CTR driving more traffic to your site. Making you a winner in the Adwords game.

This is why I say you don't have to be a marketing Einstein to develop Adwords ads that work. Just know a little bit about your market's hot buttons and the market will tell you the rest.

See? a surefire formula that's as easy as one...two...three.

So what you waiting for? Start testing today for more traffic tomorrow.

By John Gergye

5 Tips to Pay-Per-Clicking

2008-06-13T21:19:00.005-07:00

Hi, my name is Darryl Power and I have been using the internet for about 3 years. I used every way possible to generate traffic. But it was not until May 2003 when I found overture did my success really take off. But I am not here to tell you about my success, I'm here to give you some helpful tips with Pay-Per Click advertising which I learned over the past year. The following 5 Tips will help you target your specific audience, and help reach over 85% of internet users in a fast and effective way.

1. Bid on low cost relevant words

When you do your research you need to find words that not only define you website or services but are low cost and have little competition. You will also want to build a wide base of keywords, about a 30 or so to gain the maximum click through rate.

2. Qualify your Title and description

This one is simple; remember the 30 keywords you got; now you make up 6 to 7 ads with 3 to 4 keywords in them. By using the keywords in your title and description it is a fact that you can increase your click through rate by almost 40%.

3. Use unique landing pages

Now if you are promoting an affiliate product or a matter of fact any product you need to us unique landing pages. You should strive to create landing pages that have a review of the product you are selling. Reviews can increase your sales by 50% or more.

4. Use a professional URL

There is nothing more that will turn a buyer off from buying a product then having a URL that looks like an affiliate link. When you pick a domain name make sure it is keyword rich, descriptive and related to the product you are selling.

5. Finally, STICK TO YOUR BUDGET

Do not diverge from your budget. Calculate how much you will make per sale? What percentage of your visitors will buy? How much you are paying per click? Set a base limit on your cost per click around .08 to .10 cents. Remember you are only looking to make a profit.

Overall you will need to keep tweaking your ads in order to get the best Click through rates. Oh yea, start of with one or two products and build you campaigns around them, then repeat the process. Remember if you spend $200 in advertising and you make $1000 from you product, you just made $800.

By Darryl Power

Pay Per Click 2005: Very Expensive Without Expert Help

2008-06-13T21:19:00.003-07:00

Despite being online using email since 1995, at the start of the summer of 2004 I had no idea what pay per click was.

During that summer, I had taken some time off work and was researching online opportunities. This led me to Ebay, various get rich quick type scams, and then an email referral to marketing using pay per click.

What was pay per click, I remember asking.

Days of research later, I learned that pay per click (also called ppc) was a type of search marketing where advertisers pay a set amount every time their ad was clicked by a prospect. This is known as a click thru, click through rate or ctr.

The opportunity to place your ad directly in front of a prospect at the exact moment they are searching for your product or service is tremendous.

Performance based advertising is not only cost efficient and effective, but it is track-able and user-friendly. The advertiser, you, in this scenario has control over the keywords that best represent your product.

The PPC model allows you to decide how much you are willing to pay per customer. Unlike banner ads that demand payment on a cost per thousand basis, the only viewers you pay for are those that are actively seeking your product or service.

In a Google search, I learned the small sponsored ads on the right hand side of the page were a type of pay per click called Google Adwords.

I discovered that the pay per click world was huge, with millions of clicks delivered by hundreds of search engines such as Overture, Find What, ePilot, Enhance and GoClick.

The great benefit is the cost-effective, highly targeted website traffic that this type of search generates.

However, the massive popularity and growth of pay per click had also made it very expensive.

For example, Google Adwords allowed me to set up campaigns and see them live within 15 minutes. This was very, very exciting and very addicting.

Within days of learning about pay per click, I was generating 1,000 clicks per day to my various campaigns. I thought I was seeing success in pay per click.

In the early days of ppc, that may have been true because your bids on popular keywords were just pennies a click.

By the time I was hitting it, popular keywords were around $1 dollar per click and I was actually losing hundreds of dollars per day.

Worse yet, my keywords were being disabled and my ads were getting disapproved.

Then I started watching for sales. I kept watching, and watching, and watching and by the end of that first week, my 6,800 adwords clicks had produced only 3 SALES for $55.

I was crushed. My brand new online business had already lost $500. This is when I realized just how steep the learning curve was.

I signed up for free-5 part email courses on Adwords and pay per click. I learned about converting traffic into sales, avoiding the curse of disabled ads, return on investment, finding niche keywords and lowering my cost per click.

The bottom line is pay per click campaigns can bring large numbers of highly targeted visitors to your website. The industry is growing rapidly, it is hugely competitive and campaigns can become prohibitively expensive.

Success of any pay per click campaign comes down to paying pay a reasonable price for each visitor, that each visitor is highly targeted, and that you continuously monitor and track your positions.

A Fundamental Overview Of Pay Per Click Search Engines

2008-06-13T21:19:00.001-07:00

Forbes magazine has reported that pay per click ad sales are expected to increase to at least $8 billion by 2008.

The three fundamental core elements that form the basis of a successful pay per click ad program are constant monitoring, analysis, and refinement.

Pay per click search engines offer a way to buy your way to the top of search results for any term you wish. With proper management, and a clear focus, pay per click search engines can offer some of the most well targeted and economical advertising on the Internet.

Pay per click advertising works through a bidding process, and the ads appear prominently on the results pages of search engines such as Google and Yahoo. The highest bidder for a particular word or phrase receives top placement, and depending on the engine, the top three to five bidders also generally also receive placement on the first page of unpaid search results.

Fundamental questions to be addressed when formulating a pay per click search engine strategy include the following:

When is the top pay per click bid necessary for highest conversion, and when will bidding for a second or third place position create a more attractive return on investment (ROI)?

How can you keep your PPC bids from cannibalizing your search efforts on other (non pay per click) search engines?

What percentage of your pay per click budget should go to each search engine?

Does either Google Adwords or Overture work better for your particular product or service? Or, perhaps neither one is appropriate from a return on investment (ROI) perspective.

It is of critical importance to focus sharply on identifying the search terms that convert most frequently for your particular site, eliminating those that don't perform, and most importantly, calculating and maximizing your return on investment.

The cost structure of pay per click is action-driven and each time a user clicks your ad, the pay per click engine deducts the amount of your current bid from your account. Pay per click offers a high level of assurance that your ad is reaching the proper target.

Pay per click campaigns, however, are not perfect. Without CONSTANT monitoring, you sometimes risk incurring advertising costs that can spiral out of control, focusing on terms that don't convert well for your product or services, or falling way down in position during a bidding war.

PPC advertising can be a great help to a site's success, but only with very close supervision and a thorough knowledge of the unique characteristics of each PPC search engine.

We Are Right In The Middle Of A Pay Per Click Baby Boom

2008-06-13T21:18:00.001-07:00

No, this baby boom will certainly not swamp the Social Security system (sort of a bad joke for those that live in the United States, but many other countries...most notably Japan...have an even more acute problem), but this baby boom is revolutionizing the way that pay per click advertising is being spread across the Internet.

One of the early participants in this pay per click baby boom was Google, with its AdSense program. With this program, Google shares pay per click revenue with a huge number of individual partner websites that carry a few pay per click ads that are distributed by Google. In essence, this creates a whole bunch of little pay per click locations (websites) throughout the Internet and hence the term "pay per click baby boom".

Conceptually, programs like AdSense are similar to what the computer hardware folks refer to a distributed processing. Instead of trying to draw everyone to a large pay per click search engine site, little groups of pay per click ads are spread widely across thousands of locations (websites) all over the Internet.

Actually, this distributed processing or propagation technique is not limited to pay per click advertising. For example, Amazon uses a similar arrangement (called Amazon Associates) to sell the products it carries on amazon.com and ClickBank has a sales program called CBAdwords which operates in a similar fashion.

According my trusty Ouija board, it seems likely that most commercial hubs on the Internet will be shifting to this propagation concept as time progresses...all of those individual partner websites that carry the message/proposition will constitute the vast army of worker ants that keep the queen ant alive and healthy.

From a pay per click marketing perspective, these programs make brilliant use of leverage while providing highly targeted prospects for the paying advertiser.

There are, of course, some interesting things that occur as a result of all of this stuff. For example, consider what I call the "cross fertilization effect": Suppose a person goes to yahoo.com and performs a search that leads them to one of my websites that happens carry Google AdSense ads and that visitor then clicks on one of those ads...the net result is that Yahoo natural search provided Google pay per click with some revenue! Aren't these fun times that we're living in?

As these programs continue to proliferate, the individual webmaster needs to exercise a little restraint and avoid the temptation to go overboard by plastering these ads all over your website and thereby diluting your own primary message/proposition and confusing your hard earned visitor. When properly used, these ads are just ancillary or complementary content that you are providing to enhance the information and opportunities that you are providing to your visitor...if something happens to strike a responsive chord with your visitor, you might make a little pay per click money.

If properly used, these propagation programs can result in the classical "win-win" situation. However, if you over do it, this can quickly turn into a loss for you (the individual webmaster) and a win for your pay per click partners that are distributing the ads. As in many things, moderation is important.

It's a constant sea of change, but the good things just keep on getting better! Stay alert, and light on your feet, and the opportunities will just keep on coming your way.

The above are just some observations from "the peanut gallery", but I don't think I'm far off the mark about where things are heading. With that, I'm off the soapbox and wishing you success in whatever you do online!

How to Waste Money and Annoy Potential Customers

2008-06-13T21:17:00.003-07:00

Why do some companies bid on keywords for products they don't even sell? Or fail to provide the basic information people need to make the decision to buy? Here's a cautionary tale-- with a happy ending.

HAS THIS EVER HAPPENED TO YOU?

I'm looking online for lamp shades. I go to Google and click on the top Sponsored Link in the right column: Expo.com. I'm taken to their "Lighting and Fans" page. There are 29 links in the left navigation, but no lamp shades. So I do a keyword search. Products Found = 0. All I can do is wonder why they wasted my time and their money, and move on to the next ad.

CLOSE, BUT NO CIGAR.

Clicking on the second ad takes me to a home page with a "Shades" tab. I click on that and arrive on a page with information about sizes and a link to the lamp shade collection.

I start browsing and find one I'm interested in. The text instructs me to "Click on lamp image for detail." I guess they mean lamp shade image. I click, and to my surprise, I see the exact same thumbnail I was looking at, but now I have four color choices and an "ad to cart" button.

OK, I'm a designer. I can appreciate subtlety. But what's the difference between White, Off-White, Beige and Coffee? All this site shows me is a little grey photo-- but "Dirty" isn't one of the color choices.

I see the toll-free phone number at the top of the page. I call (during their normal business hours) and get voicemail. They say my call is very important to them, but I'm not so sure...

THIRD TIME'S THE CHARM?

Back to Google, click on another ad which takes me to a page with lamp shades (YAY!). I can sort by nine different criteria, but even so, I don't see exactly what I want.

There's a link to talk to a lighting consultant. I'm skeptical, but I call. Someone answers the phone! I explain what I want and I'm told I need a custom shade. This company doesn't make them, but the consultant refers me to two other sites where I can order custom-made shades.

Even though I didn't find what I was searching for I really appreciate this experience. I'd be happy to return to this site and do business with this company in the future.

THE MORAL OF THIS STORY

Have some respect for your customers. Think about their needs and do everything you can to meet them. If you're advertising a product for sale it should be available on your site. If you expect people to make a choice, provide the information and pictures they need to feel comfortable making a decision. And even if you can't make the sale today, you can and should offer a good customer experience because there's always tomorrow.

TIPS TO TAKE AWAY

If you place an ad for a product your site should sell that product. Don't waste your money bidding on keywords for products you don't sell.

If someone clicks on your ad they should be taken to a relevant landing page. Don't make people hunt around or do a Search on your site. Show them what they're looking for right away.

Give them the information they need to make a good decision. Don't expect them to guess what your product is "really" like.

By Barry Harrison

Two Imperative Keys For Profitable Pay Per Click Marketing

2008-06-13T21:17:00.001-07:00

Pay per click marketing is one of the simplest and fastest ways of sending targeted traffic to any website. Whether you are trying to send visitors to your own website, sell a product online, or build an opt in email list, pay per click marketing has been a guaranteed way to see instant traffic results.

But there is one major problem with pay per click marketing that many individuals have. This problem has been a recurring problem for the past 5 years and it's getting worse every minute of the day. This problem involves the over excessive cost and non-profitability that occurs when marketing through pay per click search engines. Many marketers deplete their income extremely fast when marketing online through pay per click engines. They set up a pay per click campaign, and within 24 hours , all of their money is drained with no sales, and no leads gained at all. After having this occur, the marketer ends up giving up on pay per click marketing and establishes in his heart that pay per click advertising is the most unprofitable form of advertising on the web today.

This scenario occurs every single day and many marketers give up on marketing their websites because of these tragic results. I was one of these individuals. I spent countless dollars on paid advertising solutions like pay per click search engines and I set up in my heart that I was never going to pay for advertising again. If you lost over $500 in one day from a paid advertising method like pay per click marketing, you will feel the same way! I was determined to find other alternatives for marketing online.

But I decided to read a lot of information from other marketers who were having great success online marketing via pay per click search engines. I tried to extract as much information as I can from them on how to market online using ppcs. I kept enquiring and enquiring about their tactics until I came up with a few key concepts that will help anyone immediately profit using pay per click engines!

These key concepts have nothing to do with the pay per click search engine themselves. As a matter of fact, don't even think about the various ppc engines on the web today. Your major concern right now is to make money using this form of advertising. And the only way you can do this now is by discovering highly profitable and hidden keyword phrases that will generate income for months to come.

Here is what I learned:

1. Find Hidden Keywords With High Search Volume and Low Competition:

This is one of the most important keys to profiting using ppc engines. Your goal should be to find keywords with a high search demand, but with a small amount of internet advertisers marketing with that keyword.

Why?

Because the smaller the competition, the lesser your bid will be for that particular keyword. For example, if you are using google adwords to market your site, and you notice that there are only 7 advertisers marketing for a particular keyword, then you can bid for the lowest amount of .05 per click while at the same time being on the first page! You will have the opportunity to send a lot of traffic to your site and at the same time, increase the return on your investment (ROI). It is a beautiful feeling when you can find these types of keyword gems. I just recently discovered a keyword that gets over 1,500 searches a day and the number one bid is only .06 with 3 competing websites only!! I used the tool below to do this:

http://www.free-traffic-generation.com/adwordiser/

2. Generate Hundreds Of These Hidden Keyword Gems:

The next key is to find as many of these hidden keywords as you can. If you can find at least 500 hidden keywords to market your business with, you'll find great success with pay per click marketing. And I am very serious when I say this. There are a lot of hidden niches and keywords that you can use to instantly send thousands of visitors daily to your website. As soon as you find these keywords, you can do a number of things to guarantee profits. One thing that I always do is set up a niche specific lead capture page that includes google adsense on it. (Ha!! I can't believe I just gave you one of my most valuable secrets for earning income online! Well, take note of this, and use it to your advantage!)

Well, you've just discovered the 2 most important keys for being successful with pay per click marketing. I highly suggest that you take into account these two keys if you expect to generate a nice supply of targeted, yet cheap and profitable traffic. But I have to warn you about something. Discovering these keyword gems can take a lot of time. If you have a lot of time to spend, then go and do all of the research yourself. If you do not have a lot of time, then I highly recommend that you pick up this resource that will help you to instantly find these profitable keywords. If you need to check out this resource, go to:

http://www.free-traffic-generation.com/adwordiser/

By Melvin Perry

10 Powerful Tips to Optimize your Google AdWords Campaigns

2008-06-13T21:16:00.005-07:00

Google announced in January 2005 significant changes in their popular AdWords Pay-per-Click System (PPC). In future only unique URLs per page will be displayed. If several advertisers uses the same URL (i.e affiliates of the same program), only the one with the best Ad will be displayed.

It is obvious that Google is trying to maximize the diversity in their AdWords results. Very popular Affiliate Programs, like Amazon.com, lead to hundreds of affiliates showing the same product with different Ads. For the affiliates using this system the "easy way to get money with affiliate programs" is now over, since it will be practically impossible to advertise just the affiliate link. Significant more effort, but also significant changes are the consequence.

The following tips can help you to get maximum benefit of your AdWords Campaigns.

1) Build your own unique "landing page" for your product. Remember that 99% of Internet users are looking for Information and thus, expect unique content from your side. Include Product pictures, Product reviews and interesting content related with your product. Use illustrative images of your product, trying to keep the load time of your "landing page" low.

2) Include a form allowing the visitor to enter his/her e-mail address in order to get more information about the product or service you are selling. Do not sell, pre-sell. Try to build a long term "trused relationship" with your visitor. Offer free gifts or freebies to motivate your visitor to enter his/her e-mail address. Of course, consider this information confidentially. Use an autoresponder to follow-up your potential customer. You could dedicate one e-mail to describe your product or service in detail, enhancing the value for your potential customer. Explain why this product or service will add value.

3) User Ad Groups to manage "keyword families". Each Ad Group should be dedicated only to one Keyword family, i.e. all variants of a Keyword choosen to advertise your product. Example, if your Keyword is "shoes", try a Ad Group with "Blue Shoes", "Red Shoes", "Mountain shoes" and so on. Use Wordtracker.com to find Keyword families. Use a high number of negative keywords to avoids clicks with no sales (i.e. -free to prevent freebies seekers to click on your ad). With the time, create a good number of selected negative keywords for your campaign.

4) Include in the text of your Ad the Keyword choosen in 3) This (key)word will be printed highlighted and will lead to a higher CTR (Click Thru Rate), lowering your costs.

5) Include in the text of your Ad a line for the Benefit of your Product, i.e. Discount, short term opportunity. Explain in few words why the customer should click your Ad.

6) Mention explicitely the price of your product or service. This will prevent freebies seekers to click on your Ad and generate costs and no sales

7) Create at least 20 different Ad versions per Keyword Group. Monitor the CTR of each ad and finally delete all versions with low CTR, keeping the most successful Ad versions. Experts create usually hundred of variations. Experiment, test, evaluate, change and keep only the best results.

8) Exclude the "content search" option to reach highly targeted traffic. Only in the case you have an amazing conversion rate, activate this option to maximize your profits.

9) Calculate the value per visitor on a regular basis. Just divide the achieved earnings in a given period (i.e. weekly) thru the clicks in the same period. This is your maxium CPC (Cost per Click). Adjust your maximum bid accordingly. Try to maximize profits, not just to lower the CPC.

10) Track your ads carefully. Google provides a tracking facility you can ad in your "thank you" page after each sale. Monitor closely which keywords convert and which not. Delete Keywords which obviously do not convert.

If you monitor your Ads on a regular basis and take care of the topics mentioned here, you may have a great benefit also from the new system used by Google. Try to differentiate yourself with high quality and content from your competition and enjoy your profits!

Alex Timaios

Is Pay Per Click your Best Marketing Bet?

2008-06-13T21:16:00.003-07:00

You may already have heard of this method to get people to your web site. From my point of view and experience it turns out to be expensive and you have to write the ads yourself, pay for them, and change and maintain them to be the correct ones to work and be the right price in competition with many others.

When people search for a particular topic like healing a headache or other malady, they will see in the column to the right an ad that when clicked on takes the person to their web site selling the book or service on healing headaches.

Advertisers pay a set amount for every time the ad is clicked by a prospect. This is referred to as a click through rate or ctr.

Yes, there are benefits: The opportunity to place your ad directly in front of a prospect at the exact moment they are searching for your product or service is good.

More benefits include your control over the keywords that best represent your product. The PPC model allows you to decide how much you are willing to pay per customer. You only pay for the click throughs, and these are your targeted audience seeking your solutions.

After using Overture and being disappointed, while doing a Google search recently, I noticed the small sponsored ads on the right hand side of the page were a type of pay per click called Google Adwords. I do know people who are successful with this company.

While this search generates targeted website traffic, the downside? You have to study what key words work best, and the best ones are much more expensive than other ones. The popularity and growth of pay per click had also made it expensive.

The Horror Stories of Pay Per Click

Story One. One submitter got hooked because it was fast, exciting and easy.

Within days of learning about pay per click, she was generating 1,000 clicks per day to her various campaigns. She thought she was seeing success in pay per click.

In the early days of ppc, that may have been true because bids on popular keywords were just pennies a click. When her popular keywords were around $1 dollar per click, she actually lost $100's of dollars per day. Along with that, her keys words got disabled and were disapproved.

Where were the sales? At the end of the first week, her adwords produced only $75 from over 5000 adwords. Count the loss!

You can shorten your learning curve if you like by taking a course in adwords, but you can just as well take a teleclass from a respected internet marketing coach who knows all of the ins and outs and do what's already tried and true-as in this book. If you want to be more successful, go to Adwords-Hints.com/pay-per-click. Find tools for keyword analyzing, lowering costs and increasing click throughs. http://tinyurl.com/5nb46

Story two. One web-savvy friend used ppc ads in Google for a set of how to video for building a motorcycle, then a race car. Her sales were affiliate ones. At first, she invested $4000 and got back $7000 one month, but when more competition entered the field, her sales were not high enough for her efforts.

Story three One health author put a short ad in Google for a diet to heal a specific disease and her solutions. She said she sold 4,000 books within months that only cost her $400 in ads. Her ad led straight to her book's sales letter.

This success story shows that if your book is narrow enough in its focus, you may want to try ads because there won't be any competition, but if you have a general personal growth or business book, you will have to pay too much per key word to make any real money.

Story four. Although I already was successful with internet promotion, I thought I should try the Overture pay per click program. My web master helped me and charged me about $350. She did take care of the changes for a while, but then I had to do it myself. Using www.goodkeywords.com helped a bit. The less expensive key words didn't work, and the more expensive cost too much. After losing around $800 I let go.

You may want to learn the lesson yourself, or you may want to invest far less money in ongoing internet promotion that is already tried and true over many years.

By Judy Cullins

How to Increase Your Adsense Revenue

2008-06-13T21:16:00.001-07:00

If you're a webmaster, you've probably heard about Google's Adsense. Perhaps you're even earning from it already. This article will show you a method to increase your Adsense revenue dramatically.

Google's Adsense allows webmasters to place links from Google's Adwords advertisers on their webpages by inserting a special code. When a visitor clicked on a link, the webmaster gets a cut of the profit Google made from the advertiser. The unique feature about Adsense is that the links it generates on your webpage are relevant to your page content. Thus, your keywords and topics become very important determinant for the type of links that will appear on your webpage.

There are only two factors that determine how much a webmaster can make from Adsense. The first factor is the number of visitors who click on the links. The more people who clicked on the links, the more you make. Naturally, this means that the more targetted traffic to the website, the more you'll make. This is where most webmasters focus their efforts on.

The second factor is the value of the links they clicked on. Here's where you can make a great difference to your earnings from Adsense and is our focus in this article.

Let's take a look at how this works:

Suppose you have 1000 visitors to your website and you get 2% conversion, that is 20 people clicked on your Adsense links. Let's assume that your Adsense links pay you only 50 cents per click. So you earn $10 dollars.

Now let's see how much this same traffic will make for you if your Adsense links pay you $5 per click. For the same number of clicks, you make $100 dollars. That's a ten-fold increased in revenue!

Well, that makes sense, you said, but how am going to determine what type of links appear on my webpages?

Good questions!

Here's where you'll need to do a little research and here's a tool to help you do just that.

Go over to http://www.pixelfast.com/overture/ and you'll get a tool that shows you how much each keyword is worth. While this tool is for Overture's keywords, we can safely assume that this reflects the keyword values for Googles Adwords as well. Once you've found the keywords with high monetary values, you can optimize your webpages for them. This will increase your chances of having these high value keyword links appearing on your webpages.

Some people have actually made extensive researches on Google's top paying keywords and found that one or two keywords are worth almost $100! However, generally most keywords are valued at between 50 cents and $5 dollars. Some keywords like "internet marketing" may fetch up to $7 dollars and "mortgage" pays up to $10 dollars.

These values may change from time to time but they generally hover around these levels. Naturally, this information is priceless and you'll have to pay to get it. I feel it is worth every cent you paid for it. You can check it out at http://theselfimprovementsite.com/links/top-paying-keywords.html.

And there you have it! A single factor that can radically increase your Adsense revenue!

By Tim Ong

The Long Term Benefits From Pay Per Click Advertising

2008-06-13T21:15:00.005-07:00

Businesses are starting to look closely at the long-term benefits from pay per click advertising. Pay per click search engines are primarily used for sales in the now time frame, but they are also being used to build a business identity that their customers will remember. This form of brand awareness can be applied to a company of any size, large or small.

If you take a look at a traditional magazine or newspaper ad, the companies are using that advertising to increase their brand awareness. The purpose of the ad is to direct the customer to their products or services but there is no chance to make a sale immediately. They are referred to a website or a retailer.

When search engine advertising, as potential customers search the web looking for a product or service and see the same site come up in their searches time and time again it begins to create that same brand awareness for that product or service.

Over 85% of all searches on the Internet are done through search engines and they are the best tools for enhancing a company's identity. They are identity builders, and they direct targeted consumers who are looking for your product or service right to your doorstep.

In the long term, brand awareness can bring visitors to their site without additional advertising. By using the power of search engines you can use the Internet to deliver a targeted prospective customer who is actively looking for your products or services right to your doorstep and build long term brand awareness at the same time.

About The Author

By Kevin OHara

Know Which Keywords Provide The Best Return

2008-06-13T21:15:00.003-07:00

Is it wise only to reley on traffic from the search engines, or should you use all kind of options to brand a domain name?

How good is the ROI (return of investment) & what can you expect from different traffic techniques?

* .5 - 1.5% banner clickthrue
* 1.2 - 2.5 newsletter
* 1.5% TV spots
* 1.9% from your own 404 error page
* 4.4% Advertising write article
* 3 - 5% PPC Google adwords
* 15 - 20% Word of mouth
* 20% various surfing
* 45% Search Ingines

Personaly I prefer traffic from the Search Engines, because keyword research make sense and better ROI and I think you have some sort of control if you know how to make optimized mini-site with good content, compelling punchlines/titles with keyword-rich text.

Yes, we all know that backlinks is important toward "Google Rank" but it will take you hour's of valuable time to build a safe link structure & to many reciprocal links on one site can be a problem according to Googles algoritm.

One-way link is the best link you ever can dream of because normally those link comes from peoble who think your content is awesome and want to give you a vote.

Remember if you are allowed to place a "one-way link" somewhere on the web, to fill in your best keyword phrase in the anchor link text.

ex: keyword phrase

On the other hand if you need to pay for "targeted traffic" what is the price and do you gain the best ROI or get ripped off.

My conclution is that "Word of Mouth" and turning words into traffic is the best free ride you ever get.

You have to know which keyword provide the best return because keyword research make sense if you wanna have more targeted traffic and better web site ROI

Know which keywords provide the best returns

By Kim Anton Hollenner

Seven Tips To Getting The Nost From Your Google Ad Word Investment

2008-06-13T21:15:00.001-07:00

With Google Ad Words . . .

When a person searches Google for a word or phrase related to your product or something on your web site, the Google search return will display your ad.

When your ad appears on the Google Ad Words page, you only have to pay for the ad if the visitor clicks on it. Even if the ad appears 10,000 times, you only pay if the ad is clicked on.

The cost per click for Ad Words can be as little as five cents.

Google provides extensive reporting showing which words and phrases produce the most click throughs for your ad.

You can set up as many ads as you like, for as many different products and web pages as you like. There is no cost to set up an Google Ad Word campaign - and you can modify your campaigns as often as you like.

Seven tips to getting the most from your Google Ad Word investment

1. Avoid highly searched single words - The biggest mistake made when purchasing Ad Words is trying to buy a single highly searched word. Doing so may seem logical, as more searches means more times your ad is displayed.

But choosing single highly searched words puts you in competition with lots of people who are willing to pay a lot for those same words (often because they have more money than sense). These single words can cost $9-$20 dollars per ad click - making them tremendously expensive to buy.

Rarely can a single word represent your product - so don't invest in these expensive single words.

2. Choose phrases - When people use the search engines, they generally search for specific information or a solution to a specific problem.

They don't search for 'videos', but will instead search for 'video on scuba diving'. So instead of buying the very expensive word 'video', you would want to buy the ad word 'scuba diving video'. Buy phrases, not words.

3. Go for Relevancy - not frequency - When it comes to ads, you want to display your ad only when it is relevant to the search. That's when it will be the most cost effective.

If someone is actually looking for what you have for sale, then that's when you want your ad to appear. The way to get a relevancy to your ad is to choose ad phrases based on the way people search - phrases looking for a solution or an answer.

In almost all cases, searchers use words and phrases that are familiar to them, and not always will they use proper english, the correct technical terms, or the correct spelling. For that reason, choose search phrases that reflect the potential misuse or words or spellings, and choose many different combination of words and phrases that might be entered.

So don't just buy the phrase 'scuba diving videos'. Consider phrases such as 'learning to scuba dive', 'scuba diving training', 'scuba diving dvd', 'scuba diving information' . . . and other words and phrases that someone interested in learning more about the subject matter would use to search.

4. Avoid the crowd - Before choosing Google Ad Words, search each word/phrase you are considering. Check to see how many ads exists for those words, and also check to see what pages are shown in the search results. The best word buys will be with phrases that have no ads - when you buy those words, your ad is the only ad shown - which makes your ad really stand out.

If the ad word has several ads, and more ads repeating on the 2nd and 3rd page of the Google results, look for a better phrase or word.

When I do this, I have two browser windows open - one with my Google Ad Words entry form, and one with Google search. I search for words and phrases, and when I find one with no ads which is relevant to my product, I add that phrase to my Google list.

5. Write your ad carefully - Your Google AdWord Ad is limited to a headline, two lines of text, and a link to your site. Not much to work with, but certainly enough to attract interest and clicks.

Your headline should summarize the benefits of visiting the link, and the two lines of text should include hot button words that further define the link. To see examples of many Ad Words, just search Google - and search for terms related to your product to see how others are using Ad Words.

Don't not use the spam approach in your Ad Words - these are a definite turn off.

6. Set a realistic budget - When you create your ad word campaign, you set your maximum spending budget per day. If you exceed your budget Google will let you know.

7. Check the results and revise the list - Google Ad Words provides extensive reporting features which show the performance of all your words and phrases. By viewing these reports you can quickly see which words and phrases are giving you the best click throughs.

Knowing which phrases produce the best results can help you come up with similar words and phrases to add to your Google Ad Words list - and this can increase click throughs and sales.

Google Ad Words do work - if you follow a solid strategy and don't get into a bidding war with others for single words.

By Craige Stacey

Adsense-ble, Or The Art Of Promoting, Without Promoting

2008-06-13T21:14:00.003-07:00

Hey, wait a minute. You can't have popups on the page. Ok, no problem. Moreover, you can't tell anyone you have an ad from Google on the page. You can't write about it, point to it or tell someone to click on it

Also, remember that you are not allowed to make a traffic pulling page, with no other way to leave it beside the ad. You must have more links on the page (now what, will anyone notice it?).

So how can you help up your click conversion rates?

1.Placement. Do not hide your ad. Put the ad to the left or somewhere near the top to ensure that anyone will see it without any scrolling.

2.Colors. There are several schools, each one pulling their way. One way is to contrast the ad as much as possible (but still possible to read it). The second one is to blend in the ad with your site as much as possible.

Click conversion rates

People say that a click through of 5-10% is very good, while others are happy with 3-5%. I have pages reaching 30% click through and they have several product and affiliate links, plus sales copy for products.

How to get that high click throughs?

My secret weapon is trying to make my WebPages as likable as possible for Google.

I have found that better ranking on your search term (for a page) in Google, increases the click through. Not because you get some secret bonus or extra points (according to those who know, are there no connection between the Google search engine and adsense).

However, I believe that if the Google search engine ranks you high, then you have created a webpage that Google understands very well. Therefore, when the adsense ad is placed and Google scan your page to determine the content of the ads to show, it also will find the page clear and understandable, and as a result choose very targeted ads.

All of this boils down to using the page tags, content, headers and similar to focus on a very narrow search term. People coming in after finding the web page in the search engine (and having read the title and description), actually find exactly what they where looking for. In addition, the ads showing are exactly in the area they where looking and will pull a higher click rate, then ads showing for someone looking after arriving from a false or misleading link.

By Kenth