Google Adsense

Google Adsense - All Secret TIPS & TRICKS

For short articles, CTR is best when ads are placed just above thecontent

For long articles, CTR improves if ads are placed somewhere in center of the content - visitors read the long content and then they are looking for more resources.

Text Ads instead of Image Ads as users get more options. If you still want to display image ads, consider ad formats that support image ads - Choose either the 300x250 medium rectangle or the 160x600 wide skyscraper - or both, if you display multiple ad units on a page.

Your Ad Here

Google Ads without background color and borders always perform better. Make the border color and background color same as your page background color.

Always put ads above the main fold. Make sure that the ad unit with the highest clickthrough rate is the first instance of the ad code that appears in the HTML. Since the first ad unit is always filled before the rest, you want to make sure that ad unit is located in the best placement on your page.

Try setting the ad link URL color to a lighter shade. If your text is black, you may make the adlink as light gray.

Go Wide - The large rectangle is the best paying adsense format (336x280) - The Google Adsense Publisher team also feels that the best formats are the wider ones - the ad formats that contain the widest individual ads. Try using the 336x280 large rectangle, 300x250 mediumrectangle, or 160x600 wide skyscraper.

Placing images next to ads or above ads does help in attracting user attention.

Blend AdLinks with other navigation links or place horizontal adlinks at the top of your webpage. AdSense publishers are permitted to click on link unit topics on their web pages, provided that they do not click on any Google ads on the resulting page.

Organize an Adsense Party for your friends and colleagues - Request them to navigate your website, watch their activity - it will provide vital clues about which regions on your website draw more user attention. Try putting ads near those areas.

You can put upto 3 adsense units on a page. Try putting a large skyscraper on the right navigation sidebar of your website. That area is close to the browser scrollbar. You can also add 2 AdSense for search boxes, 1 adlink unit and 1 referral button per product (i.e., 1 AdSense referral button and 1 Firefox plus Google Toolbar referral button).

The first few lines of your content are an important factor for determining what Ads are served on your webpage. That's the right place to put keywords in bold (strong or tags) or header tags (h1, h2, etc).

Always select the setting to open Google Adsense search box results in a new browser window, so you won't lose your visitors. Click the Open search results in a new browser window checkbox and this add target="google_window" to your form tag.

Maximum people think the search box is on the top right corner. So you know where to put it.

Don't syndicate full content. If people can read everything from the newsreader window itself, why would they visit your website where your ads are.

Use URL channels to determine performance of individual pages. I track my most popular pages with Google Analytics, Statcounter and create a channel for each of the URL. You can even track Adsense Clicks with Analytics

For low CTR pages, try changing titles or adding more content to get better focused ads

Block low paying advertisers with Filters. Why to loose a visitor for 0.01 cents. Use Overture or Google Adwords Keywords tool to discover keywords that are less popular with advertisers.

AdSense for search Top Queries report shows you what your users are looking for, by listing the 25 most common searches conducted through your AdSense for search boxes. Use this report to identify additional topics to add to your site, or to keep track of your most sought-after information. Focus and improve that content.

Not everyone has a RSS reader. Use RSS to Email services like FeedBlitz, Bloglet or Rmail to let users subscribe to your blog by email.

Remember, you are the best judge when it comes to choosing ad formats. Even Google doesn't offer the best advise always. For instance, in the visual heat map, Google suggests that webmasters are best served by positioning ads on the upper left-hand side of a Web page. But on the Google homepage, you will find ads on the far right.

Which Google Adsense Ad Unit Works Best?
I've tried them all and I keep going back to the Google Adsense Medium Rectangle. The 300x250 medium rectangle has consistently outperformed other Ad units on all of my sites.

Where Should Medium Rectangles Be Placed?

On page placement of adsense ads is key in optimizing your CTR. I found the most success in placing the Google Adsense medium rectangle either right in the center of the page or in a center right column as long as it has content above and below the ad unit.

What Color Should I Use In My Ad Units?

Initially I used the same color as my content, making my Google Adsense ad units blend with the content. After awhile I found success with the color red and then alternated between mycontent color and the color red. This is the strategy I currently use and am happy with the outcome. I'm guessing that by alternating between a blending color and the color red, repeatvisitors or those who visit more than one web page might be attracted to the Adsense advertising when the color changes.

Should I Create Web Pages Based On High Paying Keywords?

In all cases you should create quality content based on subject matter that you believe yourvisitors will find valuable. If this happens to be high paying keywords then great. Myself I find it preferable to create a larger volume of content as opposed to optimizing high paying keyword web content and competing with a million other Adsense webmasters. In the end more of my pages achieve a top rank in the SERPS and even though I earn less per click I have found a higher and more consistent revenue stream. The term death by a thousand cuts applies here, I imaging that if I could create content that always earned at least .20 per page every day I would do better than getting the premium click once per week or so.

Should I Use Multiple Adsense Ad Units?

This is up to you. Some webmasters have found that using multiple Google Adsense ad units on the same page increases CTR and also total revenue. Everyone seems to agree that multiple Google Adsense ad units decreases your cost per click so I guess as long as your sure the total revenue goes up its a good strategy. That said, I've tried it a few times and in all cases removed the extra ad units in favor of a single 300x250 medium rectangle. I prefer to get the best value per click by limiting the adsense inventory on my web pages.

Should I use Adsense On A Forum?

Its is fine to use Adsense Ads on a forum however expect a very low CTR. This is due to repeat visitors disregarding your Adsense advertising and the fact that many bulletin boardslimit you to using the 728x90 banner which is known to induce "banner blindness" That said, if you have a forum that is maintenance free why not run Adsense on it anyway and capture what revenue comes your way. I am experimenting with alternating colors to try and draw repeat visitors back in on my CTR stats.
Facts (What we discovered)

1. Stats Update Frequency/Delay: Although AdSense stats usually updates every couple hours, you don’t need to panic at all if you see no change in your stats for over 12 hours. Even if other webmasters are seeing normal updates.

2. Don’t worry about anomalies in your stats during the course of the day. These are not accurate. There could be delays in the update due to one reason or another. Only when you see figures for a new day can you know that the figures for the previous day are not going to change any more.

3. Sometimes the stats are carried forward several days. This happens when Google decides to freeze your clicks and earnings for fraud checking/tracking purposes or server delays. Thus, you may notice your earnings/clicks shoot straight up when you least expect it. It is possible for your CTR to go up by as much as 10% and your CPM to raise $200 over the normal.

4. The update on the different stats are not synchronized. For example, when you check your account, the page impressions may be freshed updated, while the clicks and earnings are from two hours ago. Thus, there may be a sharp drop/increase in the derived stats. Due to this, you don’t need to fret over all these little bumps.

5. Often delays in updates foreshadow changes to the AdSense program. For example, slow updates preceded introduction of channels, TOS changes, and addition of new languages.

6. Channels are a great way for you to track the performance of your ad on a particular page/site. If you want to use the same code for all of your pages, you can also use the recently added URL channels. Of course, channel data are delayed by two days.

Performance Tips

1. EPC doesn’t matter! That is because you have absolutely no control over your EPC. Your EPC is influenced by many variables including your webpage content, advertiser’s budget, seasonal fluctuations and more. Thus, the productive thing to do is concentrate on the factors that you have control over such as CTR and page impressions.

2. How well am I doing?

Many of us probably wonder how we are doing compared to other AdSense users, including myself. However, we really can’t get a good sense of the average if Google doesn't disclose their figures, which they don’t. Since people doing well with AdSense generally don’t like to reveal their earnings due to the fear that they may be terminated by the program, any discussion about an average EPC/CTR/CPM is a waste of time.

3. From various experiments by myself and other webmasters, we can conclude (at least for now) that using image/text ads instead of just text ads will dramatically decrease you CTR because of various reasons. (i.e. fewer advertisers, banner blindness etc.) However, the EPC is usually slightly higher.

4. Blend in or stand out? This is completely site dependent. Sometimes, people will never click on your ads unless you “trick” them into doing so, although this is not so good for long term. Other sites will require your ad to scream in your visitor’s face to get good clicks. Do some extensive testing to find out what’s good for your site.

5. Make good use of the URL filter feature. Blocking repetitive (eBay ads) or boring ads (free smilies) will definitely increase your CTR.

6. Large rectangles placed above the fold will often generate most revenue. However, this may not be a good long term solution since such and ad is usually obstrusive and have little aesthetic value.

7. If you run a forum site, you may notice that your earnings are very low. Here is a solution: use a simple cookie-based php script that only displays AdSense ads once every 10 page views -- essentially a counter counts down from 10 to 0 and on 0 displays an AdSense block. Between the AdSense ads, display regular banner ads. Although your AdSense page impressions may be down, you will notice your CTR skyrocketing, and a large increase in overall earnings.

In conclusion: Play around with your ad to maximize your performance, and look at the big picture in your stats!
1. Never click on your own Adsense links. This is theft. Best to set a policy upfront to not allow yourself or any of your staff members or contractors to click on any of your adsense links. You will know if your links are working within 1-2 days after you put them up as Google allows you to monitor your clicks and revenue performance.

2. Vertical skyscrapers on the right side of your website produce the best results as a generalization. If in doubt, do A/B testing until you discover which banner size creates the best result.


3. Borderless Adsense web banners produce more usually than those with borders. Blend them into your site. Google allows you to customize your Adsense ads, links, borders, and color themes.

4. Create Adsense channels so that you can track your results from different sub-sections of your websites.

5. Get to know high value keywords and don't be afraid to alter your content a bit to include them. I do not recommend hauling off and building websites for the pure purpose of additional Adsense revenue. Google is smart and they may optimize you right out of their program.

6. Time to retire 2nd tier affiliate program links that have not paid you more than $100 USD per quarter. Replace this premium space with Adsense.

7. If your site needs a re-design in order to incorporate the Adsense panel into your current ezine or email newsletter archives -- the more pages you have it on, the more revenue opportunity you will have.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

WHY Adsense does not pay for EVERY click

Adsense account report overview is the most awaited thing that every adsense publisher like to peep into, several times a day or even several time a hour. Why not? Afterall this is all for which many adsense publishers are toiling through day to earn every possible penny by implementing the best possible fair strategy, quality content and everything needed.

So what would an adsense publisher like to see when they login to their adsense account. Ofcourse earning statistics. The first thing everyone's view stare at is Today's Earning section of adsense account page mentioned in bold green color. But many a times the earning shows there is very depressive. Its $0.00.
Soon after that, the eyes stare at a short summary details. Now this is the place which sometimes turns the new adsense publishers a more frustrated when they see that there are clicks either 1 or 2 but earning has not being registered. The first question that strikes the mind at this view is

"WHY there is no earning despite of 1 or more clicks"?

So, if you are new adsense publisher then I am sure that, you may be thinking complaining adsense about this with a mail and claim your earning or getting the exact reason for that. But hold on, you are expecting something which you are not entitled to get. Google adsense has a simple and clear answer about your query stating that they will not be able to clarify the exact reason due to their stratigical privacy but your earnings are as per adsense TOS.

Wait a bit before making any wrong impression about adsense in your mind and left all considering adsense as fake. I think you should have a little closer look on Adsense TOS and adsense help section to get your probable answer that has already been answered there.

So, what are the probable answer of your question about non earning clicks?

The answer is here. First of all you have to make up your mind that you are working with a most renouned money making system who have their best reputation in web market. So, throw out of your mind the misconception that adsense ever trying to cheat you by stealing few cents from your account by not making you payment. On the contrary, adsense have designed the best possible strategy to save the interest of the advertisers who are draining money for their purpose into Google adword and the interest of the adsense publishers too who are the only leverage mechanism of adsense to smoothen the money inflow from the advertiser and they in return get the best quality oil (ofcourse adsense earning) from adsense to keep that lever mechanism smooth. So, this may confuse you a bit more that is adsense is so authentic then why they have not paid you, your much expected money that you deserve.

The answer follows very simple logic to understand. Read it,

As told earlier that adsense has implemented the best logic strategy & tracking system to track every activity. Hence if you have registered some click but not earned then the probable reason should be one or more among those mentioned below.

1. INVALID CLICK - The click has not been registered in adsense as valid clicks. You may be a genuine adsense publisher not clicking from your IP on your ads but may be somewhere your friend is trying to help you with clicks on ads of your webpage to help you. Adsense has a complex logic to differentiate between the valid & invalid click. Though adsense never disclosed the strategy but experienced publishers over time has analysed few factors that google adsense might be using. Adsense considers the time difference between clicks, probable conversion ratio, authenticity of IP where from click is been made etc.
   
   
2. Clicks made on public service ads - Sometimes adsense doesnot have ads related to your content and it displays public service ads on your page. These ads are not payable if someone have clicked on the ads while adsense is displaying public service ads.
   
   
3. INVALID IP - Sometimes publishers made complain that they are using cyber cafe for their website, so their IP are showing same as being the IP from which the clicks are being made. Remember that adsense understand that every user may not have personal pc at their home and may be using PC from cyber cafe, hence same IP shared by more than 1 people. Adsense also has generated strategy about what should be the criteria for considering the clicks from same IP as valid that are not being made by the adsense publisher themselves.

So, I would suggest you to keep away the misconception about adsense, take care of your quality blogging/sites, fair promotion techniques, better SEO and left the rest of the job for Adsense to do. I assure you that Adsense is your most authentic accountant that you should rely on. It will never let any single penny to loose from your account that you deserve nor it let incoming of any illegal penny to your account that doesnot belongs to you.

Have a happy blogging. Share this post with others it you liked it. Keep returning to this blog for more important update topics. Subscribe to it for latest post updates.

Friday, July 3, 2009

Making Money Online

Here is an explanation about the Google AdSense calculation formula to help new AdSense beginners to understand and optimize their AdSense revenues.

- Click through rate (CTR): is the number of clicks an ad unit receives divided by the number of times the ad unit is shown (impressions).

- Effective CPM (eCPM) : is the cost per 1000 impressions, CPM is a useful way to compare revenue across different channels and advertising programs. It is calculated by dividing total earnings by the number of impressions in thousands.

- Impressions: represents the number of times an ad is displayed on Google or on sites or products in Google’s ad network. A page impression is counted each time an ad unit is displayed on a publisher’s site. Page impressions are used when calculating reports for AdSense publishers, rather than ad impressions

- Clicks: the number of generated clicks by all your ads.

- Earnings: is total money that would be given by Google AdSense for publishers who participate in their affiliate programs.

-

Earnings Per Click (EPC) : this is the average cost per click that would be given to publishers depends on the advertiser’s bid, sum of the click, page impressions. However, it’s still being a Google AdSense Secret.

The formula for Google AdSense calculation is:

CTR = (Clicks / Impressions) * 100
EPC = Earnings per Click

eCPM = (Earnings / Impressions) * 1000
eCPM = CTR * EPC * 10

Earnings = eCPM * Impressions / 1000
Earnings = CTR * EPC * Impressions / 100

Example: I’ve got 31 clicks for 1700 impressions with an EPC of 0.05 $

CTR = (31 / 1700) * 100 = 1.82352 = 1.83 %

eCPM = 1.82352 * 0.05 * 10 = 0.91176 = 0.92 $
eCPM = (1.55 / 1700) * 1000 = 0.9117 = 0.92 $

Earnings = 0.91176 * 1700 / 1000 = 1.549992 = 1.55 $
Earnings = 1.82352 * 0.05 * 1700 / 100 = 1.549992 = 1.55 $

Friday, July 3, 2009

Adsense Making Money Online

Almost four years ago I wrote a post here on BLOG with 10 Tips for Using Affiliate Programs on Your Blog.

In that post I suggested the following tips:

1. Consider your Audience - start with your reader when considering what to promote. Relevancy is key.
2. Genuine Recommendations and personal endorsements always work best - recommendations of things you personally genuinely like are always best.
3. Link to Quality Products - the better the products that you recommend the more your readers will thank you for suggesting it.
4. Contextual Deep Links work Best - in general you’ll have more luck promoting a product from within a post than on a sidebar
5. Consider positioning of links - links/banners that are in parts of your post/blog that where readers look work best (top of posts for example)
6. Traffic levels are Important - the more eyeballs your promotion gets the better
7. Diversify without Clutter - some products work better for some audiences than others - so promoting a variety of products can be good - promoting too many is of course not good.
8. Be Transparent - don’t try to trick people into clicking your links. I’ve changed my stance slightly on this - I used to put (aff) next to any affiliate link but in the end found readers were just annoyed by it or didn’t understand what it meant. Now I use site-wide disclaimers to talk about it.
9. Combine with other Revenue Streams - every blog is different, some will work better than others with affiliate marketing while others will work better with adveritising. However I find on many blogs advertising and affiliate marketing can work well in tandem.
10. Track results - if you don’t have some way of working out how your promotions are converting you could be wasting your time.

As you can see - I’ve changed my opinion a little on the way that I express #8 but apart from that I still subscribe to all of the advice in that post. However I’ve also learned a lot more about affiliate marketing. In fact over the last four years the revenue that I make from affiliate marketing has continued to grow - to the point that it now probably makes up around a third of my online income (it varies from month to month).

So I thought it might be time to build upon the 10 tips above with some more lessons that I’ve learned.

Your Ad Here

Adsense

As costs of PPC campaigns are increasing, internet marketers are more than even under the pressure to deliver positive results. The performance of PPC campaigns is dependent on following factors:
- The impression rate

- Your ad position

- Click thru rate (CTR)

- Conversion rate
Finding the right balance between impression rate, ad position and clicks is the starting point to successful PPC advertising. Before exploring tips to help your campaign perform better, let's quickly sum-up the concept how Google displays your ads in its sponsored results:
* Daily budget controls frequency of your ad display
The frequency is expressed by number of impressions. If your daily budget is not high enough, your ad may not show all the time (meaning you don't have enough impressions per day).
* Ad position depends on the Rank Number
The higher the rank number, the higher is your ad's position on the page. The rank number is calculated based on the following formula:

Rank Number = CPC (Cost Per click) x CTR (click through rate) x (Ad quality)
Now we're ready to explore what practices are more likely to help us improve PPC campaigns performance:
1/ Improve Ad Delivery
If your ad does not show up every time when searches are performed under your keyword, it may be a sign that your daily budget is not high enough. As you now know, how frequent of your ad display is controled by the daily budget. If you would like your ad to be shown more frequently, please consider to increase your daily budget in order to receive a maximum exposure for your ad.
Normally, you have 50% margin for your daily budget. For example, if your desired daily budget is $10.00 per day, you can set your actual daily budget on Google to $15.00 per day, because your actual spending is based on your click thru rate, by setting the daily budget higher will allow your ad to get more exposure, but your actual spending may still be in your desired daily budget range.
However, be sure to monitor your daily advertising costs and if they are rising too high, decrease the budget on the safe level.
2/ Improve Ad Delivery per Keyword
Each campaign can have one or more adroups. An AdGroup is a group of keywords and ads that will display when those keywords are searched for on Google. You may have experienced a situation when only few keywords out of the whole AdGroup trigger your ad. The explanation lies again behind the daily budget that controls a number of impressions for your campaign. These impressions are distributed between individual AdGroups and further between individual keywords. So it may happen that some keywords in a particular Adgroup have more impressions than the others, meaning some keywords trigger your ad more frequently than others.
If you want to improve the ad delivery for your targeted keywords, you can consider splitting your keywords and creating a new campaign for keywords with low impressions. This should improve the frequency with which they will trigger your ad.
3/ Optimize your Adgroups
As mentioned above, each campaign has one or more adroups that all share campaign's impressions. Often, the impressions are not divided evenly between adgroups. So it may happen that some adgroups have more impressions and show their ad(s) more frequently than others. It is a very similar scenario as with keywords we just described above.
To improve results of your low-performing adgroups, you can consider to create a new campaign for them in order to increase the frequency with witch they show your ad on Google.
4/ Analyse your Clicks
Make sure the clicks are made for specific, targeted keywords. If you're getting lots of clicks on non-targeted keywords, consider reducing Max CPC and/or your ad position in order to improve your ROI. Similarly, you can raise bids for targeted keywords that are performing well.
5/ Optimize your Ads
Make sure you bid on targeted keywords, create compelling ads and link them to relevant content on your website. The keywords you chose will segment the market and target your desired audience. If you won't chose wisely, you'll finish targeting the wrong market and wasting your advertising budget. The ad you create needs to attract attention of your prospects. It needs to communicate your unique selling feature - in other words, what makes your product/service different from others and why a visitor should visit your website. Be specific about your offer and include call to action. Lastly, guide visitors to the content on your website where they can access more information about the offer advertised. The landing page should also clearly state what is the next natural step to make - buy your product, download the white paper, sign up for a free trial, etc.
PPC management requires lots of work and testing but if you stick to the basics you can make money instead of losing them. Remember, the only measure that matters on the Internet is the profit you make.

Adsense Calculations

Here is an explanation about the Google AdSense calculation formula to help new AdSense beginners to understand and optimize their AdSense revenues.
- Click through rate (CTR): is the number of clicks an ad unit receives divided by the number of times the ad unit is shown (impressions).
- Effective CPM (eCPM) : is the cost per 1000 impressions, CPM is a useful way to compare revenue across different channels and advertising programs. It is calculated by dividing total earnings by the number of impressions in thousands.
- Impressions: represents the number of times an ad is displayed on Google or on sites or products in Google’s ad network. A page impression is counted each time an ad unit is displayed on a publisher’s site. Page impressions are used when calculating reports for AdSense publishers, rather than ad impressions
- Clicks: the number of generated clicks by all your ads.
- Earnings: is total money that would be given by Google AdSense for publishers who participate in their affiliate programs.
- Earnings Per Click (EPC) : this is the average cost per click that would be given to publishers depends on the advertiser’s bid, sum of the click, page impressions. However, it’s still being a Google AdSense Secret.
The formula for Google AdSense calculation is:
CTR = (Clicks / Impressions) * 100
EPC = Earnings per Click
eCPM = (Earnings / Impressions) * 1000
eCPM = CTR * EPC * 10
Earnings = eCPM * Impressions / 1000
Earnings = CTR * EPC * Impressions / 100
Example: I’ve got 31 clicks for 1700 impressions with an EPC of 0.05 $
CTR = (31 / 1700) * 100 = 1.82352 = 1.83 %
eCPM = 1.82352 * 0.05 * 10 = 0.91176 = 0.92 $
eCPM = (1.55 / 1700) * 1000 = 0.9117 = 0.92 $
Earnings = 0.91176 * 1700 / 1000 = 1.549992 = 1.55 $
Earnings = 1.82352 * 0.05 * 1700 / 100 = 1.549992 = 1.55 $

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

6 More Tips for Affiliate Marketing on Blogs

Almost four years ago I wrote a post here on BLOG with 10 Tips for Using Affiliate Programs on Your Blog.
In that post I suggested the following tips:

1. Consider your Audience - start with your reader when considering what to promote. Relevancy is key.
2. Genuine Recommendations and personal endorsements always work best - recommendations of things you personally genuinely like are always best.
3. Link to Quality Products - the better the products that you recommend the more your readers will thank you for suggesting it.
4. Contextual Deep Links work Best - in general you’ll have more luck promoting a product from within a post than on a sidebar
5. Consider positioning of links - links/banners that are in parts of your post/blog that where readers look work best (top of posts for example)
6. Traffic levels are Important - the more eyeballs your promotion gets the better
7. Diversify without Clutter - some products work better for some audiences than others - so promoting a variety of products can be good - promoting too many is of course not good.
8. Be Transparent - don’t try to trick people into clicking your links. I’ve changed my stance slightly on this - I used to put (aff) next to any affiliate link but in the end found readers were just annoyed by it or didn’t understand what it meant. Now I use site-wide disclaimers to talk about it.
9. Combine with other Revenue Streams - every blog is different, some will work better than others with affiliate marketing while others will work better with adveritising. However I find on many blogs advertising and affiliate marketing can work well in tandem.
10. Track results - if you don’t have some way of working out how your promotions are converting you could be wasting your time.

As you can see - I’ve changed my opinion a little on the way that I express #8 but apart from that I still subscribe to all of the advice in that post. However I’ve also learned a lot more about affiliate marketing. In fact over the last four years the revenue that I make from affiliate marketing has continued to grow - to the point that it now probably makes up around a third of my online income (it varies from month to month).
So I thought it might be time to build upon the 10 tips above with some more lessons that I’ve learned.

11. Build Your Network Before You Need It

Perhaps the biggest thing that I’ve learned about affiliate marketing is that it works best the bigger and stronger your network is. I mentioned in my first list that ‘traffic levels are important’ - this is true, but connected to it is your ‘network’.
Whether it be loyal blog readers and subscribers, your email list, your Twitter connections, your Facebook friends or some other social network - the better your network the better you’ll do at driving affiliate sales.
It’s not just about size - the size of your network is only part of what I’m talking about here. Also important is the depth of relationship that you have with your network/readers and the amount of trust that they have in you. If you have consistently helped people and been useful to them over a long time they’re probably more likely to respond to your recommendations.
Relevancy/Focus counts - The other key part of your network is how relevant it is and how focused it is upon the topic that you’re doing promotions on. For example - I see some people on Twitter running competitions to build their follower numbers in a way that just brings in any follower that they can. The problem with this is that they end up with a large but unfocused network. I personally would rather have a smaller network who all shared the one interest than a large one who just signed up to get a prize.
Lastly, a network takes time to build - if you think you’ll be doing some affiliate marketing at some point in the future - start building your network now, before you need it. This gives you time to build the depth of relationships, trust and focus of your network before you begin promoting affiliate products.

12. Try different Mediums

I’ve alluded to this above already but one of the things that I’ve noticed over the last few years is promotions work differently on different mediums.
For example: some affiliate promotions seem to convert best in a blog post, others work best when you send an email to a list you’ve been building while others seem to take off on Twitter or other social media sites.
The key is to try different approaches, to have build up your network before you need it (see above) and to track the results for each promotion so you can check what is and isn’t converting.

13. Multiple Promotions of the same Product

I spoke about this at Blog World Expo last year in a session but don’t think I’ve written about it here at ProBlogger. Here’s what I’ve found:
If you write a single blog post promoting an affiliate product you’ll have a certain percentage of readers buy the product (the % varies a lot). If you are able to follow that up with a different type of post a few days later it can reinforce the promotion.
Here’s how I’ve done it on my photography blog:

1. Blog Post 1 - a post announcing a new product, giving some benefits, sharing who the product is relevant for etc.
2. Blog Post 2 - a post a few days later that is an interview with the person behind the product - exploring why they made it, expanding upon what it includes, who it’s for and giving the product context. I’d try to also include some tips or suggestions for readers who don’t buy the product in such an interview so it is a useful post for everyone.
3. Email List - later in the week email out the subscriber list linking to the previous posts and reinforcing the promotion.
4. Tweets/Followups - I would also include a few Tweets about the promotion through the week and would consider a 3rd blog post a week later - perhaps some reader reviews of the product.

The key is to not spam your network but to find interesting and useful ways to draw attention to the product multiple times over a week or two so as to reinforce it and give those who take a little longer to make a decision the opportunity to get the product.

14. Bonuses Work

There are many techniques that internet marketers use to increase sales of their products. I find some a little ‘cheap’ and ‘nasty’ but many do work. Two that I’ve found less offensive and/or manipulative are where you add value to the affiliate promotion by either adding a bonus of your own to the offer and/or getting the person behind the product to offer a bonus or discount just for your readers.
I’ve done this a number of times on my blogs and have found that conversions are significantly higher.

15. It takes Time

A theme that regular readers of my Blog will recognize is that making money from blogs (through any method) takes time. While an affiliate program does have the potential to make you a lot of money very quickly - it almost always comes after a lot of work and once you’ve spent a lot of time and effort building out your network.
The early days of building your network may see very little (if any) results. I personally earned very little from affiliate marketing in my first year or two of blogging but as I mentioned above in the last year or two it’s really begun to exponentially increase - partly as a result of getting smarter with my promotions but partly just as my network grew in size and quality.

16. Timing is Important

One of the things I’ve learned over the last week of launching my own product is just how much difference there can be in the rate of sales at different times of the day and week. It would vary depending upon the location of most of a blog’s readers but for me sales have been significantly up during business hours in the USA and on weekdays. No real surprises there.
The lesson translates to promoting products - unless the product has a real focus upon the type of people surfing the web on the weekends or late at night you’ll want to time your promotions to those times of the weeks that your audience is online. Similarly - avoid public holidays - this last week even though we launched the workbook 3 days after Memorial Day in the US I suspect we lost a few sales as some people took the week off.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Happy Adsense

Every Adsense publisher or website owner wants huge traffic drive to their webpage. But things are not always upto expectation. So, there must be some ways so that your webpage should fulfill your expectation.

Below mentioned is a list of 10 genuine ways to make your webpage perform upto your expectation. These strategies can help build your website traffic, subscribers, and customers starting today!

1.) Search Engines

SEO or Optimization of your blog/website is necessary to make your webpage search-engine friendly. Submit your webpage to various search engines and directories to list your online existence .

It is a good idea to submit your webpage to lesser known web directories along with major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Listed your website/blog in as many places as possible, will boost your rankings in major search engines as well.

2.) Affiliate Program

Setting up an affiliate program where you pay people for promoting your website/blog will also help to drive quality traffic. But some suique strategy for promotion should be followed to resist negative promotion effects.

Submitting to affiliate program directories help spreading the word about your affiliate program.

3.) Link Exchanges

This is another important aspect of traffic drive campaign. Creating a links page on your site/ blog where you will put links to other non-competing websites in the same industry will help ranking in major search engines.

Personally contact the owners of other websites through email with your proposal to exchange links will serve your purpose. They inturn will link to your website in return.

4.) Post In Forums

As i have already told in few of my older posts that online discussion forums is the most effective way of marketing your website/blog. Posting your responses to people's questions, along with your website/blog url in signature will automatically promote your website in many ways.

5.) Comment On Blogs

Visiting others blogs related to your website topic for commenting on them along with your website URL willl let others know about your website/blog. But be careful while entering your comment. Don't use short comments like "good post", "nice" etc. It is considered as spamming, even readers doesnot get idea about your writing skill or your site.

Add insightful comments about the blog topics, and leave your website link. Your comment and your link will permanently remain on the blog website.

6.) E-Mail Signatures

Create an e-mail "signature" - your name, your website address and a short tagline and allow automatically inclusion of signature to your outgoing mails. This helps promoting your site.

7.) Traffic Exchanges

This is simple but effective idea of exchanging traffic among group of webmasters. Search the web for "traffic exchange" to find those services.

8.) "Pass-Around" Strategy

This is the most most effective promotion technique where the URL of your website spreades like wild fire. Just try creating something of value that people will pass around. It may be a report with useful information that you allow people to give away. It can also be some kind of cool and unusual webpage that people will want to e-mail to all their friends.

Of course, the pass-around item will include your advertisement and your link, spreading the word about your website.

9.) Writing Articles

Writing articles on the topic related to your website along with URL of your website or blog and your author bio will catch attention of mass traffic to visit your webpage. Ezine articles plays important role in this context. Submit your articles to article directories, and allow people to publish your article in their newsletters and websites.

These articles will also help spreading your URL around the web like wildfire. If people find them interesting in reading them, they will regard you as an expert in your trade and will. Thats a good idea for a free publicity?

10.)Last but not least, enrich your blog/ website with quality content and interesting in reading. Readers will self promote your url by words of mouth.