Friday, April 21, 2006

Adsense Really Does Make Sense!

OK, I am over my bitterness from the past two days of being locked out of my account. Let's get back to business!

I wanted to talk a little bit about Google Adsense. For those of you who don't know what this is, they are the ads (provided by Google) that appear all over the place (including this blog!). For example, I have two sets of ads on this blog: One appears on the right hand margin below my links and the second one appears under the blog summary on the top of the page. The one on the right is called an "ad unit" which are made up of content sponsorship from Google's Adwords program (that will be discussed in a later blog!). The one on the top is called an "ad link" which provides a topic you can click that will bring you to a new page of sponsored links.

When I first started affiliate marketing, I kind of ignored Google Adsense because I felt a few "cents" a day, if I was lucky, was not worth it. That was a stupid mistake. True, some clicks only pay a few cents, while MOST pay between $0.30 and $2! I couldn't really believe it! Even though I don't get many Adsense clicks, I do make about $2-$3 per day for doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! It is so easy to set up and once you add the javascript code to your blog or website, there is no more maintenance required! Just remember, $3 per day is $90 per month! That money also helps offset promotion costs. And realize this, right now, I only receive about 100 impressions per day and about 2-4 clicks...as I continue to promote the blog and get more people to visit, the higher the clicks become and the more money Adsense brings in!

For ANYBODY with a website that draws ANY traffic, you should always have an ad or two somewhere on the page. It is too easy to ignore. (But, don't be silly about it!...websites that are wallpapered in ads usually just piss me off!) Good luck and sign up today:

https://www.google.com/adsense

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Splogging BS and Blogspot

YEA I'M BACK!

It is a bit ironic that my original intention to today's (now yesterday's) blog was going to be devoted to splogging and spam. If you have not noticed, this blog is a bit late. Why, you may ask? Because this blog is currently being flagged as spam. I don't know really what I think about this either. On one side, I understand how blogspot needs to take a bit more responsibility in controlling spam on their website. On the other side, I find it very annoying and even pissed off that I am now locked out from writing my daily blog because my account is on hold. Whatever this "spam-preventation" robot is, it is really not doing its job correctly. With all of the real Spam and Splog (which, last night I learned was a Spam-Blog), why would they suspend me prior to actually reviewing my content? Again, nice try by blogspot, but really, they need to get smarter about this. Also, I am kind of interested in knowing whether or not someone has "flagged" my blog as spam (as you can do!). If you have, please nut up and write me a comment about it!

So it is 8pm, Wednesday, PST. Let's see how long this takes before I can submit again (and get back to the real issues at hand!).

My account was reactived at 3:30pm today...At least it was less than the 24 hours they promised! BACK TO BUSINESS!

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

More Work on Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

I keep slowly but surely add RSS feeds to various directories as well as add a few comments here and there to a few of the popular forums related to my product. I also spent a little time last night re-reading a chapter in BecomeHated called "How to Drive the Most Traffic to Your Site". This eBook has quite a bit of information related to SEO and is probably my most informative resource on the topic. One of the many points that it makes is that Page Rank is not only a function of how many websites link to you, but also what their Page Rank is as well. For example, having a primary link on one high ranked page (say 7 or 8) will probably help your own ranking much more than having a link on 5 different 1 or 2 ranked pages (truly understanding Page Rank is still a mystery, though). Keep this in mind when you are finding places to get your links posted. A bit more discussion on this topic can be found at:

http://www.seogeeks.com/articles/pagerank-chart.php.

For more details and ideas concerning SEO, I highly recommend getting a copy of BecomeHated.

Monday, April 17, 2006

Trying to Understand Page Rank

In the past, I never really paid much attention to Page Rank and SEO (Search Engine Optimization). The more I read about blogging (and affiliate marketing in general), the more I hear about SEO. One thing to understand is "Page Rank". Google, for example, has a Page Rank tool (that is incorporated within its toolbar add-ons...I highly recommend that you install this into your browser! You can get it at: http://toolbar.google.com/?promo=mor-tb-en). It appears at the top of the browser and provides a "Page Rank" for every website you visit. This provides you with a "gauge" to see how search engines rank the website in importance. A 10 of of 10 means that it is extremely important and search engines will more than likely put this site above all others. A 0 out of 10 usually means that it won't even be found.

So, naturally, getting a higher Page Rank is an important asset to get FREE traffic to your website. Also understand that Page Rank is a function of the number of high ranking websites that actually link to your website. Getting back to yesterday's blog, by adding your URL to search engines and RSS feeds AND by just simply posting on forums and commenting on other blogs (with signature links), you are already on your first steps to getting your link out there. As I discover (and you suggest) other ways of improving Page Rank and SEO, I'll be sure to post it!

Sunday, April 16, 2006

Becoming Known - My First Steps at Being Found

Let's quickly come back to the present and focus on my current task of the week: Becoming known! My last affiliate effort focused entirely on GoogleAds. I do plan to promote this the same way, but first, I want to draw some people to my blog the natural, FREE ways.

After some reading and forum study, submitting my blog to some free RSS submission sites seem like a good first start. I was referred to the following submission list site:

www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55

I went through and checked out most of the links and about 20 or so seem promising. This is my first step to getting my blog "out there". This will be in addition to the URL submissions I will make to the main search engines (such as Google, Yahoo, Lycos, Hotbot, etc.) Further, I plan to start reviewing other blogs and forums and leave my "fingerprint" wherever I feel relevant. I will do this for a few days and see if I can build a larger hit count. Stay tuned! (and Happy Easter!)