Nov 16, 2010

Text v Graphic on Adsense

Google Adsense provides advertisers and publishers with the opportunity to place adverts in both text and graphic format.

As advertisers decide to put adsense into their website over banner advertising, the question still remains. Which is the best for advertisers and which is the best for publishers?

On one hand advertisers may feel that image adverts are more responsive yet less likely to stimulate a sale. On the other hand text adverts may convert more, whilst being less visible to the consumer.

Text based adverts are considered the least intrusive of the two formats. However does that mean that Graphic advertising is better? Consumers are used to graphic advertising from signing into free email accounts, and from using other web based services. Through being used to graphic advertising they have almost programmed their selves to ignore it. Through the adverts being untargeted, the consumer is used to brand advertising which they feel is generally less purposeful. This may cause the consumer to ignore the graphic advert from the assumption that it will be the same.

Text adverts are not forced upon surfers. Through being less obvious some people will not see them at all, however those who do see them, and read them are significantly more likely to click on them. This is for a number of reasons, but the first is that they provide more information. Generally, someone who is reading text on a page is not going to be fully satisfied by what they read, and if they check adsense adverts they will most likely read something which will further supplement whatever their intention is next. With an image advert, it is far more of a gamble for the surfer.

Graphic advertising is often paid per impression. This is because the advertiser may be trying to promote their brand, instead of promoting a specifically useful service. They therefore are assumed to have worse conversion rates, and with this text adverts are in the consumers eyes more effective. However, if the text contained within an advert was placed in graphic format, which would be the most effective? Well firstly it can assumed that the surfer will be more likely to view it, however if their were multiple image adverts appearing next to each other they may feel overwhelmed.

Graphic adverts are also harder to regulate. Let’s consider Google allowing adverts to be changed frequently and without regulation. The advertiser could claim affiliation from the website they are advertising on, and contain keywords such as “ipod” which cannot be contained within a text advert. Although more regulation and quality control could be in place, a pornographic image for example could be made to appear in an advertiser’s adverts unknowingly.

Text adverts also have a broader market appeal, as advertisers don’t generally have the in house resources to create an image advert, but do have the in house resources to write a text advert. This could mean that a wider array of advertisers find text advertising accessible, through text adverts being less burden on the advertiser, and being easy to change.

Text adverts are also cheaper for the advertiser to create, where as a graphically designed advert may cost in excess of $200. Through removing this fixed cost advertisers may be willing to allot a higher rate to advertising itself; thus benefiting the advertiser and the publisher.

Text advertising appears to be the preference of the advertiser. They pay a CTR (click through rate) and only receive targeted traffic. This removes risks from businesses that previously had to worry that adverts were not only seen, but clicked on and stimulating sales. As CPC (Cost Per Click) is more relevant to text adverts, advertisers are able to gain exposure without needing a high click through rate to be effective.

The big brands are willing to advertise in both formats however the broad market appeal of text inevitably makes it the winner. As flash websites disappear with image adverts, it is becoming clear that text and information is the preference of the website users.

You need to have optimized niche website templates for best results. You may find the best adsense templates and blog templates at www.AdsenseTemplates.com (http://www.adsensetemplates.com). They are offering 100 fresh new templates every month.

Tips For A Successful Adsense Site

One doesn't have to dig very deep on the internet to find an adsense site. At its most basic level, an adsense site is a site which displays Google Adsense ads to earn money. The problem is that the majority of Adsense sites are trash – just content scraped off other sites that has been thrown together into a mish-mash that the webmaster calls a website.

If you want to be highly successful in the Adsense site industry, you're going to have to do something drastically different. Following are several tips you can use to distinguish yourself from the crowd.

1 – Use a professional design
Many adsense sites use a very basic, cheap looking template that they paste their content into. If you use a professional website design, people are more likely to place value and trust in your site.

2 – Use unique content
Don't use recycled content. Take the time or money required to get your own unique articles and content written for your site. This will allow you to offer your readers content that they cannot get anywhere else, as well as give you better rankings in the search engines.

3 – Create a valuable resource
The purpose of an Adsense site should not be just to get a visitor to come and click on the ads. It should be to get a visitor to come, and because the like you site so much, keep coming back again and again. That is how you can have a highly successful site – returning visitors.

4 – Use other monetization methods
Adsense should not be your only source of income from a site. Sell a product, promote affiliate programs, sell banner ads, or sell text link ads on your site. This serves to diversify your income, as well as gives other content for your visitors to look at or click on.

3 Secrets to Knocking Out Big Competitors

Nobody likes a bully… especially small business marketers.  If you’ve ever felt like the little guy taking punches from a heavyweight champion, you know what I’m talking about.  Big business has donned its gloves, and is waiting to put small business down for the count.

I’ve got good news!  Sometimes the little guy wins.  Heck, it isn’t easy and sometimes it’s a close call, but little guys do win and when they do… victory is sweet!

What can you do when you’re being threatened by the bully down the street?

1. Take a careful look at the Competition
Every business has its strengths and weaknesses.  You need to be aware of both… your competitors strong points, and the places where room for improvement is quite obvious.

2.  Be Flexible
Don’t expect your competitor to broadcast his next move so that you can be prepared to block it.  You’ve got to think a step ahead, and be ready to outsmart his next maneuver.

3. Use a little Judo
You don’t have to be big and brawny to successfully use Judo.  Why?  It’s an art that uses your opponent’s momentum to trip him up.  So what if you don’t have thousands of dollars to invest in a campaign.  When you’re competition has invested his tens of thousands in one, you’ll be able to make a quick about turn and counteract quickly with a smaller campaign of your own.  He’ll either forfeit his investment or continue through, but loose steam. 

I’m going to let you in on a little secret about your competitors that might encourage you.  Although big businesses often have a wide variety of products filling their shelves, they often don’t have depth.

Think about it this way.  You may run to your local department store and find everything ranging from make-up to camping equipment.  The problem with that?  …chances are they don’t have an extremely wide assortment of their products.

This means that if you’re an avid outdoorsman, you probably wouldn’t be satisfied choosing between two cheap brands of tents when there is an amazing variety on the market.  An outdoor related store could get one over on the big department store by offering the widest variety of fewer products in a focused field. 

Another asset about being the small guy, is that it’s easier to make a quick turn.  Hey, how many managers do you have to get okays from to make a quick decision?  Think of the weeks it takes for a local department store to send a request from a customer for a certain product to the regional or national management?  Yeah, too long!

As a small business, you can have a new product on your shelves within a week.  If I were a customer wanting a new tent, I’d prefer to not wait until summer was half over to get it.

There are a lot of benefits to being the small guy.  Don’t take bullying lying down.  You have what it takes to get the best end of the stick and come out a winner.

Nov 15, 2010

Click Fraud

If you're using AdWords or AdSense you must have heard about an emerging practice in the underworld of computing called "click fraud". But what exactly is click fraud and how is it accomplished?

Well AdSense uses a payment mechanism that awards a certain amount of money to a publisher (someone who holds an AdSense banner on their page) every time a person clicks on the said banner. So click fraud is the attempt to have people clicking the ads just so that they can earn a greater income.

There are people setting up sites for the sole purpose of fraudulently generating revenue through Google's AdSense program. These users achieve an incredible number of clicks through many methods, some complex and sophisticated and some rudimentary and simple.

One of the most complex is through the use of so called "hitbots". These are automated programs who emulate clicking the links in AdSense banners (there are some that actually click the banners as well).

Google's AdSense protection scheme is by no means perfect and nearly anyone can find the details of surmounting the protection mechanism, ironically just by doing a Google search.

Another, more rudimentary method is to hire a lot of people in a poor country to click the links on your site. This means these people will actually sit all day and just click links so you can earn a fortune. They come from very poor countries like India, and they're prepared to do so for just $0.50 an hour.

Of course, there's a problem with this mechanism. Once Google receives a large number of clicks from a single address, the address and the site that had the AdSense banner will be banned, and the illicit behavior might even get the fraudster sued.

To prevent this from happening, many people use a large number of proxy servers for the purpose of clicking. These are basically trojans, located on computers throughout the world (though mostly in the US). What's even more daunting is that these clicks will appear to originate from an actual computer so such scams are really hard to detect.

And don't think this happens only in isolated instances. There is a great deal of illegal activity in this domain.

In fact there's so much that if search engine companies don't increase their security with such programs as AdSense, such criminal behavior could become more become even more damaging.

Google has a very strict policy regarding click fraud, and it has sued those employing such techniques in the past. But while the search engine giant tries its best to minimize the risk of click fraud there's certainly room for a lot of improvement.

It is estimated that more then 20% of the clicks that follow an AdSense link are just done in order to get money from the person paying for the ad. Some people believe the number of fraudulent clicks to be even twice as large.

There are a great deal more schemes involving click fraud, such as groups of AdSense publishers clicking each other's links (which is referred to as "clicking rings", or spamming people so that they click such links.

Despite Google still holding click fraud on a leash, the phenomenon is certainly raising concerns for the advertisers on AdWords, but despite this advertising with Google's AdSense still remains more profitable for the advertiser, as opposed to traditional untargeted advertising schemes.

There are some means of protection against such schemes and all advertisers should be savvy enough to employ them. Many advertisers choose to avoid the content network all together for fear of click fraud.

You need to have optimized niche website templates for best results. You may find the best adsense templates and blog templates at www.AdsenseTemplates.com (http://www.adsensetemplates.com). They are offering 100 fresh new templates every month.

Adsense – Still A Cash Cow?

With the advent of Google losing a court case (and a shed load of money) and the continued problem of click fraud the question is now on the tip of everyone’s tongue – “Is Google Adsense still the cash cow that it was?”.

In this article I’ll take a look at ways in which the average webmaster may still develop a successful Adsense business and how to use the up and coming Google witch hunt to your advantage.

There are currently two main problems that are facing Google, both of which are serious and could lead to the demise of both Adsense and Adwords.

The first and most serious problem is that of click fraud. For those of you who do not know click fraud is the act of clicking on your own (or a friends) ads in an attempt to generate artificial earnings.

This is such a problem for Google as it ensures that the value that Adwords purchasers gets is significantly less then they would want, thus ensuring that sooner or later they will just get up and walk away (with what remains of their advertising budget firmly clamped in their hand).

To remedy this problem Google have tried putting several rules in place such as not allowing the webmaster to show Adsense ads in auto surf sites (to name but one restriction).

The second problem that Google faces relates to content, notably the amount of original content which is out there.

The problem in this case is that many people have purchased article scraper software (software that you point at someone elses website and just shout ‘Fetch!’ – it then returns a document collection which is a complete rip off of the site).

This was already a problem before the advent of Adsense sites and with the continual chain of people chasing high value keywords it has become worse; It is now possible to search for a given phrase on Google and return nothing but duplicate content for the first few pages of search engine results.

In order to address this problem Google has been modifying it’s algorithm to effectively punish people with duplicate content, the extent to which an individual site is ‘penalized’ is currently a matter for debate.

So, given Google is about to launch a witch hunt looking for sites with nothing but duplicate content and for people performing click fraud what can you do?

After all there are so many people out there using site generation tools that Google can trace and/or document obfustication technology (you’ve seen the ads – “We can make your one original article into 300 and Google will never know!” – yep, and anyone who visits your site will just find drivel with spelling errors or contextual mistakes).

Step 1.
If you must use site generation software make sure you find one that leaves no trace behind itself, ask yourself – ‘If I was looking at the source code from the generated page how would I know that it’s machine generated?’

Step 2.
Don’t use site scraping tools, they're immoral and a waste of your time

Step 3.
Do include RSS feeds into your pages, they add fresh content with no effort on your part (at least one of the site generation tools now supports this kind of functionality)

Step 4.
Don’t click on your own adverts, Google will can you in the blink of an eye

Step 5.
Do get incoming links from established sites (in the same area as your niche content)

Summary.
If you are at all serious about creating an Adsense income you need more than one site and so it is inevitable that you will use site generation tools (because there aren’t enough hours in the day for you to create the amount of pages by hand), by all means use these tools but use them ethically.

When using site generation tools ensure that they allow you to add multiple blocks of Adsense /Clickbank /Ebay code to each page (it saves you a lot of time) and that it performs search engine optimization for you (both on page and off page).

You should also take the time to write some of your own original content – like this or perhaps pay a ghost writer to create a batch of articles for you (don’t forget to ad your bio box at the bottom of everything you write).

To answer the initial question, yes, it is still possible to make LOTS of money from Google – you just need to be careful.

SEO for Adsense

If you've been using Google's AdSense on your pages you obviously feel the need to somehow generate even more traffic for your website, which in turn would translate to more AdSense click and a higher income.

But who do you do this? Well, the major way you'll get visitors to see your website (other then using AdWords, which is encouraged as well) is to use some techniques to have search engines send more and more users towards your page, by ranking high in search results for your topics of interest.

Believe it or not this is a technique, better known as search-engine optimization or simply SEO. So here are a bunch of tips that come handy under every amateur or professional optimizer's belt.

The first thing you need to take care of is the actual source code and layout of your page. This has to be kept as simple as possible. The problem comes when AdSense and the search engines themselves begin to have troubles in extracting the most relevant keywords on your site because of a too complex layout.

Secondly, try to have each one of your pages target only one specific topic. This way it is a lot easier for them to get indexed properly and for the AdSense ads to be consistent with the content of the site itself.

Also, try not to include too many hyperlinks in your page as well. This also means you should try not to use too many AdSense ads on your page either.

If there are certain keywords you wish to target, make sure the word you wish to target is present in the title, in the first paragraphs as well as in the name of the file. While you're at it you might want to ensure the word springs up in the page's last paragraphs.

And of course, it's very important for your content to have original and compelling content. How do you do this? Well the easiest way to do it is to find something you're really passionate about. That way, providing you give it a lot of effort you're bound to have a great page quite fast.

If the content you use in your site is in the public domain (which is highly discouraged) make sure that you at least give it an original title, and add an opening and a closing paragraph of your own.

This takes a little while, but if, after waiting, you still can't find your page near the top, you should try rewriting your title and your first and last paragraphs. It doesn't take much, often just changing a few words will give you the right results.

And of, course there's the use of keyword tools that may aid you in finding some good keywords to include on your page that will drive visitors to your site more and more.

So those are about the basic techniques in search engine optimization. You can find a lot of computer tools to aid you in doing this, and of course, Google is a great place to search for this.

In the end, you'll find that SEO is a complex topic, and entire books have been written on the topic as well. You might find that you have a lot of optimization you need to do in order to get more and more visitors to your site and clicking those precious AdSense banners.

You need to have optimized niche website templates for best results. You may find the best adsense templates and blog templates at www.AdsenseTemplates.com (http://www.adsensetemplates.com). They are offering 100 fresh new templates every month.

Nov 14, 2010

Adwords Killer Review – My Adwords Killer Case Study

Adwords Killer is another very popular Adwords guide that hit the market recently. This is my unbiased and critical Adwords Killer Review that will tell you exactly what you will find inside - and what you won't.

Unless you have been living under a rock you know that there are dozes of Adwords Guides out there. All of them promise you that you can make a fortune. What I don't like is that you keep reading the same stuff over and over - sometimes basics that you could get for free on the tutorial pages of Google Adwords.

Other Adwords books that I had previously bought include Google Cash, Adwords Miracle, Affiliate Project X, Day job killer, Adwordelite and The Definitive Guide to Google Adwords by Perry Marshall. If you add up the price for all of them you know I spent a lot of money.

So my million dollar question really is: Does Adwords Killer offer any new tricks or strategies that you haven't seen yet in any other guides or is it just the usual stuff (Split-testing ads, Tight ad-grouping etc.)?

Adwords Killer has 81 pages and it does cover some of the basics, but the major part of the guide consists of new and innovative tactics that cannot be found in other books. Maybe that's because the other authors preferred to keep those tricks for themselves – maybe it is because they were not aware of them. I don't know.

So what does Adwords Killer cover what other Adwords Guides don't?

Negative Keywords

This is one of the highlights of the book. Everybody tells you to include the negative keyword –free in your ads. Adwords Killer goes far beyond that. The author gives you a comprehensive list of 47 negative keywords that have statistically proven to make campaigns unprofitable. Most of them I had never considered. But once you think about it – it seems so obvious. He also tells you exactly when and how to use negative keywords and how to avoid a common mistake many people make when using negative keyword phrases consisting of more than one word.

Campaign Tuning

Campaign Tuning means you constantly improve your campaigns to make them better and more profitable over time. This is something that others don't mention at all – although the very popular Adwords Miracle does tell you a little about campaign tuning but not enough.

Adwords Killer tells you how to use advanced keyword tracking using log files – which only applies if you have your own landing page - and how to know if a campaign has reached its maximum profit potential. This is something that really made me totally turn around some of my campaigns. One of my campaigns that was losing money before now makes $25 each and every day.

CPC Kill Technique for Campaign Defense

Recently certain Adwords products have started to show you how to nuke or steal other people's campaigns. Adwords Killer is the first guide to show you how to protect an evil advertiser from stealing your keywords and attacking your campaign. This will become more and more important since too many advertisers out there just try to spot a profitable niche and then just copy your ad. The CPC Kill Technique tells you exactly how to keep other advertisers out of a niche that you have occupied and that you want to keep it for yourself.

Site Targeting Secrets

This was completely new for me. I must admit that I had always switched off the content network, like most of the other gurus said and focused only on keyword targeting. This section alone for me was worth the price of Adwords Killer many times over since it tells you exactly how to use the site targeting feature to make a $10 per day campaign into a 50$ per day campaign. The good thing: As with site targeting there is almost no competition out there yet, so up to this point this is easy money.

Bidding Secrets and Position Preference

Adwords Killer shows you a method to outbid any competitor only spending the minimum amount of cash. More important it shows you how to use the position preference feature from Adwords (rarely used by anyone) to maximize your conversions. Yes, I knew that it was no good to be in the number one position for a keyword, because you get too many people who click out of curiosity but don't buy. What surprised me was the exact position your ad should be in to get fewer clicks but much higher conversions.

I would recommend Adwords Killer if you are already a little familiar with Google Adwords and are looking for more powerful tactics to boost your profits or if you currently have some Adwords campaigns running that are unprofitable. If you are a total newbie, don't buy this book – if you are already familiar with Adwords – Adwords Killer will turn you into an experienced Adwords advertiser that 99% of other advertisers cannot compete with. Even if you are very experienced like I am Adwords Killer will have some tricks that you didn't know. Applying only one of them can pay the price of the book many times over.

The use of these advanced tactics is what can separate a winning campaign from a losing one and an affiliate marketer who makes some money from an Adwords Pro who makes a killing.

Honestly I would not want to compete in a niche with another advertiser who uses the tricks laid out in Adwords Killer. Get it here: http://www.adwordkiller.com