Winning the ® Google AdSense War

Some owners of content sites are earning four and even five-figure incomes per month selling "nothing." They're doing this by selling their targeted traffic to other websites through Google's AdSense program.

If you're not familiar with ®AdSense, it's where ®Google pays website owners ("publishers") to run ads on their sites. Google accepts paid ads from advertisers, and then shares this revenue with the publishers who allow these ads to be displayed on their sites. They pay based upon clicks generated from the publishers' sites.

Many publishers have discovered that running Google AdSense ads is more lucrative, and less trouble, than marketing their own products or services. So an entire industry has sprang up around monetizing websites using AdSense and other pay-per-click programs.

The "industry" is mature enough that seminars are even held that teach how to best monetize your content sites. I'll be attending a seminar, in New Orleans, Louisiana, on September 9th - 11th, 2005, that has this very focus. You can read more about it at: http://WillieCrawford.com/new-orleans-seminar.html

Since MOST people I've communicated with aren't earning four or five-figure incomes per month, let's examine how you increase your chances of earning these amounts.

First of all, your website has to be on a topic (a niche) where people are spending lots of money. There are niches where advertisers often spend $40 - $50 per click... just to get visitors to their websites. Obviously, these visitors buy "things" on these websites that make it worthwhile to pay that much for the traffic.

In case you're wondering what keywords any "sane" marketer would spend $50 on a single click for, read on...

Certain visitors to websites, that later convert to customers, could literally be worth thousands, even millions, to marketers. These marketers know the lifetime value of their visitors, and have the conversion rates calculated! Markets where customers can be this lucrative include legal/lawsuits, medical, higher education, real estate, new and used vehicles, investments, travel, and products offering residual income. There are many others.

I actually have a list of over 9000 keywords that I consult when building a new site, or optimizing an existing site. Doesn't it makes perfect sense to create sites that attract visitors with a high value-per-visitor?

You can grab a copy of my list along with a few personal notes on how to monetize these high-value keywords at: http://9000TopPayingKeywords.com

The keywords on the list above range from 93 cents to $108 per click. There ARE higher priced keywords but you probably don't want to focus on them since the competition can be incredibly cutthroat. There are niches where your competitors will actually sabotage your efforts. Money does that to some people :-)

It makes economic sense to build a site around topics where people are actually spending money already.

It makes sense to target a market where people have money to spend - and they expect to spend it on products similar to yours. In that sense, you can even set up site designed to generate traffic for governmental agencies, foundations, charities, etc. It's all about getting in front of the traffic and then re-directing that traffic to those willing to pay for it.

When setting up content sites, it's important that you not violate the terms-of-service at the pay-per-click management firm that you plan on using. For example, Google actually tells you that you should not build sites just for their AdSense program. Yet, they need sites to display their customers’ ads in order for their program to work.

It's a delicate balancing act. Google wants to deliver relevant clicks to their customers. They know that traffic coming from "junky" or "spammy" sites may not convert as well for their customers. This would lower their customers ROI, and lead to many unhappy customers. This would drive Google's customers to their ever-growing competitors.

Google wants webmasters that have quality, targeted traffic to run AdSense Ads. When you set up a free blog on Google's Blogger.com they even have the AdSense invitation "programmed" into the signup process.

So how DO you win the Google AdSense War and get your share of that multi-billion dollar advertisers' revenue stream? You build high-quality content sites that focus on niches where people are spending money. It's as simple as that. You let those already doing it teach you what works best - it's a easy as that!

About the Author

Willie Crawford, Navarre, Florida US

willie@williecrawford.com

Learn more about top paying keywords

Willie Crawford is a corporate president, published author,
seminar speaker and host, tele-seminar speaker and host,
retired military officer, karate black belt, network marketing
trainer, and lifetime student of marketing. He teaches how
to actually generate substantial multiple streams of on-line
income using very simple automated systems. An example
is at: http://SendOutCards.com/willie

AdSense Stats and Performance 101

As more and more people are getting into the AdSense game, there seem to be many questions asked again and again by the newcomers. Here, I have compiled detailed explanations to some common AdSense terms, facts, and performance tips.

Terminology

Real Stats (Figures based on actual performance tracking updated several times a day)

• Page Impressions: The number of times an ad unit (a collection of 1 to 4 ads). If you have two ad units on a page, then every time the page loads you get two page impressions. Page Impressions DO include PSA (Public Service Ads) and Alternate Ads.
  
• Clicks: The number of times someone clicks on an ad. Clicks on PSA will be included in this stat as well.
  
• Earnings: Money you?ve made.

Derived Stats (Figures calculated from the real stats)

• Clickthrough Rate: Clicks/Page Impressions. It is expressed as a percentage.
  
• Effective CPM:. Earnings per thousand page impressions. Calculated by 1000 X Earnings / Page Impressions
  
• EPC: Your EPC is not displayed because it does not really matter. EPC stands for Earnings Per Click (Earnings/Clicks) and is frequently talked about.

Facts (What we've 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%.
   
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!

Tony Zhu is the owner of an online business resource website, InaWhim.com, the largest free resource for the new and experienced home business owner. At InaWhim.com, you will find massive listings of paid survey companies, products with free resell rights, exclusive quality articles, friendly community, and much more. Everything FREE!

Article source: http://www.topiccenter.com/Internet-and-Businesses-Online/Affiliate-Revenue/

How To Get Banned From Google Adsense In Just 2 Clicks

The darkest nightmare a hardworking affiliate webmaster fears is receiving a dreaded Google Adsense Warning, or even worse, a notice that Google Adsense has been disabled for the entire account.

The notice starts out like this:

"It has come to our attention that invalid clicks have been generated on the ads on your web pages. We have therefore disabled your Google Adsense account. Please understand that this step was taken in an effort to protect the interest of the AdWords advertisers."

Some webmasters use Google Adsense to generate 100% of their website income and the account may hold many different websites. In that case, every website is disabled at one time. An automatic disqualification can be devastating, especially when Google has no obligation to explain its decision in detail.

Not only does the account become disabled, but also existing click-through earnings are refunded back to the advertisers.

Life gets tough, but is it that easy to get an account banned? Yes it is.

The terms of service every Google Adsense Webmaster accepts, describes the easy do's and don'ts.

Do use the Adsense approved formats only

Do keep your click-through data and income private.

Don't display Adsense on registration or thank you pages.

Don't use Adsense code and a competitor's content-targeted advertisement on the same page.

Don't encourage anyone else to click on ads.

For a complete list, read the Adsense policies and terms

https://www.google.com/adsense/policies

https://www.google.com/adsense/terms

The easiest method an account can be banned is by a Webmaster clicking on the site's own ads.

Just how many click-throughs are needed to get a site banned isn't exposed, but Google Adsense watches for multiple clicks from the same domain. One person was banned who clicked twice from the same domain within a 24-hour period. That doesn't mean that is Adsense policy, because Adsense appears to place suspect sites on watch status until the action is duplicated.

Spikes in click-through percentages are hefty red flags. Those are the changes worth becoming proactive over by emailing Google Adsense. A site that rises from a consistent 1% click-through rate to a 10% click-through rate on one day could become suspect. The actual percentage that creates the flag isn't made public for obvious reasons.

What's the safest way to protect an account?

Don't click on the site's own ads ever.

Deceptive practices work for a short time, but they always come back to hurt the originator.

Follow up with more tips to help protect your account status here http://www.car-accident-advice.com/google-adsense.html

About The Author Mike Oliver is a programmer/analyst who survived injuries from a serious multiple car accident. After speaking with attorneys who looked to create a case and then take up to 50% of any settlement, Mike Oliver knew there must be another way to get the legal help he needed, conquer the insurance nightmares, and keep 100% of his settlement without fear of a do-it-yourself-kit. He found it and saved thousands of $$$. You can, too. Get the lessons Mike paid to learn Free at www.car-accident-advice.com

Improving Adwords Campaign Management - Tip 1

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.

About The Author Tom O'Brien is a certified Google Adwords Campaign Management Professional.To find out more profitable Adwords Tips or get help with your Adwords campaign visit: here

What is Pay-Per-Click?

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is when an advertiser pays for each qualified click that sends a search engine user (i.e., visitor) to the advertiser’s web page. PPC requires the advertiser to bid on key words or key word phrases chosen by the advertiser. There are many PPC advertising services available to choose from. Google AdWords and Overture are probably the two most popular in use today.

The PPC search engine allows you to buy a top position in the search engine results for the particular keyword or phrase you choose. The PPC search engines can deliver targeted and qualified visitors to your web page at an economical advertising cost if you manage the program carefully with a clear objective. PPC provides the advertiser with assurance that their ad is being delivered to the targeted audience.

PPC advertising uses a bidding process where the highest bidder or highest activity value, depending on the search engine, for a particular keyword or phrase will receive the top placement on the search engine results page. The PPC search engine will place your ad text in a special location on the results page when a user searches on your PPC keyword or phrase search term.

As an example, Google AdWords appear on the right side of the search results page while the organic (i.e., natural) search results appear on the left side of the page. In the case of Yahoo! Search, the sponsored ads appear on both the left and right side of the search results page. The top 2-3 sponsored ads appear in the top positions on the left side above the natural search results and the next 3 sponsored ads appear at the bottom of the left side and on the right side of the search results page along with other sponsored ads.

PPC advertising is a good way to obtain web page visitors when you don’t have a top ranking web page to get you the necessary natural search engine placement. Statistics show that over 80% of search engine users prefer the natural search results as opposed to sponsored ads. Nevertheless, the search engines deliver a huge amount of visitor traffic to the sponsored advertisers especially in the competitive keyword markets.

The typical PPC advertising campaign is based on the bid per click. For example, you bid $0.10 for a particular keyword or phrase that is accepted by the search engine. Whenever a search engine user clicks on your sponsored ad then you are charged $0.10 by the search engine. This amount is deducted from your account funds. Your placement in the search engine results page depends on the search engine. For Google, the placement is determined by your bid price and the ad’s click-through activity. For Yahoo, the placement is determined by your bid relative to other bids.

PPC can be an excellent method for getting visitor traffic to your web site but it can also cost you a lot of money. You need to be extremely careful and monitor your cost of using PPC versus the revenue generated. As the old saying goes, do the math. Calculate your return on investment (ROI) on a continuous basis to determine if you are making a profit on your PPC campaign.

As an example, assume your bid for a particular keyword is $0.10 and the product you sell has a profit margin of $15 after product costs (excluding PPC costs). If your conversion rate (the number of visitors that buy your product) is 1.0%, only 1 of your visitors will buy your product out of 100 visitors. Your net profit for every 100 visitors from your PPC campaign will be $5 ($15 profit margin less $10 for PPC).

It is a good idea to experiment with the different PPC search engines to find the one that works best for you. In addition, you need to spend the necessary time and effort to select the keyword or keyword phrase that has a profitable conversion rate for your specific web page. A higher conversion rate implies more profits to you.

Try to avoid the senseless bidding war with your competitors. Seriously evaluate whether having the number one placement position is worth the PPC price you pay. What about position numbers two, three and so on. Will you get enough clicks in one of those positions to make your PPC campaign a success? Do not automatically assume that you have to be in position number one to make a lot of money using PPC. It all comes down to experimenting and testing.

There is no such thing as the perfect PPC campaign. Evaluate the performance of your PPC campaigns on a continuous basis. Are you leaving money on the table by not adjusting your PPC bid to a lower level? Should you increase the bid price to get more traffic? Is your conversion rate changing? What are your competitors doing? Should you be considering different keywords in your campaign? PPC advertising is a great way to get traffic but at a definite price. PPC requires a thorough knowledge of the PPC search engines that you use and constant monitoring and evaluation of your campaigns.

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Copyright (C) 2004 F. Terrence Markle – All Rights Reserved

Get my F.R.E.E multi-part series on generating targeted and quality traffic to your web site. http://www.QuikSystems.com/WST/TrafficSeries.htm Get my F.R.E.E newsletter on building your own targeted mailing list: http://www.QuikSystems.com/EzineSub.htm

About The Author Copyright (C) 2004 – F. Terrence Markle has worked for over 20 years with public and private companies. He has an MBA in marketing and finance. He has been involved with Internet-related businesses for over 3 years. His primary focus is the marketing of affiliate programs. tmarkle@quiksystems.com

Google AdWords and AdSense - A Dynamic Small Business Marketing Duo

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last year or so, you probably know that Google has become the king of the search engine hill. There are many reasons for this but number one in my opinion is that above all else they put value on content. Today I want to introduce you to two very powerful small business advertising options created by Google.

These two ingenious programs have all but revolutionized the way advertising is done on the web. Warning: If you are thinking..."web advertising isn't for me, I just need a few more clients around the block"...you better read this or be prepared to have your competitors eat your lunch.

Goolge AdSense - Again content is king at Google. This program allows web site "publishers" to add some code from Google and receive "content relevant" ads on their site from other site owners. Here is an example - those ads in the box on the right of the page are delivered by Google and are matched to the content on the page. When someone surfs to the page and decides to check out one of those ads, the web site owner earns a portion of the advertising revenue that Google collects.

The key here is that if you go to a site about quilting, you will see ads about quilting and not about dog grooming. I know this sounds so obvious but Google was the first to really figure this out.

This program has worked so well that some website owners are actually building content specific sites and paying for them solely through AdSense revenue. Small business owners should consider adding this feature to pages on their site for several reasons.

I've already mentioned the fact that there is money to be made, but what many site owners are finding is that because Google is so respected and because the ads are highly targeted...they are no longer looked at by surfers as ads, they are looked at as content.

Some will even go as far as to say that by putting the Google ads on your site you actually better your chances of higher rankings with Google. Google flatly denies this claim and I don't think it is true but I do know that Google AdSense ads should be on every small business owner's site. (Google AdSense)

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Another Warning: This is somewhat complex stuff. This article is only meant to introduce you to the power of these programs. Check out Google Cash by Chris Carpenter for a deeper understanding of ways to make this work for you.

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Google AdWords - I've already talked about those ads you see on websites, well those ads need to come from somewhere don't they. AdWords is Google's program for advertisers.

Any site that wishes to participate bids for "keywords" that are relevant to their product, service, or site and then creates ads to attract hits. These ads show up on private websites, like this example, and on the right side of Google search results like this search for "Free sales letters and tools" As you can see from this Google search you received the content related sites that you searched for but you also get some related ads that are sponsored.

Now here is where Google is genius. Instead of simply subjecting surfers to any ads that anyone is willing to pay for, they actually police the ads that are running. On some pay per click programs, whoever is willing to pay to most wins. Google uses a performance model. In other words an ad that is the most relevant and therefore receives the most clicks will move ahead of an ad that may pay more but isn't as effective. This simple philosophy is why Google has quickly dominated the PPC world.

Okay...and now the really big innovation

Regional targeting. Google recently introduced a system that allows advertisers to target certain metropolitan markets only. In other words, a remodeling contractor who only wants to do kitchen remodels in say, Denver, can bid on the keyword phrase "kitchen remodel" and only have his ads show up for people who live in and around Denver.

The implication this has for local small business owners is staggering. In the example above, our Remodeler can now tap into highly targeted web traffic for pennies per lead. In my opinion, small business owner who learn the ins and outs of this medium will dominate their markets. (Google AdWords)

Look for more on this topic in the future.

Copyright 2004 John Jantsch

About The Author John Jantsch is a marketing consultant based in Kansas City, Mo. He writes frequently on real world small business marketing tactics and is the creator of “Duct Tape Marketing” a turn-key small business marketing system. Check out his blog at http://www.DuctTapeMarketing.com/weblog.php