Book 2007

posted by Ahmad Faiz Besah @ 4:38 AM 0 comments

Welcome

Welcome to your AdSense Insider course.

First, here’s a very brief outline of exactly how AdSense works:

• You sign up for AdSense with Google, and, if you are accepted, Google will start placing ads on your web pages automatically.
  

• If someone on your site sees an ad and clicks on it they leave your site.
  

• Google charges the advertiser for the click and shares this money with you. This type of advertising is called Pay Per Click advertising, usually abbreviated to PPC.
  

• The Ads you get on your web pages are usually relevant to your visitor.

The amount you can earn per click vary enormously from a few cents to many dollars. Yes, get your AdSense participation right, and you can earn several dollars a click!

We will look at why different ads are worth different amounts later in this course.

Let’s get going then.

AdSense is Google’s syndication program for its AdWords advertisements.

This means that it is Google’s way of placing AdWords ads on other people’s site – including potentially your own - so first up you need to understand AdWords to make sense of AdSense.

Next: Google AdWords and AdSense

posted by Ahmad Faiz Besah @ 3:47 AM 0 comments

Google AdWords and AdSense

Google AdWords

1. They are 100% targeted: the advertiser chooses which keywords have to be entered before their ad is shown. This means that you can make your ad appear ONLY in front of people ACTIVELY LOOKING for information about a topic.
   
   You sell binoculars?
   
   Then you can set up your AdWords ads so that they show up ONLY when someone enters "Binoculars" into Google’s search box. You can also restrict your ad coverage to specific countries or even cities so you can focus your advertising budget geographically too. Yes, if you wanted, you could decide only to advertise your binoculars only to people living in Western Samoa.
   

2. You only pay for click throughs. If no one clicks on your ad you don’t pay anything but….
   

3. Google penalizes ads that don’t work well because it wants only ads that are RELEVANT to the searcher to be seen. Poorly performing ads get disabled automatically.
   
   

4. Google gives advertisers incredibly detailed near real-time response data so you can monitor and adjust your ads without wasting much money. Small changes in your ad, including Capitalising the first letter of some words, can have a Big Impact on your click through rates.
   
   (If you are new to AdWords, you can pick up an excellent introduction here)
   

Next: AdSense & Content-targeting

posted by Ahmad Faiz Besah @ 3:46 AM 0 comments

AdSense & Content-targeting

Google AdSense

So where does AdSense come in this?

Well, Google has taken the excellent AdWords program and extended it to third party sites and called it AdSense. That's all.

An AdWords ad on your site is an AdSense ad.

Key distinction

However, AdSense differs from AdWords in that Google, instead of looking at the search terms entered into its search box to determine what ads to show, looks instead at what keywords you have on your site.

Example:

If you have a page on your site all about banks, AdSense technology determines that it would be an appropriate place to post AdWords ads about banks.

This technology is called "content-targeting".

I have posted a page on this website about dollar accounts and banks because Google pays you by check / cheque. If you don’t live in the USA, cashing these dollar checks / cheques can be quite expensive and it can also be quite a tricky business opening a dollar account.

If you look at the banks page, you'll often see ads for dollar accounts posted there.

The important thing to note is that the process of assessing what your web page is about is automatic.

Google uses its content-targeting technology to do this and generally it does it very well although there are exceptions.

For an example of a page where content-targeting doesn’t seem to work well, see http://www.infomatifanalisa.blogspot.com

When I last checked, this showed ads for DNA testing whereas it should ideally have ads about viral marketing things on it: content-targeting technology has picked up on the wrong meaning of viral in this instance.

However, note that headline on the page includes the word "laboratory" - this could certainly be confusing Google.

How you make money with AdSense

We’ve been over the basic money-making process. Maximizing your income is much harder and it raises what I call the content dilemma which we'll explore later too:

• Is your site designed to earn AdSense revenue or is its main objective something else?

So that's the background to AdSense.

Tomorrow we’ll look at ways to maximize the amount of money that Google sends you.

There are two pretty complex processes going on behind the scenes that we will examine, paying particular attention to those things that are within your control. Not everything is!

Best wishes until then,

William Charlwood


PS One of the ways to boost your AdSense income is to develop creative ways of getting people to come to your site again and again.

I cover this in detail in my ebook The Definitive Guide to Google AdSense.

posted by Ahmad Faiz Besah @ 3:27 AM 0 comments

Maximize the amount of money

Welcome to Day 2 of your AdSense Insider course.

First an apology: there's a bit of math ahead!

Yesterday we looked at AdWords and learnt how AdSense is Google’s AdWords syndication program that posts AdWords ads on content-targeted websites:

Ads about binoculars appear on web pages with information about binoculars on them.

It makes sense doesn't it!

Today we are going to look at the factors that affect how much money you will get from Google if you sign up (and are accepted for) the AdSense program, paying detailed attention to those areas that are controllable - because many aren't.

The AdSense revenue equation

Revenue is generated for you when someone clicks on an AdSense ad on your site. Google charges the advertiser for the click thru and shares this revenue with you.

The amount you earn from an ad is given by the following equation

Income PER AD =

Click through price (also known as Cost Per Click)
X Fractional pay out
X Click through rate
X Page traffic
X Appearance frequency

The COST PER CLICK is the price the advertiser is bidding to place an ad under the AdWords program and is determined by a complex real time automatic auction process: Google advertisers set a maximum price they are prepared to bid for keywords and they usually pay less than this.

The lowest bid in the UK is 4p and in the USA is 5c so if you get clicks on these ads you're not going to make much money.

The FRACTIONAL PAYOUT RATE is the percentage of its revenues that Google pays out to AdSense partners. THIS FIGURE IS NOT DISCLOSED BY GOOGLE. However, anecdotal evidence suggest the payout rate is good and competitive systems such as 7search.com payout around the 50% mark.

CLICK THROUGH RATE is the number of times the ad is clicked on divided by the number of times it is displayed (“impressions”).

PAGE TRAFFIC is the number of times people visit your web page.

APPEARANCE FREQUENCY is the number of times a particular ad appears on your page (remember that ads are rotated by Google automatically and successful ads are shown more often.)

To repeat: this is income PER advertisement, so to calculate your total AdSense income you need to evaluate this equation for each ad on all your web pages and add up the results.

By the way, Google saves you the bother and tells you the answer in the reports it gives you.

But already the complexity of the process is apparent and of these factors, some are completely out of your control: Fractional payout rate and Appearance frequency being two.

So let’s look at those three factors that are at least partially within your control.

Next: Cost Per Click

posted by Ahmad Faiz Besah @ 3:26 AM 0 comments

Cost per Click

Cost per Click

The Cost per Click, whilst fundamentally determined by the advertiser, CAN be influenced by the content of your website: if you can modify your site so that it includes more content related to higher value keywords, you are more likely to get higher value click through prices.

For example, if you run a site about Bird Watching you may get ads posted about Bird Watching books. But why not extend the site to include content about the best binoculars for bird watchers?

Dedicate a page to this topic and you could find higher value ads running on that page because binoculars sell for more than books and businesses advertising binoculars may be willing to pay more for keywords relating to them.

You could also run some pages about travel and hotels in exotic locations where rich bird watchers like to take their holidays. It’s all content relevant to your site but it is likely to increase your AdSense revenues too.

If you've already got a site, visit the AdSense tool to find what ads Google is likely to run on it. If you get ads that don't seem relevant there are 2 possible causes:

1. Google doesn't know what your page is about, or

2. Google has never heard of your site.

Next: Estimating Cost Per Click

posted by Ahmad Faiz Besah @ 3:26 AM 0 comments

Estimating Cost Per Click

Estimating Click Through Values

Visit Overture's Bid Tool to find out how much keywords are being bid for on Overture, a competitor to AdWords. This will give you an indication of the prices people are bidding on Google which, in turn, will give you some idea about the click thru value of AdSense ads relating to those keywords.

NB Overture keyword prices are not necessarily exactly the same as Google's prices and, just like Google's will vary over time.

The rule is: aim high.

Alternatively if you already have an AdWords account you can use the Keyword tool to find out the current price of any keyword - but remember AdSense is about content, not keywords so, again, this is only going to be an indicator.

Next: ADSENSE CLICK THROUGH RATE

posted by Ahmad Faiz Besah @ 3:25 AM 0 comments

ADSENSE CLICK THROUGH RATE

Click Through Rates

Can you influence Click Through Rates?

Yes. You can - but not by saying "Click these ads" because that contravenes the Terms and Conditions you agree to when you sign up with AdSense.

It wouldn't be fair to advertisers either if you artificially promoted clicks on their ads because they have to pay for them. In the long run, such contrived clicks will cause an advertiser to stop using AdSense and you'll eventually lose out. Faster than that, however, Google will cancel your account.

But there are legitimate ways of boosting Click Through Rates. Here’s how.

You use your page to sell the products and services that are likely to be shown in the ads. To follow our binocular example, if you post content about the benefits of excellent (and expensive) binoculars and how they enhance the bird watching experience, readers are going to be more interested in buying binoculars than if you simply post content about the different types of binoculars available and they will consequently be more likely to click an ad.

You have to write sales copy that focuses on the generic benefits of the products and services likely to be advertised on your pages.

Next: WEB SITE TRAFFIC AND ADSENSE

posted by Ahmad Faiz Besah @ 3:24 AM 0 comments

WEB SITE TRAFFIC AND ADSENSE

Web site Traffic

We saw yesterday that AdSense revenue was controllably dependent on

• Click thru rate - you need to encourage those clicks- but watch out you don't break Google's rules.
  

• Click thru price - have content relating to high value keywords
  

• Page traffic - more visits equals more clicks

The focus today is on Page traffic.

I don't know how much traffic your site currently gets but you probably want more. However, there are two different sorts of traffic

1. The casual visitor who is not going to do much, is click/trigger happy and won't hang around and doesn't come back.
   

2. The keen, genuinely interested, active site participant. This is the sort of traffic you want to get and keep because your job is to develop a relationship with this type of visitor - not a one-night stand.

Why?

Because people who visit your site frequently are going to be interested in what is on it and this interest will extend to your AdSense ads - that's what Google does for you automatically.

Interest = clicks
Clicks = money

They'll also come back of their own accord and each time they do, they might see another interesting ad too.

That thinking has helped us define who we want but we now have two tasks ahead:

1. Getting these people to visit your site the first time.
   

2. Getting these people engaged in the site so that they remember it, like it and come back frequently

Let's look at the first of these.

Next: WEB SITE TRAFFIC - FIRST TIME VISITORS

posted by Ahmad Faiz Besah @ 3:18 AM 0 comments

WEB SITE TRAFFIC - FIRST TIME VISITORS

Web site traffic - first time visitors

You are going to have to promote your website to people who you know are likely to be interested in the contents of your site.

There are 8 standard strategies:

1. Advertise your site offline using postcards, printed ads, signs on your car etc. BUT GIVE PEOPLE A GOOD REASON to visit in your ad.
   

2. Advertise your site online with AdWords and other pay per click systems such as Overture - but watch you don't spend more than you earn.
   

3. Get your site high on search engines (by building excellent content - that's what they look for).

   This is FREE, very competitive and is the best method although it takes time for a new site to get noticed. People searching on a search engine are ACTIVELY looking for stuff which means they are more likely to become active visitors, visitors who return and click - if they like what they find.
   

4. Promote your site in an ezine about your subject matter (but make your writing interesting) and send it to your regular customers or visitors.
   

5. Enter comments into discussion forums and include a short link to your site. I did this for FactsAboutAdSense.com in a brand-marketing forum and started getting visits almost immediately - for ZERO cost.
   

6. Use PR techniques to get your site mentioned in the Press.
   

7. Include your web address in your email signature ALWAYS. Again, this won't cost you anything but will increase the visit rate - and it can work very well if you do more than just put your web address on it - give them a reason to visit. ("Want to get paid by Google while you sleep? Visit Facts About AdSense to learn how" is what I use. It works.)
   

8. Publish an ebook about your subject and give it away but include links to your website in it then get other people to give it away as a bonus or a freebie provided they keep the links to your site in place.

Next: PAGE TRAFFIC - REPEAT VISITORS

posted by Ahmad Faiz Besah @ 3:16 AM 0 comments

PAGE TRAFFIC - REPEAT VISITORS

Web site traffic - repeat visitors

How does your site keep people engaged?

You need to give people

• a REASON, and

• a REMINDER,

• to RETURN

How do you do this?

The REASON

Make your site genuinely useful and informative about your theme, product or service. Write content-rich pages that are worth reading because they inform. Write new stuff too from time to time.

The REMINDER

You can't remind people to visit unless you know who they are. So you need to get their contact details in return for permission to keep in touch and an effective way to do this is to give something away like a tip sheet, a guide, insider knowledge and so on.

But, again, make sure it is useful and has value.

Now use this contact information to remind people about your site.

The easiest way to do this is by email.

If you use email, you are probably going to need to automate the process, otherwise you'll spend all day at your PC, and the best way to do this is to use an autoresponder. What an autoresponder does is send out emails automatically when it receives new contact details but good ones do much more than this.

I use one to distribute this AdSense Insider course and I have programmed it to send out the 5 lessons in the course automatically in sequence.

Here's some more info about it: Autoresponder.

Your autoresponder should be easy to use, and provide you with detailed testing and reporting capabilities as well as, crucially, a facility that makes it easy for people to opt-out from your mailing list. You must do this to avoid being accused of spamming.

This is yet another reason why content is king. Keep providing information, information, information otherwise they'll sign off - for good.

Next: Copy Writing

posted by Ahmad Faiz Besah @ 3:14 AM 0 comments

Copy Writing

Copy Writing

When people land on your site for the first time, you have around 10 seconds to get across a message that makes them want to stay there.

First time visitors make an extremely quick judgment about your site, in fact you typically have just 10 seconds or so to make a positive impression. So you have to explain immediately why people should stay.

Don't worry about not catching everyone because you only want targeted visitors anyway. The low interest types are not going to help drive up your AdSense revenues. A great way to do this is to put your number one benefit statement into the headline on your home page.

I do this on the sales page for my guide The Definitive Guide to Google AdSense.

Take a look.

The dreaded Corporate Yawn-fest

What doesn't work is a corporate yawn-fest on a web site that starts off with something like "We've pride ourselves in providing you, the customer, with excellence in everything we do..."

Apart from anything else, why would you believe them?

Now IF you get someone to stay on your site, they typically have a little look round first before delving more deeply into what you're offering.

Only if they continue to be interested are you likely to get their attention enough to get their contact details. And you may well not get them first time, which is why your site must also give them a reason to return unprompted. And the reason is Content - again.

But when they do come back, they'll really have a good look around and start to engage in the site. And that is when you'll get the AdSense clicks.

It's been quite a long session today and I hope you've taken it all in. Do check out the Autoresponder info if you haven't already got one because getting one is essential to any half-decent web marketing plan.

Tomorrow we are going to look at the format and styles of AdSense ads - Google offers a surprising degree of control over ad placement and appearance.

We'll also review the process of placing the AdSense code into your website site.

Next: ADSENSE JAVASCRIPT

posted by Ahmad Faiz Besah @ 3:13 AM 0 comments

ADSENSE JAVASCRIPT

AdSense JavaScript

Today we are going to deal with the process of implementing AdSense into your site. Of course, you first of all need to get accepted into the AdSense program.

Assuming your site has made the grade, you will get an email from Google with the title "Welcome to AdSense". This will include a link to a page on Google where you enter your username and password. Make your password non-obvious because, when you log on to your account, you say where the money goes and you don't want someone else redirecting it do you?

Included in your AdSense control panel is a form where you specify what shape of ads you want to display and, when you make your selection, some JavaScript code appears in a box below.

All you need to do is cut and paste this code into your site. But there are some decisions you need to make first.

There are three steps.

1. Decide which pages you want to place AdSense ads on.
   

2. Decide what format ads you want on each page.
   

3. Paste the code in the site

Where to place your ads

Do you want AdSense ads on your home page?

This depends on what your site is about.

Remember, unless you are writing a site specifically to get AdSense revenues, the main aim of your site is not going to be getting clicks that TAKE PEOPLE AWAY from your pages because every click on an AdSense ad does exactly that.

The best place to put ads is on content-rich pages that you already have but which are not producing any revenues for you.

Next: AdSense Ad formats

posted by Ahmad Faiz Besah @ 3:08 AM 0 comments

AdSense Ad formats

AdSense ad formats

Google offers lots of formats for your ads. The best way to check them all out is to print out this Formatting Guide.

You should pick the one that fits in best with your existing page structure unless during the review process you decide to undertake a major re-vamp!

Google allows multiple formats across your site but until September 2004 didn't allow you more than one block of ads on each page.

Color schemes

Google lets you specify what colors the ads will appear in and there are two schools of thought about what is best.

You can design ads so that they fit well with your existing web design. Or you can make the ads stand out strongly by choosing a markedly different color palette.

You can now get sufficiently high resolution statistics from Google to find out which ads work best on your site. I cover this in detail in my book The Definitive Guide to Google AdSense.

Pasting code

This is either easy for you or difficult!

If you routinely look at the HTML in your web pages, the process is straightforward: just locate where in the page you want the ads to go and paste the code in.

If HTML is a foreign language you'll need some help to begin with.

Practically, the best way forward is to experiment a bit. Put the code in, have a look at the page (and Google will immediately start posting ads on the page although they may not be content-targeted to begin with.) If you like what you see, stick with it. If not, move it around, use a different format (go back to your AdSense control panel) and do it again.

What happens next?

As soon as your new page is viewed (even if you preview it in FrontPage), Google gets alerted to its existence and sends out some ads.

Now if Google doesn't know anything about the page you will see so-called Public Service ads which are about charities and so on. However, in around 15 minutes (it's that fast) you will start to see ads that are content targeted. They will be more relevant to your page. But this will only happen if Google can work out what your page is about, so check that the copy makes it clear and that the page title, headings and meta tags are consistent and valid.

Rejected by Google?

If you can't get into the AdSense program, don't despair!

There are things you can probably do to improve your chances and you can re-submit your site. Look carefully at the criteria for acceptance again on Google's own site. Make sure you have relatively clean content, with lots of text (Google can't "read" the content of a picture and it doesn't deal well with Flash animations) and focus your copy on the theme of the web page.

You will also need to ensure that your site is big enough so that it isn't regarded as too trivial. Some people say you should go for at least 20 pages but in my experience you don't need that much - you just need good content.

Next: GETTING ACCEPTED INTO THE ADSENSE PROGRAM

posted by Ahmad Faiz Besah @ 3:07 AM 0 comments

GETTING ACCEPTED INTO THE ADSENSE PROGRAM

Getting Accepted into Google AdSense

This is the last day of the AdSense Insider course and we are going to put it all together here so that you can be up and running in a day or so from now.

I said earlier that there are things you can do if you find your site is not accepted by Google and by far the most useful thing to bear in mind is that Google seeks out information. So unless your website has a lot of information in it, you probably won't get accepted.

Now as you can imagine, this is not a clear cut issue.

Who decides whether your site is information rich or not?

Automatic Site Assessment

The answer is that in the first instance Google's own spider, the software that scans your site, is the first judge. If it 'thinks' your site is content rich then you will pass the first hurdle. And this is where some sites fail.

The spider is an automated system and it makes quick, not always accurate judgements which gives you the first clue about getting your site accepted:

If your site is rejected fast by which I mean within a couple of hours or so, it has probably been rejected by Google's spider on the basis that it doesn't understand what your site is about too clearly or it hasn't found much content.

So you will have to get to work and add content - write further copy relevant to your main them, scan the web and find good articles to post (but make sure you get the appropriate permissions). All this will help.

And then submit again.

BE WARNED: there is a rumor going round that one site was rejected and it simultaneously got dropped from a previously high ranking on Google's search results page. It's only a rumor, but be warned.

Similarly, if your site is accepted fast, it will almost certainly have been accepted automatically.

Human intervention

However, there appears to be a middle case where the spider is not sure whether your site qualifies or not. And in this instance, the site is referred to a human who makes the final decision.

FactsAboutAdSense.com passed straight through the acceptance process because it has a load of content in it, has a clear theme running right through the site and is designed to move up the search engine ranks too.

Tip:-

If you are thinking of applying for AdSense, check out sites that compete with your own for traffic and see if any of them have been accepted. If they have, compare the content in them to your own to see if you exceed theirs. (This is quite a subjective process but it can help you)

If you are rejected, you can always apply again.

Multiple sites

Google actively discourages you from running several AdSense accounts on different sites. I'm not clear why they do this at the moment apart perhaps from saving operational costs involved in printing and posting checks. However, you can run the same AdSense code on a range of sites that you run. You can also monitor your earnings from each site if you use Google's Channel system - I explain this in detail in my book.

Well that's the end of the course. I hope you now feel better informed about Google's AdSense system.

Best of luck with your own program.

and best wishes to you.

William Charlwood
FactsAboutAdSense.com

PS If you want to get seriously commercial with AdSense you need in depth information that covers the real DETAILS behind maximizing your AdSense earnings. It's all in my ebook The Definitive Guide to Google AdSense.

posted by Ahmad Faiz Besah @ 3:04 AM 0 comments

Congratulations! You've found the hidden page

This page is not really part of the AdSense Insider course and I don't publicize it anywhere on the basis that anyone who finds it is keen to get going and learn more.

Just to repeat, if you want to get seriously commercial about AdSense in terms of

• getting AdSense live on your site

• understanding the AdWords pricing model fully

• positioning AdSense ads on your pages so that they maximize your revenues

• setting up color schemes that deliver the clicks

• using Channel reporting to manage your account effectively

• installing AdSense Search properly so that you are most likely to get clicks and high value ones at that

• driving targeted traffic to your site using free methods

• developing high value content that delivers high value yes ad clicks

• building systems that automatically bring traffic back

• testing content for AdSense potential before you write it

• extending AdSense onto other sites, and understanding why this can improve your earnings

then you need to study The Definitive Guide to Google AdSense.

It's 101 pages, 43 Chapters, 24,000+ words and best of all it contains links to privileged sections of the FactsAboutAdSense.com website that I don't index.

When you purchase it you also get automatic membership of The AdSense Insider Group (TAIG) as well as a number of bonus products and services.

TAIG members get detailed research notes and up to date analysis of AdSense related matters plus a dedicated email address where you can send me questions about your own AdSense problems.

I'm afraid I really will be increasing the price shortly too once I've now had clearance from Clickbank to do so.

(There's a $50 price limit to begin with and it’s just been increased to $70 so I'll be going for $67.00.)

posted by Ahmad Faiz Besah @ 3:03 AM 0 comments

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THE BOOK OF THE STORIES OF THE PROPHETS

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SAFE HARBOUR by Luanne Rice

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Gallows Thief by Bernard Cornwell

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