March 2, 2010 By

My Last Google AdSense Check

Ok maybe not my absolute last, but definitely one of the last for this amount.

I’ve grown disenchanted with AdSense in recent times, and I think Google AdSense is a dying trend thanks in a big part to Google themselves. Google is now a billion dollar publicly listed corporation more interested in going after the big fish. They don’t need, or want, someone like me. Perhaps this feeling was in part to the way they brutally banned my AdWords account with no valid reason or explanation.

last-adsense

I’ve already sold off most of my AdSense sites and blogs, as a final “cash-out” strategy and the price was pretty good. You can earn about 10 to 15 times a site’s monthly AdSense income, which shows that a lot of people out there still want to hold on to Google AdSense for two simple reasons:

  • It is truly the most hands-free “residual income” method of making money online, even today
  • It’s still one of the easiest to master for newbies trying to make a buck or two online

For me though, since I’ve decided on my direction for 2010, AdSense seems to be a bad fit. At my stage right now I know that whatever effort I can put into building an AdSense site I can apply to creating software or information products that will generate a much better income, with much better satisfaction.

Of course AdSense will still be used on test concept sites etc, but for the most part, I’m done with AdSense.

Filed Under: Google Adsense Tagged With:
February 19, 2010 By

Is Google AdSense A Dying Trend?

adsense

A lot of people have been making money with Google AdSense since well… the beginning of time. However around 2007 AdSense made a lot of changes to their program and their payout has been decreasing since. Maybe Google decided to keep more money for themselves, after all they never really let you know how much you’re supposed to be paid.

Watch the Google trend: http://www.google.com/trends?q=adsense 

Yes you can still make money from Google AdSense, but it’s definitely not as lucrative as it used to be. Yet strangely enough, it’s still one of the easiest ways to make your first few cents online. The problem is that it can stay at “just a few cents daily” if you’re not sure of what you’re doing, and it’s not going to make you a millionaire either.

I think you can make your own conclusions on this one. Is AdSense on it’s way out slowly, or do we need more time to judge?

Filed Under: Google Adsense Tagged With: ,
May 20, 2009 By

Private Label WordPress AdSense Themes

image

As many of you may know, I make a great living online with my WordPress AdSense System product, and since 2006 this product alone has made me more than a six figure income. Although this is a complete system with an e-book guide and videos, one of the biggest selling points is the incredible 30 AdSense-ready WordPress themes I include in it.

Now, you can get Private Label Rights (PLR) to the entire themes collection, rebrand and modify it however you want, and sell them yourself for an incredible profit. You get:

  • 30 niche WordPress theme designs
  • Full source codes to the themes and images
  • Full source documents for the instruction files
  • Complete sales page to sell the entire collection
  • Bonus collection of web software with sales page
  • FREE updates and bug fixes

To secure your copy of Private Label Rights, just visit Instant AdSense Themes.

Filed Under: Free Tips Tagged With: , , , ,
December 22, 2008 By

The Death of A Niche Market

A niche market may last forever, but the profitability of any niche market is mostly up to one company that is always the topic of discussion in any marketing seminar: Google.

Indeed, how much money you make in niche marketing is very directly influenced by Google’s ever changing policies for Google AdWords. It affects your Google AdSense earnings, your affiliate sales, and even your own product sales. Let me explain how.

Google’s AdWords program is where the advertisers pay lots of money to place ads on Google for their product. Some of these ads are displayed on the Google search engine itself, while an equally large portion is displayed on Google’s “content network”. The content network is made up of millions of websites belonging to the average Joe like you and me. We place a small code called “AdSense” on our websites so when our visitors click on our ads, we make money.

In summary, there will be no AdSense is there was no AdWords. The two are more related than you can think. Any policy change Google makes on either service effect the other. Sort of like twins.

Sometimes AdWords policy changes can mean that an entire niche market is effected and loses its profitability. An example below, where Google’s new policy disallows anyone selling “template sites for ad networks”.

google-tos

This means that if you produce web templates or blog themes for AdSense, Yahoo Publisher Network or similar programs, you can no longer pay for traffic and make sales. That means, your affiliates lose out of a huge traffic source too. That also means, if you have a website showcasing such templates but monetizing it with Google AdSense, all of a sudden your clicks count for way less money than it used to.

You get up one day wondering “What happened?”. Why was I getting $1.00 per click for AdSense last month and now it’s barely $0.10? Since the most profitable websites or merchants for your site have been disallowed by Google in AdWords, your AdSense ads now show less targeted merchants, and you earn much less.

The answer is, Google. What can you do about it? Nothing except move on to a new niche.

It’s not healthy that so much of online marketing revolves around a few companies like Google, PayPal, eBay and ClickBank. Historically these companies don’t really understand online marketing as much as you’d expect them to. They have the power to kill off niche markets, especially those they don’t like or just don’t understand.

Filed Under: Google Adsense, Google AdWords Tagged With: , ,
July 31, 2008 By

Max Banner Ads Review – Manage Blog Banners

max-banner-ads

Pawan Agarwal has released yet another monster WordPress plugin, and this time it’s something all blogger, black hat or white hat or “gray hat”, can benefit from.

Max Banner Ads is a plugin that will help you manage, rotate, organize and track advertising on your site, including Google AdSense, banners, JavaScript ads (like from CJ) and even flash-based ads. As a matter of fact, you can actually use Max Banner Ads to rotate, manage and track almost any kind of content you want.

The really cool thing about Max Banner Ads is that it’s 100% plug-n-play and trust me you don’t have to copy and paste a single line of code, although those codes are still made available for more advanced users.

Create Your Own Banner Ad Zones

max-banner-ads-2 This is what makes this WordPress plugin totally plug-n-play. You can effortlessly create banner ad zones for your blog, and you can choose to either:

  • Display ads before the first post of your blog
  • Display banner ads at the bottom of the last post
  • Display banner ads within the post content

You can choose the layout, either:

  • Fixed alignment – left, center or right
  • Randomize the position (great for Google AdSense within the post content)
  • Display it as a WordPress widget in your sidebar
  • Edit the CSS and match your blog layout

Adding New Banners and AdSense

Adding new banners is really easy too. A cool feature here is to just copy and paste the advertising codes given by the publisher, and Max Banner Ads will automatically extract the image as well as the URL into the system. You can also easily upload banners from your PC.

Adding javascript ads (Google Adsense or codes from networks like CJ or PepperJam) is simple, just copy and paste into the space provided. However script ads don’t produce statistics and it’s not possible to track clicks on them.

max-banner-ads-3

Here how the tracking and reporting page looks like. At a glance you can see not only the impressions and clicks, but you can also see the actual banners (unless it is a javascript).

max-banner-ads-1

Free or Paid?

Max banner ads is available both as a free or paid plugin. Both version work the same except that the paid version allows you to remove the “Powered By Max Banner Ads” link at the bottom of all your banner ads. However, if you do upgrade to Max Banner Ads Pro you can still use it on an unlimited number of blogs, so $47 is well worth the price of looking like a professional.

Get the pro version here.

Filed Under: Free Tips Tagged With: , , , , ,
January 16, 2008 By

Google Adsense Scroll Buttons A Possible New Feature?

adsense-scroller

I’ve noticed that Google has been testing with a scroll button of some sort in an attempt to display more ads within the same ad block. How this works is that by clicking on the arrow buttons you can actually see more ads in the same blog without leaving the page. Right now it seems to appear randomly or by some sort of algorithm only Google knows. Also, it seems highly unlikely that someone will actually want to see more ads by clicking on those tiny buttons.

If this is a permanent feature worth studying, I’ll definitely add it to WordPress Adsense System in the near future. For now, I’ll just observe.

Filed Under: Free Tips Tagged With:
January 15, 2008 By

Google Will No Longer Pay for Adsense Referral Units

google-adsense In an email I got today, it seems that Google will stop paying for your Google Adsense referrals. They are also going to remove all Adsense referral units from the program by end of January. They didn’t quite explain why, as per the email below:

Hello,

We are writing to share some important information with you about referrals to the AdSense product. As part of ongoing efforts to optimize revenue opportunities for our publishers, we’re constantly experimenting with new revenue-enhancing features as well as tweaking those products already available to our publishers. This is the case for referral units directing visitors to sign up for AdSense. After experimenting with this program over the past year, we’ve concluded that there are other products that are of higher value than this program to publishers in your region. As a result, referral units for the AdSense program will be retired in the coming weeks. Referrals to other products and services remain unaffected.

If you’re currently displaying referral units on your site directing users to sign up for AdSense, read on below for details about what to expect in the coming weeks.

In early January, the option to add referral units directing users to the AdSense product will no longer appear in your account. You will continue to accrue earnings for all existing referrals yet to generate $100 until late January, at which point the program will be fully retired. Existing referral units will continue to appear on your pages.

By the end of January, you should remove all referral units directing users to AdSense from your pages. Referral units that you do not remove will continue to be displayed on your pages as normal, but conversions will no longer be recorded. We suggest you replace the AdSense referrals with referrals to another product or service or an additional ad unit.

Thank you for referring users to AdSense in the past. We apologize for any inconvenience this news may cause.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team
Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

The Adsense referral unit wasn’t a very good way to make money anyway, so you may as well remove it and replace it with a better affiliate program.

Filed Under: Free Tips Tagged With:
December 22, 2007 By

Display Google Adsense in Feedburner RSS Feeds

If you’re using Feedburner for your blog’s RSS subscription, you should know by now that since Google bought over Feedburner, you can have your Adsense ads display within your Feedburner RSS feeds.

To do this, simple login to your Feedburner account and select your feed. Then click on “Monetize” and you should see a page that requires your Google Adsense account information, such as:

  • Your email address for the Adsense account
  • Your postal code (additional verification)

Once you’ve entered the details, you’ll be sent a verification email from Google Adsense, and you need to verify by clicking on a link. Then you’re taken to a page where you have to grant access to Feedburner, that allows Feedburner to retrieve and send information to and from your Adsense account.

Once you’ve done that, you should now see a page like the one below in your Feedburner account under “Monetize”:

adsense-feedburner

Click “Activate” to activate the service, and build your Adsense ad format and colors as you would normally do when putting Adsense into your site or blog. If you have multiple RSS feeds you’ll need to activate it for each feed, and you can use the same account settings.

Note: For some reason your Custom Channels and Custom Palettes don’t show up in Feedburner. You have to sign-out and sign-in again for these to work properly.

Once you’ve build your ad, you’ll be given a specific code to paste into your WordPress theme files, and the instructions given on how to this are pretty clear. If you’re already using Feddburner FeedFlares on your site, Adsense will show up automatically and you don’t really need to do anything.

There are some limitations with this service however:

  • You can only display ads in the 468×60 and 300×250 format
  • You cannot choose to show only text ads, so I’m guessing it will default to the configuration you’ve set in your Adsense account itself
  • Once you’ve inserted the codes, Adsense ads who up on both your blog and your RSS feed, you cannot choose to display in your RSS feed only
Filed Under: Free Tips Tagged With: , , ,
December 16, 2007 By

Earn Money with Google Video Units

Google video units are a relatively new way to earn money with from your blog or website. Google partnered with YouTube to allow users to show customizable video units on their blog and earn money with targeted advertising. (Google owns YouTube, but they are still run as two independent companies).In the screen shot below you see how the Google video units look.

But what differs those units from a normal YouTube video are the two ads that are placed strategically on the top and bottom of the video window.

Google Video Untis

When you place a Google Video Unit on your site, you can choose the video content by the following strategies:

  • by content
  • by individual content providers
  • by automatic targeting to YOUR site’s content

The ads shown on the videos will be relevant to your content as well, which can result in higher click through rates. The ads aren’t intrusive to the overall look of your video screen and you can also customize the color scheme and the layout of your video.

To display and utilize this new joint venture between Google and YouTube, you’ll need to have an AdSense publisher account with Google which is free of charge to you. Most bloggers are already using AdSense in some way or another and if you haven’t got an account yet, then you can sign up now to start displaying video units on your pages.

Notes: At present, video units are only available for publishers located in the United States with English-language websites.

How to Add Video Units to Your Page:

  1. You need to link your YouTube account with your AdSense account
  2. Sign into your account at AdSense
  3. Select AdSense Setup tab and then navigate to video units
  4. This will redirect you to YouTube to customize your video unit. It will also ask you to login unless of course you already were.
  5. Choose a name and description for your player so you can remember it in the future.
  6. Now you can customize the colors and the layout to fit into your blog site. Feel free to play around a little.
  7. This step is probably the most important one; you’ll now need to choose the content you want displayed on the player. Remember, you have 3 choices as explained above and need to make sure it is targeted to your site.
  8. Once you are happy with the choices, click on generate code
  9. Copy and paste the code shown into your HTML source on your blog
  10. Click publish

Congratulations, you should now have your first Google video units video playing on your site.

Monika Mundell

Editor of Easy WordPress

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Filed Under: Free Tips Tagged With: , , , , ,
May 27, 2007 By

WP Plugin – Adsense Manager

Adsense Manager is a new WordPress plugin that helps to manage Adsense ads on your blog. Unlike other plugins which require you to copy and paste the code from Google Adsense site, Adsense Manager can generates the code automatically for you.

This allows you to modify Ads right from your WordPress admin panel. You can change colours, type and size of ads with a push of a button. On WordPress Widgets enabled blogs you can also drag the Ads around your Sidebar to position them as you like.

Details instruction on plugin usage can be found here.

Filed Under: Free Tips Tagged With: , , , ,