Display Adsense Below Blogger Post Title

Displaying your AdSense ads directly under the title of your blog posts, if you use the blogger platform, could increase the exposure of your AdSense ads.

The fact that AdSense ads placed in the hot spots on a web page get the greatest exposure to visitors should not be new to you.

So how can you display your AdSense ads just under the title of your blog post?

• AdSense Code
  Log in to your AdSense account and generate the HTML code for the AdSense format you want to display under your blog post title
  


• Encode AdSense Code.
  If you paste the AdSense code directly into the HTML code of you blogger template, you will get an error message and your AdSense ads will not display properly
  
  Why? Because blogger is in XML and the XML code needs the HTML code characters like <, > and & to be converted to entities for the code to be interpreted.
  
  To convert your AdSense HTML code to a format that will display properly on Blogger you need to use an HTML encoder. There are several available to use online, just perform a search engine query


• Log in to your blogger account
  


• In the dashboard click on the 'layout' tab
  
  




• Once the layout has loaded, click on the 'Edit HTML' tab in the navigation
  


• Back up your current template.

This is very important. You are about to edit the template of your blog and if you make a significant mistake you want your blog template available to reload

• Click on the 'Expand Widget Templates' radio button and look for the following code
  
  

• Paste your encoded AdSense code just beneath the code displayed above

• You can preview your results before saving the new template
  
  
• It really is that easy

How To Cloak Affiliate Links

Problem with affiliate marketing is the issue of commission theft.

People find a good product through a website of yours and then go and buy the product using their own affiliate link. It takes only 5 minutes to generate your own affiliate link for a lot of products out there.

This is commission theft.

But how can you protect yourself against commission theft

The honest truth is that you cannot completely achieve this but you can reduce the frequency of link theft by cloaking your affiliate links.

So how do you easily cloak your affiliate links without having to buy some software or the other.

So that instead of an affiliate link that looks like

youraffiliatename.product.hop.clickbank

You have a link that reads

yourdomain/likes/name you choose for product

• First create a folder called likes. [you could choose to use recommends or goto or whatever else you want to appear after your domain name]
  


• Use this script
  
  


• Save it index.html file in a folder within the likes folder
  


• Name the new folder the name you want to call the product. So if you are promoting a link cloaker you could call that folder linkcloaker.
  


• Upload the likes folder with it's contained folder to your hosting account

And you are done.

What you have just done is set up a webpage on your website called mydomain/likes/productname which redirects to your affiliate URL.

Confused?

Read it again slowly

Some Useful Affiliate Marketing Forums

This affiliate marketing forum post is mainly directed at newbies.

I remember when I first got into affiliate marketing, I was SOOO excited. I just wanted to talk about it all day long. Share ideas, sound off someone.

One of my friends got into affiliate marketing with me but lasted about 10 seconds. 'Seemed too difficult' apparently

So all this excitement and no one to share with

Till I discovered the affiliate marketing forums. Big day.

Now some of the forums are just areas full of spam, no useful information. Just people trying to get backlinks.

And at some forums.... well the big bad wolves are just waiting to jump and bite your head off when you say anything. Even hello!!

But I also found forums which were nurturing, full of really useful information and treated me with a little respect.

So I am sharing some of these forums with you here

• 5 star affiliate marketing forum

Absolutely my favorite especially when I was a newbie. Well laid out. A ton of useful information. Allows you to have links in your signature. Don't know if the links are do follow but this forum is worth it's weight in gold

• Warrior Forum Probably one of the most widely known affiliate marketing forums. A lot of really advanced affiliate marketers here.

Tend to offer warrior special offers on ebooks written by other members. Good source of information although the newbie may find some of it rather heavy going. Again a lot of information that you can learn from

• Digital Point Forum Another pretty large and very busy Internet marketing forum. Loads of newbies here but also a lot of more experienced marketers who share advice. Backlinks allowed in signature.

There is also a market place at digital point forums for websites and services and all sorts of things Internet marketing related

• Conquer Your Niche.

Not as busy as the previous forum. Some big name marketers here. Useful for getting backlinks. Also allows you to write adwords style ads for your websites which are displayed on the forum. The more posts you have, the more your ads are displayed.

• SEO chat

Not really an affiliate marketing forum. SEO chat is on the list of forums I visit most frequently. Great Search engine optimization advice. Allows backlinks in your signature. Only problem with this forum is a few of those big bad wolves lurk here

Hope you find these useful

Twitxploitation Or Essential Tools

So you probably have not heard of twitxploitation before.

Well neither had I till i sat down to write this post, but it seems rather appropriate for the sudden rash of Twitter applications put there. At least that's my take on things.

There is no doubt that twitter is a great networking site. Admittedly in my early encounter with Twitter I was skeptical but now I can see some of the potential.

And it would seem so can a lot of software makers out there.

So is it exploitation, or to stick to our term Twitxploitation; or do we really need 275 different twitter applications?

It seems twitter has fallen victim of it's success. Everyone wants to climb on for the ride

Please don't get me wrong. There are some really useful twitter applications out there. I use some of them.

Tweetfeed for example is a must have. I can't praise it enough [Big Tip :) ]

But do we really need a twitter application that measures out tweets in inches!!

So what say you. Is it Twitxploitation or useful applications all round?

Stop Social Bookmarking Till You Have Read This

Social bookmarking sites are GREAT for traffic.

But so many niche affiliate marketers complain that they are not getting the ton of traffic expected when they bookmark their content

So what on earth could be wrong?

The power of social bookmarking lies in the number of friends that you have

'It is who you know that counts' is a true saying both offline and online

My suggestion?

When you join a bookmarking site, take a few weeks to make friends or followers or fans or whatever the relevant term is on the social bookmarking site you use BEFORE you start submitting your bookmarks.

Several reasons for this

Momentum.
The maximum number of bookmarks a post gets is usually soon after you submitted it i.e in the first few days. So when you bookmark your post, you want to ensure that it is visible to a large number of people i.e your friends, as soon as it is posted. Think about it, when last did you digg, tweet or sphinn a post that is more than a month old?

Pay It Forward.
If your posts are goods, your friends may share it with their friend ... more diggs, stumbles, etc. If you already have a large number of friends from your two weeks of active participation, then the chances of getting a few who will 'pay it forward' i.e share your bookmark are higher

Also when you do start bookmarking your content, do not submit every post on your blog. It just will turn people off. Choose your best posts. The ones that will draw people in. These are the posts you want bookmarked. They are the posts that will get the most diggs, stumbles, tweets and therefore draw attention to your site

Finally, bookmark other sites as well. By this I mean submit other sites as well. The more active bookmarkers, I have noticed tend to submit news stories, just to mix things up a bit

Google Adsense Policy A Closer Look

AdSense being one of the main sources of monetization for my websites is something that I pay great attention to.

Taking a close look at the AdSense policy I came across this apparently innocuous statement

I hope you can read the text that I have circled in black ink.

This section of the policy is with regards to encourage clicks.

For all the years I have been using and learning about AdSense, I must have bought at least 50 ebooks or training videos on how to get the best out of your AdSense campaigns

And they all advice the same thing

'Blend your ads'

'Make you ads appear to be part of your content'

Being one that likes to test things out, I tried all sorts of different formats and sizes for my AdSense ads on my main sites.

And found that blending just did not work for me.

My click through rate was higher with ads that stood out. Different colours and what have you. So as a result I have tended, on most of my Internet properties, not to follow the 'blend your ads' mantra

But reading the AdSense policy in detail again, I am glad I haven't

For those who cannot read the screen capture the policy says

In order to ensure a good experience for users and advertisers, publishers participating in the AdSense program may not:

• Format ads so that they become indistinguishable from other content on that page.
• Format site content so that it is difficult to distinguish it from ads.

I don't know about you but it does make me sit up and take notice.

The long and short of it is read the policy carefully and avoid getting banned

Make Money With Adsense Traffic Quality

Make money with AdSense traffic question was written to give you an idea of the magnitude of the task ahead.

It was really just number crunching to give you an idea of the amount of traffic you will need to get to your AdSense sites to make some money



Here we are going to talk about a more important factor with regards to AdSense traffic and that's Quality of traffic



I know you must have seen the adverts that offer you 10,000 visitors to your site for $15. I get them all the time in my spam box. The thing to do with these emails is to delete them. Bought traffic does not work with AdSense.

So what type of traffic works with AdSense. By works I mean will give you a decent click through rate on the AdSense ads displayed on your pages

• Search engine traffic. It has got to be number one. Search engine traffic has been shown, time and time again, to be the best converting traffic for AdSense sites
  
  It really is why you need to apply some search engine optimization when writing posts for your blogs
  
  And when you go after search engine traffic, you must make sure that your blog ranks for keywords that are relevant to your ads. No point in getting a ton of search engine traffic about SEO when the page really draws social media ads. The way to avoid this is to optimize each post for a SMALL number of related keywords and make sure that your backlinks reflect this. [Think of the 'click here' and Adobe example]
  
• Targeted Traffic. You want to draw people that are interested in the topic your post is about. No point in drawing retired folk to a student loan post. Your target traffic sources must be relevant to your websites content.
  
  Can you see why buying 10,000 hits for $15 is a waste of money now?

About The Google Adsense Ban

Google AdSense ban is a real issue for those if us that monetize our websites using google AdSense.

So lets just take a few minutes out to discuss methods of avoiding the dreaded AdSense ban

First and foremost, Google has a guide that tells you the Dos and Don'ts so please read it. AdSense guide from the lips of Google

• Click Fraud. This conjures up images of someone sitting in a darkened room clicking on their own AdSense ads. A really dumb thing to do. First, this WILL get you banned. And second, it's not going to make you rich. Duh?.

But click fraud also applies to a host of other things e.g asking visitors to your web page to click on the ads, getting friends and family to click on your ads, click exchanges. If you are reading this and thinking, I am doing this and not yet banned, don't worry, you soon will be

• Code Manipulation. With AdSense, you are allowed to change the text color, banner size, even the font of the ad while creating your code. Any further editing of the code that is outside the scope provided in your AdSense account can get you banned.
  
• Multiple AdSense accounts. This is a real no-no with Google AdSense. It really is a one account per person policy here. Yes you may have heard some big shot marketer telling of his multiple AdSense accounts, doesn't make it right. Also the big shot marketer is making money from all sorts of avenues and really is not relying on AdSense to put food on the table. Also, you are not a big shot marketer!!
  
• Other contextual ads. Now this one is often a genuine error on peoples part. But AdSense does not want you displaying your AdSense ads on the same pages as you display other contextual advertisers ads. So if you are monetizing your site by displaying AdSense ads, you cannot display yahoo search marketing ads on the same pages. It is one of those things that is not obvious, I suppose this is why we need to read the TOS of AdSense

These are just a few basics. You may be wondering why I have written this post.

I was chatting to a friend about what I do online and the AdSense thing came up. As soon as I explained AdSense to him, he said, I'll build my site and click on my ads for an hour a day everyday

Yikes!!

Doesn't quite work that way

Do Follow Link. What Exactly Is It

A lot of fuss made by Internet marketers about getting as many do follow links to your website as possible.

And these links are pretty valuable especially when you want to give your website an SEO boost in the search engines

So for the newbie, what are do follow links.

Do follow links are links from one website to another that can pass on a PR boost to the site they are linking to.

Let me clarify. If site 'A' is about 'SEO' and ranks well in the search engines for that term. And site 'A's webmaster posts a link to site 'B' .

If the link is a do follow link it means that when a search engine spider visits site 'A' and finds the link to site 'B', it can do all of the following

• Follow the link to site 'B'
• As a result crawl and index website 'B'
• It will give some recognition to site 'B' as having something to do with 'SEO' ['SEO' being the keyword that site 'A' is about] This is the PR or link juice
• This means that site B will have slightly higher relevance in the eyes of the search engines for the keyword 'SEO'
• This could help site 'B' appear higher in the results page when a search for the keyword term 'SEO' is queried

No follow links on the other hand have the following properties.

• No follow links link website 'A' to site 'B'
• No follow links CAN be crawled by the google bot
• No follow links however do not pass on any PR boost

Higher Adsense Click Value

Highest paying AdSense keyword is a reasonable target for a lot of Internet marketers. Or is it?

Later I will add a list of the current highest payout AdSense keywords I could find

And you may wonder why share such a lucrative resource

Simple.

Because I don't use it!

I know it seems sensible to build information sites based on these high paying AdSense keywords in a bid to increase your revenue from AdSense.

For example, a website based on a keyword like 'Chicago personal injury lawyer' could garner $40 or more for a single AdSense click, if the list is to be believed

Wow! $40.

Let's be more conservative and say $20. With that kind of site all you need is 5 clicks a day to make a reasonable income.

Problem is the competition to get high SERPs position for this keyword phrase is bound to be steep.

And we all know you need visitors to get clicks.

Let's take an average made for AdSense website with a click through rate of 5%. [This is a little generous. Most webmasters report a click through rate of 1 to 2% but we will use 5% for our little illustration]. This means to make your 5 clicks a day, you need 100 unique visitors to your site a day.

Now in itself, this is not a big ask

But fire up your google keyword suggestion tool, it shows that the month of March yielded a grand total of 140 for that keyword phrase.

And you can be certain that some of those will be webmasters like you and I doing keyword research

Not looking so favorable after all

So maybe going after these high payout AdSense keywords is not the best way forward for the average niche marketer

The compromise is to find a keyword that garners maybe a dollar a click but gets a ton of searches.

That makes for better return on investment of time spent in generating the website and optimizing it for the search engines

Well at least that's my experience

The list?

Not mine. I got it from a forum I participate in. The forum is http://www.tareeinternet.com/forum/

Till next time

Adsense Requires Work, Loads Of Work

I was browsing the forums a few days ago and had noted that my adense earnings were particularly low. So when I came across an adsense post, actually there is an abundance of adsense posts in the forums , but this one caught my eye.

The post ran along the lines of adsense doesn't work and is not worth doing.

I duly replied, cause you just feel compelled to when one of your major sources of income is being bad mouthed; and said something along the lines of

'Having a slow day today and have only had 100 adsense clicks but adsense does work'

Not sure how to interpret the response I got. Couldn't be sure of it was disbelief or sarcasm. Either way it was negative. The possibility of getting a hundred clicks on a slow day seems beyond the comprehension of this guy

And it got me thinking that in spite of all the experience and all the training material available on adsense [and some of it good, I might add] and even the wealth of free information on adsense, a large proportion of the make money online crowd going the adsense way are not making any money

A quick browse of the digital points forum adsense subforum has posts along the lines of

'Yeah, made $1.20 today'
A dollar and 20 cents!!!. Their time would be better spent doing manual labour for minimum wage.

I think the problem with adsense is a lot of us were led to believe that it is a quick and easy method of making money online

You know put up an info site of doubtful quality, slap some adsense code on it and .. Hey presto! Money by the bucket load

Problem is it doesn't quite work like that

Adsense takes work, a whole ton of work to get any decent returns from it

You know those thousand dollar per month checks?

Totally possible but you have just got to focus

Focus on quality content, Backlinks, networking, posting decent information, increasing site size, increasing site reach. Focus, Focus, Focus

I do this part time and now spend about 4 to 5 hours a day on my different projects.

So before anyone else complains about the lack of earnings from adsense, the question to ask yourself is 'have you given yourself a fair chance?'

How To Create An RSS Feed

If you have a website that does not have an RSS feed, here is a quick guide on creating a basic RSS feed for your site

Open your HTML editor and create a new page

Go to the HTML code version and enter the following code with the appropriate details of your site inserted

The code is

When you save the as an xml file

Call it feed

Upload to your hosting account in the root directory of your website
Validate the feed at http://feedvalidator.org/

The URL of your feed is yourdomainname/feed.xml

Once validated, you can distribute your newly created RSS Feed URL to the feed directories.