8.1 Writing Content
AdSense works better than just about every other type of online advertising for one simple reason: the ads are relevant to the content on your page. Users click on the ads because they find them interesting.
And they come back and click on them again because they find your content interesting.
If your site doesn’t have good content, you’re going to struggle to attract
users and links, and you won’t be able to persuade anyone to come back to your site.
Having the right content then is crucial to having good revenues with
AdSense. It’s also crucial to the relationship you have with Google’s indexing mechanism. Remember, Google is a search engine first and foremost. Their purpose is to provide the web user with the best search results for the terms they are seeking. If you are providing quality con* How To Develop Self Confidence * How To Draw and Paint
* Guide To Bowling
* What Character Does Your Handwriting Reveal * How To Develop Perseverance
* How To Become A Speaker * Dreams Interpreted * How To Play Tennis
* Hints On Writing Short Stories * How To Make Money
* Strength From Eating
* How To Study The Bible For Greater Profit * The History Of Music
* How To Make and Use A Home Radio * How To Write A Hit Song And Sell It
I have subscribed to this service and plan on testing some new public domain works on one of my sites. You can read more about The Lost Files at
http://www.adsense-secrets.com/thelostfiles.html
8.6 AdSense In RSS Feeds
One of the biggest changes to take place on the Internet recently has been the growth of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds. These let subscribers see when a site has been updated and sends them information instead of waiting for them to come to the site to see it for themselves.
The good news is that Google is starting to put AdSense ads in RSS feeds.
The system is new and Google is still testing it as I’m writing this book but if you’ve got an RSS feed on your site (or want to set one up) and you’ve got more than a hundred subscribers, your site can join their team of Beta testers.
There seems to be little room for tweaking the ads, although it’s a safe bet that the same principle of blending the ads into the page would apply as much here as on a Web page. At the moment though, the ads only appear after the content, at the bottom of the URL. You can apply for the program at
http://services.google.com/ads_inquiry/aff
Alternatively, if you don’t want to be a Google guinea pig, Kanoodle is ahead of them. You can use their program at http://www.kanoodle.com/about/brightads.cooltent, you have a greater likelihood of having your search results come up higher on the page.
8.7 Use Your Newsletter To Drive Traffic!
A great newsletter is another way to capitalize on AdSense. Newsletters are fantastic tools to drive repeat visitors to your pages!
Here's one way to use them: Instead of mailing the entire newsletter, save a few juicy tid-bits for your website and provide a link for your visitors to click.
When subscribers click-through to get the full story, they're likely to click
your ads. And send you another AdSense bonanza! For example, Prizepot
(http://www.prizepot.com) is a contest and sweepstakes site with a new item each day. Their free weekly newsletter is sent with a teaser for all the new items posted that week. In order to find the entry form, you must click the link in the newsletter. Of course, when you arrive at the destination page, not only do you receive information about the contest, but you are greeted by AdSense ads. For a sample newsletter, send an email to join-prizepot@lists.worldvillage.com.
If you have a big, responsive mailing list — start turning it now into extra AdSense cash!
And if that isn’t a good enough reason to start producing a newsletter, it
looks as though Google are also testing AdSense in the newsletters
themselves. They’ve already been doing it for iVillage.com and there’s a good chance they’ll be extending it to other users soon.
You can either create a newsletter yourself — and mail it using a mass
mailing system like Intellicontact.com — or you can ask someone to write it for you. ConstantConversions.com (http://www.constantconversions.com) is a copywriting service that specializes in newsletter writing. You can tell them about your site and they’ll do it all for you, from concept to inbox. You can even tell them you want it optimized for AdSense. They’ll know what to do.
To start your own email newsletter and auto-responder
for your site, I highly recommend Aweber.com. With
Aweber, you can build unlimited lists with unlimited autoresponders. That means you can have your list set up to automatically send email to certain groups at predetermined times. Along with their email broadcast services, Aweber is my first choice for many of my lists.
8.8 Buying Content/ Hiring Writers
One of the problems with free content is that you can get what you pay for. And if your site doesn’t have valuable content, it’s going to have an effect on your click-throughs.
The alternative of course is to pay professional writers to write for you. I’ve already mentioned www.elance.com as a good place to find designers but it’s a good place to find writers too. You can also ask ConstantConversions.com to write articles for you.
The advantage of hiring writers of course, is that you can be sure you’re
getting good content with little effort. On the other hand, you have to make that money back.
Try testing a writer to see how much profit a series of articles generates. If you pay $200 for five articles but find that your new pages don’t give you a $200 increase in revenues, you either need a new idea — or a new writer.
8.9 Automated Content
Finally, a couple more options you can use to create content for your website are ArticleBot and TrafficEqualizer.
Both these tools automatically create pages filled with content based on your keywords, saving you the hassle and expense of writing and buying content yourself.
The folks at Google aren’t crazy about pre-fabricated, useless content and it’s unlikely your users will be either. They’re probably better than nothing, but good content is best of all.
Fortunately, it’s also easier than ever to fill your site with page after page of sticky content, each of which contains ad units and opportunities to earn revenue.
The most obvious way to create content is of course to write it yourself.
Pick a subject you like and pour your heart out. If you know everything there is to know about video games, you could set up a site stuffed with reviews, news and walkthroughs, and write all the articles yourself. Your AdSense units will give you ads related to gaming and as long as they’re positioned properly and look right they should give you more than enough revenue to fund your video gaming habit and then some. You can do the same thing for any topic you wanted.
But remember, if you’ve created your site to make money, then writing the content yourself means that you’re working for that money. When you count your revenues, you have to factor in the time and effort it took you to make those revenues.
That’s one of the reasons that many people look for other, easier ways to get content around their ads. (The fact that they just don’t like writing is another good reason.) Fortunately, there’s plenty of ways of creating effortless content and some of them are even free.
8.2 Making Bucks With Blogs
Writing blogs isn’t exactly effortless, but it is something a lot of people do for fun and because they’re updated regularly, Google loves them. If you’re going to write a blog anyway, then you should certainly be making money out of it.
The biggest challenge when writing a blog is getting ads that give you good revenues. Because your entries are going to be talking about all sorts of different things, there’s a chance that you’re going to get ads on all sorts of random topics.
That’s fine, unless your ads are barely giving you enough revenue to pay for the blog.
If you find that you’re getting lots of ads related to “blogs” for example,
instead of what you’re blogging about, you can try changing the meta name in your template. Delete the <$Metainfodata$> tag and replace it with your own keywords and description:
Make sure that your blog has plenty of keywords and use lots of headlines containing key phrases, repeating them throughout the blog.
Above all though, make sure that your blog has plenty of text. It might be fun to stuff your pages with pictures of friends, family and pets but Google can’t read them and you’ll end up with public service ads instead of revenue.
8.3 Adding AdSense To Your Blog
Not all blog sites use the same template so how you add AdSense to your blog will depend on the company you’re using.
For users of Blogspot.com, which is owned by Google, you can put the ads in the template section of the site:
" title="external link">
<$BlogItemTitle$>
You can see on my own blog at http://www.joelcomm.com how I put ads
directly above my text. http://crayfish-info.blogspot.com does the same. The ads here are centered above the
break tag to add a gap between the head and Google and help his ads to stand out.
To do the same thing to your blogspot blog, click “Change Settings” on the Dashboard and then click “Template Tab.” Somewhere on the page, below the CSS material, you should find a section of code that begins”
<$BlogDescription$>
The code should then look like this:
http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
Before uploading, check the preview to make sure that the ads are where
and how you want them, then “Save Template Changes” and “Republish” to refresh the blog.
Of course, you don’t have to place AdSense directly above the text. Another option is to embed the ads within the text so that they appear after particular entries. That would limit you to three entries per page (if you wanted an ad unit after each entry) but it could increase your click-throughs.
8.2 Old Content
Blogs have to be written all the time, but if you’ve ever written anything in
the past, don’t just let it gather dust on your shelf. Give your old work a new lease of life by throwing it onto the Web!
For example, “Low Fat Linux” by Bob Rankin was written years ago. You may be able to find it on Amazon.com, but it’s not likely that many people are buying it because you can read the entire book for free at www.lowfatlinux.com.
Bob’s content has done its job of selling copies. Now it’s doing a second job, selling clicks to ads.
What have you got lying around that could be earning you money?
Fig. 8.1 Bob Rankin makes money from old content. Note the position of his ads. They’re prominent but could he get more clicks by putting them on the right? He could also have added an AdLink unit above the list of links on the left.You might have an ebook of your own that isn’t selling very well. Instead of attempting to sell your ebook for $19.95, why not turn it into web pages and make it available for free for all to enjoy? Paste your AdSense code on the pages and you may make more from the ads than from sales of your ebook. Repurposing old content is a fantastic way to draw water from your own well.
8.3 Volunteer Writers
To use old content, you have to have content in the first place. If you don’t happen to have any out-of-print books that you’ve written lying around — and you don’t feel like writing something new — another option is to ask people to write for your site for free.
Lots of people like writing. Just look at Amazon. They didn’t pay a penny for all those book reviews. Their users write them for free and Amazon benefits. When I started www.WorldVillage.com, I didn’t have money to pay the people who reviewed software for me. Instead, I contacted the game companies and received complimentary copies of their computer games, which I then forwarded to a staff of volunteer writers. The agreement was that they would provide me with a written review of the game and they would keep the game as payment. I’ve got dozens of game reviews that
bring users to my site and get them clicking on my ads. I didn’t pay a penny for them but years later they continue to generate revenue for me.You don’t have to use reviews though. Whatever the subject of your website, you can add a line asking people to send in their thoughts and comments. You can just say something like: “We want YOU! We want your thoughts, articles and comments. Send your submissions to editor@yoursite.com and we’ll post them here.”
You can then create a whole new set of pages for your users’ submissions and put AdSense on each one of them.
8.4 Build Thousands of Pages with Other People’s Content
What is the focus of your web site? Is it all about parenting? Do you help
people with their finances? Does your newsletter introduce people to new
web sites? Or is your focus on the legal field? Regardless of your niche, you can benefit from taking advantage of one of the little-known secrets of AdSense experts… FREE syndicated articles.
Many writers want nothing more than to have their work published and read. Syndicated content is a dream-come-true for writers AND publishers. For the writer, it exposes their work to a larger audience. And for the publisher (that’s you!), it means more quality content for your site. You might not be aware that there are literally THOUSANDS of articles available online which you can easily add to your web site!
Of course, the trick is knowing where to find these articles. Below is a list that can get you started by showing you where you can find over 30,000 articles that are ready to be placed on your own web site.
Please note that each site has its own restrictions and rules for using its
content. In all cases, you must leave the author’s name and web site link intact. Some sites require that you also link back to the site where you found the article. This is critical! Remember that while you are allowed to use the articles on your pages, the content is still property of the author. Please give credit where credit is due!
You may wish to publish articles only relevant to your topic, or you may wish to become a publishing powerhouse, adding thousands of new pages to your site. Regardless of how you wish to approach it, here are a few sites that provide you with thousands of FREE articles that you can republish on your web sites.
EzineArticles.com
http://www.ezinearticles.com
A fantastic resources featuring over 21,000 articles covering a huge range of topics. However, they do have a limit of 25 articles/year for each site. Look through the categories and you can select some gems.
DotComWomen.com
http://www.dotcomwomen.com/free-content.shtml
Nice selection of articles targeting women.
John Watson
http://members.tripod.com/buckcreek
John offers his stories for site owners to enjoy and place on their sites.
ValuableContent.com
http://www.valuablecontent.com/
The site name delivers as promises. Dozens of categories with hundreds of articles for you to publish. Marketing, business, humor, internet, legal, computing, sports, travel and many more.
Patricia Fripp
http://www.fripp.com/articleslist.html
Patricia Fripp is a businesswoman, marketer and motivational speaker. Her site offers over one hundred articles perfect for any business-oriented site.
ArticleCity.com
http://www.articlecity.com
This one is a source of articles that will keep you busy for weeks on end.
ArticleCity offers over 12,000 articles that you can place on your site. If the topic exists, you can bet that this site will have an article on that topic. I recommend spending a great deal of time selecting articles for your site here.
Want to find more? Simply do a Google search for "free articles" and see
what turns up. Fine tune your search for your topic to find articles relevant to your site, such as “free parenting articles” or “free financial articles”.
Now that you know where to find free content, you can build hundreds or
thousands of keyword relevant pages and place your AdSense code on them to generate more revenue.
8.5 Add Public Domain Works To Your Site
One of the best kept secrets of free content comes in the form of Public
Domain works. Basically, these are books, articles, recordings and pictures whose copyrights have expired. Since they have not been re-registered with a copyright, they enter the public domain. What does that mean? It means ANYONE (including you) can publish, re-publish and/or sell the works without paying a commission to anyone!
Think about this. You can build a site with HUNDREDS of pages just by publishing one public domain book on your site! Think of all the AdSense impressions you can deliver. The possibilities are endless.
I have two sources that you will want to investigate to find Public Domain works that you can begin using immediately
Idea #1 — Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg is the oldest producer of free electronic books on the
Internet. Their collection of more than 15,000 eBooks was produced by
hundreds of volunteers. As of this writing, the top 10 most popular works on Project Gutenberg are:
1. The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci by Leonardo da Vinci
2. Project Gutenberg "10K" DVD
3. How to Live on 24 Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett
4. The Art of War
5. Ulysses by James Joyce
6. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
7. Project Gutenberg "Best Of" CD August 2003
8. How to Speak and Write Correctly by Joseph Devlin
9. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
10. Grimm's Fairy Tales by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
Check out their entire library at http://www.gutenberg.org/
Please note that while you may republish these works on your site, you are not allowed to resell the works themselves.
The downside of using works from Project Gutenberg is that hundreds of other people may already be using them. You might opt for less popular works in order to get better search engine placement.
Idea #2 - The Lost Files
Created by Russell Brunson, The Lost Files is a
subscription-based service that provides the latest works to enter the Public Domain. In other words, he keeps you posted of new books and articles before everyone else gets their hands on them!
Here is a list of some titles available to members:
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