Make Money Online from Adsense

Making money from Adsense is probably the most widespread way of making money online - this is an old post but is probably still relevant.




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If you ever wander over to the Google Adsense forum one of the questions that comes up time and time again is 'How can I get/increase my revenue using Adsense ?' And one of the most popular searches on Google is 'how can I make money online ?'



Well hopefully I can provide you with some useful information that will allow you to increase your revenue !



[Note : If you want to cut to the chase you can scroll down 7 paragraphs (I got carried away!) - but you will miss my valuable insights into the blogging business and assorted bloggeratis !]



I have noticed that there seem to be two camps when it comes to making money from blogs - camp 'A' where people make no or very little money despite trying hard and spending a lot of time and effort (a couple of dollars a day maximum) (I am in this camp in case you were wondering) and camp 'B' where people make thousands/hundreds of thousands/millions every day/week/month (delete as appropriate), names in this category which spring to mind are Darren Rowse (Problogger), John Chow, Steve Pavlina, TechCrunch ($150,000 a month apparently) and a variety of people over at forums like earnersforum. As a cynical beginner I am slightly sceptical about some of the claims, but I assume there must be some truth in them. I am just confused, like many people I guess, as to why there should be such a large discrepancy between the haves and the have nots. The people who seem to know what they are doing and who make money in their sleep by merely moving their Adsense ads. from one corner of their screen to the other and the rest who seem befuddled and clueless and who are constantly trying to wheedle the secrets out of the 'cognoscenti'. Of course if people think that you know something that they don't then they may be tempted to visit your site in a desperate search for the 'secret knowledge' thus creating a sort of pyramid selling or multi-level marketing effect, i.e. people visit the site to find out how to make money from websites/blogs and while they are there they click on a few ads. or sign up for some affiliate program, or buy a book or two, thus making money for the guy who is supposedly telling you how to make money, but is in fact telling you to go off and create a website just like his so that people will come along looking for your 'secret' and click on your ads.. For example I have had a good look around Problogger to see how he 'did it', but I very much doubt that he has been checking out what I've been getting up to! Problogger does of course have some useful information, as he has a camera review site, but I suspect most people to his sites are looking for information on how to monetize their own sites.



When you read the blogs of 'succesful' bloggers to find out how they do it, you end up with a vague idea that you need 'high quality content' (although to tell the truth I see precious little of it around) or you need to work your 'ad placement' or SEO optimization (directories, swarms, communities, you scratch my back I'll scratch yours) and of course you need to build your traffic by writing 'quality content' so that people feel obliged to come back to your blog again and again or link to it, because you 'give good content'.



It should be noted however that you must not write stuff just to get people on your blog so they will then click on the ads and make you some dosh for your efforts, no sirreee! There is among some bloggers an almost religious zeal about serving the community, doing good, providing useful/useless/inaccurate or downright dangerous information etc... At the same time you are also advised to 'blend' the ads into the site so that they are barely noticeable. Lol - you gotta smile sometimes. Then any money that you make is just reward for all your good work/karma or whatever.



I can't help feeling that there is something wrong, or possibly even ever so slightly hypocritical, with this model. People trying to make money from blogs can't stick up a big notice saying 'click on these ads. before you enter!', as clearly people would be so disgusted they would just hit the back button. Yet they are not averse to letting people know they are making a small fortune just by writing a couple of articles a day (how many journalists make the sort of money some bloggers apparently make?).



It would seem to me that if bloggers are making vast amounts of money, journalists would be better off quitting their day jobs and joining them. They would probably get a wider audience on the Internet and make more money at the same time for a lot less work.



I digress, but you get the picture. There is a well-known businessman in the UK called Alan Sugar. He started off as a market trader then created a company called Amstrad and made his fortune selling consumer electronics (PCs, printers, faxes, videophones etc...) One day he said he was sick and tired of hearing company executives claiming all they wanted to do was serve the public by providing them with 'quality products', as if they were in business to be philanthropists. Sugar said "Our motto at Amstrad is 'We want your money!'"



This I suspect is the motivation for the vast majority of bloggers who put ads. and affiliate links on their sites. They want your money. Not 'your' money literally, because usually it's some advertiser's money. But in the end it is your money, of course, because companies merely put up the prices of the goods to include their advertising costs. Providing useful information is of course 'useful', but the purpose of this information is to attract readers and thereby make money, like TV programs which are there not to entertain or inform the audience, but to attract as many people as possible to see the ads. that are paid for by their sponsors. On some sites you do sometimes find some 'useful' information but 'useless' information often seems to serve the same purpose. You merely have to re-define 'useless' as 'useful'.



So if you're reading this you presumably want to know how to increase your Adsense revenue. Well here is some 'useful' information I have come across which like I said at the beginning will hopefully help you increase your revenue. The guy I got it from says that within 2 days he increased his revenue 4-fold, from 40 cents a day to $1.60 a day. He actually said 400% but his maths ain't too good ! It's really only 300% but I'll let him off that one, as the increase is nevertheless impressive even if the amounts are pretty paltry (not poultry as I read on one blog! [Lord give me strength]).



So I for one am going to follow his advice and see if I can increase my $1 a month to $4 !



This is how it is done :-





Put an embedded 728×60 link unit just under the header image,

Put a 120×600 link unit in the sidebar (he didnt' say which sidebar, but it is generally accepted that the left-hand sidebar is better) and

Embed a 250×250 link unit in every post.

Make the colours match the blog itself (so that cunningly the ads. look like part of the content you have created [hehehe])

Then worry about getting the traffic in.

So I am off to do it and I will keep you, and me, posted as to the results (or not) thereof.



[EDIT : Well after much fiddling I have managed to do it, almost. The 728 x 60 no longer seems to exist so I chose 468 x 60, the link unit in the sidebar was OK. The difficult part was getting the 250 x 250 in the body of the post automatically (without having to put it in manually for each and every posting), at the bottom of the post. Fortunately I found a post explaining how it can be done for the new blogger, congratulations to the guy who worked it out, I will be putting up another post later today or tomorrow with acknowledgement to him and also explaining how it is done and how I tweaked it a bit further. I may also try and tweak it a bit further still to see if I can move the ad. to a different spot in the body so check back later (it's 14:00 UK time on Saturday 24 March 2007 at the moment - EDIT : Check out my post 'How to Incorporate Adsense Ads. directly into your Text']

How to Make Money Online - Michael Arrington Makes $150,000 a month from Techcrunc

You want to know how to make money online then take a look at Techcrunch - $150,000 a month (2007) is serious money from a blog ! But apparently that's what Michael Arrington makes with TechCrunch blog. Mr Arrington created TechCrunch in June 2005 and it has been so successful he now has five full-time writers and five part-timers. He used to be a corporate lawyer (until he saw the light !) specializing in venture capital start-ups and makes use of his connections to write his blog, but even so $150,000 a month from advertising revenue is a lot of advertising and a lot of clicks on those pesky little ads.! http://www.businessinnovation.cmp.com/articles/strat_061215pg2.jhtml




He says “I don’t cover news unless it’s interesting. I write stories companies don’t want me to write”. He also operates on rumor and insider information, which may be illegal in stocktrading, but not here . He also says the secret is to write passionately about something you love. So now you know, except I suspect there's other stuff he ain't letting on about too.



According to other bloggers his success is based on the fact that he found a niche and exploited it; he gets stories first; his blog actually contains some useful information; his opinions are worth paying attention to; he negotiates special advertising deals (so he's not getting all his money from Adsense or putting all his eggs in one basket - and as a lawyer he is no doubt an expert in negotiating good deals); he has contacts within the industry; his blog has a brand (although it didn't when he started out a year ago). He used to post 3 times a day - but not anymore, as stated above he has people posting for him.



There are apparently other bloggers who make similar amounts - Problogger could be one and Gigaom another (allegedly).



Other factors which may contribute to the success of TechCrunch, Mr Arrington has lots of other businesses on the go and is on the Board of Directors of a number of companies. In addition TechCrunch :

was featured in a front page story in the San Francisco Chronicle

the Financial Times wrote about it in December, 2006.

Michael Arrington was named a 'Web Celeb' by Forbes on January 24, 2007.

he was also named one of the 50 Most Important People on the Web by PCWorld in March 2007.

I have looked at his blogs. They are well put together and certainly look more like websites than blogs but I see nothing so compelling on them that would bring in $150,000 in advertising from people clicking on stuff !, but WTFDIK, I could say the same about many other blogs too. One blogger says he gets 2 million visitors a month, his blog is certainly interesting but even so the numbers are surprising to say the least. I guess the blogosphere is a 'really big place'!



So the way to do it seems to be have something you're passionate about, write about it, make the content interesting (how many times have I read that before!), it also helps if you have a few contacts that can get you information before anyone else has it, and people will be unable to resist, they will simply flock to your site to find out what all the fuss is about !

Make Money Online for Beginners

Statistics are important if you are trying to make money online. You need to know who is visiting your blog and why. Clicky shows you in real time who is looking at your blog.




Clicky is now out of beta since 13 March. It may sound like a strange marsupial that clicks out its messages to warn its human friends of danger, but it's actually a cool new analytics tool that lets you know everything you've always wanted to know about those mysterious silent beings who visit your website or blog. Up until now I've been using dear old Google analytics, but I found the experience strangely unsatisfying. Clicky on the other hand is a breath of fresh air! Whereas Google seem to go out of their way to couch their tools in jargon and to make their programs as confusing as possible, the folks at Clicky have obviously realized that most people just want everything to work and to be simple to understand!



Innovative features include RSS (Clicky are justifiably proud of the fact that they are the only analyzer on the planet that gives you web stats via RSS).







and Spy, it can also distinguish between regular Google search traffic and Google Blog search traffic and has several more features in the pipeline. For me though the best aspect was that I could actually understand what I was looking at !







Another good thing about it, which we can all appreciate, is that it's free if you have less than 1,000 page views a day, which means most of us. If you're rich or you have more than 1,000 page views on average or you just like spending money, fear not they also have a premium service. The whole installation is simplicity itself. I managed it in around 2 minutes and I'm no genius!



Steve Rubel over at Micropersuasion has just installed it, so we are in good company. If you want to give it a go, clicky here Clicky Analytics

Make Money Online Blogging

Here's something you might like to know if you are trying to make money online using Adsense, if you are interested in making money online, especially if you're new to it (like me). Rule No. 1 : Don't shoot yourself in the foot! I have a number of blogs - this one, one on the stockmarket, one on meditation, and until recently one on technology news.




I have Adsense ads on them (you may have noticed them down the side or up on top somewhere) that are supposed to bring in some dough (doh !). The ads are also supposed to be relevant to what the blog is about. However, on my technology site I noticed that all I was getting were Public Service Ads, which may be very useful to someone but were not what I expected.



I tried re-configuring the site, playing about with the layout and the template etc... etc... and got nowhere. I even wrote to Google (yes I was that desperate!) - they sent back their computer-generated response of course (as they all do - Ebay are masters at it) which told me nothing, or rather told me so much as to be totally useless, as it gave me no clue as to what was going on with the ads.



Then I had a moment of insight! Eureka! I remembered that one of my posts was about a company that generates electricity from the stuff that comes out of the rear end of pigs (very successfully too), and that in the post I had not used the word 'manure' or some other scientific term, I had instead gone for the more colourful 's' word :-) (silly me). I realized in my moment of insight that Google possibly doesn't like profanities, or any other unpleasant or vice-related vocabulary and that my blog had been classified by Google's spiders as 'unsuitable' for its ads ! The solution I decided upon was to abandon the blog and create a new one.



It turns out, however, that this was probably a bit of overkill, but as a newbie of course I didn't know this at the time. Apparently this is a common problem with Google's Adsense site rating system and the way round it is to use 'section targeting' . Briefly put "Section targeting allows you to suggest sections of your text and HTML content that you would like Google to emphasize or downplay when matching ads to your site's content"



The main use as far as I was concerned would have been to highlight the offending 's' word and tell Google to ignore it which you do by putting :-





google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore)





into your HTML code, check out the full details over at Google help (see below).



Other people have had similar problems. For example if you put the word orange somewhere in your post, you are liable to get all sorts of ads for mobile phones. There are better examples but I don't want to mention them here for fear of getting on the bad side of Google's spiders again.



You can find a whole load of information (more than you want probably!) over at Google itself, in Google Adsense help do a search on 'Section Targeting'.



So maybe I'll revive my ex-blog and play around with their section targeting to see what pops up! So if you've been getting the Public Service Ads and don't know why, it might be something in your text, which you need to instruct Google to ignore. :-)

A day b4 sessional...

Tommorow's my sessional,2nd sessional of this sem,11th sessional of my btech course.Anyways back 2 square one-tonite.I've got Maths-4 and Electrical Machines 2morw and as usual i m still unaware of most terms used in d book.Still I opened it now-electrical Machines....2nd chapter,DC motor.As a matter of habit I first counted d pages,den selected wat seemed 2 me wud take least time and fetch max marks.So i started wid d motor principle.
(Rewind:scene:exam hall,sessional 1,EM ques Paper:TZP popped into my mind....letters r dancing.....wat r all this things....generator-the only thing i know is de r a nuisance cos wenever crt.is gone and v get happy dat atleast now v wud b saved of doing experiments in electronics lab....these stupid generators r switched on and our dreams of gossiping 4 3 hrs gets shattered.but i promise i'll read 4 next internal 4 sure)
I don't know generator(its not in d portion dis time..will see it at d time of semester-concentrate on present needs),so motor principle:

"It converts electrical 2 mechanical energy"
(wow so simple! water pump).

"Its action is based on d principle that when a current carrying conductor is placed in a magnetic field it experiences a mechanical force whose direction is given by Fleming's left hand rule."
(Well I'm just unable to remind myself what was it that Fleming gave...still continuing...).

"Constructionally, there's no basic difference between a d.c.generator and a d.c. motor"
(ab I've not gone through d.c generator yaar).

"In fact,d same d.c. machine can b used interchangeably as a generator or a motor"
(but which machine!)

"D.C.Motors are also like generators"(not again...please),shunt-wound or series-wound or compound wound."

"It should b noted dat d function of commutator is same as in generator"
(4 god damn's sake,i wanna read motor not generator)..............

sorry it's just too much..I've gone through one whole page and in every alternate line d word generator pops up...which means i've to read generator b4 reading motr...which seriously i'm not going to do now.....so it's just an internal yaar.comeon chill maar....sem ke waqt padh lenge.

Saga of my sessionals!

Act 1:-
Beginning of semester
Scene:-1st day of semester,
Before going to college
(I got up a bit early,took a little extra effort in dressing up,waterbottle,new copies,pens everything arranged)

There's still a few min left 4 the bus to come
Resolutions(I swear I'll keep them this time)
1.I'll go to college everyday i.e. not bunk classes.
2.I won't sleep in classroom till tiffin bell(I usually get up after that)
3.Take notes regularly(6 copies for 6 subjects not 6 in one)
4.read from the very beginning of sem (not end this time)
5.Get good marks in sessionals as well as sem(come on Nish! You can do it!)
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and it goes on - a few ideal ones.


Act 2:-
Before 1st sessional
Scene:- 10 p.m. , sessionals tomorrow at 11 a.m.

Count hours.Oh! more than 12 hrs left.Nothing to worry.Opens books,no notes.All ìn one
Letters dancing,unable to understand anything.
To God:-
Please God ,OK this last time.I swear I'll do well in next internal/sessional.Ok sorry now.
To myself :-
What has happened , this is the 1st sessional.It's fine.There are two more to go.I'll surely do well next time.Now I can't do all this in one day.But I promise,right after this sessional I'm going two work hard.

At 12 p.m.(Oh! there's so much.Well,I need a sleep.I'll get up tomorrow at 4 a.m. & complete.)
Books closed!
Lights off !

Next day:-
Oh ! my God , Its 10:15 , that idiot of my di,didn't wake me.Well,bus will come at 10:30.
Now this mobile, Alarm too didn't go.I'll kill di,I had told her to wake me up.
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And then u know

Act 3 :-
Before 2nd sessional
I should have learnt but then you know I was so busy(doing what God knows).Anyways , there's still time.

After turning a few pages
Can't do it yaar.(Now, no need to sulk Nish! It's just a sessional after all ).And its best of two,I'll do next time really.Just this one time God.

Act 4 :-
Before 3rd(final) sessional
You know what di,our college closes after the 3rd sessional,means really its officially closed.So you know the papers of 3rd sessional are not going to be checked.
Arey! I know for sure,
You see, there's no one of us who'll go & check the marks.So why should the teachers check.They'll put some marks and send.Now, that's if its not going to be checked then why should I read.And you know me, I don't get satisfied reading tid-bits ,formulae.I've got to know my subject and that needs time which I don't have.So I'll just start from the beginning (but after sessional)and do well(once and for all) in this semester.Ok.
So no need of wasting time now.Chal I am feeling a bit sleepy.
Good night di ............................

Apna Bollywood!

Kuch Kuch Hota Hai definitely.We are 'Indian' by heart n soul. And so, chahe koi kuch bhi kahe,apnaBollywood'll always reign , even though we (an elite class which watches hollywood movies as well!) know dat they(apna bollywood) have got less substance (than their counterparts) and more of masala,over-dramatic tantrums and pretty exaggerated emotions,not to mention those who-gives-a-hell-bout-lyrics tracks. But even with all these vices they manage to emerge out victorious!

You know what, it's cos there is something (don't ask me wat 'cos i'm a victim too!), something that is wonder,beauty and magic blended together, add a few humorous dialogues, few emotional scenes (which would make us cry) and lo and behold bollywood reigns!

Maybe 'cos India is the land of spices so quite naturally our movies will have spices in somewhat regular quantities.And moreover we grew up watching these stuffs, identifying ourselves with those next-to-impossible romantic scenes. I watched movies like Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Hum Aapke Hain Kaun before I started reading Mills n Boons, so even though I love ball dances, candle light dinners, still there's a different magic in our very own sarson ke khets, white salwars, sea beaches.You remember the way Madhavan treats Dia Mirza in RHTDM, with paanipuri,taking her on cycle-very much Indian huh! And ya how can I forget that it was Bollywood who first put this notion into our head that rain is romantic (obviously our parents didn't teach us that!).

Sometimes I wonder whether these things taught us to dream or our dreams were portrayed in movies.It works both way round. So thats it, I love bollywood.
Oops! there are things one just can't leave........