Adsense Earnings, Tips, and General Thoughts

I got several questions from the readers of this blog on how my Google earnings do versus my expectations, some complaints that the earnings drop significantly down from the beginning of the year, and some requests to share useful tips on how to boost the Adsense earnings from blogging.

As you probably know, revealing the Adsense earnings and statistics is not allowed by the program rules, so trying to follow them, I will just mention some general trends:

1. Being in the blogging business from 2007, I should admit that my Adsense earnings are slowly climbing up, however not as fast, as I would like it to do. It is still a good side income and source of inspiration and self-realization, so, overall I am quite pleased with the general outcomes.
2. At the end of the year, I have lost one of my blogs, and all the efforts to get it restored failed so far. As soon as I understood, what the reason for the ban was, I actually stopped any additional appeals. The blog was devoted to the Online MBA, and it was totally my fault that it was banned. The reason for the ban was simple – I used to post my own selected study papers as samples for the blog on how they should be written, while publishing student papers is forbidden by the Google Adsense rules. Learning through mistakes…
3. The income from the beginning of the year is indeed slightly lower than expected. There are several reasons, which might contribute to that:
1. When the blog, I mentioned above, has been banned, the entire account got blocked. As it was during my ski vacation, with no Internet, it took me about a week, till I have learnt about the incident and restored my account. All my Blogger blogs were inaccessible for a week, and that is not a good way to treat your faithful readers and visitors.
2. After the shopping season, investments in advertising may go down, so it is understandable the cost of the click decrease.
3. Overall, I observed the rough trend of dropping earnings for the period from January to April, with gradual increase from beginning of April through the end of December. Note that it might not be a global trend, since other program users report different results. I guess, it depends on the niche you are working, the structure of the blog, and on some other details.
4. In spite of the earning decrease, the amount of unique visits per day is steadily growing, so there is a good chance, that these visits’ monetization is just matter of time.
5. In terms of advices and recommendations, I am not sure that I have enough knowledge and experience to share them with broad public. By simple googling, you can find tons of useful, and not so useful advices.

I will just offer you several general, but fairly reasonable tips from Ryan on the Adsense business arrangements:

a.       Be Committed To Your Adsense Business.
Many publishers never see their Adsense business as a real business but rather a virtual fun. In order to succeed you need to be a 100% committed. Take your online business seriously as you would with your offline business. Be professional, track your progress and never make the same mistake twice. Sometimes, novices have the fallacy that their online actions stay transparent and unseen. Well, you better be careful because everything is tracked and consequences are lurking.

b.      Stay Within The Circle
Use the latest Adsense tools and software for your business. The super Adsense earners are always very smart. They apply the services of these tools first and dump them when they get ineffective. These tools serve as their secret weapon and that is why they must get hold of it first.

c.       Choose the right Keywords
A lot of publishers go for those keywords that have high payout range with too much competition. They might get lucky every now and then. But the mega Adsense earners always look out for those less competitive keywords and build a lot of sites with them. It pays more on the long run.

d.      Start With An Umbrella
In order to be more focused and effective, you need to start with a broad subject which you can easily break down. Choosing a broad niche and breaking it down makes your work concentrated and allow for flexible connection between your sites or blogs. This way you also keep your visitors longer into your site.

e.      Keep It Simple
Make your sites or blogs simple and easy to navigable. A slick home page with clear links always predisposes the visitors positively and you reduce the bounce rate of your site.

f.        Purpose
Do not build a site without a purpose. Your site cannot be everything to everybody. It has to be narrowed down to a topic. Target a certain group of people with common interests. They are going to be your audience in the long term.

g.       Consistency
Track your success and repeat what works. Building just a site is not enough. You have to build to exhaust all possible sub-niches within your broad subject. Then chose another subject and continue your work. Your audience will appreciate the valuable content you give to the web.

Google Instant Search and Marketing Concerns

Google recently introduced their “Instant Search” feature which starts to populate search results the instant you start typing into the search box. At the same time, Google suggests alternate search terms as you type to help narrow your search without forcing you to enter entire search phrases.

The main idea behind this new feature is to save users a few seconds on each search and cut down on misspellings for search terms, business names or product names. Users may not notice much difference in their overall experience, however, for small businesses and online entrepreneurs, this new search method carries a few interesting ramifications.

Since Google clearly ranks as the “900 lb. Gorilla” of the online marketing world, acting as de facto gateway to the Web for millions, any change to their system makes businesses nervous. Many have expressed concern that this latest change will force users of Google’s AdWords program, the search giant’s lucrative pay-per-click marketing arm, to pay for more expensive keywords.

They reason that since the most popular search terms appear in the search box first, and that most people will opt to accept Google suggestions, those most popular searches will carry the highest click prices. In other words, businesses that depend on Google to show their ads fear that Google will force them to pay more money by recommending more expensive keyword searches.

But that might not be a real future!

The suggested search term feature actually appeared on Google quite a while ago, and all that’s really changed is Google starts to display the actual search results AS you type. With the old 2-step process, Google made suggestions as you typed and then you clicked the search button to see the search results.

Instant Search just creates a FAST way to see the results for different search variations without forcing you to click the button each time to see those results. This process makes it simple to see the results, change your mind, and not wait for the results each time you change the phrase.

Most people always start with a broad search and then narrow it by including more descriptive terms (often called “long-tail” keywords) to better find what they want. This new process won’t change that.

In fact, it will give people more chances to refine their searches on-the-fly by providing Google more details of what they want. Instead of posing a threat, I believe this new Instant Search feature creates an opportunity for any business to perform high-speed market research to look for possible opportunities and trouble spots.

The following four steps will help any small business use Google’s new feature for instant results.

1. Go to Google and search for your business as if you were a consumer.

2. Make a note of the keyword suggestions Google offers as you type.

3. See if those suggestions give you any ideas for your own marketing (since they should represent the most popular phrases).

4. Note which competitors show up and where you appear in relation to them.

These 4 simple steps make a great barometer for taking a read on your local market, fast.

Who appears consistently?

Who shows up hit-and-miss or every once in a while?

Who shows up in Google Maps?

If your competitors show up and you don’t, you’ve got some work to do!

Bottom line: as a small business, use Google’s new Instant Search to quickly get the big picture when it comes to your business, industry, and local competition.

Source and Additional Information:

 http://smallbusinessmarketingweekly.com/

http://www.webguild.org/20100909/google-instant-implications-for-users-advertisers-website-operators

http://searchenginewatch.com/3641319

8 Main Providers for RSS Feeds Monetization

RSS feed is a popular data format used for serving users frequently updated content and they offer great opportunities to publishers who are looking for alternative systems to generate revenue from their original content.

An RSS (most commonly expanded as "Really Simple Syndication") document (which is called a "feed", "web feed", or "channel") includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place. 

With the growing popularity of RSS feed-based syndication, many Internet publishers became concerned that subscribers to their RSS feeds would not be exposed anymore to the advertising on their web pages, as some readers could now read all of their content inside their RSS reader. In this light, some decided to publish only a short part of their articles in their RSS feeds so that those interested would click through to their site to read the rest of the content.

While initially this approach has given good results to those using it, recently more and more online publishers have decided to provide the full content of their articles inside their RSS feed not to alienate those readers on the move or offline who were frustrated by their inability to read the full content of the articles without clicking through to the main site.

Several years ago, several companies started to offer the opportunity to automatically insert ads inside RSS feeds. These RSS feed monetization services enable publishers to place ads inside their RSS feeds and earn money when these are read or clicked upon.

The revenue models offered by these RSS feed monetization services are different ones: they span from CPC, CPM to flat rate plans; additionally, publishers can choose between contextual text-based ads, banners and interstitial ads, which are often completely customizable.

Consider the following points, while exploring the topic of RSS Feed Monetization and developing a relevant strategy:

• Type of ads: the typology of advertisement offered, whether contextual or random text links, banners, interstitial ads, etc.
• Every how many posts the ad is shown: the exact positioning of ads within the RSS feeds.
• Ability to select and approve the ads: the possibility for the publisher to choose which ads can be included and which cannot.
• Stats about ads performance: the availability of a control panel that allows the publisher to monitor the revenue and performance of ads within RSS feeds
• Rate: the method of payment offered to the publisher, whether CPC (Cost Per Click), CPM (Cost Per Mille – which estimates the cost per 1000 views of the ad) or flat rate
• Requirements: special requirements that the publisher needs to have in order to insert ads in her RSS feeds (which might correspond to a high authority, pagerank and number of RSS feeds subscribers).

Main Providers

Google AdSense for Feeds

AdSense for feeds allows web publishers to earn by placing targeted Google ads in their feeds. AdSense for feeds works the way the rest of the AdSense program works: by delivering ads that are relevant to your content and your readers.

Like other AdSense ads, feed ads can be paid in two ways: by click, or by impression. Feed ads can also be targeted in two ways.

• contextually targeted to the content in your feed
• targeted by advertisers to your specific feed when you set up an ad placement

You can control the frequency, appearance, and positioning of Google ads in your feeds. The ad size is automatically determined based on where your feed is appearing. You can get detailed instructions on how to start using the program on Google AdSense website.

Kannodle

Kanoodle is a pay-per click network which includes hundreds of thematic ad categories from which you can freely choose. Through BrightAds RSS, Kanoodle’s content-targeted sponsored links will be inserted directly into site owners’ RSS feeds within posts or as individual posts, with relevancy of the ads assured through Kanoodle’s topic-based approach. You can sign up for the partnership in the program from the company website.

Pheedo

Pheedo’s FeedPowered advertising platform converts your RSS feeds into rich, dynamically updating advertising that engages your audience. Pheedo retrieves your RSS feed several times an hour and updates your FeedPowered advertisements with any newly published items. With Pheedo FeedPowered you can also monetize your syndicated video content. Get started, signing for the Publisher section on the company website.

TextLinkAds

TextLinkAds provides a service to bloggers called Feedvertising, which allows them to run text link ads in their RSS feed. Whether the ads come from TextLinkAds, your own in-house efforts, or your affiliate links the choice is always up to you. Feedvertising is currently available only for WordPress 2.0+ users with more blogging platforms coming soon. There are no variable CPM rates or cost-per-click systems: publishers get paid according to a predictable flat rate pricing. Join the Publishers program, signing on the company website.

MediaFed

MediaFed is a service that lets you generate revenue from your feeds by inserting suitable advertising in the feed items. MediaFed ad placement system automatically inserts adverts into your feeds in one of two ways: either adverts are inserted every x number of articles where you control the value of x, or by matching keywords to your article contents to target relevant advertising. The program is mostly oriented on the European customers. You can inquire about the potential partnership, sending email, posted on the company website.

FeedShow

FeedShow is a web-based RSS feed reader and first the online aggregator to remunerate publishers theough Google AdSense. Revenues are generated by clicks on the displayed ads. FeedShow gives the publishers 50% of the revenues generated by the targeted ads. When displaying ads, both your Google AdSense codes and Feedshow codes are used, so that the number of ads displayed for the publishers account and the FeedShow account are the same. Google and the AdSense program will then pay the editors directly without any interaction with FeedShow. Sign in for the program on the company website.

AdGenta

AdGenta is a service that allows you to choose which advertisements to put onto your website or in RSS feeds by selecting specific keywords. You have total control over the advertisements your visitors see, because they are no longer bound to the content, but to your personal choice. Besides, there is no approval process or minimum traffic requirement to use AdGenta. You can join the program by signing in from the company website.

ThankYouPages

ThankYouPages is a service that allows publishers to insert advertising into the links contained within their RSS feeds. When a user clicks a link from your RSS feed, they will are shown a short, fully branded, interstitial advertisement between the click of the link, and the final destination. You have control over the look, feel, and format of the page, as well as how often offers appear to your user. If you are interesting to join a program, you need to complete first the ThankYouPages application process at http://www.thankyoupages.com/join_now/.

Sources and Additional Information:

http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2007/03/25/rss_feeds_monetization_tools_a.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS

https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=20012

https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=99647

http://www.doshdosh.com/monetize-rss-feed-advertising/

Blogging for profit might get you in trouble!

Does writing a blog constitute work? That appears to be the position of the New York State Department of Labor, which recently declared a laid-off attorney ineligible for unemployment benefits because she was bringing in $1.30 a day from blog ads.

Earlier this year Karin--a 2008 graduate from the University of Virginia School of Law who asked that her last name not be published--was laid off by a New York City law firm six months into her job.

Karin applied for state unemployment benefits and began receiving $405 a week. Unable to afford her rent in New York, she moved to St. Louis, Mo., and began searching for paralegal jobs while preparing to take the Missouri bar exam (it is common, and legal, for the unemployed to receive jobless benefits from the state where they last worked, even after moving elsewhere.)

In April, Karin started a blog, called STL Meal Deals, where she wrote about local restaurant promotions. Since she received no payments from the businesses she mentioned, Karin decided to try generating some income by signing up for Google AdSense, a service run by the Web search giant that pays bloggers to host ads on their sites. Google sends bloggers checks when their earnings hit $100--a level that took Karin three months to achieve.

When the check came in, Karin realized she had a legal obligation to disclose the income to New York State, even though doing so might reduce the weekly unemployment benefits she received. According to state regulations, anyone receiving unemployment benefits, who works one day and earns less than $405, will have his check for the week reduced by 25%. Someone who earns more than $405 in a single week becomes ineligible for any payments for that week.

It was after Karin notified the Department of Labor of her AdSense income that the confusion started. New York cut her weekly benefits to $300 and sent her a form to fill out and send to her employer. Unsure whether Google was considered her employer, Karin called the DOL to get an answer. She says a state official told her she shouldn't have claimed the AdSense payment as income because it was "residual," meaning a payment made for services previously rendered. New York does not regard residual income as employment pay that could make someone ineligible for unemployment benefits.

The call prompted Karin to file another claim with the state and to attach a letter stating she was running a blog and that the Google AdSense revenue it generated was her only source of income. A few days later, she received a letter from the DOL informing her that it had launched an investigation of her "business" to determine whether she remained eligible for benefits.

Karin called the DOL again and says this time she was told that the state considered her self-employed, which would require her to claim earnings each time she received an AdSense check. She called back to get another opinion, and Karin says this time she was informed by yet another state official that she needed to declare that she was working every time that she updated her blog.

Meanwhile, New York State has informed Karin that she is ineligible for unemployment benefits while its investigation is ongoing.

Several phone calls by Forbes to the Department of Labor failed to yield a clear response as to whether New York State regards Google AdSense payments as residual or self-employment income. Such payments are "uncharted territory" and questions of eligibility are "very case specific," according to a DOL spokesman.

Karin, meanwhile, has pulled AdSense from her Web site. "It's frustrating that nobody seems to have a straightforward answer," she says. "It's even more frustrating that trying to work and generate additional income, while being straightforward and honest about that income, is treated with suspicion and punished."

Her total AdSense income: $238.75!

Google, for its part, seems to want to stay out of it. In a statement, the company said, “Google AdSense revenue supports many publishers and bloggers with a revenue stream from online advertising. We're not able to comment on how various states choose to classify this revenue for purposes of unemployment benefit eligibility."

The company does send 1099 statements to anyone who earns $600 or more in AdSense income within a calendar year. The recipient, in turn, is supposed to declare this as miscellaneous income when filing his federal tax returns. Google does not report to the IRS, or issue 1099s, for AdSense income of less than $600 per person.

So is blogging work only if you make a certain amount of money? New York, at least, doesn’t see it that way. “You are considered employed on any day when you perform any services - even an hour or less - regardless of whether you get paid for that day,” said a spokesman from the Department of Labor.

Sources and Additional Information:

http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/07/blogger-google-unemployment-personal-finance-google-adsense.html

http://blogs.forbes.com/moneybuilder/2009/10/08/blogger-loses-unemployment-benefits-after-making-1-a-day-in-adsense-pay/

Tweaking Color Schemes of AdSense Blocks with Portable Freeware

When you plant Google AdSense ads blocks on your blog or website, you might need to tweak the suggested colors in your template to fit better to your page. In some cases, you want it to blend in the page design; in some cases, you want it to be as bold as possible. Finding the appropriate colors might be challenging, especially, if you want it to be exact match. Identifying the type of color can be very difficult, but with Just Color Picker, you can get the exact color value of any pixel. Jpicker is small, portable, and absolutely free utility that will assist you in picking the right colors.

After starting to use the utility for Google AdSense ads tweaks, I found it very convenient for other design purposes, as tweaking my Blogger templates. The initial experiments show very interesting patterns, proving that even small changes in the sites GUI might be useful for the overall site effectiveness.


Features

• Five formats of color value: HTML, RGB, HEX, HSB/HSV, and HSL.
• 3x, 9x and 15x zoom of any screen area.
• Picked colors history. History saving function for future use of the picked colors. Removal of colors from the history.
• RGB and RYB color wheels to display triads and complementary colors.
• Two harmonious color finders. With this feature you can easily pick harmonious colors, for example, for your web site. Just choose your favorite color and the color picker will find the best colors harmoniously matched with yours.
• RGB & HSV color mixers to edit a picked color.
• Gradient between two latest-picked colors to allow you to pick a color from a wide range between the chosen colors.
• Optional stay-on-top.
• User-defined hotkey to capture color info (Alt+X by default).
• Copying the color value or its selected part to the clipboard just by button click.
• No installation required. Just Color Picker is a portable application and can be run directly from a USB stick.
• Multilingual interface Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

Website: http://www.annystudio.com/jcpicker.zip

Download: http://www.ziddu.com/download/4315421/jcpicker.exe.html

AdSense Ads Management Plugin for WordPress Blogs

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If you are using Wordpress, and you care for effective blog monetization with Google AdSense, this plugin must be for you. The plugin Adsense Injection will help you setup AdSense on your Wordpress with no complications.

It only adds your AdSense code into the body of your Wordpress blog and not into the side panels or the footer or the banner area. And you do not have to change any AdSense code or play with files.

This Google AdSense plugin is so easy to use. Say, you are able to edit the template of your blog and you edit the header file and the left sidebar file to include your AdSense Code in there, you then only have to set the limit of the ads that the AdSense Injection script shows in the body of your blog to a maximum of 1. That will automatically hide your AdSense Ads from yourself to avoid accidental clicks, as you choose that in the settings.

You can also change the way the AdSense ads display in your blog posting area and you can change the type of AdSense blocks that are displayed with just one click. Since the AdSense Injection Plugin will show different types of AdSense blocks at random if you choose more than one type of ad, your visitors will not always see the same Ad blocks and this will lead to an increase in your AdSense earnings.

Download plugin: http://www.ziddu.com/download/2111387/adsense-injection-20.zip.html


Additional Reading:
http://gerthough.com/wordpress/how-to-adsense-free-adsense-software-adding-adsense
http://www.reviewmylife.co.uk/blog/2008/07/24/adsense-injection-wordpress-plugin-tweaks/

Create Free Mobile Version of your Blog and Monetize it with MoFuse

Using smartphones and other mobile devices for Internet search is new and growing trend of the Modern World. Blogosphere is adopting quickly, and there are multiple opportunities for the bloggers to create specific mobile versions for their blogs to make easier for readers to access the data and improve readability. The new service MoFuse is offering free and nice solution for all blog owners to bring their blogs to the portable media in the suitable format. Authors claim that it is not the only reason for opening your account at MoFuse. They list some additional points, that at some extent interacts each other and make this effort more valuable:

• Making your readers happy... People want to read your blog on the go!
• Getting new readers... MoFuse will help to promote your mobile blog which will increase traffic.
• Making some money... Mobile ads will provide you with an additional revenue channel from your blog!
• Getting smarter... Our analytics let you see information about your mobile visitors.
• Getting going... More and more of your readers will want your content on their mobile devices!

Signing up to MoFuse is incredibly easy. All you need to do is enter your email and a password and you’re good to go. Creation of 5 mobile blogs and adding mobile badges to them took no more than 10 minutes of my time.

The dashboard is very easy to navigate and the FAQ is pretty good. The first thing you need to do is add your blog feed. All you need to do is add your blog URL and decide what mofuse domain you want (for this blog, I chose a nice address http://blogging.mofuse.mobi/). It’s possible to change this name at a later date as long as the keyword hasn’t been taken away.
After establishing your mobile site, make additional step to monetize it through our revenue sharing program. MoFuse splits the revenue 50/50 with blog owner. All you need to do to enroll is choose which mobile advertising program you want to use on your MoFuse mobile site and enter your ID (I would stick to Google AdSense).

Mobilizing your Blog with MoFuse