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Copyright 2005 Randy Charles Morin
Part of the KBCafe Blog Network.
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Copyright 2005 Randy Charles Morin
Part of the KBCafe Blog Network.
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Google: Electronic Funds Transfer is ready for the big-time! We've been working hard on our payment system, and with our thanks to the thousands of AdSense publishers who took part in our beta test, we're now ready to bring EFT out of beta.
https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=25885
I was finally able to get all my sitemaps working today. But, one sitemap gave me an error, Denied URLs. I clicked on the link and it said "http://www.kbcafe.com/Rmail/?guid=20050915093956 - URL not under Sitemap path". I thought immediate that maybe the capitalization of the URL mattered, but all other URLs submitted had the same capitalization. Any ideas? I guess it's still Beta.
Free to join. Earn up to 20% commission on direct sales. 11 million product in their database. They don't have an API.
About: I wanted to try out Greasemonkey, the Firefox extension which lets you use JavaScript to customize your browsing experience. So I wrote a Greasemonkey script which prevents accidental clicking on your own Google AdSense ads.
http://www.ioerror.us/software/adsense-prevent-clicks/
Randy: Very cool! Might save someone from getting banned.
This is pretty cool. Very much worth it for the Adsense newbie.
http://services.google.com/adsense/breeze/troubleshooting/2059761/index.html
Abdullah Farouk: I wonder, if what Google says is true, then it will always try to show the best paying ads. So, wouldn't it make sense to limit the size, and/or amount of adblocks shown? If Google did show the highest paying ads, then wouldn't a 125x125 block pay better than a leaderboard, in the same place, since it only has one ad?
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=344373
Randy: Let's start with the redundant answer "It depends". Assuming you had two identical pages. Both have one ad, one has the button and one has the med rectangle. The page with the button will likely get a higher CPC. The page with the med rectangle will likely get a higher CTR. The formula you should be concerned with is
earnings = page impressions * ads per page * click thru rate * average price per click
Let's assume page impression is a constant p.
earnings = p * CTR * CPC.
The question is, for my page, will the higher CPC justify the lower CTR. Some pages it will, some pages it won't.
Digital Point: Here's how it works:
JenSense: The official word from Google on Google products and services ads running on AdSense publisher websites:
Ads for Google products and services enter into the auction just like ads from any other advertiser, and clicks/impressions on these ads absolutely do result in payment to publishers.
http://www.jensense.com/archives/2005/09/adsense_ads_for.html
Tarik: We used sitemaps 15 days ago. We submited the sitemap.2 days later deep craw started. After submiting, our traffic from google dropped from 2000 visitor to 200-300 visitors. There were 19000 pages in the index before but now we have 48500 pages in the index traffic is near 400 visitors now. Before submiting we changed our link structure. All pages with rank disappeared. This is normal but how long will we wait? Will there be an increase in the traffic? As our pages in the index increase will our
page rank increase?
Randy: Sitemap is becoming a big problem. Google's sitemap forum is being overrun with help requests, including my own. The above is a case in point. Here, the author made a critical SEO mistake by taking down all his pages with rank. His traffic won't return until he builds up rank on the new pages.
Michael: I've been dabbling with various ways to make money with some small business ventures centered around eBay. The one I am loving the most is the eBay affiliate program. You get paid anywhere from $0.10 to $0.20 for each click-thru from your site to theirs that a user bids on an auction with, and $20.00 to $45.00 for anyone who bids and also registers for the first time.
Yirmumah: For some reason on the main opening page, it still wants to show PSAs.
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=342472
Randy: This is a very common problem. The root cause is almost always stop words. Words, that if used too often, result in zero ads, only PSA or alternates on the page. I'll post a list of stop words, grouped in categories. This is only a small non-authoritive subset of what Google's stop words might include. I've left out some of the more vile stop words, which should be obvious to everyone (f-word, female dog, father-less child, etc).
Google has a new feature in Beta where the publisher can include the text link "Advertise on this site", next to the "Ads by Goooogle" text link. Clicking thru takes you to a page where you can target ads directly at the reference Website.
More from ProBlogger, AskDaveTaylor, Google.
I couldn't find an online Google Sitemap Validator, so I wrote my own.
GoogleGroups: When I submit a sitemap to Google, will Google crawl only pages submitted in the sitemap, or it will crawl all the links from those pages recursively? In other words, should I mention in the sitemap all my dynamic pages, or I can just include one page with all the links to my dynamic pages?
Answer: Yes, Google with treat pages found from your sitemap just like pages it discovers any other way. It will follow links from those pages, subject to the usual restictions from robots.txt etc. You don't have to include all your pages in your site map.
More than a month ago, I started experimenting with Google sitemaps. I create one for the Bad Politics blog. I even submitted some RSS feeds, as the FAQ suggested would work. It still doesn't list any sitemaps. Is this thing on? I also have URL lists, which work with Yahoo! I have tried the URL list with Google sitemap yet. Maybe tomorrow.
https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/stats
Update: I posted in the Google Sitemap forums and sent a bug report directly to Google. I never heard back in the forum, nor via email, but all of a sudden, it's working now. Thanks!
Andrew Goodman: Now it appears Google's stepped up their inclusion of house ads in Adsense creative units. I wonder if publishers get paid for these clicks?
Russell Shaw: Google AdWords or Google AdSense tied to mobile presence? Definitely.
Adwords Crew: To celebrate our birthday, here’s our gift to you: 7 AdWords tips -- tried, tested, and true:
Jason Lee Miller: At the Inside Adsense blog, the support crew disputes the widely held belief that webmasters benefit by blocking low-paying advertisements, calling it a "myth." [cut] But the (almost) general consensus over at professional web forum WebMasterWorld, is that filtering ads is a proven method for increasing AdSense revenue.
Randy: My two cents. I'm more inclined to believe Google than the dwellers of WebMasterWorld. I find that half of the WebMasterWorld dwellers are spewing bad advice and it's that same half that are talking up filtering. It's important to note that Google and their partners split (% varies) the earnings on the Google Content Network. That means it's in Google's best interest to help their Adsense partners make money. On the other hand, this same logic does not bode well for their Adwords partners. As such, when Google talks about how to make money with Adsense, I believe them, but when Google talks about how to make money with Adwords, I ignore them. My 2 cents.
Google: Soon, we'll be changing our AdWords login system to Google Accounts.
https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=24823
Randy: I know many will complain for the sake of complaining, but I have a multitude of Google accounts that I would appreciate merged into one.
CNet: As of June, advertisers had spent $5.8 billion to place ads online this year, a 26 percent increase compared with the first six months of 2004, according to a new report.
http://news.com.com/2100-1024_3-5882670.html
Randy: That's pretty amazing. The Web 2.0 bubble seems to be driven by the demand for Web advertising. This is much better than 1.0 where the bubble was driven by investment frenzy. And more sustainable. Thanks Google!
Mystic: I have no clue why adsense cancelled my account.
Randy: Is there an echo on the Web? No more click-fraud. No more splogs. Three cheers for Google.
Critters: By adding images above the leaderboard it has increased CTR, even though it is now below the fold.
I report any splogs with Adsense ads to Google. I do this by clicking on the Ads by Goooogle link in the offending ad unit and filling out the form. Google has responded by email with a better way of reporting Adsense splogs.
Google Adsense Team: In the future, to allow us to investigate any issues more efficiently, you can email our specialists directly at adsense-abuse@google.com.
ClickZ: Microsoft's MSN has launched its paid search service in France and Singapore, according to the portal's SVP Yusuf Mehdi. [cut] MSN is expected to begin an invitation-only U.S. beta of adCenter next month.
earnings = page impressions * ads per page * click thru rate * average price per click
More page impressions means more money. More ads per page means more money. Bigger CTRs means more money. Higher CPCs means more money. This should all be obvious. But remember...
page impressions = f(ads per page)
Page impressions is a function of ads per page. If you have too many ads, then you'll lose regular readers, which will result in less page impressions.
This user claims that her application for Adsense was denied with the following response from Google.
We did not approve your application for the reasons listed below.
Further detail: Difficult site navigation: When our specialists attempted to review your application, we found that your site was down. Once your site is functioning, we will be happy to reconsider your application.
She hosts on blogspot.com.
http://midiatblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/joking-from-google.html
NYT: Microsoft will unveil Monday its own system for selling Web advertising as it struggles to compete with Google and Yahoo in the expanding Web search business. The system, to be used by MSN, is meant to improve on those of Microsoft's rivals by allowing marketers to aim ads on Web search pages to users based on their sex, age or location.
Admoolah: Trying to increase earning by using the AdSense Competitive Ad Filter to block low paying ads doesn’t make sense. [cut] Trying to outperform Google’s algorithm is next to impossible. Google has much more information on the ads themselves and what works and what doesn’t work.
http://www.admoolah.com/blog/index.php/2005/09/blocking-low-paying-ads/
I've seen and receive emails from too many people who are struggling with Google sitemaps. The result of their improper usage often means less quantity and timely indexing of the Website by Google.
About: Google Publication Ads enables you to place ads in print publications, allowing your advertising to reach an audience that's targeted to the demographics and topics you choose.
http://adwords.google.com/publicationads/login
Randy: Invitation only Beta.
I think I've previously posted a tool for discovering Overture maximum bids, but I found a better URL. Even if you are using Adwords/Adsense, which don't publish their numbers, you can still use the Overture tool to get an idea of the bids prices on Google.
Cosa Aranda asked in an email: My main website is http://www.funponsel.com/blog. I need suggestion especially on the SEO side. It sucks on Google Search Blog, Yahoo (no inbound links) and MSN (low pages indexed).
Randy: Let's take a look.
One thing I did find is that you are not well indexed in Yahoo! [http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/search?p=site%3Awww.funponsel.com]
Yahoo! has a great way for blogs to submit all their blog entries. You simply create a text file that list all the URLs, one URL per line. Here's the URL list [http://www.webvertization.com/urllist.aspx] I created to submit all the Besting Adwords blog entries to Yahoo! Then submit the URL here [http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request].
Blogger Buzz: Our new integration with AdSense lets you signup from within Blogger. And we've added a tool for inserting the ads in your blog (so you don't have to mess around with the HTML).
Robert X. Cringely: Google AdWords algorithm tries to do many things and one of those is to encourage advertisers to pay more for words. [cut] So increasing the amount per word DID increase sales, though not enough to justify the additional cost. Google's revenue per word, of course, went up by 10X. But dropping the price by more than half was greeted by a huge decrease in clicks-through that could only have resulted from some unknown resultant change in GOOGLE's behavior, given that all other variables were constant.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050922.html
Randy: I only quoted the important part, so you might want to read this article to truly understand what is meant by the above. The article starts off a little boring, but it's worth the read. In summary, the author is suggesting that Adwords has a behavioral component that rewards advertisers when they increase their bids and penalize them when they decrease their bids. That is, if you bid 10 cents and got x clicks thrus, then raised your bid to $1 and got more than x clicks thrus, then lowered it back to 10 cents, you'd get less than x clicks thrus.
Quite often, after I help someone, they'll ask "How can I repay you? You want me to click on your Adsense ads?" My response is "No, that's click fraud and you'll only get me banned." If you want to contribute to KBCafe, then feel free to do it in one of two ways.
Big miletone today, as Google has now indexed 200k Webpages at kbcafe.com. If you haven't heard it before, the numbers of pages indexed is a major factor in your Adsense income. I've been testing ExpoActive for the last month or whatever. I gave it impressions here and there and nothing really worked out. My CPM is $0.10. I can't tell you my Adsense CPM, but I will tell you it's grotesquely greater than $0.10. Most of the advertisers paid $0.03 CPC, which I assume is the minimum.
Allan Tsai: After removing all YPN ads and switching back to Adsense, I get a call the next morning from Yahoo (funny, same thing happened with Google). I explained my situation and they confirmed that the better-targeted ads payout less than generic terms (counter-intuitive I know). As a suggestion they said I should try to remove ad targeting to see if it helps with CPC at the expense of CTR.
Randy: Sometimes, relevance doesn't matter. Just serve me the best paying ad.
Inside Adwords: Recently, the AdWords team built an online forum in which AdWords advertisers may search or browse for answers, ask questions, and assist others with AdWords -- 24/7. [cut] This new forum, called AdWords Help, may be found on Google Groups.
CommonSenseTechnology: When using Firefox on XP, the AdSense display flashes at a rapid rate.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/CommonSenseViewsOnTechnology?m=1535
Randy: Has anybody seen this before? It may be related to the Amber Alert javascript ticker.
Inside Adwords: September 23rd, the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. PDT [?] due to system maintenance.
Diane Nassy: Google is pretty closed-mouthed about who is paying what for their ads, and there is no real way to determine which words pay the most per AdSense click. But ah, far away in a parallel universe we find another Pay-Per-Click provider called Overture. It seems that Overture is less sensitive about releasing their top-priced words and anyone who cares to find out what web sites are paying for words and phrases can do so by simply using Overtures tattle-tale special pricing tool.
Earlier this week, I experimented with buying the keyword 'failure' on Google Adwords. I bid $0.01, so my keyword was inactive. To active it, I would have to raise the bid $5.00. Ya right! For fun, I let the ad sit. Turns out, it's been getting impressions and clicks. Today, Adwords said I could activate it for $0.03. I did. I'm the only active bidder. I'm right up there with George Bush and Michael Moore. Fun! I think I blew my entire budget in less than one hour on $0.03 clicks.
Richard MacManus: As a freelancer now, I've begun to think more about how I can maximise my Google Adsense revenues. I'm wondering if you could please give me some advice?
Randy: First I'm honoured. I've been an active reader and linker to Richard's blog for a couple years. Let's start with enumerating what Richard's blog already has.
I don't think I can tell Richard anything about getting interested readers or RSS subscribers. In fact, I'd like to ask him how I might get 4000 subscribers. How did you do it?
What I do notice is that Richard is likely suffering from a-list blogger syndrome. Most of Richard's readers, judging from his high subscriber count and low Alexa rank, are reading his blog via RSS. RSS readers tend to be the last people you'll find clicking on ads. There are two complimentary ways of going about resolving a-list blogger syndrome.
Let me finish with a bunch of tid bits that could help improve Richard's CTR and eCPM.
Michael J. Tsai: Today Google informed me that I’m not allowed to use the word “Mac” in ad copy.
corena: Actually... Adsense IS like sex :
Andy Merret: On several of my blogs I’ve switched to using a serif font for paragraph text, and I’m wondering if it has had an effect on clickthrough rates. [cut] Any experiences? Data?
http://andymerrett.co.uk/weblog/2005/09/20/effect-of-font-style-on-google-adsense
Randy: The theory is that sans-serif has a better CTR. I've never seen data that backs that claim.
Today was another good day for KBCafe. I received more Adsense impressions than any day in two months. Of course, of late, with all my experimenting with different Adsense strategies (lower eCPM), I didn't break my Adsense earnings record. On the other hand, 5 Amazon affiliate orders made up the difference. I don't know how much money I made on the orders, as Amazon doesn't tell you the earnings until the orders are shipped, but it should be enough to make yesterday my best day yet. The best part about yesterday is that Adsense did not make up 99% of my revenues. It's nice to have another source contributing to the topline. The fear that Adsense may not always be as profitable for blogs, is slightly calmed by having another source of revenue. Let me repeat slightly.
WebmasterWorld: Yup, people are conditioned to know that blue=link.
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum89/9465.htm
Update: I converted one page to #0000FF links a day or so ago. CPM more than doubled. I converted two more this afternoon. CPM is rising quickly. This might be the best unknown Adsense trick in the books.
WeblogEmpire: Affective immediately, all affiliate promotions for the Adsense-Secrets program from Joel Comm across Weblog Empire blogs has ceased. [cut] His association and business dealings with [spam blog promoter] Rick Butts for profit leave us with no alternative but to withdraw all mention or promotion of his products.
http://weblogempire.com/2005/09/16/statement-regarding-adsense-secrets/
I created an Adwords Ad Group with the keyword failure. Minimum bid was $5. I bid $0.01. There's currently only one showing sponsored link for this keyword and nothing shows up if you do a sponsored link search for failure.
Update: I got 7 impressions and 0 clicks. Inactive means slowed, not inactive.
Everyday, I'm amazed at some of the bad advice given in Adsense forums on the Web. Recently, I stumbled across the following advice.
Adsense Tips for Maximum CTR: Do not rely on one website. Yes you can make money with one website but try to make as more as possible
Having more than one Website can increase your overall Adsense earnings, but it has nothing TODO with maximizing your CTR. This was part of a list of 10 tips, of which half of the tips had nothing TODO with maximizing your CTR. I won't link to it, because I don't want to give the author Google juice for publishing bad content. Let me add an eleventh Adsense Tip for Max CTR.
#11 - Don't believe every Adsense tip you read.
This is what I call a blog that's not really participating in the blogosphere. If you aren't linking to other people and commenting on their blogs, then why would you expect others to do the same to your blog. This is a critical flaw and is likely the biggest reason that Paul is still sitting at a PageRank of zero. Beyond this one critical flaw, he could also improve in the following areas.
Update: Google Juice removed.
Inside Adwords: To give you the chance to review and activate previously disabled keywords after the launch of our new keyword evaluation system, disabled keywords have remained in your account for the past several weeks. Next week, they'll be deleted. [cut] You don't have to make any changes to prepare for this --- your previously disabled keywords will show up as deleted in your account, and you can still choose to re-enable them.
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2005/09/deleting-disabled-keywords.html
Update: I deleted and re-added all my disabled keywords and they are now all inactive. But, remember inactive doesn't always mean inactive.
AwesomeBlogs: Today i am going to show you one of the ways to “Blend” you google adsense color to fit your blog.
Randy: This will not always work. When you copy and paste from the browser to photoshop, you are taking the color as rendered on the current machine. Not every color code will render in the browser exactly the same on every computer. This would be especially true if your computer's color quality was not set high. The best thing TODO is look at your HTML and CSS source and find out what the actual color code is.
I have many keywords that have always been inactive since Google moved to the new statuses. Many of them get hundreds of impressions per week.
John Battelle's new book called "The Search", which is getting rave reviews across the blogosphere is available for purchase on Amazon. BoingBoing claims to have a special publisher offer for 35% of the cover price. That's a big savings compared to the 34% just anybody can get by buying it at Amazon. I guess it's a matter of whether you want BoingBoing to get the kick back or me :-)
Internet-Search-Engines-FAQ: There are many alternatives to Google AdSense:
Randy: Each alternative ad server is giving a brief description. Best overview of Adsense alternatives I've seen to date.
JenSense: I spotted Yahoo Publisher Network ads in an RSS feed today, the first time I have seen them delivered via a feed.
http://www.jensense.com/archives/2005/09/yahoo_publisher_2.html
Atlas: Web users who view display ads during the workday and early evening are more likely to make a purchase, fill out registrations, or otherwise convert than consumers who see ads between midnight and dawn.
http://www.atlassolutions.com/pdf/DaypartAnalysisDMI.pdf
Randy: I can confirm. My CTR tails off in the evening and night. About 1/3 of my PageView occur before noon PST, but about 1/2 of my clicks occur before noon PST. I get next to nothing between 6PM PST and midnight.
Google: Use our free training to sharpen your AdWords knowledge. We offer both multimedia and text lessons to match your preferred learning style.
https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=20957
Google Adsense Tricks: Roseanne van Langenberg of Marketing Defined not only says she is getting more stickiness and better AdSense CTR from small size fonts - her site is completely created with tiny fonts (the AdSense ad fonts are slightly bigger though). She says she's doubled AdSense CTR and now averages 3 page views per visitor.
http://google-adsense-tricks.blogspot.com/2005/09/tiny-font-size-means-more-adsense.html
Randy: Something else to test. No, don't worry, I'm not going to 4-pt fonts. But, I might try <style> div { font-size: smaller; } </style>.
Google: Also, rotating color palettes is a simple way to add variety and freshness to your ads. All you need to do is hold down the Control key and select up to four color palettes when generating your ad code in the Ad layout code page of your account.
http://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html
Randy: I'll try this on a page or two and report back.
Q: How do you report a splog with Adsense to Google?
Randy: When you find a splog (a SPAM blog) that has Adsense on it, then...
Inside Adwords: Create two or more ads within the same Ad Group. [cut]Our automatic ad optimization will then show ads with a higher clickthrough rate (CTR) more frequently. The served percentage number, located under your other ad statistics in each Ad Group, will show you how often each ad is being shown. [cut] To make sure you have this feature enabled, follow the instructions here.
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2005/09/testing-ad-text-waters.html
MrGeek: So yesterday I changed everything over to custom channels, this has caused some interesting results. My summary page states that today I have received a total of 1,317 page impressions, but the drill down shows that just one of my sites has had 1,908 page impressions so far.
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2161944
Randy: Custom channel impressions are always per individual ad unit whereas URL channel impression are per page (or per individual ad unit). The default report is per page, but the custom channel impressions still report per individual ad unit. So, if you have more than one ad unit on a page, then the numbers will not add up.
Amit Agarwal: 27 Self-Tested Working Google Adsense Tips that could increase your ad revenue.
http://labnol.blogspot.com/2005/09/z-adsense-tips-for-increasing-revenue.html
Randy: I won't re-enumerate all here. Click thru to Amit's site.
I disagree with "i) Use Text Ads instead of Image Ads as users get more options". I suggest you enable both and let Google make the choice. You'll get text ads most of the time, but you'll also get high performance image ads once in awhile.
I disagree with "k. Always put ads above the main fold". I find a leaderboard at the end of a blog post does very well.
I disagree with "l. Eliminate the ad link URL by setting its color same as your page background color". This practice is deceptive and might attrack some unwanted attention from Google.
I disagree with "m. The large rectangle is definitely the best paying adsense format (336x280)". I converted to the medium rectangle as the large only displays text ads, whereas the medium displays both.
I disagree with "q. Try to place a large skyscraper on the right sidebar." If you right sidebar is a right floating <div>, then they will steal the better ads from ads located nearer the top left, which are better performing locations.
I disagree with "u. Don't syndicate full content." Fact is, regulars don't click on ads anyways. Some search engines only index your feed. The more content in the feed, the more referrer hits from those search engines.
ProBlogger.ca: Over the weekend I decided to give Adsense ad blocking a try. I was tired of having the eBay Adsense ads constantly showing up on my sites. They were usually not targeted very well and I figured that the visitors to my websites were probably not interested in eBay anyway. So I went ahead and blocked ebay.com and ebay.ca ads from showing up on my websites in hopes of increased adsense revenue. I will keep you all posted as to the results at the end of the month.
http://www.problogger.ca/?p=77
Randy: I'm considering blocking both eBay and RSS/Blog related ads on some of my Webpages. Also, I recently noticed that a Web 2.0 company is using Adsense site targeting against my entire domain. The problem is that I don't know how to block those ads on some Webpages and not others, as the ad filter is not granular.
DigitalPoint: I thought I'd start a misspelled campaign and set up 45 key words misspelled with double keystrokes proximity errors etc etc.... I thought that I could get away with a .05c minimum CPC as none of the words were english words anymore. Only 2 of them made it!!!! some of them required .17c or .25c. What is going on? Is it ebay out-bidding for just about everything under the sun?
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=28379
Randy: It's important to remember that minimum CPC is partially based on the performance of your ads. Improve your ad and maybe you can lower your minimum CPC. Buying misspells, although a good practice, can lead to lower CTRs (lower performance), as users often click on the "Did you mean: XYZ" link before considering the results.
Newb: Ive just watched an online presentation about XYZ Adsense Get Rich Quick tutorial. It seems to give you everything you need to make money from adsense. Top keywords, content, tracking software and the right ad format and placement. Does anyone (and I suspect you do) have any comments on this and could I start making money just by using the supplied content, knowlege and Adsense?
Response #1: Everything you need to know about adsense is found in their TOS and in these forums.
Response #2: I strongly agree with Response #1.
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=28374
Randy: I'm gonna agree also. I don't know anybody who is succeeding with Adsense from the paid tutorials. Most seem to be acquiring knowledge by reading and participating in forums like Besting Adwords.
HostDriver: You’re setting yourself up for disaster if you make any of these Top 10 mistakes!
Ad Moolah: After reading YPN’s Terms and Conditions, It seemed like they did not allow publishers to reveal their monthly revenue amount.
Jedimaster: Last week I got the following email from the Google AdSense folks.
Hello,We've noticed that your AdSense payment address is located near the area most impacted by Hurricane Katrina. We also know you may have issues more urgent than your AdSense activities right now, so we'd like to offer our help.
If you're having trouble managing your AdSense account in any way, please let us know. We can assist you with holding your payments, updating your payment address, switching to electronic payments, or any other account issues you may have.
Please feel free to reply to this email or contact us at adsense-support@google.com to let us know if there's anything else we can do for you.
We offer our deepest sympathy during these difficult times.
http://ray.camdenfamily.com/index.cfm/2005/9/12/Thanks-Google
Mike: What keywords do you bid on that cost $.10 or less?
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=313393
Randy: It should be remembered that your minimum CPC is based on the keyword in addition to your ad performance. Just because you are buying keywords for $.10 or less, doesn't mean others can buy those keywords for $.10 or less. I've found that new campaigns have a starting minimum CPC of $.20. Once the campaign starts performing, then the minimum is dropped. My experience may differ from yours. If so, then tell me your experience.
Brian Dana Akers asks for advice to get more visitors to his Website. Let's begin by looking at the numbers. His PageRank is 5. That's pretty good for a personal Website. He's definitely got some good linking action going, which is evident when you search for inbound links in Google, Yahoo and MSN.
http://www.briandanaakers.com/
Now let's look at how well he's indexed, he's got 13 pages indexed in Google, 12 pages in Yahoo, 64 pages in MSN. That's pretty low. I can see this translating to very few referrer hits from search engines. Another issue that makes him search engine unfriendly is that all the Web pages stress his name in the title. For example, here's an interesting article on his site. The title of the article is "Brian Dana Akers / Falling Forward". This is a very common problem on most Websites. A <title> like this will give the page a good score when the user is searching for Brian Dana Akers. Is that really what you want? What you really want, is to stress the uncommon keywords in the <title>, in other words, turn the <title> around to "Falling Forward - Brian Dana Akers". Note also the dash delimiter. I don't have any proof that it's better than a slash, but I prefer the common practice when I don't have evidence either way.
A small issue, but they all add up, is that his Webpages have a lot of validation warnings. Now, I'm not saying your Webpages have to validate 100% of the time. That's an unreasonable expectation. But validation warnings are often an indication of bigger problems behind your markup.
Overall, this is a pretty good 90s style homepage. Increasing the traffic is simply a matter of creating more original content. I suspect per Webpage, he's actually getting a lot of traffic compared to most Website these days. But compare his 64 pages to the 164 thousand on my personal Website. More original pages translates directly to more hits. Believe me, I've been trying to force myself to write more content, simply because page count is that important.
To date, I've focused on new visitors. Another important part of increasing your visitors is acquiring regulars. Brian's Website has mostly static content. Once you've read the site once, there's no reason to return. Acquiring regular visitors requires that you provide them with fresh content that they can get excited about, provide a mechanism they can post their own opinions about your content, or both.
What Brian needs to increase his traffic is regular fresh content. This sounds like a blog. Since Brian is a science fiction writer, then he might consider posting one page every few days from a short story he's working on, write reviews of other science fiction work or simply blogging about his life as a science fiction writer. By posting one new blog entry every day, then you'll have an army of 300 interesting pages in one years time. I personally like to write about 20 blog entries per day, which gives me about 6000 new pages per year.
Adwords User: Every key word I use, has its maximum bid on it. Lets say it's X amount of cents per click. Well it seems to me that every few hours, google wants to raise my maximum bit to X amount of cents, which is quite higher then the initial maximum. So I raise it. And a few hours later, google wants to raise it again. so I raise it, and its getting to the point where its just not worth it.
Ted: Scenarios like yours aer very, very common when dealing with highly competitive terms and poorly targeted keywords. For example, if you are bidding on the term "find jobs" with a keyword description about your forum, it may not preform well at all simply because it is off target. Even if you THINK your CTR is good it is still completely relative.
http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/showthread.php?p=102245
Randy: Some very sound advice that I thought deserved a repost.
I found this Q&A on a blog today.
Q: How can I increase visitors to my blog?
A: Submit your blog to the 3 major search engines and add your Blog to some of the major blog engines and RSS feed search engines.
Randy: This advice can help, but only marginally. If you want to increase traffic to your blog, then let me give you four pieces of advice.
Get well indexed by Google
Focus on getting indexed by Google. You can worry about MSN and Yahoo! later. Go to Google and type "site:kbcafe.com" substituting your domain name for kbcafe.com. On the right, about an inch below the top of the window, you'll see "Results 1 - 10 of about 164,000 from kbcafe.com" or something like that. That third number is the approximate amount of pages you have in the Google index. The more pages you have in their index, the more referrer hits you'll get from Google. You can do a lot of things to help Google index your site. Here's a list.
Ping the big blogosphere engines.
The blogosphere engines rely somewhat on blogs pinging them when they are updated. Making sure you participate in this ping-fest is very important. So, important, that I wrote my own automatic pinging utility.
Don't just blog, be a blogger.
Blogging is more than just writing blog entries. Link to other people, compliment and criticize them. Write comments in other people's blog, leaving a sig trail back to your own blog. Enable comments in your blog. Use Technorati and find out who's linking to you and talking about the same stuff.
Make it easy to become a regular reader.
Make sure you have an Orange RSS chicklet on the homepage of your blog and each blog entry page. You might also want to add an array of subscription chicklets and a way readers can subscribe via email. Make sure these are visible and near the top of the page, don't hide them halfway down or near the bottom of your sidebar.
http://techools.blogspot.com/2005/09/10-adsense-tips-for-maximum-click.html
Randy: Every these days is creating their own top Adsense tips. Most, like the above, are obvious and misleading. I think I need to create my own comprehensive top Adsense tips.
Google: I’ve heard some ugly rumors circulating about image ads, and I want to separate the myths from the facts so publishers don’t miss out on an important revenue opportunity.
http://adsense.blogspot.com/2005/09/distorted-images.html
Randy: Must read for Adsense publishers. I suggest you rarely limit your ad selection to text or image. Enable both, all the time. Google gives instructions on doing this.
Inside Adwords: The My Change History tool, a new feature you'll find located on the Tools page of your AdWords account, allows you to see a log of the changes you've made to your account over the past three months.
DigitalPoint: I learned there almost everything I know about it, especially that:
InsideGoogle reader: I did something similar once and made over $12,000 in one month through Adsense. I got banned by Google and the party was over. The weird thing is that I was banned by Google, but Google still paid me the 12K.
Randy: The commenter is referring to Wordpress SPAMming incident. I assume Wordpress also got paid. I assume Syndic8 also got paid. I guess there's a lesson. When you get caught, you can apologize, life goes back to normal and you get to keep the cash.
Google: G.A.S.S. - Google AdSense Stats Syndrome. The primary sign of affliction is the compulsive need to check AdSense stats every 15 minutes or so to see how much you've earned since your prior login. [cut] So for you G.A.S.S. sufferers, we will offer a bit of temporary summer relief this Thursday. For some scheduled maintenance, our reports will not be (visibly) updated for around 6 hours beginning at 12 noon PST (GMT -8 for you international folks).
http://adsense.blogspot.com/2005/09/temporary-gass-relief.html
Randy: No stats between 3PM and 9PM EST? What will I do?
WebmasterWorld: Both ad networks are both on target, although Adsense ads show more "less sophisticated" adverts (no brand name, mostly mom and pop operations); while YPN shows brand names. Google's Adsense gives me double digit CTR, while YPN only gives me 1/10 of Adsense's CTR. At the end of the day, even if YPN gives me higher earnings per click, Google gives me better revenues.
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum110/86.htm
Randy: What does the author mean by double-digit CTR? 10% or greater? Or 1.0% or greater? 10% or greater sounds unbelievable (clickfraud).
Adsense Team: Placing images next to your Google ads may be in compliance with our program policies. We ask publishers to place a border around any images placed next to their Google ads. Please know that the images should not draw any undue attention to the ads. This activity is strictly prohibited in order to avoid potential inflation of advertiser costs.
http://smartmoneydaily.com/DIY/AdSense-Picture-Testing-Results.aspx
Randy: Some words of caution for those putting irrelevant images next to their Adsense solely to increase their CTR.
Greg Hughes: Joel Comm, author of AdSense secrets and general AdSense guru, has launched ReliefSense.com - where you can donate your AdSense revenues to the relief efforts.
Randy: I simply don't like this idea. I'd rather bloggers put up Red Cross banners. Telling your readers that you are donating a dime every time they click on your Adsense is clickfraud.
digg: An anonymous Google employee confirms that many Googlers run Adwords accounts. As you can imagine, this has fueled much debate over the ethics of such an arrangement.
Randy: If no Google employees were using it, then I'd be concerned that maybe they know it doesn't actually work. Knowing that they are using it, validates to Adwords users that the campaigns can actually work.
vabtz: The following advice is based on my experiences of running adsense on forums for 2 years.
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum89/8167.htm
Randy: All great except #5. Never cloak. You can get similar results using Google's Section Targeting.
Sofizar: This category of fraudsters deserves a taxonomy of its own, which we have developed.
http://www.sofizar.com/google-adsense-fraud.php
Randy: A rather comical and somewhat naive view of the Adsense fraudster.
Besting Adwords reader: Randy, I was thinking the other day while reading your blog: If you get some kind of mod-rewrite would you actually increase your indexing? (I know it's not apache but there must be another similar way in NT) I find that when you 've the url of the page, matched with a consistent page title, and the same for the title of the blog entry you get better indexing. But that's my point of view. Can you tell me if it's better or not?
Randy: I'm a big believer in not overloading your URLs. Although I agree that overloading your URL with the page title can help your PageRank, the overloading often creates very long URLs.
Here's an example of Oleg's URLs, which are overloaded...
http://www.olegdulin.com/index.php/archives/2005/09/06/barbara-bush-on-katrina-victims/
and mine, not overloaded...
http://www.webvertization.com/?guid=20050826072442
If someone were to paste my URLs inline, then they would likely never wrap, whereas an overloaded URL will often wrap. In fact, my editor is currently wrapping Oleg's, but not mine. Now, when such URLs is pasted into emails, the email software will often break URLs that wrap. Since mine will rarely ever wrap, they remain clickable. The same will not be true of Oleg's. By the way, Oleg has a great blog otherwise.
Zentanglement: I am temporarily disabling adsense on this blog in lieu of testing YPN for a month or two.
http://www.zentanglement.com/2005/09/02/temporarily-removing-adsense/
Scott Patterson: The following are six ways that you can do this and increase your revenue at the same time:
http://articles.simplysearch4it.com/article/00009/8598.html
Randy: Agree with most everything, but would add that you want to position your ads in the middle of the screen, not the top and you want the medium rectangle, not the large rectangle, because the medium will rotate between text and image ads, whereas the large will always be text. Choices are key because they gives Google ways of increasing your CPM and their profits.
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