From the category archives:

adsense

Google Does Not Like Images Near AdSense Anymore

by golbguru on December 21, 2006

A commentator “Salman” brought this to my notice through a comment on my last post. Thanks Salman.

You must have seen the nice images near the Google AdSense ads in my right sidebar. Well, on the 18th of this month, Google made it clear that such images are not acceptable. The details are described under the blog post titled “Ad and image placement: a policy clarification“. Let me quote a few lines from the post which would make this very clear :):

What if I place a space or a line between my images and my ads? Would that work?

No. If the ads and the images appear to be associated, inserting a small space or a line between the images and ads will not make the implementation compliant.

Here is an example of an “unacceptable” ad displayed on the post:

FruitImages1

Apparently, the images are not really related except the “fruit” part. There is an image of a banana near the ad “Order Grapefruit”.

That’s bad news for people who are using Wordpress plugins like “AdSense Beautifier”.

That also means that the images on the AdSense widget on my right side bar will go away. In fact I think it’s a good excuse for me to get rid of AdSense totally for some time and see how it goes :).

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Guest Article: Easy Money Making Ideas For The Beginner Blogger

by the imaginary diva on December 18, 2006

[This is the second article in the guest blogging experiment at this blog. If you are interested in contributing as a guest blogger feel free to contact me]

So you’ve heard that you can make money blogging.

How real is that potential to generate extra monthly cash without leaving the comforts of your home? And how much money can you really make? If you have done your research, you will find out that there is a lot of “white noise” out there. How do you filter the information available on what works and what doesn’t? It is every beginner blogger’s dream to take that first step to financial freedom.

Why don’t we get started then? Let us set a target of $600.00 a month from your blog starting January 2007. Isn’t that just a nice new year’s resolution? What can you do with all that money…. Good heavens!

Let’s make this a reality in three steps!

Step 1 - Payperpost.com

Average monthly revenue towards the goal - $480.00

Daily time spent - 20 minutes / 2 posts at approximately $8.00 each

Payperpost connects Bloggers with Advertisers. Once you register, you can check daily on available opportunities that you can blog about. Each opportunity will pay you between $5 - $20 approximately. You can take two opportunities maximum a day, just make sure they are not one after another. There has to be at least a post in between them. Each sponsored blog post must remain on your blog for 30 days. In your account section of Payperpost it counts down how many days before payday. And it’s really cool seeing all those “You’ve Got Cash” emails from Paypal!

Step 2 - Google Adsense
Average monthly revenue towards the goal - $75.00 / $2.50 a day

Google Adsense is a very good source of revenue. However, there are a couple of factors that you need to pay attention to, in order to make money. Targeting $2.50 a day doesn’t really seem much, but you need to understand how you can make that money in less clicks - 3 clicks vs. 10 clicks.

Diva tips in optimizing your blog:

  • Generate an overall theme for your blog and stick to it. The more theme oriented your blog is, the better success it will have - wedding, relationships, cars, dogs…. etc.
  • Blend the color of your Google Ads to your blog. In other words, the Google ad background and border must be the same color as the spot where you are placing it on your blog. Use the same text color for Ad text, post title color for Ad Title and Ad Url.
  • Each post title must be clear and straight to the point. Notice I didnt make the post title of this post as WANT TO MAKE MONEY ON THE INTERNET? Do you know how many posts out there with that title?
  • Strategize your post - how much revenue can you expect per clicks if you talk about the weather (advertiser’s maximum bid $.50), visa (advertiser’s maximum bid $2.00), lexus (advertiser’s maximum bid $1.15), crystal cruise (advertiser’s maximum bid $3.00), or find love (advertiser’s maximum bid $0.62). How do I know this? This is based on overture’s listing. Why don’t you try it next time you make a post?
  • Last but not the least, don’t be shy in posting your adsense. Google allows you three widgets. Make it work….

Step 3 - Tumri Cornerstore

Average monthly revenue towards the goal - $45.00 / $1.50 per day
Never heard of Tumri? Well, you have now. I wish I can say that they are the best kept hidden secret on the net, but they are not. They are a new company and only few blogs are carrying their cornerstore ads.

What makes them special? Tumri takes the Amazon concept a step or two forward. They have nice and exciting flash widgets that display 4 - 5 products at the same time! It draws products from Amazon, Overture, Ebay, and your favourite store! When you are targeting impulse buyers on your site, you need to have a look-at-me-i’m-special presentation that just shouts BUY ME! And that is what Tumri brings to your blog.

Tumri is not like Amazon that you will have to wait until someone buys your product before you generate income. Tumri will pay you for clickthroughs! Here is an excerpt from my email interview with Jason Ng at Tumri :

  • We do not violate the Google Adsense terms as we are not ‘contextual’; we do not scan the content of the page. We have behavioral based targeting where we optimize revenue based on user behavior and publishers will be able to completely control what is displayed within the widget.
  • The commission that we will payout to you will be based on a combination of click based revenue offers and order based revenue offers. Click based or CPC (cost per click) commission occurs when a valid click is made on any CPC based product offer. Order based commission or CPO (cost per order) occurs when a lead/click is generated from your site to one of our merchant partners and an order is made. You will receive a percentage of that total order amount. After you have selected the product categories that you want to display in the widget, we will optimize the CPC and CPO product offers based on the user behavior so as to maximize your commission.

Payperpost - $480 + Google Adsense $75 + Tumri Cornerstore $45.00 = equals $600! That’s $7200 in your pocket in a year. Can you make more? Of course. Please make me green with envy….

So, who’s game to join The Tao 600 challenge starting January 2007? What an awesome way to start the New Year, don’t you think?

About the author: Imaginary Diva has been a regular reader at Money, Matter, and More Musings for a long long time. Click here to visit her blog. That’s just one of her blogs..she writes on more than half a dozen others.

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Crazy Egg Is Giving Crazy Results: Look At The Google Adsense Clicks

by golbguru on November 9, 2006

Short intro: Crazyegg.com is a free service that allows you to see where your visitors are clicking so that you can improve the placement of important matter on your website . You set up tests for your webpage and Crazyegg monitors your website for clicks during the test period. Serves as a great tool for AdSense ads placement (well theoretically speaking…if the data are correct).

I am running a test for the past 8 days and checked my results today. I was so estatic after I saw the clicks on my AdSense module in the top left corner of my blog. Here is a heat-map showing the crazy clicking (those spots are where the people clicked):

heatmap adsense

Crazyegg’s numbers says I received 50 clicks on my Adsense ads in the last 8 days!! Damn, that would mean an enormous increase in my click-through-ratio (CTR defined as the ratio of number of times an ad is clicked on to the number of times the ad is displayed). In the past, I have been averaging like 4~5 clicks a month! Yeah right….unfortunately my joy was extremely short lived. Later, I logged into my AdSense account and found out that there were just 4 clicks in the last 8 days….major let down :(. My first thought was that Google must tricking me or something. But then I cross-checked with Performancing.com and their tracking records support Google’s version of 4 clicks. So it was just 4 clicks after all…..and that sounds about right too given my earlier pathetic CTR.

How the heck did Crazyegg.com come up with 50 clicks? Has anyone else experienced this? Is something wrong with my setup or the Crazyegg just got cracked?

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Who Does Not Click on AdSense Ads?

by golbguru on September 18, 2006

When I ask this question, it obviously means that my AdSense experiment is not working as well as I was anticipating it to be. There are a number of visits to my blog, but no clicks! Made me wonder…who clicks on these ads? Even after much contemplation I did not reach any specfic conclusion. Then, I asked myself an easier question: who doesn’t click on these ads?

I think I found a part of the answer. Ever since the time I have been actively blogging (about the same time I started with the AdSense experiment), I myself haven’t clicked on any AdSense ads on other peoples’ blogs! Now, if all bloggers did it like me and start “not-clicking” on their fellow bloggers’ ads, it’s not going to work for anybody.

So regardless of whether anyone clicks on my ads or not, I am going to play my part in the game. Starting today, I have decided to click on at least one Google ad on every blog (except mine!:)) that I visit. DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS. IT’S A STUPID THOUGHT. You may just get your AdSense account suspended for doing that. :)

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Playing With Google AdSense

by golbguru on August 29, 2006

Very few people have ever read this blog. Of those, very few will ever return. This entry is for those very few returning loyals. You will notice a few changes with the layout. I just registered for Google AdSense and posted a few of their not-so-loveable advertisement blocks all over my blog. Let me know if they irritate you. I have absolutely no hopes of earning a dime with these advertisements, and right now they are there only for the sake of my learning about AdSense. If anyone has any experience with AdSense, I would love to hear from you.

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