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Sunday, July 20, 2008

How Do I Build One?

I know the notion of creating your very own content-rich website might be a little intimidating, but you can do it. It’s not hard. You don’t have to be a good write to have good content on your site. In fact, you don’t have to be a writer at all. There are plenty of successful people who make a lot of money from Google AdSense and they don’t write a word of that content. We’ll talk more about that later, but you can hire writers, or have guest writers—it’s not hard.

Anyone can create a content-rich Website by following a few key points:

· Have some discipline—maintain your site.

· Update that site often. Having a schedule is best.

· Be able to beg, borrow, or commission content

Discipline is key

To create a content-rich Website, you need to hone your focus and your self-discipline. I don’t have to tell you how incredibly easy it is to waste hours, even days, just surfing around the web from one site to another. You can’t let yourself get distracted like that or you won’t accomplish anything. Start with setting a limit to surfing for fun so that you limit your searches to sites and resources that are relate very directly to your site's subject.

Discipline also applies to creating creation. Successful writers can’t afford to wait for inspiration to strike before starting work. Instead, they develop a writing schedule for themselves and they stick with it like it was their job—since it is. As one famous writer said, “I write when I feel like it. And every morning at 9am, I make sure I feel like it.” Schedule a time for yourself to sit down at your desk and write.

And you’ll need to develop another schedule for when to add content to your Website, and follow that schedule religiously. Make a commitment to yourself and follow through with it.

And remember—if you just simply can’t write, or you find yourself making too many excuses not to write content, just hire someone.

Go to Elance.com and post a project to write 20 articles of 300-600 words each for $5 to $10 each. You’ll find someone.

Regular updates are critical to your site

Nothing is deader than a website that looks like somebody’s forgotten about it. Regularly updating or modifying your site content gives you a big advantage over the competition. Web surfers will keep on coming back to your site if they notice that there’s always something new to see, learn, or enjoy each time.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

What Content-Rich Sites and Why Have One?are

A content-rich site is one that has lots of informative articles up at it, usually centered around a theme. Most sites can't quite pull off being WikiPedia, so they specialize. For instance, you could do a site for dog owners. Possible articles on that site would cover:


  • How to figure out what kind of dog you want
  • Where to get a dog
  • How to deal with a puppy
  • Life stages of a dog
  • House-training puppies
  • Dog training
  • What to feed dogs
  • Whether to get more than one dog
  • How to socialize dogs with other dogs and with cats
  • Exercise needs of dogs
  • Training dogs to do tricks
  • Treating fleas
  • Common dog ailments and when to go to the vet
  • Dog nutrition
  • Taking your dog on a trip
  • Getting a pet sitter or boarding your dog if you don't take him on a trip


The articles you'll want to have on your site should be short enough so that someone can read them in about 5 minutes. This means you want to stick to articles of 250 to 750 words, with 300 to 600 words optimal. To give you an idea, a single page in a published novel has about 300 words.

Of course, your real purpose in putting up all these nice little short articles and changing them out frequently is not to just put information out into the world. It is to have a site that people will come back to so that they will see the Google AdSense ads, and click on them, and then you will get checks in the mail.

That's a key point, so I'm going to repeat it:


The purpose of having a content-rich website is to attract people to it, again and again, so that they will see the ads and click on them.


You might think it's lots of cool graphics and colors that make a site attractive to a visitor, but it's really the content. In order to make money from Google AdSense, you need to grasp that concept. Believe me, you could run a wonderful advertising campaign and develop all sorts of viral marketing tools and attractive affiliate programs.

But unless your Website is content-rich, the traffic spikes that you get for your efforts will only be temporary. The very best way to attract and retain an online audience is to provide content that's useful, valuable, informative, educational or just downright funny as hell or entertaining in some way.

What does a content-rich website look like? Here are a few examples.



Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Building Content-Rich Sites


First off, why would you want to build content-rich websites? The short answer is “Because it keeps people on your site for awhile, it makes them come back, and they tell their friends about that site.”

But why? Well, for one thing, people will stay on a content-rich site because it takes awhile to read an article or two. Thus, while they’re reading the material, their peripheral vision (off to the sides) notices little ads that happen to surround that articles.

And if people start to realize that a certain site has good content that they like, and in particular, different content that constantly changes and is updated, then they’ll check back to see what’s new.

The worst thing in the world to have is a stagnant website that never changes. People will visit it exactly twice—the first time to check it out, and the second one to see what’s changed—and when they find out it hasn’t changed, they most likely won’t come back. Ever.

What are Users Saying about AdSense?

It's one thing to hear about all the great advantages Google AdSense offers, including how it can make money for you in your sleep. But it's another thing to hear comments from real, live people. Here are a few of my favorites.



  • "We're seeing this impressive new revenue stream without incurring any cost. We're maximizing our previously unsold inventory, and our revenue per page figure continues to grow." Scott Zucker, Executive VP and COO, Intelligent Content Corp, PetPlace.com


  • "It took no time at all to copy and post the code on individual pages, and it fits well with our content management system and with the look and feel of all our pages."Steve Larson, Founder, Our-Hometown.com

  • "Instead of spending money to hire an additional sales rep to sell ad banners, Google ads have become a virtual sales tool for us. Now we're able to reap thousands of dollars in additional advertising revenue each month that we would very likely have missed without Google AdSense." Robert Hoskins, Editor and Group Publisher, Broadband Wireless Exchange"


  • "Google shows targeted ads reflecting the sorts of information and services SeatGuru visitors want. For a small business like mine, this is the best approach to advertising. You set it up easily, it automatically serves relevant ads, and it takes very little of my time." Matt Daimler, Founder, SeatGuru.com"

  • "At the beginning I was very concerned that I might lose traffic to competitors. I only used AdSense on a limited number of the site's pages, and I watched the stats very carefully. If the traffic, pages per visitor, or conversion rates dropped I knew I could easily pull the ads...Since implementing AdSense, our ad revenue has increased more than tenfold, and 100 percent of my available inventory is now sold through AdSense. "Vik Kachoria, Entrepreneur, Real Adventure".


Tuesday, July 15, 2008

How do I Get Started?

It's easy to get started with AdSense and it only takes a few minutes. You fill out one single online application and that's it. Once you're approved, it takes only minutes to set up AdSense; all you have to do is copy and paste a designated block of HTML into the source code for your site. Once you do that, targeted ads will start showing up on your website.



To fill out the online application, go to:

https://www.google.com/adsense/application-1?apply=Click+Here+to+Apply/


Monday, July 14, 2008

What Kinds of Ads Will I Get on My Site?

Obviously, there are some kinds of ads you wouldn't want to have on your site, such as pornographic ones or ads for sleazy multi-level marketing schemes that scream "Make $30,000 a month just for watching TV!" in big red letters.

Well, you can put your mind at ease. Google has an ad review process that checks the ads they send to your site. This process ensures that the ads that you serve up are family-friendly and that they comply with Google's strict editorial guidelines.


Google's ad-screening team combines sensitive language filters, input from site owners like you, and a team of linguists with good old common sense to filter out ads that could be inappropriate for your content. And if that's not enough, you have to capability to block competitive ads and choose your own default ads. That's another nice feature: Google kind of lets you run your own show.



Now, another thing you might be concerned about is whether the ads will clash with the look, feel, and colors scheme you've got going with your site. Don't worry. You can customize the appearance of ads and choose from a wide range of colors and templates. Same thing goes for your search results page. And reports are customizable, too. Google provides flexible reporting tools that allow you to group your pages any which way you want.


That means you can view your results by URL, domain, ad typ

e, category and more so that you can figure out where your earnings are coming from.




Sunday, July 13, 2008

What Can it do for Me?

In three words, earn you money. More relevant ads on your pages translates into more clicks—and more money that you receive. Because when users click on an ad, Google will pay you. If you've set up your own sales team, you'll get an additional benefit: AdSense complements their efforts. It doesn't compete with them. With AdSense, you get a reporting page that gives you a breakdown on how your ads are doing and what they're bringing in.

Google has a huge advertiser base, so they have ads for all kinds of businesses and for just about every type of content no matter how broad or specialized it is. And since Google provides the ads, you don't have to spend time talking to your advertisers.


AdSense represents advertisers that span the spectrum. These advertisers range from large global brands to small and local companies. And ads are targeted by geography so global businesses can display local advertising easily. One more thing: you can use AdSense in many languages.

So how does AdSense figure out how to do all this targeted advertising? Well, AdSense has the ability to deliver relevant ads because the gurus at Google understand how web pages really work and they're continually refining their technology to make it smarter all the time.


For example, some words can have several different meanings depending on context. You've seen th is happen with "two" and "too" and "to." Google technology is smart enough to understand these distinctions from the context that the word appears in, so you get more targeted ads.


When you put a Google search box on your site you start making money off of web searches that people do on your site. This ability to search off of your page keeps them on your site longer—since they can search from right there where they are—and it will only take you a few minutes to get AdSense up and running. The best part, of course, is that AdSense is free for you to use.


Friday, July 11, 2008

What is Google Adsense?

Google AdSense is a fast and absolutely ridiculously easy way for people with websites of all types and sizes to put up and display relevant Google ads on the content pages of their site and earn money.

Because the Google AdSense ads relate to what your visitors came to your site to read about, or because the ads match up to the interests and characteristics of the kind of people your content attracts, you now have a way to improve your content pages AND make some serious bucks off of them.

Google AdSense is also a way for site owners to provide Google search capability to visitors and to earn even more money by putting Google ads on the search results pages. Google AdSense gives you the ability to earn advertising revenue from every single page on your website—with a minimal investment of your time

So what kind of ads do you have to put up? That’s the good part—you don’t have to decide. Google does it for you. AdSense always delivers relevant ads that are precisely targeted—on a page-by-page basis—to the content that people find on your site. For example, if you have a page that tells the story of your pet fish, Google will send you ads for that site that are for pet stores, fish food, fish bowls, aquariums…you get the picture.

If you decide you want to add a Google search box to your site, then AdSense will deliver relevant ads targeted to the Google search results pages that your visitors’ search request generated.


If you’re into upgrades, Google is now offering “AdSense Premium”, which is CPC based and, for the time being, offers less flexibility in terms of ad sizes -- only banners and skyscrapers are currently available. You can apply using existing AdWords accounts, or you can request a new account. Applicants are usually notified within a day as to whether they’ve been accepted for the program.

Here’s the thing you need to know: Google has no strict criteria for acceptance into the AdSense program, and Ad Sense doesn’t hit you with a minimum traffic requirement. The only criteria they’re really sticky about is the standard “acceptable content” requirements, and that’s pretty standard almost anywhere.

Google AdSense says they’re serious about attracting quality content sites, and because of that they only allow AdSense members to serve one ad per page. This means you can’t use AdSense for both banners and skyscrapers.(Note: banners are those horizontal ads that run up top and down bottom. Skyscrapers are the tall ads that run vertically, on the left and right of your page text.)

Once you’ve been accepted into Google AdSense, you’ll be able to get the AdSense advertisements on any site you own using the same ad code, provided you obey the Google guidelines. (And that’s very, very important—more on that later.)

Your reporting doesn’t occur in real time, but is updated regularly throughout the day. Right now, you can’t view reports based on a domain or site basis if you run the AdSense on more than one site.

Before you sign up, you really ought to read the lengthy and detailed FAQ on the AdSense site.



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