What is Google Adsense? An Introduction...

Most of the Internet marketing community is at least somewhat familiar with Google Adsense at this point. Google Adsense can be a very lucrative venture for many, so having a better understanding of Adsense is definitely worthwhile.

Google Adsense are small contextual ads that are published on web sites with the consent of the web site's owner. The ads are created by publishers that are selling products and/or creating brand awareness. The ads that are created are called Adwords and they are also a Google sponsored program.

Google Adwords and Adsense run hand in hand. Every time someone does a search on Google or one of their partner networks and clicks on one of the sponsored ads, then the person who created that ad will pay Google a predetermined price. This is where the term "pay per click" (PPC) comes from.

Now the beauty of Adsense is that the person who owns or hosts the web site that the Adwords ads appear on will split the amount of money that Google receives from the creator or publisher of the ad. It is a well guarded secret what the percentage of the split is, and it does vary, but for our purposes let's say it's 50%.

If a publisher is willing to pay $.40 per click for his Adwords ad, then the host of the website that welcomes Adsense can expect to see roughly $.20 every time someone clicks on that ad that appears on their site. The other $.20 is kept by Google. So basically it is sort of a partnership between Google and web site owners.

Adsense is shown in the most relevant way possible. What does this mean? Well, probably the best way to illustrate this would be through an example. Let's say John has a website featuring work at home opportunities. If John wanted to monetize his web site with Google Adsense the ads that would be shown would all be related to work at home and very close topics like home based businesses. If a page of his site was dedicated to affiliate programs, then the Adsense ads appearing on that page would be for affiliate programs. Google spiders crawl the pages the ads are on and show the ads relevant to the content.

So how is the price per click determined? This is where the Adwords side of the equation kicks in. Adwords publishers bid on keywords. The more lucrative or sought after a keyword is, the more the publisher will be willing to pay for each click. Keywords range anywhere from a few cents to many dollars per click.

It is not very hard to see how someone with a web site that generates a decent amount of traffic can make a lot of money by putting Google Adsense on their site. Many Internet marketers create empires of web sites with specific content for the sole purpose of attracting high paying Adsense ads. Top Internet marketers earn in excess of $100,000 a year with Adsense. You can too if you are willing to work at it hard enough!

Click Here to Learn How to Start Earning 15 Minutes From Now With Adsense!

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Do You Track Your Ads? You Should!

In order to create the most effective ad for your home business, you will need to test different versions of your copy and track the effectiveness of where you advertise. Experiment by changing the copy, tweaking the looks, rearranging the layout and testing where you place your ad.

Changing The Copy

Try several different headings for your ad. Just a one word change may have a significant effect on the response rate. Test different versions of your copy to find the most effective wording.

Tweaking The Looks

Change the font style, font sizes, and font colors. Emphasize important words and phrases by placing them in italics, making them bold, changing their color, and highlighting them. Add a border, a different border color and/ or a different border style. Try different combinations of these and find out which combination works best.

Rearranging The Layout

Rearrange the components of your ad to see if it affects the response rate. Add a short testimonial or two to see if that has any effect. Try adding more than one call to action link.

Testing The Placement

Track and test the response rate for your ad. An ad in one e-zine may result in 100 clicks while an ad in another may only result in 50. You will want to know where you get the best response for your advertising dollars.

Why do you want to track your ads? Here are four good reasons:

1. To save money.

If you know where you get the best response from, you won't waste money by advertising on places where you get a poor return.

2. To maximize your profit.

While advertising on one place may bring you a better response than advertising on another, you need to take into account the cost of each ad. If you get 200 responses from one advertising source but each response costs you $4.00, it may be better to advertise on a place where you get 100 responses that only cost $1.00 each.

3. To improve your ads.

By testing different versions of your ad, you will find the most effective one. To obtain a true test of a particular ad, you will need to know how may people were shown your ad, how many people acted on your ad, and the result of that action. (For example, your ad was shown to 1000 people of which 100 clicked on your ad link and 2 bought your product)

4. To find out what works and what doesn't.

You will want to know what components of your ad work and which don't. You can only find this out by tracking different versions of your ad.

While knowing how many people click on your ad and how many sales you make is important, you will want to know how much each click and sale actually costs you. In order to maximize your Return On Investment (ROI) you should monitor the following:

1. How many unique visitors each ad or promotion generates.

2. The number of sales each ad or promotion generates.

3. Which ad or promotion generates the most traffic to your website.

4. The Cost Per Click and Cost Per Sale of each ad or promotion.

5. The Click to Sales Ratio which will show you the quality of the traffic you're getting.

6. The ROI for each ad or promotion.

You will also want to track where your traffic is coming from. You may get traffic from an e-zine ad, from a forum post and from a banner ad. One of these sources may bring you a significant amount of traffic while another brings you little or no traffic at all. By tracking every ad and promotion you place, you will find out where to direct your advertising efforts, thereby saving you both time and money.

Only about 1% of your competitors track their traffic sources. By tracking your ads, you will gain an advantage over 99% of your competitors. At the same time, you will boost your bottom line as you will no longer be wasting money on useless advertising.

Quickly and Easily Track, Edit & Manage your Ads, PPC, and Affiliate campaigns. Improve conversions & slash advertising costs! Ad Tracking Software - ROI Tracker

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Free Targeted Website Traffic Promotion Tips

Targeted Traffic Promotion

What is targeted traffic? When a visitor arrives at a web page which has the information he is looking for, we say that he is a targeted visitor. The web page is set up to draw attention of such visitors. The visitor may not be looking for that web page specifically, but he is interested in the information available there. Even before he clicks open that page, he almost knows that he will find relevant information.

How does he know that?

He knows because the URL of that page appeared before him when he was looking for information on the subject of his interest. Perhaps he was searching on a search engine, or going thru an ezine on the relevant subject, or maybe he was visiting a forum dedicated to the topic. There are many more sources by which he could have arrived at that web page.

This is how targeted traffic can be generated – by placing your web page at places where people would be looking for the information available on your page. Before we discuss those “places” in little more detail, let us see briefly why targeted traffic is required.

There are many sources thru which you can get traffic without spending anything, such as search engine traffic. But it is not entirely correct to say that you have not given anything at all to get that traffic. At the minimum you have invested time, effort and other resources to put up your website and advertise it. With this investment you have fair expectations that interested people will take benefit of your offer. Then why put in your effort to attract people who have no interest in your offer? These people are untargeted traffic. There is no point in wasting your time and the time of uninterested people. You will do much better to attract targeted traffic from which you can expect to get a favorable response.

Now let us see some of the methods of targeted traffic promotion.

Article Promotion – Hundreds of articles are published every day, yet there is always appetite for more articles. You can take advantage of this situation when demand for good quality articles seems to be on the rise. You can submit your articles along with your resource box to several ezines for publication. When your articles are published they are picked up by other publishers and web site owners and your articles get distributed with viral effect.

Those interested in the subject of your articles can get to see them thru search engines, ezines serving that subject and other web pages bearing your articles. They see the resource box with the article and click the link to arrive at your web page where they expect to find further information on the subject. They are targeted visitors who are likely to take your offer.

Forums – Forums are used for exchange of information on a particular area. You can join the forums in your area of interest and start participating there. When you post your message, generally you are not allowed to use the message for advertising your business. However, many forums allow you to add a signature line where you can tell briefly about your offer and give URL of your page. This small by-line does the marketing for you. When people read your post they may like to click on your URL and visit your web page. This way you get targeted traffic, visit from people interested in your area.

Linking – Reciprocal links have become very popular, not so much to get traffic as for improving search engine ranking. But you do get some targeted traffic from link exchange. The visitors are likely to be your link partners. When your link exchange efforts help you in getting good placement of your pages in search engine searches, you tap on the inexhaustible source of traffic from search engines.

Subscription List – This is reverse of the processes discussed above. Instead of visitors finding your web pages, you contact the interested people and show what you have to offer. You get your visitors to subscribe for your newsletters or ezines. Your subscribers give you their email addresses and permission to send them emails. Then you have the option to contact them when you decide. You can send them issues of newsletters and ezines at regular interval. You can also send announcements at any time. It will be in your interest to retain and enlarge your list to secure future of your business. This is one of the most inexpensive and effective marketing tools.

You can get additional viewership by syndicating your newsletters with the help of RSS feed.

These are some of the methods of targeted traffic promotion where you do not have to spend money.

Next time when you see your own web page, see it from the visitor’s viewpoint which will help you to ensure that your visitors get what they are looking for.

About the author:

Sanjay Johari regularly contributes articles to several ezines. See his blog to discover the Amazing Formula for traffic promotion that sells products like crazy.

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How to Profit From RSS Data Feeds

RSS stands for "really simple syndication", and as the name suggests, it can be relatively easy to take advantage of RSS to make money.

There are many ways you can profit from RSS data feeds. To begin with, since this is a fairly new technology, many people are afraid to jump in and learn how to take advantage of it. This makes it a great opportunity for you because there is less competition.

In the same way you generate traffic, subscribers and money by writing and submitting articles to article directories, you can do the same thing with RSS feeds.

You simply create your RSS feed and then submit it to the various RSS feed directories.

The links within your feeds need to point back to your websites, affiliate links and opt-in list pages so that you can make money.

On the Internet content is king and webmasters are always on the lookout for free content. Especially nowadays, with the Google Adsense craze, a lot of Internet marketers are creating tons of websites constantly with page generators and free content.

This is why an RSS feed will be picked up and used on lots of different websites, and the smart marketers that use RSS feeds stand to profit wildly from this situation.

Since you will be submitting the RSS feed to directories, it is important to use an attractive title, including related keywords. This way, people looking for content will find it when doing a search in RSS feed directories.

Now that you have a fair understanding of what RSS is, and how you can create your own feed, here are some creative ways to put the power of RSS to work and bring in profits:

1. Syndicate your RSS feed in RSS directories to be picked up by webmasters looking for free content.

2. Insert relevant affiliate links in your RSS feed.

3. Insert links to your websites and opt-in list pages. This way you build up your link popularity and attract traffic to your websites.

4. Sell a product directly using RSS by including your sales letter in the feed.

5. Use RSS data feed content from other authors to create a content site using a page generator. Once the content site is done you can add Adsense and related affiliate links.

These are just a few ideas to get you started with making money from RSS feeds. With application of this technology you can come up with various other ideas, and profit even more. The key is to take action and differentiate yourself from the majority of Internet marketers, many of whom are afraid to deal with technology at all.

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Small Business Blog Directory

I came across this business blog directory today. It's free to list, so I thought I would share it with all you wonderful biz tips blog readers. I submitted my own blog today (the one you are reading)!

One thing I like about them is that they're only listing business blogs there! They specifically state that they're not interested in personal or non-business blogs. This makes it more likely that your business blog will get read by visitors since they won't have to sort through thousands of non-business blogs.

If you're interested in listing your own business blog, it can only be good publicity for you. They have a PR5 and it's free.


Small Business Blog Directory

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10 SEO Tips

It is not hard to be barking up the wrong tree when it comes to getting search engine traffic because there is so much out of date information being circulated.

Not only is there out of date or invalid SEO advice getting around, there is also information which if acted upon, can result in your pages being banned.

The SEO tips below should assist the reader in forming a basic understanding of how to create human friendly web pages which are easily understood by the most popular search engines.

Know this. There are thousands of search engines but only two of them will bring you most of the traffic. They are google and yahoo. Another search engine that brings me a little traffic is msn but I do not focus too much on tactics for that engine.

Focus your attention on the engines that will bring you the most visitors first and work your way down.

Basic SEO

1. Insert keywords within the title tag so that search engine robots will know what your page is about. The title tag is located right at the top of your document within the head tags. Inserting a keyword or key phrase will greatly improve your chances of bringing targeted traffic to your site.

Make sure that the title tag contains text which a human can relate to. The text within the title tag is what shows up in a search result. Treat it like a headline.

2. Use the same keywords as anchor text to link to the page from different pages on your site. This is especially useful if your site contains many pages. The more keywords that link to a specific page the better.

3. Make sure that the text within the title tag is also within the body of the page. It is unwise to have keywords in the title tag which are not contained within the body of the page.

Adding the exact same text for your h1 tag will tell the reader who clicks on your page from a search engine result that they have clicked on the correct link and have arrived at the page where they intended to visit. Robots like this too because now there is a relation between the title of your page and the headline.

Also, sprinkle your keywords throughout your article. The most important keywords can be bolded or colored in red. A good place to do this is once or twice in the body at the top of your article and in the sub-headings.

4. Do not use the exact same title tag on every page on your website. Search engine robots might determine that all your pages are the same if all your title tags are the same. If this happens, your pages might not get indexed.

I always use the headline of my pages as the title tag to help the robots know exactly what my page is about. A good place to insert the headline is within the h1 tag. So the headline is the same as the title tag text.

5. Do not spam the description or keyword meta tag by stuffing meaningless keywords or even spend too much time on this tag. SEO pros all agree that these tags are not as important today as they once were. I just place my headline once within the keywords and description tags.

6. Do not link to link-farms or other search engine unfriendly neighborhoods. A good rule of thumb is if your pages do not contain any words that reflect the content of the site you are linking to, do not link to it.

7. Do not use doorway pages. Doorway pages are designed for robots only, not humans. Search engines like to index human friendly pages which contain content which is relevant to the search.

8. Title tags for text links. Insert the title tag within the HTML of your text link to add weight to the link and the page where the link resides. This is like the alt tag for images.

My site contains navigation menus on the left and right of the page. The menu consists of links not images. The links are keywords. When you hover over the link with your mouse, the title of the link appears. View the source of this page to see how to add this tag to your links.

9. Describe your images with the use of the alt tag. This will help search engines that index images to find your pages and will also help readers who use text only web browsers.

10. Submit to the search engines yourself. Do not use a submission service or submission software. Doing so could get your site penalized or even banned.

Here is the submission page for google: http://www.google.com/addurl.html

Submit only once. There is no need to submit every two weeks. There is no need to submit more that one page. Robots follow links. If your site has a nice link trail, your entire site will get indexed.

My site has a nice human friendly link trail which robots follow easily. All my pages get indexed without ever submitting more than the main index page once.

More SEO Tips

Get the facts here: http://www.google.com/webmasters/. This page will explain most of what you should focus on along with what you should forget about.

If you have been thinking about handing over the task of SEO to someone outside of yourself, you should read some warnings before you part with any money. http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html

SEO Discussion

Most SEO Professionals will not tell you about the goose that laid the golden egg. The following link will take you to a jealously guarded FREE SEO discussion.

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=google.public.support.general

You can search the forum for specific questions you may have. I like to just lurk around and read the messages.

About the author:

Ed Zivkovic owns his own website which contains articles with all sorts of tips for work at home webmasters. Here is the site: http://www.ezau.com

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Free Strategies for Getting Website Visitors

Getting targeted visitors to your website is the ultimate goal as an internet marketer. More targeted traffic tends to equal more money, so it makes sense to get as much traffic as you can to your websites. But how can you do it without spending a fortune?

Unknown to many there are a few great ways to get visitors to your site without spending a lot of money. But remember, it's not very easy. It takes more work. If getting traffic and making money online were easy then we would all be rich!

But, if you would like to do a little more work instead of paying to get visitors to your website, then here are a few things you can do:

1.Submit articles to article directories

This is probably one of the most effective ways of getting traffic to your site. By submitting articles with a link that points to your website, you are pretty much assured of long term traffic. As long as your article stays in the directories that you submit to, people can find it and the chances of getting traffic to your website is increased. If it's a good enough article other sites in your niche will add it their websites, thus increasing your traffic even more!

A few of the article sites where you can submit to are goarticles.com, ezinearticles.com, ideamarketers.com, articlecity.com, and articlesfactory.com.

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Sounds intimidating and most people think it's very difficult, but it's not really rocket science. SEO is simply techniques that you implement on your web site to rank higher in the search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Here are some things you might want to implement right away:

a) Your domain name should have your keyword in it.
b) Title tag of each page of your site should contain your keywords.
c) Your keyword should be in the first paragraph of your page.
d) The image alt tags should contain your keyword.
e) The file names of each page of your site should also have your keyword.
f) You should get relevant inbound links pointing to your website.
g) Provide fresh, quality, relevant content on your web site.

3.Create a blog and link it to your site

Postings at Blogger are easily indexed by Google. Updating your blog is feeding the search engines. Each time you put fresh content out, the search engines will notice it and come running to eat it all up. Putting your keywords in this fresh content will help you rank higher in the search engines. Your site gets updated a lot if you link your blog to it. Blogging is easy and it adds a lot of pages to your site to keep it fresh and updated.

You can get free blogs at blogger.com and wordpress.com

4.Posting in forums related to your niche

By participating in forums you'll have the opportunity to place your link in the signature line and get traffic from forum members. You can find a forum related to your niche by going to a search engine and typing "your keywords" +forum. Make sure the signatures you post in forums are catchy enough to attract readers and make them click on your link and come to your web site. Do NOT spam forums with adverstisements! Simply participate in discussions, offer advice, ask questions, etc...

There you have it... simple, cheap or free, and very effective ways of getting traffic to your website. Implementing the above on a regular basis will basically guarantee a stream of traffic, not only for the short term but also for the long run!

About the author:

Trent Brownrigg is a successful internet marketer and home business consultant. Find the best home based business at http://www.work-at-home-jobs-iowa.com and he will personally help you succeed.

Get for FREE home business tips at:
http://www.work-at-home-jobs-iowa.com/home-business-blog.html

Get your FREE “Biz Tips Newsletter” by sending a blank email to: workathomebiz@aweber.com

==========================

Copyright© Trent Brownrigg
http://www.home-business-team.com

Permission is granted to publish this article, electronically or in print, as long as the bylines are included, with a live link, and the article is not changed in any way (grammatical corrections accepted).

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Have An Idea? Starting A Business? STOP! Read This Article

As a business consultant I am asked a lot of questions about success, especially from younger clients from age 25 –35 who are loaded with ideas and the youthful enthusiasm but lack experience. My answers are usually the same each time…you have to have a good idea, a written plan backing that idea and enough business knowledge to deal with the issues surrounding start-up launch and rollout. And that’s where things get a little shaky for most people. They have the ideas. They have the enthusiasm. But they don’t have a realistic written plan (if they even have a plan) and they lack true knowledge and experience. Most people starting in business have never written a business plan and/or don’t have enough business acumen to write one correctly. Specifically, they lack real world business education and experience. These same entrepreneurial-types virtually always over estimate sales and under estimate costs. They don’t have a firm grip on management, marketing, advertising, human resources and accounting, law or finance. They have a lot to learn and will waste time and money on costly mistakes to gain hard learned and expensive lessons.

And the complexity of an idea kills many projects before they get off the ground. I have heard every “business opportunity” under the sun for manufacturing, distribution, retail sales, borderline scams and on and on and on… and my conclusion is this:

KISS—keep it simple stupid. Keep your start up costs low and human resource requirements at a minimum. The more intellectual your product or service, the more involved you will be in the day to day grind of work product output. You want to be able to clone yourself. You want your business to be so simple a monkey could do it. Let me give a quick example: Lets say you want to set up a mortgage company. In this case, you have to know a lot about a lot and your staff will have to know a lot about a lot and these educated people are going to want a nice big fat juicy payroll. Whereas, a business like an oil change company hires people with little or no education to simply drain car oil—a monkey could do it! The result is a number of successful business franchises. Simple process, low paid employees.

Then I tell people, before you run off and look for your big success with a new idea stop and think about how you can make money doing something simple, something you can clone, something with low start up costs, something you can test quickly and easily. Something like; “washing residential and commercial windows”. Why window washing? What’s your up front start up costs? All you need to get started is a bucket, a squeegee and some cleaning fluid! Then, go sell. If you were the company washing all the commercial windows between Chicago and Detroit you would be a millionaire. And a monkey can do it.

The problem here is, like every business, making the sale. But remember something; if you create a new product or service, you will have to spend time “educating people” about your offer before you can sell it. That’s twice the work. Do something they are already familiar with--that way you can spend your time selling rather then educating and selling. Something like washing windows. I don’t care what your business or idea may be; if you can’t sell it, the project will fail.

This is why you need a plan. Do you want some free business coaching? Here it is, and it won’t cost you a dime. Click the link below—get the Business Planning Ebook, it’s the best planning tool you will EVER find. I use it all the time. Thanks for reading and good luck!

We have a number of Free EBooks you can download at our site that is related to this article. Our site does not hyper-advertise at you to sell product. Our EBooks are high quality, powerful and worth your time.

Click the link below, go to the freebie section to get your Ebooks. This offer is an Ezine Article exclusive.

Copyright © James W. Hart, IV All Rights reserved

SMART BOOKS: http://www.smart67.com FREE DOWNLOADS: We have a variety of high quality EBOOKs that can be downloaded for free at the Smart Books site. MEDIA INTERVIEWS Yes-See Bio for booking information

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Five Common Domain Name Myths

With domain name articles and tips floating around all over the Web, most people probably feel that they know a good deal about picking and protecting a domain name. However, some common domain name myths persist. Let’s debunk a few.

Myth: Once I register a domain, I can use it forever.

Fact: While it’s possible that you’ll keep your registered domain name forever, it’s not guaranteed. Several things can happen that would cause you to lose your domain name. First, you have to register your domain name each year (or register it for multiple years up front) in order to keep your access to it. If you forget to renew your registration, you could lose your domain name, or someone else can register it and charge you a huge fee to have it transferred back to your name. Second, you could lose your domain name in a trademark dispute.

Myth: My domain name is automatically trademarked, so no one else can ever use it or anything too similar to it (such as with other extensions).

Fact: A domain name cannot be trademarked in the US! It also isn’t protected by a copyright. However, if your business’ name is trademarked before anyone else is using it, then you could sue if someone registered a domain name using your business name (or a common misspelling) to sell products or services that are extremely similar to your own. For instance, if someone else ever tried to register something like Microsoft.net, or even microsort.net, for the purpose of selling computers and software, Microsoft could sue them to stop them from using the domain name. This is to stop scammers and competitors from trying to profit off of a trademarked name. In some countries, you can’t even register a domain with their country-specific extension unless you own the trademark there for that business name.

Myth: If I own the trademark for my company’s name, I automatically have the right to register my company’s name as a domain name.

Fact: You do not, in fact, have the right to register any domain name, even if you have a trademark on the corresponding company name. The reason for this is that a trademark on a business name doesn’t give you exclusive access to use that name. It only gives you exclusive access to use that name for the particular products and / or services that you offer. Going back to our above example, let’s say Microsoft forgot to renew their registration on Microsoft.net. While they could sue another computer manufacturer or software company for registering the domain name without question, let’s assume it’s registered by a small company making microfiber-covered sofas and other furniture. The name makes sense – ‘micro’ as an abbreviation for microfiber, and ‘soft’ because it’s a very soft fabric. That company has every right to use the company name Microsoft, and they would own the trademark for that company name as it applies to the products they sell. Because of that, Microsoft couldn’t do anything to get their .net domain name back except offering to buy it outright.

Myth: A domain is only worth registering if you can get the .com version.

Fact: Many web sites have been successful using .net, .org, and country-specific domain extensions. Don’t reject an otherwise good domain name just because the .com extension isn’t available. If you’re setting up a domain name based on keywords, a .net or .org shouldn’t make too much of a difference. If you’re selling products or services to only residents of your country, a country-specific domain extension could prove to be quite profitable for you, as it tells your target market that you’re specifically selling to them.

Myth: You should never use dashes in a domain name.

Fact: While including dashes in a domain name isn’t ideal, it also shouldn’t be forbidden. Dashes make it harder to market your domain name via word of mouth, but they can be very effective if you’re determined to use a keyword-rich domain name for a general content site, if the version without the dashes isn’t available.

Copyright 2006 Stephen Ashton

Learn more domain name tips at http://www.domainnamescenter.com and find cheap web hosting at http://www.abetterwebhost.com

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