Wordpress Blogging Mastery Malaysia

Whenever I provide information about Google Adsense in my Wordpress Blogging seminars, many of the attendees draws a blank when I ask them how much they know about Google Adsense program policies.

So I took some time off to write a short Summary on Google Adsense policies here for the benefit of my students and attendees.

Google Adsense starts off the first paragraph with this - If you fail to comply with these policies, we may disable ad serving to your site and/or disable your AdSense account.

Invalid Clicks and Impressions

• Google reserve the right to disable any account at any time.
• If your account is disabled, you will not be eligible for further participation in the AdSense program.
• Please note that we may change our policies at any time, and pursuant to our Terms and Conditions, it is your responsibility to keep up to date with and adhere to the policies posted here.

Encouraging Clicks

• Clicks on Google ads must result from genuine user interest.
• Please note that clicking on your own ads for any reason is prohibited.
• May not encourage users to click the Google ads by using phrases such as “click the ads,” “support us,” “visit these links,” or other similar language.
• May not place misleading labels above Google ad units - for instance, ads may be labeled “Sponsored Links” but not “Favorite Sites”.

Site and Ad Behavior

• Sites showing Google ads may not contain pop-ups or pop-unders that interfere with site navigation, change user preferences, or initiate downloads.
• Any AdSense code must be pasted directly into webpages without modification.

Ad Placement

• Up to three ad units may be displayed on each page.
• A maximum of two Google AdSense for search boxes may be placed on a page.
• Up to three link units may also be placed on each page.

Have you logged in to check your Google Adsense accounts yet?

I have got the latest news from Google. They are retiring from Google Referral Program.

If you have not downlaoded your Referral reports of your accounts yet, do so before the last week of August 2008.

This week, I took some time off to attend Stuart Tan’s Internet Marketing gathering at his Adam Khoo Learning Centre in Taman Tun Dr Ismail, Kuala Lumpur.

Stuart Tan gathered his first group of subscribers from Malaysia to attend this last minute meet. He was accompanied by Malaysian Edmund Loh, Vince Tan and Simon Leung from USA. They drove down from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur to make this meet up happen.

As soon as I got Stuart’s email about this event, I replied to say I would be there. I was there to get some Internet Marketing tip from experienced marketers on topics I wanted covered.

They were Google Adwords, Social Media, Pay per Click campaign, Private Label Rights and a host of other topics.

We ended up having a late night snack at a nearby restaurant, as everyone was tired by then. And opportunities to network with the “IM Guys”.

I have a few ideas myself about how to determine the Successful Mindset for Blogging Beginners and in this post, I want to share them with you.

Mentality of a Successful Blogger or Person

1. They are always Aware of Why they need to Invest in Continuous Learning, Education or Training
2. They Apply what they have learned
3. They Make Mistakes but they quickly Learn from them
4. Always Willing to Learn
5. Always Willing to Explore New Opportunities or Open to New Ideas
6. Willing to part with little investment to improve their Learning experience
7. Do not give up easily
8. Know when to Ask for help
9. Shares knowledge with others
10. When you Teach Others, You will also Learn More yourself
11. Have Realistic Expectations of their Results

On the other hands, I want to share some of my views about the Mindset of an Unsuccessful person.

1. Always remain Skeptical about New Ideas, Methods or Strategy, Unexposed
2. Has stopped Continuous Learning since college
3. High Expectation of Results without little Effort put in from their part
4. Does not Invest in Upgrading their Knowledge
5. Remains in their Comfort Zone
6. Does not Invest in Time or Effort
7. Has no Future Planning
8. Does not Learn from their Mistakes or Improve
9. Gives up Easily, No Persistency and Staying Power
10. Do not Ask for Help
11. Expects Knowledge to come to them for FREE

Joel Bauer, the Persuasion Guru has once told us that to be successful, you need to have a Successful Mindset of A Winner to begin with. He also went on to say most people expects Different Exponential Results by Doing the Same Thing over and over again. These same people Expects to become a Millionaire by using the same methods. They have not thought about trying out Different Strategies and Approach or even open up their minds on how to do things differently.

My Formula for Success is “Effort + Time + Knowledge + New Ideas = Different or Exponential Results“.

If you continue to do whatever you are doing right now, and expecting different results = No Change in your Results. So do not expect to become a Millionaire overnight but not putting in any effort, time, investment for new knowledge and a successful mindset.

I have not made a single cent since I joined Google Referral Program from day one. Compared to Google AdSense program, this referral program has not done well. I have not even come across anyone making big money from this either.

Google Referral program has been revised. The reason for this is simple.

You will only receive $100 if a publisher you introduced to AdSense earned $100 in ad revenue from their site. For beginners, I think this is going to take a while if they do not know the how strategies to do this.

Now Google has changed things a bit and had improved the referral program recently. It is much easier now to earn money from the Google Referral program as they have changed the way they pay the referral.

In the new system, Google will pay you $5 straight away for each sign-up plus an additional $250 when the publisher you refer earns $100. I should think this sounds a whole lot better than the previous payment system.

Perhaps now you may change your mind and take another look at Google’s Referral program again. These extra revenue may be little now but they have potentials to grow so do not ignore them.

You may go and take a look at my right sidebar, and you will see an image that say earn money by showing relevant ads with Google AdSense. This is one of Google’s Referral program I have been talking about.

Each time someone clicks on that and joins, I get to earn $5 immediately. Obviously, I will need to test this out and let you know later.

I would like to share a few Google Adsense tips and tricks gathered from forums and blogs including some tips of my own. I will start off with a few basic general ideas and move to more specific topics as you read on.

1. Build Your Own Adsense Machine

As a website publisher you tend to fall into either one of these two broad categories:

* Publish 100 websites that each earns $1 a day profit * Publish 1 website that earns $100 a day profit

In reality, majority of the people ended up somewhere in between. Owning 100 websites will leave you with maintenance, management and content issues. Just having one website alone will leave you opened to all sorts of fluctuation uncertainties like search engines algorithm, market trends and so on.

2. Build a General or Niche Website

You have a choice of building your website around general topics or niche. In general, niche websites work better with Adsense. First thing to note is ad targeting is better. Secondly as you need to focus narrowly your writing would naturally become more expert in nature. We hope this will eventually makes you an authority in your field.

Advice for your first try at building an Adsense general or niche website, you should enjoy what you are doing. Make the process a lot easier and less painful to accomplish. Also ensure that your topic has adequate ad inventory and the payout is at a level you are happy with. Niche topic like medieval folk dancing has few advertisers for that subject. In fact it’s currently zero.

Once you gain experience of how Adsense works on a website, you could consider experimenting with high paying keywords.

You may decide to buy a high paying keyword list. Walk on this path with care. The level of fraud is much higher and there is a distortion of the supply and demand relationship for these terms. Everyone wants ads on their website that make $35 or more a click, however the number of advertisers who are willing to pay that much is pretty limited. Additionally the competition for that traffic is going to be stiff.

3. Tips for New Sites, Files and Maintenance

When building a new site do not put Adsense on it until it’s finished. I would even say do not put Adsense on it until you have built inbound links and started getting traffic. Your Adsense ads will be off topic in a dummy or placeholder text. TIP: If you start getting lots of traffic from a variety of IP’s you will speed this process up dramatically.

4. Managing URL’s and channels

Adsense channels is one area where it’s really easy to go overboard with stats. You can set up URL channels to compare how one website is doing to another. You can also set up sub channels for each URL. You can set up channels looking something like this:

* domainA.com - 68 banner * domainA.com - text link * domainB.com - image banner * domainB.com - 36 block * domainC.com - 30 block

This is great for testing and knowing who clicks where and why. TIP: You want to know what URL is generating the income so enter distinct names for your URL channels to identify with your domain name.

5. Placement of Adsense Ads Tricks in Your Site Design and Integration

You need to consider where to put Adsense in your site. It is easier for a new site and more difficult for an older site. Google has published some heat maps showing the optimal locations. The best spots are middle of the page and left hand side. I have done well by placing it on the right but you should be prepared to change it if it does not work out.

Google has also has published a list of the highest performing ad sizes:

* 336×280 large rectangle * 300×250 inline rectangle * 160×600 wide skyscraper

From the sites that I run, I do really well with the 336 rectangle and 160 skyscraper. My next best performing ad size is the 728 leaderboard, Placement can have dramatic effects on Adsense performance. TIP: When working on a new site or new layout you may want to give each location its own channel for a while until you find out your users behavior.

Another ‘trick’ that can increase your CTR is by blending your Adsense into your body copy. For example if your body copy is black, remove the Adsense border and make the title, text, and URL black. TIP: Try changing all of your page hyperlinks to a high contrast color (like dark red or a bold blue) then change the Adsense title to the same color.

Blended ads do not perform that well in forums with high volume of repeated members. Frequent visitors developed banner blindness. One ‘trick’ to keep the ads from being ignored is to randomize the color and even the placement. Do not annoy your visitors. Remember it is better to have a 1% CTR with 500 regular visitors as opposed to a 5% CTR with 50 visitors. TIP: For forums try placing the Adsense ads directly above or below the first forum thread.

5. Using Images Secret

One of the latest ’secrets’ is to use images placed directly above or below an Adsense leaderboard. How is this done? Basically you set up the Adsense code in a table with four images that line up directly with the ads. Placing four blinking arrows would be ‘enticing people to click’ and be against the Adsense TOS.

An example like placing pictures of 4 laptops over laptops ads isn’t, so use your best judgment here and look at it from the advertiser or Google’s perspective. If you have a question as to what you can implement being ‘over the line’ I suggest you write to Adsense and seek their opinion.

Using images definitely works. You get the best results when the images ‘complete the story the ads are telling’. Here is an example - if you have ads about apple pies, use pictures of freshly baked apple pies, instead of granny smith, Macintosh, pink lady, and brae burn apples. TIP: Don’t limit yourself to using images only on that size ad unit; it works just as well with the other sizes, like the 336 rectangle.

Note: Do not use very identifiable brand name or products for your images. Use royalty free or generic non-specific stock images whenever possible and appropriate.

6. Place Multiple Ad Units

Use multiple ad units to increase your ad revenue. You are only allowed to post up to three ad units per page according to Google’s TOS. The highest paying ad units will be served first and the lowest being served last. Place all three ad units in your website if the space permits. Monitor the Adsense payouts. So if a click from the third ad unit is only paying between 3 to 5 cents you may want to omit it from your page. If one ad unit is getting a higher percentage of click through you’ll want to make sure the highest paying ads are being served there. TIP: Use CSS positioning to get your highest paying ads serving in the location with the highest CTR.

7. Tips for Adsense in Affiliate Sites

You may want to consider this question - are you giving up a $10, $20, or $30 sale for a $1 click? You need to test this on your own to figure out. I prefer to use Adsense on my article pages. Take an example like an affiliate website where children’s books are sold. You need to send out some related articles like ‘getting children’s book’ or ‘finding a children’s bookshop’ are excellent spots for Adsense. You may not get rich but these Adsense revenue usually provide a small steady income and cover things like hosting costs. TIP: If you find you have pages getting more than 50 clicks per month, then add more pages about this topic, and link the pages together.PPC Arbitrage

Lastly tip, try adding a 728 leaderboard at just above the end of the “above the fold” area.

Many online marketers would like to know any success AdSense make money formula.

My simple formula stated below is one fundamental formula that beginner online marketers should know.Money = sum ( [Price Per Click] X [Number of Clicks] ). Logically speaking, if you want to make some or more money, you have to either increase the number of clicks or the price per click. If you do one or the other, per the formula above, you can make more money from the program.

1. Make More Adsense Money By Increasing the Number Of Clicks

Boost the number of clicks on your ads is the most obvious strategy that will make more money for you. You can look at two ways to boost the number of clicks

a. Drive more traffic for your web site,b. Make your ads more clickable and position them at the right place.Driving traffic takes time and efforts. It‘s also a lot of hard work. There are several techniques that you can use to generate more traffic to your web site and hence make more Adsense money.

I reveal several of these techniques you can use below:

* Submit your web site to search engine and optimize your web site for search engine.

* Increase link popularity by link exchange, article marketing, directory submission and press release.

* Paid Advertising through classified advertising, banner advertising or search engine advertising.

* Participate in forums/groups related to the content of your web site.

* Add comments to other blogs.

2. Make your ads more clickable is another method to increase your earnings.

This is relatively easy to achieve because you can adjust your ad format almost immediately. I suggest you do the following adjustments to your ad format to improve your click through rates (CTR):

* Make them more noticeable by positioning your Adsense ads on top of your Adsense page.

* Google states that the most effective ad formats are 336×280 larger rectangle, the 300×250 inline rectangle, and the 160×600 wide skyscraper. However you are advised to choose the best ad format that works for your web site. This requires tracking and testing.

* Create a custom palette that best suites your web site. In general, you can follow the following settings:

# Border color : no border or background color of your website

# Background color : background color of your website

# Link color : color of your links

# URL color : black

# Text color : black or color of your main content

3. Make More Adsense Money by Targeting the Higher-Paying Keywords

You can create unique, relevant and quality contents that target at the higher-paying keywords to increase your average price per click (CPC). Higher CPC means that you can make more money even the CTR remains unchanged.

You should find out which keyword variations for a topic pay more. Often the more specialized variations and phrases pay more than the generic terms.You can increase your CPC by reducing the occurrence of lower-paying ads.

You can use Adsense competitive filter mechanism to filter out the ads that you don’t want to be shown on your web site. It is suggested by others that showing fewer ads on a page will result in higher-paying ads displayed on your web site.

Many publishers reported that they make more Adsense money if they remove ads completely from pages with few or no clicks. Again you have to test whether this strategy works in favor of you or not.

As you can see, it involves a lot of hard work if you want to make extra Google AdSense money. You need to put in your time and effort to make it happen. Your patience in the long run will bring in the extra $$$ you want for your website.