Google Adsense introduced smart pricing in order to give advertisers more value for the money they spend. Adsense Smart Pricing can have a lot of impact on the income from your website or your blog. In order to make sure that you are not a 'smart priced' it is important to first understand what Google Smart Pricing is all about. Take out a 10 minutes to read this entire post in detail and find out how you can increase your eCPM and get more money out of the same amount of your website traffic. This post is a result of my systematic experiments spread over 2 to 3 months. If you already know about smart pricing, jump to the new method discussed here.
How does Google Adsense Smart Pricing work?
Adsense Smart Pricing is a method used by Google to give advertisers more value for their money. For example if Google 'feels' that a click is less valuable for an advertiser then instead of paying publishers the whole value of the click, only a small percentage of it is paid. There are several factors which Google uses to determine the 'value' of a click on your Google Adsense ad by your visitor. Some of the factors include
Your content and its relevance to the ad (for example an ad for selling Nikon camera will earn more if placed near a Camera review instead of say digital photography techniques).
Your website's authority on that subject (for example a camera ad on a website on photography is considered more valuable than that on a personal website which talks about everything).
The conversion rate for the advertiser. This is the most important factor and is explained in detail below.
Google Adsense - Conversion rate - the most important smart pricing factor
Advertisers who use Google Adwords to market their product have the option of tracking how many clicks they buy actually convert into sales or signing up of newsletter or whatever the final goal of the advertiser. This conversion rate is tracked by Google using a cookie based system and a small javascript code which advertisers place on their 'conversion page'.
How to avoid Adsense Smart Pricing?
In general it is very hard to say if you are being smart priced or not. Sometimes its easy though, when smart pricing eats up over 90% of the value of a click. In any case, it is worth trying to do whatever you can to increase your click through rate. Here are some ideas to avoid it. Some of these ideas can be found elsewhere on the Internet however one of the idea which involves Chitika is new. It has been actually tested by me for 1.5 months and it has brought a significant increase in my CPC (Cost Per Click).
Content related measures to avoid Smart Pricing - It is important that you actually have good useful content on your website. If you send junk visitors through Adsense, i don't see any method how you can avoid smart pricing - as easy as that. Another important point to keep in mind about content is to try to focus on one particular niche for your website (if possible) rather than writing about everything under the sun.
Link Units related measures to avoid Smart Pricing - There are certain spots on your website which receive highest attention. It is highly recommended that you put a normal ad unit instead of a link unit on this spot.
Using Chitika to reduce Smart Pricing (New Method) - This one, i believe is relatively new and quite successful way of minimizing the effect of smart pricing. The way it works is the following. You Sign up with Chitika and place one or two additional ads on your website so that your visitors have larger options for clicking. This increases the possibility of the fact that those who click on adsense are really interested in it. Chitika ads are shown only to your Search Engine visitors so your regular visitors, won't even notice there is a Chitika Ad on your website. For best results you should choose two of the following three Chitika ads - (1) Chitika 480x180 unit just on top of content (2) Chitika Mega Unit just below content (3) Chitika Linx. Naturally placing Chitika may decrease your Adsense CTR. However the idea is to increase your total income not your CTR. In about a months time not only will your Adsense CPC increase, but also your combined income from Chitika and Adsense will be much more than that of Adsense alone. I have seen about 25-30% increase in my overall income. Signup with Chitika and give it a shot.
Note that the data on conversion rate is updated weekly by Google Adsense. So any experiments you do, will not give you instant results. It is reasonable to run any experiment and/or its variation for at least a month to make reasonable conclusions. Feel free to discuss your opinion in a comment.
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Click Through Rate or CTR is the average number of clicks you get per 100 page impressions. For example if you have a page which is viewed say 1000 times and it generates 45 clicks then the Click through rate of that particular page is 4.5%. Note that click through rate of a page is the sum total of the click through rate of all the ad units. For example if you have three ads displayed on your page, and out of the 45 clicks you got, 20 are from ad 1, 15 are from Ad 2, and 10 from Ad 3, then the CTR of Ad 1 is 2%, of Ad2 its 1.5% and that of Ad 3 is 1%. The CTR of your page = 2%+1.5%+1%= 4.5%. Other terms you need to know which are related to CTR are
CPM = Cost per thousand Impressions. Also called eCPM by Google Adsense.
CPC = Cost Per Click. Also called EPC or earnings per click.
Adwords CTR for specific keywords: If you are interested in finding out what is the average CTR you will get for a particular set of keywords if you advertise with Google Adwords, use the following two links:
Adwords keyword tool : Using this you can find the number of impressions you get for a particular keywords. You can also get ideas for related keywords, average CPC, and advertiser competition, etc.
Google Adwords Traffic Estimator : Here you can find exactly how many clicks are generated by particular keyword. If you are really interested in finding out the Adwords CTR for a particular keyword, then you can divide the number of clicks by page impressions (got from the above adwords keyword tool) and multiply by 100.
Stunning discovery: I have recently discovered that the income I get by displaying Adsense and Chitika together is significantly more than my Adsense income alone. Thank you Chitika !. If you have visitors from U.S and Canada who come directly from search engines, I strongly recommend you try Chitika linx and Chitika Mega unit. However only quality blogs are accepted by Chitika. Be sure to boast about your blog when you apply. More info on Chitika.
When I started blogging I was very eager to find out what is considered a good value of CTR. Unfortunately i did not easily find a satisfying answer to this on the internet and that is exactly why I am writing this post. There are two reasons why you wont easily find an answer to 'What is an average CTR?' or 'What is considered a good CTR?' on the internet.
The value varies a lot if you take into consideration regular visitors to your site. Visitors arriving to your blog or website from Search Engines like Google or Yahoo are much more likely to click on ads and it is possible say something in general about their behavior. But your regular visitors. They may not click your ads at all, because either they are ad blind to your website or they are not actively looking for some information or whatever reason.
The Terms and Conditions of Advertising Networks like Google Adsense prevent publishers from disclosing the values of CTR. That is why I am not going to talk anything about what CTR or CPM I get from Adsense or any other network. I will just talk about generalities of pay-per-click advertising and completely forgetting my information, i will base the entire post on some references which are already available on the internet. So if you want to know details of my average CTR, CPM or CPC, there is nothing for you here.
What is the Best value of CTR that you can achieve?
Again I am going to assume that all your visitors come from search engines, so this discussion only applies to such visitors. In my opinion (which is based on the adsense testimonial given below and some hard google search), the best possible CTR is between 6% to 10%. I am not talking of Google Adsense CTR here. By this CTR i mean the CTR of the page, which is sum total of all the CTR of all the ads placed on your page (these ads may include adsense, chitika and other ads). It seems possible to arrange the layout of your page, ad formats and color schemes in such a way that say one in 10 visitors to your site or blog clicks on an ad. This is the best you can hope for and it is indeed achieved by some as seen on this Adsense testimonial. Please keep in mind that I am only talking about search engine or Google visitors here. For my blog almost all visitors are from Google.
What is the average value of CTR that people get?
According to this webpage the average value of CTR for a general pay per click program is between 3 to 7%. Even this blog entry puts the average CTR at 3%. If you google hard enough you will realize that the webmasters and publishers around the globe seems to put the average CTR at 3%. (My own CTR is very different from 3%). Most of the publishers actually do not manage to even reach 2% either because they do not have enough search engine or google visitors, or they do not optimize their ads well enough or both. So if you are getting less than 3% CTR for search engine visitors, then it means you should pay attention to your ads optimization and try to improve your CTR. Remember it may take a couple of months of experimenting with your layout and finding the right ad configuration and right Advertising Networks (for me Google Adsense and Chitika work best) to achieve the optimal value of CTR.
How to improve your CTR?
There is a one word answer to this question - Experimenting. You have to really experiment, try different combinations, try different advertising networks in order to find the right set of ads, right colors which work for you. For me Google Adsense + Chitika works best. These two advertising networks give me a CTR which I now think is hard to improve. So I have started focusing on traffic now. Here are some tips which I would like to share with you regarding improving your CTR.
Bigger ads have better CTR. For example a 160x600 skyscraper is better than 120x600 skyscraper. 336x280 wide rectangle is better than 300x250.
Ads placed near content have better CTR.
Ads placed between the title of your post and the content (on the top) seem to have the highest CTR. For me the wide rectangle just at the beginning of the post has a very good CTR.
Blue links for ads usually work better because people are used to seeing blue links (Hint: Google has blue links for search results). Try #0000ff or #000080 for links on white background.
Experiment! Experiment!! Experiment !!! - Let me explain this with a simple example. I have a wide rectangle at the bottom of my post. It was initially aligned to the left. I realized that aligning it to the center almost increased its CTR 1.5 times the previous value. Things like this can only be found out by experimenting. For Adsense and Chitika, use Custom Channels and Channels respectively to test your experiments with layouts and ad formats. Also remember that any experiment should be run at least for a week in order to draw fair and logical conclusions.
If you are using Google Adsense, you can also use the above two links under the title "Adwords CTR" to actually calculate what is the average Adsense CTR that publishers get (or equivalently Adwords CTR that advertisers get) that people get for a particular keyword and compare it with yours. However it is important to use all the related keywords rather than just one keyword while doing such analysis.
A comparison of CTR of various advertising networks.
Google Adsense CTR - The Best !! Nothing beats Google Adsense CTR. Wish I could disclose my own value of CTR but am forbidden by Adsense TOC.
Chitika CTR - Excellent !! According to Chitika Blog the top Chitika publishers get a CTR of over 1.6%. I have certainly seen levels above that. If you are looking for something to use with (or as an alternative) for adsense, you must try Chitika Linx and Chitika Mega Unit (550x250).
How much do bloggers earn? A vague estimate of blogging income and a statistical overview of money that bloggers make online.
Make Money Online from Home: Blogging - the most efficient way of earning money online. Some tips to start your own blog and turn it into a make money blog.
Get Paid to Blog - List of various paid blogging networks where you can get paid to write blog posts, sponsored reviews or display blogging ads. A useful way of earning income from your blog in addition to Google Adsense or other advertising money.
I feel so cheated and am so pissed off with Bidvertiser right now. But all I can do is write a post to alert all further Bidvertiser publishers and advertisers. Are you thinking of displaying Bidvertiser ads on your website or blog? Or worse, are you planning to advertise with Bidvertiser and give them your credit card information? I had a really bad experience with them, and even if it does not repeat with you, I think you should read this entire post so that you can take an informed decision about Bidvertiser.
About two weeks ago, I have signed up with Bidvertiser, both as a Publisher as well as an Advertiser.
When I signed up with Bidvertiser as a publisher, I was encouraged by their simple sign up and quick start system. I placed Bidvertiser ads very near to the content (top right corner) and after seeing that some of the ads that were displayed were almost $7 per click ads I got really excited. Ya, $7 per click ads. Not a single Google Adsense ad of mine has earned me more than that. In any case, I was receiving around 3000 page impressions per day. I kept the ad for around 10 days in a position where any other ad has given me a decent CTR. But with Bidvertiser I did not recieve a single click after 30,000 impressions. I tried changing positions of the ads, putting them in other crucial places, but no. Well, if a advertising system is inefficient, it is not fair to call it a scam. So what if their ads did not make me a penny or if Bidvertiser CTR is almost close to zero. This is not the main reason why I call Bidvertiser a Fraud. After all any fraud they do with publishers, will never be noticed by publishers. This is why even if you are not planning to advertiser with Bidvertiser, you should read my advertiser experience below.
I decided to advertise some of my referral links using Bidvertiser, especially because Bidvertiser had announced a new incentive - $20 in free clicks for new advertisers who sign up. I signed up for free clicks, I was made to enter my credit card information before I got the benefit of their offer.
The following are the main points why I am so pissed off with Bidvertiser.
Once you enter your credit card information you are not given the option to delete your credit card.
Your credit card will be automatically billed, without you noticing it. I was shocked to see my credit card billed for $56 even before I directly authorized any such transaction. Maybe I was not careful to read their Terms and Conditions, but lesson learnt: Even after reading this post if you want to join Bidvertiser, read every word of their Terms and Conditions.
After seeing that I was automatically billed, i tried to search payment and billing information where I could cancel their automatic billing preferences. There was no option to cancel or suspend my credit card billing in future. All they gave me was options to bill my credit card monthly or weekly for different amounts.
As a result I closed my account. I was not sent any email after my account was closed nor was any message communicated to me about what will happen to the remaining balance in my account. This is why I think Bidvertiser is a complete fraud.
Here are some more points which display the inherent tendency of Bidvertiser to cheat their clients and I would guess even publishers. This is the experience I had while I created some ads on Bidvertiser and ran them for a week.
The following sentence is copy pasted from Bidvertiser homepage at the time of writing this blog post.
Easily create and edit your ads and target URL. Simply choose a title, two lines of a description and you are set to go. Your ads will appear in the categories you have chosen within minutes.
But the actual fact : Bidvertiser takes about two days to review your ad and only then does your ad starts running. What they claim above is a blatant lie !
It is not made clear to you that your ads will also run on 'their search engine partners'. You are never told who these partners are. Only when you create an ad, start running it, and then create on edit ad you will see that this is the case (if you are careful enough to read the page carefully).
The Bottom Line ..
Whether you are a publisher or an advertiser, it is very hard to trust Bidvertiser. After all, they are the ones who count your clicks and pay you. I would not be surprised if they show different number of clicks to their advertisers and lesser clicks to their publishers. update: I think this review would be unfair and incomplete without mentioning this development. Bidvertiser had deducted $56 from my credit card automatically. Before I noticed $16 was gone, so $40 remained. I immediately closed my account and Bidvertiser at least had the decency to refund my balance. It would be fair to accept that I could have paused my ads and avoided the $56 charge. So I have no proof for scam or fraud claim and the above post should be thought of as a biased review. However, there is certainly some transparency missing and I still advise you to be on your toes when dealing with Bidvertiser.
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My Blog is now over 8 months old. My Google Adsense income last month (Apr 08) was $1017. Although currently on this blog you will find only Google Adsense and Chitika Ads (a combination which works perfect for me!), I have tried almost all major advertising networks - Google Adsense, Adbrite, Bidvertiser, Chitika, ProjectWonderful, etc.
Adsense
Adbrite
Chitika
Advertisement Concept
Google Adsense shows contextual ads to your site visitors. Because of their contextual nature, Adsense CTR is very high.
Adbrite also shows contextual ads to your site visitors. However in addition to they being contextual, you also have to enter keywords describing your site.
Chitika shows ads only to those visitors of your site which arrive from Google or Yahoo. Your regular visitors wont even notice that there is a Chitika Ad on your site.
Approval
Only quality sites are approved. Adsense Approval procedure takes a day or two.
All sites approved. You sign up and immediately access your Adbrite dashboard.
Only quality sites are approved. Sites must have significant number of search engines visitors from U.S. and Canada
Minimum CPC (Cost Per Click)
Minimum Adsense CPC is 1 cent.
Minimum Adbrite CPC is 1 cent.
Minimum Chitika Premium CPC is 1 cent.
CTR Click Through Rate
Adsense CTR is one of the best in the industry.
Adbrite CTR is average at best.
Chitika CTR is excellent for ads placed just above or below the post title.
Payment method
Standard Adsense payment is through check. Publishers in some countries like United States have the option of direct deposit.
Adbrite pays through check.
Chitika publishers are paid either by paypal or through check.
I am relatively new to Chitika and am still experimenting with ad placement. The best ad positions are just above the title or just below the title. Surprisingly my Chitika ad placed in the right sidebar is performing even better than the Google Adsense unit in terms of the Click through Rate. Adsense, however, still remains the major income source for my blog. Inspite of this I would recommend you to try Chitika. Since your regular visitors wont even notice that you have a Chitika Ad,
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Introduction This is a detailed guide about how to make money online by writing a blog (for e.g. from this blogspot). As compared to other methods to make money from home like online data entry jobs or freelance writing, blogging for income is perhaps the most powerful method of making money online and at the same time having fun. Yes, making money from the internet, by sitting in front of your computer.
If you do not have a blog or a high traffic website and would like to build one, you may be interested in reading about Site Build It!.
When Investo Blog was started in August 2008 the intention was not to make money from my online activities. Since I had a full time enjoyable job, I had no intentions at all to make money from home by quitting my job. It was just a casual blogging attempt which to my surprise turned into an important income source. Now, after about 6 months of blogging, i earn over $1000 per month from my blog. That, for me is a already a significant amount of money, and especially since this entire blog income comes purely from my online activities. Based on past traffic patterns, it is my guess, that I am only a couple of months away from achieving an income of $100 per day. Although, as compared to other bloggers, this is not a tremendous amount of money, what surprised me is that it is possible to achieve this level of income in less than a year.
Stunning discovery: I have recently discovered that the income I get by displaying Adsense and Chitika together is significantly more than my Adsense income alone. Thank you Chitika !. If you have visitors from U.S and Canada who come directly from Google or Yahoo, I strongly recommend you try Chitika (place it right above the title or below the post title). However only quality blogs are accepted by Chitika. Be sure to boast about your blog when you apply. More info on Chitika.
I would like to however caution every new blogger that merely writing a blog does not guarantee that you will make money online. There are some bloggers who earn a lot of money, well over $15000 per month while majority of bloggers barely manage to make $10 per month from the totality of their online activities including blogging. Have you wondered why some bloggers make thousands while others barely cents? Read this guide in detail if you want to find out why this happens and what you as a blogger can do more to make money efficiently from your blogging and related online activities.
How much money can a blogger earn from blogging? The answer to how much money do bloggers earn blogging depends on so many factors that there is no precise answer. However as an extremely crude an approximate guess I would say that a blog typically has the potential of earning between $2 to $20 per 1000 visitors. The money you make from your blog will be directly proportional to your blog traffic. So if you want to earn over $1000 per month, you have to build a blog which receives at least a couple of thousand hits per day. You may be interested in my earlier blog post on Blog Money, or a progress report of my Make Money Blog which deal with similar questions. The following image summarizes a survey of 'how much money to bloggers earn' by problogger in 2007. The results tell the story of how over hyped 'income from blogging' is.
Can a blogger make a living from blogging income?
Yes! absolutely. Or let me put it this way- the theoretical answer is Yes. There are several bloggers who are earning thousands of dollars per month more than a average decent paying job. BUT .... there is a very sour note to the above happy statement. The fact is that most of the bloggers hardly make enough money. I would say less than 10 in 100 bloggers who think they want to make a living from blogging income can actually manage to do so. The reason for this is complicated, and instead of digging into the reason, let me express my honest opinion. I think that
You Are Not ready to Make a living from your blogging income if
You do not have an above average knowledge about your blog topic.
You are absolutely ignorant about basics of html, javascript, css, or other web designing jargon.
You are blog is in English and your English is extremely poor.
You are not ready to take the search engine optimization seriously.
Blogging for Money - Step by Step Guide for beginners
This is a step by step guide for those who want to make money online from blogging. It is a result of my own experience and it is what I would do if I had to start with a new blog once again.
Step 1: Choose a Blog Topic - This is one of the most crucial decisions a blogger has to make. I will only say the following two things:
Choose a blog topic about which you have above average knowledge, or at the very least, above average interest.
Choose a blog topic withing your interest area which is as general as possible. For example: instead of starting a blog about weight loss ideas, it would be much better to start a blog on a much more general topic : Health and Fitness. Get the idea? Believe me, this is very important. The reason for choosing a general blog topic is simple - you have a larger audience to target and this increases your chances. To give my own example, Investo Blog was first started as a blog for trading nifty futures (hence the url niftyprediction.blogspot.com). However later on i realized that by generalizing the blog topic to include everything related to money I would be able to get a lot more blog traffic.
Step 2: You have to develop a weekly routine. Decide how much time you can spend every week for blogging and related online activities. Since most of us have full time jobs, it may not be possible to blog everyday. For those of you who are serious about making money I recommend writing at least 3 to 5 blog posts per week, (daily one blog post or more would be awesome!). At least one of the blog post you write every week must be high quality. By high quality i mean one which has lot of content (say at least 1000 words or so) and which is on a topic which people search a lot. Include relevant images and videos in your quality blog posts.
Step 3: Submit your quality blog posts to Blog Carnivals. Submitting blog posts to carnivals is extremely easy and it can bring valuable blog traffic and help improve your page rank. Following these small tiny steps will have a tremendous positive impact on the amount of money you will make online from blogging.
Step 4: After you have about 20-25 articles in your blog, I recommend that you apply and open the following accounts:
Paypal Account - This is what you will need for receiving money from paid blogging networks or various other online sources. If you have regular visitors who admire your blog, you can also add a "Make a Donation" button on your blog using Paypal. I myself however, have never managed to make money online by donations to my blog.
Google Adsense Account: This will be your first sources of online blogging income. Apply for an adsense account and then come back to the section of Adsense Optimization of this page and learn some tips to maximize your income from Google Ads. In some cases your adsense application may be rejected because your site is not 6 months old or some other criterion. Relax ! dont worry. My adsense application was rejected 5 times. It turned out i was using the wrong email address to apply. In any case if your adsense application is rejected, take the reasons seriously and then reapply at a suitable time.
Pay Per Post: This will be your second important source of online blogging income. Initially you may get only a dollar or two for each paid review. But later on as your page rank increases you will earn more and more. You may also apply for other paid blogging networks listed below. Read the section Get Paid to Blog to learn how to make money online from Pay per post and other paid blogging networks.
Hubpages: You can consider this optional, but it is useful for SEO and traffic reasons. Writing a one or two articles per week on hubpages and putting one link to your blog in each post. Remember as your page rank increases, so will your income from pay per post. Read more about how to make money online from Hubpages below.
SiteMeter or StatCounter: This or any other equivalent web counter is good enough. This will be important to study your blog traffic as discussed in the next step. As I have mentioned earlier, the amount of money you make blogging is directly proportional to your blog traffic. So putting a good hit counter can help you take your traffic seriously.
No more steps. After you complete the above steps, some real online action begins. By now, you must have at least 5 to 10 google visitors per day and maybe some more visitors from other sources. Install a decent web counter (one of the above two is my own preference) and start monitoring your traffic. Spend a couple of minutes every day studying your traffic. What keywords do people use to arrive at your blog, etc. You will know which blog posts attract traffic and which blog posts do not. Get ideas from this and continue with your weekly routine.
Step 5: After you finish about 100 blog posts and start getting about 50 to 100 blog visitors every day you may join some affiliate marketing networks and apply for Affiliate programs. It may be a bit too early for you to start making money from referral or affiliate ads, but you can try.
After this you are on your own and your can read different ways to monetize your blog mentioned below. I have found that it is good to set yourself targets - for example : write at least 10 blog posts in the coming two weeks, or develop at least two links per week using Hubpages or try hard to take blog traffic to so and so level by end of next month etc. Setting targets provides good motivation.
There are several ways to make money blogging. A blogger's goal should be to diversify his/her blogging income and try to make money from as many different sources as possible. This is especially important if you are planning to work full time from home and are going to be heavily dependent on your blog income. It is always good not to put all your eggs in one basket. Here is a list of ways in which you can monetize your blog.
Monetizing your blog by displaying Google Adsense Ads. - This is the best way to make money online for relatively new bloggers. For me this is the most important source of blogging income. Take adsense very seriously, at least until other revenue options open. Also, do not forget to monetize your blog feed. GoogleAdsense is discussed in detailed in the section 'Google Adsense Optimization'.
Monetizing your Blog by writing paid blog reviews - There are several opportunities where you can get paid by paypal for writing reviews of products or websites of advertisers. This can be the second best source of income for new bloggers. Once you have a decent blog with over 50 blog posts or so, (or maybe even less will do, try) apply to paid blogging networks like Pay Per Post. Other details are discussed in the section 'Get Paid to Blog'.
Monetizing your Blog by Affiliate programs - Affiliate programs allow you earn money per action (Cost Per Action or CPA). Although new bloggers will struggle to make good blogging income from affiliate programs, later on you should try to diversify your income and make money using referral or affiliate ads. Details in the section 'Make Money using Affiliate programs'.
Monetizing you Blog by directly selling Flat rate Ads - This is one of the best source of blogging income, since it is stable and independent of variations in your blog traffic. When the time is right, advertisers will themselves contact you after they come across your blog. This maybe a difficult money making option for new bloggers.
SEO techniques or Search Engine Optimization techniques are those which you can use to improve your search engine rankings. Even improving your ranking for a particular keyword or querry from say position 8 to position 1 can literally triple the traffic to your website or blog. Thus SEO is extremeley important. Before understanding the basics of SEO, you have to understand how search engines work. Well, the exact criterion and formula is a secret, but roughly, search engines like Google decide the ranking of a particular page based on the following three criterion.
What other websites think about your site – this takes into account other pages which link to your page, the quality of those pages, the anchor text used to link to your page and all that jazz. This can be summarized in just one number – your page rank. Getting more pages from other domains to point towards your page can increase your page rank.
What the Search Engine Robots or Crawlers think about your site– this takes into account the keywords appearing in your page, the keyword density and the relevance of the appearing keywords with the search query.
What your site visitors think about your page – this takes into account the visitor behavior for example how often do visitors press the back button on their browser immediately after visiting your site. If most visitors to your site find that it is not useful at a first glance they will press the back button and submit query to the search engine again. This, eventually will damage your search engine ranking.
SEO TIP 1: Participate in blog carnivals, submit your articles to free-article-submission sites like Bestcashcow.com, or best way would be to write your own 200 to 300 page relevant articles on sites like Hubpages and yourself link to your articles on your blog. One or two links per article on Hubpages pointing towards your blog is allowed. Don't be too fussy about page rank though. It is clear that nowadays page rank has less and less to do with search engine ranking. The following is an interesting video about page rank. SEO TIP 2: Having the right keywords and keyword density can improve your chances of search engine ranking, but dont take this too literally. Believe me there are several examples of web pages which have rank one but repeat the main keyword only twice or thrice in their page. In any case, if you overdo it and repeat a keyword too many times, Google or other search engines may consider it as a spam. Keywords are important. Learn to use them naturally and throughout your blog post, without overdoing it.
SEO TIP 3: Visitor behavior is the most important thing that will determine your search engine ranking in the long run. It is important that you try to keep your visitors on your blog for as long as you can by providing information they need, other external useful links, etc. Keep your blog clean and tidy so that visitors are not repelled instantly by watching the enormous amount of irrelevant content and links on a page. Write articles for human beings first, search engines later. More about this in 'The art of writing an article'.
SEO TIP 4: Develop the habit of putting internal links (at least two or three links to your own previous articles on related topic). Internal links and the content of those pages has role to play in Search Engine ranking.
SEO TIP 5: Try to include relevant (not junk) images and videos if possible. Also whenever you include an image describe it using a short keyword or phrase in the ALT tab of the image.
Make Money blogging using Google Ads - Adsense Optimization
Displaying Google Ads on your blog is perhaps the best way of earning income from your blog, especially when you are a new blogger. It is for this reason that you should never ever mess up with Google Adsense TOC because a blogger who is banned by Google from the Adsense program is banned forever. Now lets talk about Adsense Optimization - how to find the best configuration of Google Ad formats, color patterns and ad placements in order to maximize your bloggging money.
It is the experience of several bloggers (including me) that tweeking the position, type and format of your Adsense ads and finding the right combination can virtually double or triple the money you make from adsense. There are three questions that need to be addressed:
Which ad formats to use for maximizing income?
Where to place Google Adsense Ads?
How to test the performance of your Google Adsense ad units?
The answer to the third question is easy - Adsense Custom Channels. I strongly recommend you start using Custom Channels right away, because without them it is not possible to fine tune your ad placement and formats to optimize your blogging money.
There is no magical answer to the first two question that suits all. For example: on some blogs Leaderboards work well, on my it does not. However the most common ad formats are 300x250 medium rectangle, 336x280 large rectangle, 160x600 wide skyscraper and 728x90 leaderboard. You must find out what works well on your blog and it may take a month or so to find the most efficient combination. Here are some Adsense videos from Inside Adsense which explain some of the basics of Adsense Optimization. If you haven't already, watch all three of these videos.
The thumb rule is thatbigger Adsense ad units work better. A wide skyscraper is better than a thin skyscraper, a large rectangle is better than a medium one and so on. Try putting a large rectangle just at the bottom of your blog post. Read more about this on Adsense Optimization I.
It is important to place the ads near the content. Ads placed far away usually have lower CTR (Click through rate) simply because your blog visitors will not notice these ads. Watch this video and then see the heat map below for some recommended ad placements. Read more about this point on Adsense Optimization III.
It is usually found that ads on a 'uncluttered' and clean blog work much better than those on a highly cluttered one. Also choose ad colours which complement the layout of your site. Dont try too hard to attract the attention of your visitors by using gaudy colors. Read more about this on Adsense Optimization II.
It is important to think like a blog-visitor when you place ads. Try these recommended ad placements and then test them using custom channels. You may also want to have a look at where I have placed the ads on this page. There is large rectangle right at the beginning of the blog post, mainly for those visitors who do not stay for long on the page. There is a wide skyscraper at the right, aimed for those who leave the blog reading a post halfway. And then there is a large rectangle at the bottom of each blog post. For me this combination works quite well. It took me a series of tests spread over 2 months to find what works best. Remember placing ads will not repel your visitors or reduce your blog traffic. In fact as Google puts it, the ads are so targeted that some of them may actually useful for your visitors.
Adsense Tip: When you create custom channel and test ad performance, allow at least one week for each test. In my experience the income generated from very new ad units is usually less and thus in the first couple of days, the test results can be lower than what they should be.
Make Money Online using Affiliate Programs Affiliate or Referral advertisements allow you to earn money or commission if website or blog visitors click the affiliate link and make a purchase, or join a newsletter, or perform any other action as prescribed by the advertiser. If properly used, and also depending on the type of your blog, affiliate programs can one of your best source of online income from your blog. Let me give you a concrete example of how money is made using affiliate links. Example: The following link is an affiliate link or referral ad for them. Quality Web hosting - Unlimited Bandwidth & Storage - Only $4.95. If you click on the above affiliate link and make a purchase, then I make money in the form of commission. If you click but do not make a purchase, then I do not make money at all.
Affiliate programs allow bloggers to make income on basis of Cost Per Action (CPA), which means you get a specified amount of money if your blog visitor performs a specified action which can be anything like purchase, signing up a newsletter, etc.
A good affiliate income is a sign of a healthy blog. Although in the initial stages of your make money online project, it maybe a bit difficult to earn from affiliate links on your blog, you must keep it as your medium term goal to achieve success with earning money from Affiliate programs.
How to start earning income from your blog using affiliate programs? There are two ways to enroll in affiliate programs and start . Either you directly search for suitable affiliates one by one or you join a affiliate marketing network or referral programs network like Commission Junction where you can find hundreds of affiliate programs to enroll at one place. The following are some popular affiliate marketing networks (there are several others)
DGMPro (affiliate programs for those in U.K., Australia, India and Asia Pacific)
My personal experience is that for small blogs (like this one) it is a bit difficult to make money online from affiliate programs. For example, although I have displayed and tried several affiliate ads on my blog, my income from them is practically zero. If your blog or website traffic is less than 100 visitors per day, it is unlikely you will make a lot of revenue with affiliate programs. In that case I would first recommend you to focus on traffic building and earning money online with Google Adsense in the meantime. After you take your blog traffic to the next level, say 1000 per day, it would be a good time to take the idea of making money with affiliate programs or referral advertisements seriously. If you are a new blogger, just bookmark this section and visit later after you work on your blog traffic.
Get Paid to Blog - Make Money Online by writing Paid Blog Reviews For a new blogger, perhaps no other income is as exciting as directly getting paid for writing a blog post. You can actually earn between $1 to $20 (realistically, sometimes even more) for writing a 200 or 300 page blog review of an advertisers product or service or website. It is actually possible to make anywhere between $100 to $750 per month (depending on how often you write and the quality of your site, etc.). Here are three main Paid Blogging networks where you can find opportunities to get paid to blog.
Pay Per Post - The biggest and perhaps the best such site with plenty of opportunities. On their website they claim that you can find income opportunities for your blog and make $500 per month or more.
Sponsored Reviews - Maybe the second best. Lesser opportunities, but still good paying ones.
Buy Blog Reviews - Low paying opportunities, but still worth joining.
Sign up on all three of them. You can find more such paid blogging networks on my previous blog post - Get Paid to Blog where you will also find more details on payment options about the above site, etc.
If you master the art of writing useful articles you will make a lot of money online from your blogging activities. Let me give you some specific tips in order to writing 'successful blog articles' which will bring you a lot of blog traffic. These are a result of my own experimenting and experience.
Choosing the Title / Topic of your Blog Article: You article should be a blog post focussed on one or a group of related keywords. One to three of those keywords should appear in your title. In order to choose the best keyword for title and sprinkling throughout your blog post, use Google Insights to get an idea for what people search. For example, if i want to write a blog post on Home Loan, there are some similar sounding keywords - Home Loan, Home Mortgage, Housing Loan, etc. After using Google Insights I find the following - The queries for Home loan and home mortgage are much more than those for housing loan or house loan. So it is better to home loan/ mortgage in the title and in most of your blog article. Get the idea? Also remember to select the country and other specifics of audience you are planning to target while using Google Insights.
Try to give complete information related to that group of keywords: When you complete writing your blog post, ask yourself the question - if a person lands up on your blog post by google search, will he/she find what they are looking for? Whatever keyword or keywords you have in mind for that blog post, have you supplied complete information? This is important for making your blog visitors stay on your blog for a longer time.
Provide related and meaningful external links : Try to link to top external web pages on related topic. This will be good for your visitors and also good for your rankings too.
Update your best blog posts - You will have some blog posts which will attract good blog traffic. It is important to keep the information in that blog post up to date. It is useful to use sitemeter to track what your visitors come looking for and then see if your blog post actually has information useful for them. Monitoring what keywords your blog visitors use to arrive at your blog post can also be useful for getting ideas to write further posts.
Work from Home Full time - Risks, Strategies and Benefits.
Are you planning to make money from home full time? That is, quit your current job and be a full time blogger? Or may be not blogging, but make money from some other site? Working from home has its own perks and risks. The perks are obvious. You get to choose how you work, when you work, there is complete job satisfaction. Here are the risks that you will have to face if you plan to make money from home full time.
Kick-Start Risk: If you are planning to start a blog or a website, you may never manage to get enough traffic to make enough money for a living. This unfortunately does happen, and some of the reasons are mentioned in the section "Can you make a living by working from home?"
Competition Risk: Lets say even if you manage to make a blog or website and currently you ARE making a good amount of money from home. Even in this case, if your entire source of traffic is based on only a few keywords or pages, then you are vulnerable to the risk of competition. It can easily happen that as newer and better pages on that topic are created you lose your search engine ranknig and consequently lose traffic. In order to avoid such risks, you do not want to be in a situation where you rely on only a few pages of your blog or website for majority of the traffic and revenue.
Missed-Opportunity Risk: Your lethargy or lack of discipline or incurious mindset may avoid you from spotting new opportunities. If you never write a page on a topic, you never know how much traffic you have lost. This is a risk you face of missing the money making opportunities around you.
In any case, you are the best person who can decide whether or not you are ready to make money from home full time.
Here is a list of ideas you can follow in order to maximize your chances of success. This list is based on observing some very successful bloggers who make their living by working full time from home.
Don't just build a blog - Build a website (on one single domain) which has a blog, a forum and some information or resource pages.
Build a Glossary or small Encyclopedia: It is advisable to build a comprehensive glossary of the terms that you will be dealing with on your site. For example if you have a finance related site, then you would want to build a glossary where you explain terms like mutual funds, tax deduction, market derivatives, etc. - one term on one page where you also include an image, an external link and a complete information. The idea is that whenever you use a term in your site or blog, you link it to the page on your glossary. This is useful for your readers, it is also more likely that the readers will click on an ad on the glossary page and these numerous internal links that you will have on your page will also help SEO.
Learn to interact with people: Building a successful website is not just about writing pages after pages. It is also about dealing with several other people including your visitors, advertisers, and other fellow bloggers or even your competitors. You will have to make efforts to improve your skills of dealing with people. Start early and never miss opportunities to communicate with people or offer help.
Apart from these you will have to follow the general guidelines of building numerous high quality pages. Remember that although the main perks of making money from home are flexible and relaxed working hours, these perks are only visible once your website kick starts. In the initial few months or maybe a year, you will have to work hard, maybe over 5 hours a day until you get a few thousand visitors and signs of a decent income. You should allow at least one year of time for getting your make money from home project running in full swing.
There are many ways in which you can make money from home. Apart from blogging for money, the following income opportunities seem to be popular.
Making money online from home by participating in paid surveys.
Making money by finding online data entry jobs which allow you to work from home.
Make Money using HubPages - a combination of blogging and Freelance writing.
Hubpages is a great place for 'casual writers' who love to write and also don't mind making some money on the way. This is like a freelance writing job, only the money you make is variable, depending solely on the quality of articles you write. Articles you write on Hubpages are called Hubs. From the hours I have spent reading about hubpages, i believe that if you write say 100 quality hubs, you can expect an income of somewhere between $20 to $200 per month, depending of course on the quality of your hubs. Let me quickly point out some features of hubpages which might interest you. Continue reading or Take a tour of hubpages.
Using Hubpages for traffic and SEO reasons - This has already been discussed. If you have a blog, which is your primary publishing platform and primary source of making money online, you can write 200-300 word articles on hubpages and place one or two links in each of those articles pointing towards your blog articles. This will help you to drive some traffic from hubpages to your blog and may also be useful for SEO reasons. It would be a good idea if you can make sure that the articles on hubpages are independently interesting on their own.
Enjoyable experience : If you are looking for earning income by freelance writing, then you will enjoy your experience on hubpages. Especially creating hubs, putting images, and all that is quite user friendly.
Variety of Options to make money online: By writing hubs you have a variety of different ways to earn money online from the articles you have written. You can display Google Ads, sell Amazon and Ebay products, make money with Kontera in text ads, etc.
Make Money Online with eHow - a combination of blogging and Freelance writing.
EHow works like hubpages. You write articles on eHow and you get paid. However there are some key differences. On eHow you can only write articles which are of the type "How to" do some particular thing. For e.g. you can write an article dealing with "How to save money", but the title of your article cannot be "Best Savings Account to save money". The format of articles is also restrictive and you cannot use eHow as SEO for other sites. You get paid by paypal and the formula for compensation you recieve is not clear. However if you can write good "How to" articles, it is possible to make good money from eHow. Some say the money you can make online by using eHow is sometimes more than what you can make from Hubpages or Squidoo. One great strategy would be to open an account with eHow as well as Hubpages and use Hubpages to boost SEO ranking of your eHow articles.
Make Money using Squidoo - a combination of blogging and Freelance writing.
Making money by writing with Squidoo is again similar to making money with Hubpages or eHow with some more differences that I will point out. The revenue sharing on Squidoo is 50-50 and you can read more about it on Squidoo FAQ. The main additional difference is that on Squidoo you can write posts which have adult content. This is perhaps the best site to write such articles and make money online. You get paid by paypal and the compensation depends on how well your articles are doing, measured by a lens score.
For non-adult articles, Hubpages seems to be more efficient to attracting traffic. You can however sign up on both and see what works out best for you.
Blogging versus Freelance Writing As more and more people start using the internet more and more, there is tremendous amount of material to be written on the web. Not surprisingly there are several opportunities for good writers where they can make money online on a per writing assignment basis. These writing opportunities are sometimes called freelance writing jobs and the person who writes articles for others to make money is sometimes called a freelancer. Although you can make money online by freelancing as well as blogging, there are some marked differences, disadvantages and advantages of both which are summarized below.
Make Money Freelancing
Make Money Blogging
A freelancer makes money per assignment. Example $10 for writing a 500 word article, etc.
The amount of money a blogger makes per article is not fixed. And you do not make money immediately after you finish writing your blog post.
You can start making money as soon as you find a good freelance writing job
It takes time to set up a blog, get decent traffic and learn about ways to monetize your blog successfully.
You stop making money as soon as you stop writing articles (naturally).
You get ongoing revenue for articles you have written. Even if you go on a vacation for a week or two, you will keep getting money as long as your previous blog posts are there to attract blog traffic.
Somebody else gets a share in the advertising money earned from your article.
You get to keep 100% of the advertising income from your blog.
If you are planning to be a freelancer, it would be a good idea to channel some of your writing enthusiasm or energy into either developing your own blog or website. After all, one day you would like to write for yourself. Why get a freelancer job when you can employ yourself?
Let us have a closer look at what people search on google related to Money Making. I tried to compare the the volume for search in the past 12 months for the following queries in the category of Finance and Insurance using Google Insights :
Free Money
Fast Money
Easy Money
Make Money Online
There you go. So many people looking to earn free money. They want to make money right now, as fast as they can.
Click on the above image to have a closer look at the image. The top most blue line is for searches related to Free Money. The Red line is for searches related to Fast Money. And the orange line below is for Easy Money. The barely visible green line at the rock bottom of the above image is what this post is all about "Make Money Online" especially by writing a blog.
Here are the top myths related to money making which I think you should avoid being a victim of.
Myth: You can earn Money for Free, i.e. without working for it.
Myth: It is easy to earn Money Fast. While this maybe true in some very rare accidental cases, it usually takes a lot of patience to start earning money either from online activities or otherwise. I would say you must be prepared for a waiting time of at least a couple of months in the case of making money with your blog.
Myth: Bloggers usually earn a lot of Money. While this is true for a some bloggers, say around 10% of the bloggers, most of the bloggers struggle to make even $100 per month. This is because of a number of reasons which are discussed in this long post.
So if you are here for earning fast money, free money, easy money or quick money - I am sorry to disappoint you but this blog post is not for you. This is meant for serious people who are ready to invest time and patience for making a five figure yearly income. Later on maybe even six figure yearly income.
As I mentioned before in the introduction, the earliest reason why I started this blog was not with the intention to make money online or work from home.
In the summer of 2007, one of my friends discussed with me the idea of making money online with a blog or a website. He also gave me examples of a couple of his other friends who make over 100 thousand dollars a year from their websites. However, they were full time into website management. This is one reason why I never took the idea seriously. After all, I have a full time job which I enjoy much more than I enjoy my online activities like blogging. So why should I even think in the direction of making money from home?
However around August 2007, i started a blog, just to keep track of my investments and money management. Ya, the purpose was simple - just blogging for its own sake, not for making money. Blogging in order to keep track of what I am doing with my money.
As weeks went by, i became attracted to the idea of having more an more blog visitors. I think it must be sometime in late August 2008, that i started thinking in directions of making money online from my blog. For the next two or maybe two and a half months, I spent aimlessly blogging without any concrete plan. My efforts did not give rise to the amount of blog traffic i thought i should have got. One of the reasons is that i did not follow some of the guidelines mentioned above about SEO and writing quality blog posts.
By November end, I applied for an Adsense Account. My Adsense application was immediately rejected (later on i found out that the main reason was that I my email address attached to this blog and the email address used for adsense application did not match). Fortunately I had a friend who agreed to let me use his adsense ads until i got mine. So early December was the beginning of my actual blogging income. The first three days did not see a single click on any of the ads I had put on my blog. Yes, not a single penny earned from my hundreds of blog impressions. The ads were simply not placed near the content or whatever. But after some experimenting with ad placements and learning a few things about adsense optimization, i had started making about $1 a day by the end of December. I remember mid-January was the time when my earnings more than tripled. The main reason is a revelation I had about the importance of some of the blogging tips I mentioned above. Then by mid-February, I got my own Adsense account and had started making over $15 per day. That in my opinion was a very rapid improvement. I attribute this entire growth to some of the quality article writing tips i have mentioned above. I have shared everything I know.
Currently I earn between $35 to $50 per day which is over $1000 per month. I hope this Make Money Online guide will help you in your goal of making money from your blog. If you do find some of the tips here actually useful, - share the tips with your own blog readers.
How much do bloggers earn? A vague estimate of blogging income and a statistical overview of money that bloggers make online.
Make Money Online from Home: Blogging - the most efficient way of earning money online. Some tips to start your own blog and turn it into a make money blog.
Get Paid to Blog - List of various paid blogging networks where you can get paid to write blog posts, sponsored reviews or display blogging ads. A useful way of earning income from your blog in addition to Google Adsense or other advertising money.
only applies to such visitors. In my opinion (which is based on the adsense testimonial given below and some hard google search), the best possible CTR is between 6% to 10%. I am not talking of Google Adsense CTR here. By this CTR i mean the CTR of the page, which is sum total of all the CTR of all the ads placed on your page (these ads may include adsense, chitika and other ads). It seems possible to arrange the layout of your page, ad formats and color schemes in such a way that say one in 10 visitors to your site or blog clicks on an ad. This is the best you can hope for and it is indeed achieved by some as seen on 
I find the following - The queries for Home loan and home mortgage are much more than those for housing loan or house loan. So it is better to home loan/ mortgage in the title and in most of your blog article.
