Tuesday, September 20, 2005

The #1 Biggest Mistake That People Make With Adsense

By Joel Comm

It's very easy to make a lot of money with AdSense. I know it's easy because in a short space of time, I've managed to turn the sort of AdSense revenues that wouldn't keep me in candy into the kind of income that pays the mortgage on a large suburban house, makes the payments on a family car and does a whole lot more besides.

But that doesn't mean there aren't any number of mistakes that you can make when trying to increase your AdSense income - and any one of those mistakes can keep you earning candy money instead of earning the sort of cash that can pay for your home.

There is one mistake though that will totally destroy your chances of earning a decent AdSense income before you've even started.

That mistake is making your ad look like an ad.

No one wants to click on an ad. Your users don't come to your site looking for advertisements. They come looking for content and their first instinct is to ignore everything else. And they've grown better and better at doing just that. Today's Internet users know exactly what a banner ad looks like. They know what it means, where to expect it - and they know exactly how to ignore it. In fact most Internet users don't even see the banners at the top of the Web pages they're reading or the skyscrapers running up the side.

But when you first open an AdSense account, the format and layout of the ads you receive will have been designed to look just like ads. That's the default setting for AdSense - and that's the setting that you have to work hard to change.

That's where AdSense gets interesting. There are dozens of different strategies that smart AdSense account holders can use to stop their ads looking like ads - and make them look attractive to users. They include choosing the right formats for your ad, placing them in the most effective spots on the page, putting together the best combination of ad units, enhancing your site with the best keywords, selecting the most ideal colors for the font and the background, and a whole lot more besides.

The biggest AdSense mistake you can make is leaving your AdSense units looking like ads.

The second biggest mistake you can make is to not know the best strategies to change them.
Click Here!

For more Google AdSense tips,
Click Here!


Copyright © 2005 Joel Comm. All rights reserved

Adlink Units: Are They Worth It?

By Joel Comm

When Google first launched AdSense, there was some skepticism from publishers. As much as most people were blown away by the idea of ads that were targeted to the content of a Web page there was the question of whether users, used to banners and skyscrapers, would click on something that looked so different.

Boy, were those doubters wrong! AdSense has more than proved its worth to advertisers, users and publishers.

A similar sense of skepticism greeted Google's launch of AdLink units. With nothing more than a list of links (which then lead to the ads), these units contain even less information than a traditional AdSense unit. And the user has to click twice before the publisher gets paid. That makes them sound about as welcoming as a winter barbeque in Siberia.

It took a while for publishers to discover that actually AdLink units weren't as bad as they looked, and that with a smart bit of positioning they could actually take advantage of the way some pages are laid out. In fact, for some designs, they were able to reach parts that other AdSense units just couldn't reach!

And best of all, publishers quickly discovered that once someone clicked on an AdLink unit, they would almost always click on the ad that followed. That did their revenues the world of good and removed the two-click doubt.

The old AdLink units then were effective, but fairly limited. They were great if you knew the one or two places on the page to use them but not so good if you didn't. Recently though, Google has launched horizontal AdLink units that have taken these ads into a whole new realm. Because they fit neatly across a page they're useful for a much broader range of page designs and are much more flexible. On the other hand though, they're now competing for space directly with the traditional ad units, making it even harder for publishers to figure out which ads to place where.

Is all this good news for publishers or bad news?

It's great news for savvy publishers who have more tools to maximize their AdSense revenues (and know what to do with those tools) but it's bad news for people who don't make the effort to learn how use AdSense - and now have more ways to miss out.

For more Google AdSense tips, visit Click Here
Copyright © 2005 Joel Comm. All rights reserved

Joel Comm is Dr. AdSense, an Internet entrepreneur who has been online for more than 20 years. Joel is co-creator of ClassicGames.com, now known as Yahoo! Games and is the author of the web's best-selling AdSense ebook, "Google AdSense Secrets (Or What Google Never Told You About Making Money With Adsense)".

The 5 Most Important Things You Must Know About AdSense

By Joel Comm

Whether you're just starting out with AdSense or whether you've been using it for years, the success of your ads will depend on knowing five absolutely essential pieces of information about AdSense:

1. AdSense Can Make You A Huge Heap Of Cash Lots of people make the mistake of believing that AdSense is only good for bringing a site a few extra pennies a month. Wrong! AdSense can fund your lifestyle - if you get it right.

2. Junk Sites Get Junk Income But just because it's possible for a site to make a lot of money with AdSense, it doesn't mean that any site can make a lot of money with AdSense. Your site must have good content that can attract users on its own merit. There are a lot of different strategies available for producing good content for your site. You'll need to use them if you want to create the sort of site that makes real money.

3. Your Choice Of Ads Matter One of the first things that you'll have to do when you join AdSense is to pick the types of ads you want to display. Success relies on following certain principles that encourage users to click and persuades them that they've got a reason to do so. You'll need to know those principles.

4. You Can Influence The Ads You Receive! Here's a little known AdSense secret: you do have some control over the ads that get served on your site. That control isn't unlimited - but it is worth exercising. It's also a little complicated but it's got a lot do with keyword hotspots located in each Web page. (I explain it all in my book, Google AdSense Secrets.) That's definitely something you need to know!

5. Your Stats Are Your Best Friend The stats you get with your AdSense account might look complicated and well, a bit dull... but they're packed with useful information that can have a massive effect on your revenues. To make real money with AdSense, you need to know what your stats are telling, what they're not telling you and where you can find out more.

There's a lot you need to know to make serious money with AdSense. If you're missing that information, you're just throwing money away.

For more Google AdSense tips, visit
Click Here!

Copyright © 2005 Joel Comm. All rights reserved

How To STOP Affiliate Link "Hijackers"

By Jim Edwards

(c)2002 Jim Edwards - all right reserved

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Let's face the facts!

Almost everyone online today is looking to make or save a
buck any way they can. In the past, most of the people who
clicked on your affiliate links used to purchase without a
second thought... but, as times get tougher online, it seems
a growing number won't!

As money gets tighter and product prices rise, people who
know how to manipulate the system will sometimes replace
your affiliate ID with theirs and "hijack" your commissions.

Here's an example:

Let's say your affiliate link is
www.ebookaboutcats.com/?live-well.

Say the highjacker uses the affiliate ID of captain-hook.
What he would do is replace your ID with his, and buy from
the URL www.ebookaboutcats.com/?captain-hook.

The bottom line: the hijacker puts your money in his pocket.

In other cases, they can't stand the thought of you "making
money off them" so they bypass you by simply chopping off
the end of your affiliate link that contains your ID.

Instead of buying from www.ebookaboutcats.com/?live-well,
the bypasser will simply "chop off" the affiliate ID at the
end and simply buy from the plain URL www.ebookaboutcats.com
--without your affiliate ID attached!

Either way, you get cheated out of your rightful commission.

To help you fight these affiliate link hijackers I offer a
couple of my best (proven and battle tested) tips, which
will at least confuse these "hijackers" and, in many cases,
often defeat and disarm them completely.

Side Note: If someone really, really wants to steal your
affiliate commission, they will find a way; however, most
hijackers are just opportunists who will only act if they
see an easy buck.

The first and cheapest way to hide your affiliate links is
using a javascript redirect page. This is where you hide
your affiliate link in a page on your site using a simple
javascript that redirects people to your affiliate link.

It works great not to expose your "naked" affiliate link in
your actual email messages and ezine ads, but, once people
get redirected to the true affiliate link, many affiliate
programs expose the affiliate link along with your ID in the
browser address bar.

Here's an example of a redirect script in action.
Click => http://www.ebookfire.com/esejs.html

Notice how the link takes you to a page where you can see my
affiliate ID, ebookfire, in your web browser's address bar.

Like it or not, someone can replace my ID with theirs and
"hijack" the commission... but at least the redirect script
keeps them from immediately seeing my "naked" affiliate link
(http://hop.clickbank.net/?ebookfire/ebksecrets) when I
publish it in my newsletter, email, or on my website.

You can get free redirect scripts just about anywhere you
find free javascripts. Here is the script I use
http://www.ebookfire.com/jrs.shtml.

A better way to hide your affiliate links is using a zero-
frame or "invisible" frame that masks the affiliate link by
making it appear you are sending people to a page on your
website. In reality, you are actually sending them to your
affiliate link.

This is the technique used by those "sub-domain" redirect
services that provide you with urls like
http://ese.ebookfire.net.

While giving someone a link like that is much better than
using a "naked" affiliate link such as
http://hop.clickbank.net/?ebookfire/ebksecrets, there is a
problem. As soon as someone does a "view >> source" in their
web browser they'll see your naked affiliate link plain as
day... which instantly blows your cover!

Currently the best way to protect your affiliate commissions
from ruthless hijackers is to use a combination of a zero-
frame page along with URL encryption. This involves sending
someone to URL that looks like a page on your site, but
actually pulls in your affiliate link like those "sub-
domain" services. However, there's one critical
difference...

If someone does a "view >> source" in their browser, you
have added protection in that all they will see is a jumble
of computer code (http:) instead of
your naked affiliate link.

Check out this example of a zero-frame with URL encryption
in action.
Click => http://www.ebookfire.com/ese.html

Side Note: Beware of cloaking scripts that use javascript
because they could malfunction in some web browsers.

Here's the bottom line: if you are going to sell through
other people's affiliate programs, never send a "naked"
affiliate link... you're just asking for people to hijack or
bypass you if you do.

Though nobody has a 100% perfect solution to this problem,
if you want to get paid more often through your affiliate
links, make sure it's not obvious you're referring people to
an affiliate link. If they can't easily see how to hijack or
bypass your link, a lot more people who would have taken the
money out of your pocket just go ahead and buy through your
link - which is, after all, the whole point! :-)

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Jim Edwards is the author of numerous best-selling ebooks
and earns thousands every month in affiliate commissions.
Jim is the developer of "Affiliate Link Cloaker," the web's
easiest, fastest, and safest way for even "non-techies" to
protect their affiliate links and STOP ruthless "hijackers".
Click Here