Money Talks-Making Money With Your 1st Or 50th Website Using Google Adsense
If you are just starting online with your first website, you havequite a learning curve in front of you. I know that your learningcurve is still long, because I have been making money online foryears, and I am still learning new stuff everyday.Every year, more people are coming online. And every year, peoplestruggle to figure out how to tap into the economic enginepowered by the Internet. The one thing that newcomers to theInternet frequently fail to realize is that those of us, who aremaking the most money online, spent years learning our trades.
The good news is that Internet newcomers have one major advantagethat my mentors and myself did not have when we started ouronline enterprises. The newcomers have people like us who arewilling to teach others what they have learned.
First And Most Important Lesson To LearnThere are three kinds of commercial websites on the Internet:product/service merchants, advertising providers, and non-profitwebsites.Now, the Red Cross and the United Way are non-profit websites bychoice and mission. But, the majority of non-profit websites onthe Internet were designed to be for-profit websites, but thewebsite owner will have been lucky to have earned enough to paytheir web hosting costs.
By the end of this article, I hope that I will have provided youenough information to be able to turn any non-profit website intoa profit generating machine.Merchants sell services. They also sell products made by othersor themselves. Some merchants produce their own informationalbooks and e-books, on a wide variety of topics.
Many people make the mistake of assuming that they do not knowanything of value that other people would want to know. But, thatjust isn't true. Call me an optimist if you will, but I believe everyone knows something that other people would be willing to pay a certain amount of money to learn.
Ii is a fact that some of the smartest online entrepreneurs Iknow make a lot of money by writing and selling books ande-books, on topics ranging from cryptograms(http://www.cryptogr amsbylouise. com/), to how-to cure acid reflux(http://www.refluxgo neforever. com/), to finding the hero within(http://www.herosoul .com/), to how to be more successful with anonline business.
I have bought many e-books and I have to say that some werebetter than others, but all of them helped me to learn what Ineeded to know in order to be successful with whatever endeavor Iwas undertaking.Advertising Providers build websites with the intent ofattracting a huge and loyal audience, so that advertisers willconsider their website to be a good place to spend theiradvertising dollars.
In those dark days before Google Adsense(http://adsense. Google.com) and Yahoo's Publisher Network(http://publisher. yahoo.com/), we little guys were just toughout-of-luck if we wanted to sell our advertising space through alarger network of advertisers.I remember having a website that was finally serving one thousandunique page views per day, or 30,000 page views per month. Iremember thinking that it was time for me to see whom I couldsell advertising space. So, I started doing my research.
I looked at one advertising network, and then another, andanother. Without fail, most advertising networks required onemillion page views per month in order for a website toparticipate in their network. I was just poop out of luck.So, I started advertising space on my site to my visitors. I soldsome advertising, but I did not make a living doing it. The mainissue here is that the people on my site are looking to learnabout travel and other things, and advertisers generally spendtheir time on sites learning about doing business online.
Then in 2003, it all changed with the rollout of Google Adsense.Suddenly, all I needed to do was to apply to participate inGoogle's program. On approval, I could add one little piece ofjavascript code to my website, and I could start earning moneyfrom Google immediately, by making their client's advertisingavailable on my own website.Finally, my information website had a method for earning moneythat did not require for me to spend all of my waking hourschasing one sale after another.
Some BackgroundWhen I started my first online business, I had set up an Yahoostore (http://www.yahoo. com). I did very well with it, but aftera couple years, I realized that I did not want to keep doing thesame thing for the rest of my life.Three rooms of my home were committed to storing merchandise thatI was buying for resale. When I made a product purchase, I had totake photos and then sit down to my computer, upload the imageand make an appropriate product description. Then I had to spendall of my spare time, making new listings at Yahoo and running tothe post office to ship the merchandise I had sold.
One day I realized that the reason I had started my business isto provide my family a better standard of living. I hadaccomplished that goal, at the cost of time with my family. I wasliterally working from the moment I got out of bed, until Icollapsed into my bed at the end of the day.After parting ways with Yahoo, I researched other profit modelsand settled on a membership site. In order to be successful witha membership website, one must be willing and able to add newgood quality content to the website at least three or four timesper week. That is a job in itself.
While my membership site did well monetarily, I found myself in aposition similar to when I had my Yahoo store. I was spending allof my spare time with my business and not my family.Finally, I Wrapped My Head Around The SolutionWhat I needed for myself was a website where I could sell otherpeople's products and services, then let the other person handlethe entire process of collecting the money and delivering theproduct or service. I needed to build my business in such a waythat I could build my website, when I wanted to invest the time,and I could collect my checks at the end of the month.The advertising website is the best kind of site to have whenyour goals are the same as mine.
So, I embarked on building a website that had information on awide variety of topics.Three years after I started my current website, Google launchedtheir Adsense program. I applied to Google's Adsense program andwas accepted within just a few days. I then applied my GoogleAdsense code to my website.Over the years, I have been building links to my website so thatpeople could find me. The articles and directory links haveproduced good traffic results for me on a consistent basis, sinceI started the process of building them.
The Next Lesson Can Literally Double And Triple Your IncomeWhen you undertake to design a website that will hostadvertising, don't be shy about it!• Don't stick your advertising in a corner somewhere; • Don'tdesign your advertising to look like something other than anadvertisement; • Don't be afraid to test your advertisingplacement; • Don't be afraid to tell people that they can buyadvertising on your website; • Don't be afraid to charge goodmoney to advertisers to have a placement on your website.Don't be afraid and don't be shy. Your reason for puttingadvertising on your website is to give YOU a way to make moneyfrom your work. But, in order to keep your advertisers happy, youneed to make sure that they get a good return for theirinvestment.When you can help your advertisers make money, then you will byextension earn money from your website. It is a beautifulconcept; when I help put money in my advertiser's pockets, theyput money in my pocket.
Specific Tips To Maximize Your Advertising Click-Through Rates(CTRs)The default link color on the Internet is blue; so make the linksin your advertising blue.The default text color on the Internet is black; so make the textin your advertisement black or whatever color is the default textcolor on your website.Make your advertisement block stand out from the rest of thecontent on the page. Putting your ads directly in your visitor'sface is good. Within a text block, I have found the 300x250 to bethe most effective ad block size. To see an example of the300x250 text block in action, view my blog here:http://www.clintond ouglasiv. com
Other ad block sizes that we have seen good results include: the728x90 leaderboard, 468x60 banner, and the160x600 wideskyscraper.Be The Next Advertising Success StoryI advised a friend of mine to make these kinds of changes on hisown website. He already had great traffic, but he was not makingas much money as I thought he should be making.On my suggestion, he changed his Google ads from the bottom ofhis left sidebar to the main part of his pages. He told me thathis CTR increased from 0.8% to 2.4%. I told him to change his adsfrom the 468x15 link unit to the 468x60 banner ad. He told methat his CTR increased from 2.4% to 4.7%. Then I told him tochange his links from black to blue. Within just a few weeks, hereported back to me that his click-through rates jumped again,this time from 4.7% to 7.8%. He even reported that on someindividual days, his new layout generated as high as 11.4% CTRs.On my friend's website, his CTR jumped from 0.8% where it hadbeen for a couple years, since he started using Google Adsense,to 7.8% on average. While most webmasters will see an averageincrease of two- to three-times, my friend has experienced anearly tenfold (+9.75%) increase in his advertising revenuethrough that website.What could you do with ten times more advertising revenue fromyour website? You will never know until you implement these kindsof changes on your website to increase your own advertisingrevenue.
Clinton Douglas IV, writes E-Business articles. "In less than 7 Days" you could have your own Highly Profitable Website. Visit his site now; Read the insider secrets to Building an Online Empire ==> Learn how to make fast online money by visiting: http://online- empire.vasrue. com/
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