I’ve recently gotten a few questions about how/whether to include Adsense ads on a blog or website and how the whole process works. This is my response:

The Adsense system works in a pretty direct way. You first sign up for an Adsense account with Google (they won’t approve you unless you have an active website). Next, select and ad style from a variety of ad formats that they make available. Customize the ads by choosing colors for the text, background and borders. Finally, Google provides you with a block of Javascript code to paste into your web page where you want the advertising displayed.

Every time a website visitor views your page, Google scans the text looking for keywords. It then looks for advertisers bidding on those keywords and places one or more relevant ads into the ad space you created. If a visitors clicks on an ad, Google will share the revenue payed by the advertiser with you the site owner.

There are a lot of nuances to how all this works and which ad formats and placements work best, but those are the basics. Look around and click on a few articles to see how I chose to integrate the ads on this site.

The best resource for understanding the nuances of Adsense that I have found is a book by Joel Comm called “The Adsense Code.” I have a copy on my bookshelf. I don’t expend quite as much energy on my Adsense income as the book recommends, but have used much of the advice about ad placement and formatting to arrive at the implementation that I currently use.

One of the most important factors in determining your success with Adsense is writing content on subjects that advertisers are willing to pay big money for. If people are only willing to pay $.05/click to advertise on your content pages, it will take a long time to make any money.

If you already have a website, use this free Google tool to see how much people would be willing to pay for ads on your site:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Click on the ‘The Site-Related Keywords’ tab and enter the domain name for your website in the URL box. Check the box labeled ‘Include other pages on my site linked from this URL’. In the drop-down box labeled ‘Choose data to display’ select ‘Cost and Ad Position Estimates.’ This will give you one more option to select the currency and maximum cost per click (CPC). Enter 100 in the CPC box.

When you have done all that, click the ‘Get Keywords’ button. Google will search through your site and identify the keywords that advertisers are paying for and then estimate the value of each click. If your site doesn’t generate at least a few keyword phrases worth $2-$3 or more, you won’t make much money from ads.

You can also use this tool to do research on other topics. If you find a web page on a subject you would be interested in writing about, run it through the tool and see how valuable the topic is to advertisers.

For most casual web publishers, Adsense is not going to make you much money. But, there is potential to earn respectable income if your site is on a high value topic. You can also create sites and content specifically focussed on high value keywords, but be warned, there is a lot of competition out there and you will have to work to get traffic to your sites.

Adsense isn’t likely to make you rich overnight. But, as my experience demonstrates, it can add a respectable amount of income to your overall business plan.

The Go-To Guy!

P.S. Don’t let me have the last word, leave a comment and let us know what you think.

Associate Content approved my recent articles today and made me offers. That is the fastest turnaround I have had with them so far. Up until now it has always taken me at least a week to get offers for anything (but I was also submitting more articles. They might deal with them in batches and the ‘bulk’ submissions are slowing them down???)

The speed of approval was the good news. The actual offers weren’t that great. My article titled “Speed Write Your NonFiction Book Using Dictation” got a whopping $5.10 offer and my article titled “How to Fly Without Getting Sick” got a truly underwhelming $4.61 - and that one was an exclusive submission.  Since it ended up taking me about and hour to write and submit each, I’m way off my target goal of earning $20/hour.

On the slightly brighter side, I’m $9.71 closer to my new monitor. That is better than last week, but I’ve got a lot more writing to do!

Since I didn’t see much benefit to submitting an exclusive article, I think I will submit most as non-exclusives so I can use them again and squeeze some more money out of them (but that money will not be counted toward the new monitor purchase.) The writing article will be going up on this blog immediately - I might get some Adsense income from that one.

So here is the running tally:

2 Articles Sold - $9.71
Balance Required to Buy Monitor - $590.29 - $790.29
Remaining Number of Articles to be Written at Current Average Price ($4.85/each) - 122-163

Looks like I have a ways to go. I had better find some more profitable subjects if I want to get this done before my 14 week old daughter graduates college.

Back to the article mines,

The Go-To Guy! 

Do you want to start your own business publishing information products? There is a mountain of information products out there promising to show you how to start your business. The dirty little secret is - most of these products are either incomplete or just plain garbage.

So, where do you turn for help? Well, I’ve spent the past year and a half exploring this market and building my business (this blog is one component that actually makes me a little money!) I discovered a person named Fred Gleeck, known as ‘The Product Guru’ and recently attended his One-Day Info Product Seminar.

I liked the seminar so much that I bought the rights to distribute a recorded version of the One-Day Info Product Seminar (and I also have a copy to listen to over and over!) Fred goes step-by-step through the process of creating and growing an info product business. There is no hype, he just lays out the details. Unlike most ‘gurus’, Fred doesn’t brag about million dollar product launches or hype the idea of becoming instantly wealthy. He focuses on the elements needed to create and run a lasting business.
To kick off my sales of these seminar audio recordings, I am offering a GIGANTIC DISCOUNT! My One-Day Info Product Seminar sales page is currently offering the package for $67 - 30% off the retail price of $97.

But, that is not good enough. I am distributing 10 copies at the ridiculously low price of only $37. But, when they are gone, I will never sell it for that low price again.

These specially priced copies are being sold through eBay. View the One-Day Info Product Seminar’s Auction page for details (and to see how many copies are left.)

I spent a long time looking for a mentor I could trust, and Fred is one of my mentors now. The sales/auction pages have a little more info how I discovered Fred and why I value his teaching.

If you want to build your own info product empire, don’t wait! Order your copy of the One-Day Info Product Seminar today!

Have a profitable day,

The Go-To Guy!

P.S. If this is not for you, but you know someone who would appreciate the information, please forward this page to them.

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Dear Web Business Newsletter Subscriber,

Since the birth of my daughter back in January, life has gotten pretty busy. My online business has had some great successes, but most of my energy has gone toward my growing family.

Needless to say, projects have been piling up and I have been looking for ways to double and triple up what I am working on to try and get as many projects done as possible. I think I have come up with a combination that you will profit from.

MY INGENIOUS MASTER PLAN

One of the members of this newsletter, Walter Scheu, has created an amazing course on importing products to sell on Ebay. Walter asked me to help promote his new product as an affiliate and I quickly said YES! The product is excellent, the price is very reasonable, and the exposure levels are low enough right now that the marketplace hasn’t been saturated with his product already - there is an opportunity to offer something unique.

My excitement for the project got swallowed-up by daily life as a new daddy and I still haven’t gotten this promotion done. I could have just cranked out a quick promotional email, sent it to all of you, and called it done. But, this newsletter is not targeted at eBay sellers. Sales would be low (if any) and there would be little benefit to you. Plus, this is just not a good strategy for selling products. So I decided to do something a little different.

Over the course of the next few emails, I am going to go step-by-step through my plan to market Walter’s eBay Importing course. I will explain every aspect of how I will market this product with enough detail that you can swipe the whole idea and steal my profits for yourself.

WHY WOULD I DO THIS?

I have a few reasons. The first is that I want to help Walter recruit new affiliates and make some sales. It’s a good product.

The second, and most important, reason is that I think you will gain valuable insights into online promotion strategies by following along with a real life example. Even if you are not interested in promoting Walter’s product, you will benefit from seeing the thought process behind planning an affiliate marketing campaign. Effective promotions need more effort than simply dashing off an email (which requires you to already have a list of prospective buyers.) The steps I outline will help you with any online promotions you are planning.

HERE IS WHAT WE WILL BE DISCUSSING IN THE UPCOMING EMAILS:

• Audience Targeting
• Choosing Your Angle (What’s Your Story?)
• Selecting Secondary Promotional Products
• Building a Promotional e-Course (Telling Your Story)
• Creating a Squeeze Page and Setting Up Your Auto-Responder
• Generating Traffic

In the next email we will look at the nature of Walter’s ‘Importing for Ebay Sellers‘ course and decide who our target market is for promoting this product.

To prepare for this, visit the sales page for Walter’s course and familiarize yourself with what he is offering and the tone of his sales message. If you are considering promoting the product yourself, I recommend you purchase a copy and review it carefully - but this is not necessary for you to follow along with this series. Follow the link below and bookmark the page for future reference:

Importing for eBay Sellers, by Walter Scheau

Until next time, have a profitable day!

Andrew Seltz
The Go-To Guy!
www.AndrewSeltz.com

P.S. I actually want you to steal my plan and out promote me. I’m being very specific so that you can apply what you learn and see the results in action. Plus, I want to see Walter’s product jump to the top of the best-seller list.

P.P.S. If you have any questions about the project that I don’t cover, hit the reply button and send me an email. I will do my best to cover it in the next email.

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EMAIL

Importing for eBay Sellers

Subscribe to the Web Business Newsletter

I had my most profitable online business month yet last month and decided to roll some of that back into my business by seeking out a little offline education.

Here in New York City almost every street corner has a few news boxes giving away course catalogs or free local papers. One of the course catalogs that is very popular is the Learning Annex catalog. This one is usually filled with everything from from the weird and wild like ‘How To Strip for Your Partner’ and ‘Making a Fortune In Real Estate’ to very practical computer classes and soap making classes. It’s an adult education free-for-all.

In the middle of all these classes is a half day seminar called ‘Market and Sell Your Own Information Products’ led by Fred Gleeck. He has been leading these classes a few times a year for many years. When I first read about him I did a little research and bought 2 of his books (it was cheaper than the seminar and I wanted to get a feel for what he was all about.)

The books are very good (you can download the full texts in PDF format If you join his mailing list at www.FredGleeck.com. He email infrequently and they are always worth reading.)

I’ve grown to appreciate Fred’s writing and really wanted to hear him speak and meet him. This Saturday, March 17, 2007, I’m going to finally do it - and I payed the course fee out of the PROFITS from my online business!!!

Another marketer recently encourage me to go to meetings like this in order to network with people and not just for the information I’ll learn. I’m hoping that happens too!

I’ll post about what happens next week. If you are in New York, sign-up at www.learningannex.com and we can meet up at the seminar.

The Go-To Guy!

Jonathan Leger, author of $7 Secrets and the excellent scripts for viral promotion, has kicked out another excellent report: Write That Report!!!

I grabbed a copy and it is very good (no surprise there.) If you have been wanting to try a $7 report but just can’t seem to get one going, this report is for you.

Jonathan walks you step-by-step through the process of writing a report from selecting a topic to outlining, fleshing out, polishing it up and creating a PDF. No surprises, just a solid process.

Of course, his whole point is to use these with his $7 Reports method. If you haven’t already purchased $7 Secrets, he includes it with your purchase of this report 2-for-1! (this is an un-advertised bonus! Get your copy before he changes his mind!!!)

If you want to check it out, here is the link:

http://www.WriteThatReport.com/

The premise of the $7 reports system is that people will perceive a $7 price tag is very low risk and would be willing to purchase a short focussed report without a hard sell. Then, by using a set of scripts that Jonathan includes with the report, you let your first level customers sell the report and keep 100% of the purchase price. The money goes directly to the affiliate’s PayPal account - no waiting - and the report author gets the name and email address of the customer. The script also includes a mechanism to include a one time offer (OTO) who’s cost is split between affiliate and report owner.

The scripts are pretty amazing and it is hard to believe they are included with a $7 report. But Jonathan claims to be making very good money with this system. The $7 Secrets book explains the whole system in detail!
Keep an eye out, I’ve got a couple of reports in the works already!

The Go-To Guy!

Write That Report, by Jonathan Leger Squidoo Lens

Website Traffic: You can either pay for it or cast a wide net to pull it in.

Paying is pretty simple (well, technically it’s an art unto itself) but you join up with a PPC program, select your keyword groups, write some ads and start paying.

You can also find websites where your potential visitors hang out and buy some links or ads on those sites.

To cast a net you will invest time rather than money. I have two basic strategies.

The first strategy is to write a batch of 300-500 word marketing articles with links back to my target site in the author’s resource box and post them to directories like www.ezinearticles.com and www.goarticles.com. (I wrote an article about how to write effective marketing articles on my blog.)

It will take some time before the articles start getting picked up by other publishers and reprinted, but once they are out there, you’ll keep getting traffic. I have articles that were published over a year ago that still bring me regular hits to my sites.

The second strategy takes advantage of the work done in the first. I will pull apart the articles I wrote and format them as blog entries laced with links back to my target site. Then, I’ll take advantage of the many free blogging sites out there like www.blogger.com, www.wordpress.com, www.myspace.com, www.livejournal.com, www.friendster.com, and www.squidoo.com and make a bunch of new blogs and post the revised article content.

Almost instantly you will find sites like Technorati linking back to your main site. Within a few days you should start seeing visitors and find yourself geting indexed in the search engines - just don’t use the exact some content on every blog. It will count against you in the search engine rankings.

The last time I did this, I got my first visitor and earned my first dollar in under 48 hours.

Keep adding new content to the blogs and article directories for a few months (once ore twice a week after the first week.) If you’ve targeted a good niche, chosen good keyword targets, and written good articles, you will see a steady flow of traffic drawn into your site through this network of pages linking in.

One warning: Don’t forget to actively promote a newsletter or some other device on your main site to capture visitor’s email address. The next time you want to talk to them you don’t have to wait for them to wander by, you can send something straight to them!

The Go-To Guy!

P.S. Using an approach like Jonathan Leger’s $7 Secrets to promote a simple report you’ve written can quickly build a mailing list without all of the blogs and article writing. That’s my next project!

“If You Knew How To Easily Create One Single Page Website That Earned You $3600 A Year…

If You Knew You Could Create That Site In Just ONE DAY…

If You Knew That This Site Would Be Putting Cash In Your Pocket In Just A Few Days Time…

HOW MANY SITES WOULD YOU MAKE?”

Those are the headlines at the top of the sales page for a new Internet marketing e-book, Niche Marketing on Crack*.

I just bought (and read) Niche Marketing on Crack*, by Andrew Hansen. The title of the book is unfortunate, and the ‘Miami drug dealer’ photo on the cover and website aren’t much better, but the sales letter hooked me, what can I say?

The technique is a variation on Bum Marketing, but includes niche websites and basic SEO.

The book is hype free and promotes a very focussed application of respectable techniques. You could learn about them all by scouring forums and websites then cobbling together all of the information into your own system. But, Andrew includes a step-by-step action plan and doesn’t gloss over any of the details which saves a lot of trial and error. (How much is your time worth?)

I am well versed at all of the individual techniques that are written about here, but still picked up some valuable pointers about identifying profitable affiliate products.

The book covers searching for profitable affiliate products/niches, setting up an SEO friendly niche site using Wordpress, creating promotional articles, and the full process for promoting the site and getting profitable traffic.

Niche Marketing On Crack* is a good book for newbies who want a detailed outline of what to do to create and promote a niche website and also for more experienced marketers looking to refine their work process.

Niche Marketing On Crack* is a great fit for 5BaD projects as it focuses on a system that can be completed, from start to finish, in less than a week.

View the Salespage: http://andrewseltz.com/recommends/nichemarketingoncrack/*

I recommend this ebook!

The Go-To Guy!

*This is an affiliate link.

Article marketing is a low cost strategy to direct traffic to a website and begin to develop one-way backlinks to its pages. For new online ventures it offers a great way to build traffic to a site and to establish its authority in a particular niche.

Article Marketing is also an excellent strategy to quickly get a new site listed in search engines like Google and Yahoo!

The basic process for article marketing is this:

• Write a series of short 350-700 word articles related to the content of your website
• Add an author’s resource box to each article that contains links back to one or more pages on your website
• Upload the articles to various article directories like www.EZineArticles.com or www.GoArticles.com
• Wait for other publishers to reprint your articles and resource links
• Wait for search engines to index your articles (and the links back to your site) from the article directories and also from the websites that reprint them giving you relevant inbound links and new visitor traffic

The process works. I wrote my first small batch of articles over a year ago and continue to see traffic from them today. I even make a dollar or two every now and then from ads on the pages that the resource links are pointing to. If I had more articles out there, the overall traffic would rise. But those first articles were a test to see if the process worked and were not well written for the task of making me money (or even getting me good search engine ranking.)

Once I proved to myself that the basic system worked, I next had to learn how to write articles that compel people to click on the resource links and how to optimize those links to improve my search engine rankings. The best SEO in the world won’t help if your content isn’t compelling and the most compelling articles are pointless if they don’t improve your business.

Optimizing the links was easy. I just had to include the primary keywords for the page I was directing traffic to in the anchor text in the link. Like this: Energy Efficient Home Construction information. Every article gets unique words based on the page that is being linked to. When multiple articles link to the same page I make subtle alterations to the link on each article so that the search engines don’t always see the exact same text and devalue it as duplicate content.

Making the articles compelling so that readers want to follow the links and come to my site is more challenging. The most effective articles for this marketing method give readers a taste of the topic and lead them to deeper subjects they need to explore to really be satisfied. The resource box should promise them this next level of information and the links will lead them to the new information.

I realize that this explanation might not be clear enough, so I’ll give a quick illustration:

Say you are selling camera equipment for product photography - cameras, lights, display stands, backdrops, etc.

You write an article about how adding a photo to your eBay auctions can radically improve your profits. Your readers will be eBay sellers who want to make more money and your article leads them to realize that good product photos will improve their income.

In the article you make a special point of the importance of professional quality images to set yourself apart from the crowd. You further explain that with a modest investment in the right tools and some basic training anyone can learn to take the kinds of images that will make big money. If you write this well, the reader will now want to know how to take a good product photo and what equipment is needed to get professional results.

In your resource box you promise them free tutorials for taking product photos they can use in their auctions. These links will land them on pages where they will learn techniques and discover the basic tools they need to take good photos (with ads for the gear highlighted in the tutorials, a newsletter sign-up form, and maybe an offer for an e-book guide to taking professional product photos.) The link text might be something like “Learn 5 Simple Steps to Professional Quality Product Photos.”

Another article pointing to the exact same set of tutorials could focus on showing aspiring catalog photographers how to build their portfolios. Still another would entice model building hobbyists into taking professional quality photos of the models they build to show off their skills, etc. You can find dozens of different ways to approach potential audiences for your products.

The article introduces a need and builds the desire for a solution, then the resource box promises to satisfy this new desire.

Model building websites, photography websites, and auction business websites will all begin to reprint your articles and steer their visitors toward your site. The search engines will also start to recognize your site’s pages as authoritative because of the growing number of inbound links. Over time your search engine placement will also improve.

Creating articles that work at this level takes effort. If your main goal is to simply to gain backlinks to improve search engine rankings, this is overkill. But if you are trying to warm up a new customer for a sale, you have to make the effort.

If you would like to see some of the marketing articles I have published visit my EZineArticles profile. (While you are there, please rate my articles - every little bit of promotion helps.) Hopefully you will be able to see the improvement in my articles over the past year.

Now, get out there and start writing.

The Go-To Guy!

P.S. Don’t let me have the last word. Leave a comment and let us know what you think.

Wow!!

That was all I could manage to say when I saw the traffic stats for this website on Thursday February 1, 2007. I had looked at the stats earlier in the day and they were clicking along at their usual rate. There are a couple of articles on the site that turn a good amount of natural search traffic and also have some inbound links from a couple of blogs. But, around 11:00pm things went nuts!

I did a quick stat check before shutting down for the night and noticed a huge spike in traffic. Most of the inbound traffic was going to one single page which registered more than 400 page views by midnight. Every time I hit the refresh button on my browser, the numbers jumped again.

The following day I logged over 1300 visitors to that one single page (this is about 30 times my average daily traffic.) I had never seen anything like it on this site before. A little investigation revealed the cause of this new traffic.

My site was recommended by a member of the StumbleUpon.com community. StumbleUpon is a social bookmarking type website where people rate sites they visit with a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. As groups of people see your site it gets rated higher. They also have a Stumble feature where they will recommend a site that you might be interested in based on your preferences and past recommendations.

One of my pages has 2 reviews and 25 thumbs-up. When a user recommended it in a relevant topic area on the site - BOOM!!! My traffic went through the roof.

This shows the power of a new wave of search tool. Sites like StumbleUpon.com and Squidoo.com are relying on the concepts of social proof and word-of-mouth to evaluate the relevance of a site. This is just an extension of what has been happening in the blog world with sites like Technorati and Digg.

So what did I learn?

I learned that I need to do more than add a few social bookmarking links at the bottom of my article pages. Now, I added a “Stumble This” link underneath the title of every article. It is part of the template for my pages, so when you read an article, the link is right there at the top asking people to give me a thumbs-up. It is important to be more aggressive and ask people for recommendations. (I do this at the bottom of the page, but how many people actually read that far?)

I have also decided to make direct requests to my newsletter subscribers to recommend specific articles when promoting something new. (I plan to do this infrequently because I suspect if the same people recommend everything I do, the site will filter them out and devalue their recommendations.)

Never underestimate the power of social proof (the ‘everyone else is doing it so it must be good’ principle.)

If you like this article, please Digg it, Stumble it, Delicious it, and otherwise recommend it in any way you can. The larger my readership, the more time I can spend adding fresh content to the site.

The Go-To Guy!

P.S. Don’t let me have the last word on the subject, leave a comment and join the discussion.