The Big Adsventure

So we all want high ranking websites, for this we need inbound links. Not just any old link will do, we need links from related websites. The best thing would be if we had full control over the page that contains the link to our site.

One place that offers this is Squidoo, they let you create your own page, called a lens, that you can fill with content and links. The system is kind of like MySpace, but for serious people. You don’t find the messed up pages with backgrounds that make the content impossible to read like on MySpace.

At Squidoo your basic page layout is set and you only control the content, making this place a much more pleasant place to visit. People really try to make their lens a place that people want to visit, this is encouraged by offering them ways to make a little money thru their lens.

I’ve created my own lens at Squidoo and it actually brings some visitors to my site. Even though it’s not a lot of traffic comming in this way I’m quite sure the lens is helping me getting a better placement in the search engines.

Scott Boulch has just released his ‘Life After AdSense’ report, the sequel to ‘The Death Of AdSense’ After telling us all about how a change made by Google has affected the income that can be generated with AdSense, in this report he shares his ideas on how to make a good pile of money with other programs. Like the first report, this one is also free of charge for everyone: download the report for free

Well my AdSense account has never realy been alive… I am making a few bucks with the ads but not nearly as much as some people claim they make.

Looking for some new AdSense tips to share here I found The Death Of AdSense, a report about why AdSense doesn’t work anymore and how to make money on the internet with other programs. The author writes about how he got from $500 a month to $50.000 a month, moving from AdSense to other programs. I have not had the time to read the full report yet but you can download the report for free and have a look.

After YouTube and Google Video we’ll soon have another place we can go to, to be amazed at how many weirdo’s this planet inhabits: MSN-Soapbox. Looks like uncle Bill wants a piece of the amateur video pie. The MSN Soapbox site has been launched but is currently ‘by invitation only’ (where did they come up with that idea…) The new video sharing will be integrated with the MSN messenger application so pritty soon we’ll have more to piss us off than those freakin’ animated smilies…

I was just browsing the code library at webdigity to get a little script to add to the blogotition website. While I was checking out if there where any other scripts that are usefull to me, I came accross a script for AdSense.

This simple little script stores some different AdSense ad color settings in an array and each time you show the AdSense ads on your webpage, one of the color settings will be used at random. Great idea! There is probably a color setting that will get the most clicks (= the most money) but what this setting is depends on your website. What works for one site doesn’t work for all sites.

We can change the script a bit to also store channels in the array. For this to work you’ll have to create a new channel for each color setting you want to use. You can create custom channels in your AdSense account. After running the ads like this for a while, you can see which colors get the most clicks on your website and stick with those. Thanks for sharing this code Olaf!

To get a good ranking in the search engines we are all looking for incoming links. This is one of the basic things that search engines use to rank websites in the result pages. The theory behind this is very simple: if a lot of sites link to a site, it must be a good site.

Too bad that this is not always true, people try to do whatever they can to trick the search engines into thinking that their site is important enough to show high up in the results. We all want to be up there, this is a never ending battle between the website owners.

There’s a lot of ways to get those inbound links. You can buy link-spots on other sites, trade links or add a link to your forum signature, but these are exactly the kind of links that mess up the search engines. How about getting incoming links the way they should be: one way incoming links from sites that thought you are worthy of a link from them. These kind of links are not easy to get, but once you do get them, you will notice these are worth a lot more than all the other kind of links.

So how do you get sites to link to yours? Only one thing: you will need to have high quality, unique content on your site. Until then, treat others like you want to be treated: link out to sites that you think are worthy of a link! If your page or post was inspired on some other website, or if more quality information on the subject can be found somewhere else: link there! This is what links are for. The owner of the site you link to will notice your incoming link and return the favor, if you’re worthy!

With AdSense you are paid for each time a visitor clicks on an ad that you are showing on your website. These kind of programs are know as PPC (pay-per-click) Some programs will just give you certain amount on each click. The AdSense clicks have different values and a single click can earn you anywhere between 1 cent and over $10. The trick here is to get those top-paying ads to show on your website.
So which ads are that? Like everything else Google will not tell you, but you can do some investigation. If you have signed up with Google AdWords, which is the advertisers end of AdSense, you can see what your ranking on the ad lists would be if you would pay a certain amount for your ads. Playing around a little in your AdWords account you can find the high-paying words.
You could also buy a list of top paying keywords, but the lists are expensive and often very old which makes them highly inaccurate. I think a better option is to get some software to find your high paying keywords. One such software package is Keyword Elite by Brad Callen. It’s amazing how easy this software makes finding the right keywords to target. You can also use the program to optimize your AdWords ads so you don’t spend more money on advertising then needed.

Me and a few fellow webmasters at webdigity have started a blogotition. A blogo-what?
Blogotition is a Blog-competition, please note that at this point in time ‘blogotition‘ is officially the newest word on the web! No search-engine has ever seen this word anywhere before, ever! And whenever you see this word somewhere else, be sure to remember where it came from!
So what’s the goal of the competition? The goal is to get to spot number 100.000 at Technorati. Right now The Big Adsventure ranks 1,121,327 so there’s a long way to go! The ranking at Technorati is determined by the number of blogs linking in. Blogs will link to your own blog if you have quality content, but sometimes blogs are given something to link in.
In this blogotition I see my competition giving away some quality stuff to get others to link in. While this could be considered cheating I guess if they can do it, so can I! At this very moment I’m working on a new members only website and as soon as the site is finished, which will be within the next couple of days, I will have a hell of a deal for you! So, stay tuned…

The one thing people love most are free things. It doesn’t really matter what it is, as long as its free. Think about something you can give away, that is related to your website. Maybe a key hanger or decal or other small item that you can get really cheap. You can give this away when people have done something to support your website, like placing a one-way link on their own website or if you are running a forum the persons post count or number of people referred could be the criteria to receive a free gift. In this way you are buying traffic but could end up paying a lot less then when you buy it directly. You could also have your website name printed on the item you are giving away for even more potential traffic.
On the other hand this could become quite expensive and if your website fails you could be stuck with 1000 thisdidntworkout.com key hangers sitting on your desk. Well here’s another idea: give away a digital product. E-books are a hot item on the internet and people are willing to pay between 10 and 90 bucks for them. If you don’t want to write your own e-book you could just buy one with master resale rights and give that away! You can even give away the same book on different websites because you can easily change the website name and links in the book.
Lets Work Online is currently giving away a free e-book ’24 AdSense website ideas’ with one complete ready-to-upload ‘made for AdSense’ website. And the free book even comes with branding rights enabling you to replace the affiliate links in the books with your own.

With all the blogs around advertisers are seeing new opportunities to market their service or product. Of course you see AdSense™ ads on many blogs, but lately there’s a new trend in blog advertising: advertisers paying the blogger to write a blog entry about their service or product.
The good thing about this kind of advertising is that the visitors will think it’s a normal blog entry and not an ad, and so they will be more likely clicking on the link and visit the advertisers site. On the other side this type of advertising could also diminish the overall quality of some blogs, where they will be posting an ‘objective’ review of a service or product while they only really posted it to make some quick bucks…
One site acting as a link between bloggers and advertisers is Get Paid For Blogging