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As a internet user I detest popups. But as a webmaster on certain sites I understand they may be a evil neccesity. Why?

Have you ever had a website that got over 20,000 unique visitors a day, and yet was only able to make you $10 a day with adsense? As I have said many times before adsense is a great earner but it should not be the end all.

On one of my sites, I am running: Adsense, adbrite, Amazon, and paypops. This is a huge site though and besides the popups I have trouble believing that the advertising is taking away from the user experience.

What are your thoughts on popups.

Please let me know your views from both a internet user point of view, and also from a webmaster’s point of view.

For your reference I am not talking about malicous popups that don’t go away, or popups that try to install viruses. Just your standard run of the mill popups.

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Late last year we welcomed Thai to our AdSense for search family, and we’re now excited to let you know about the launch of AdSense for content in Thai. If you’re a publisher with a Thai website, you’ll now be able to earn money for valid clicks and impressions for Google ads on your site. Get started by logging in to your account and visiting the AdSense Setup tab to generate ad code. Or, if you don’t have an AdSense account yet, review our program policies and then feel free to submit an application.To celebrate this launch, why not look up a few Thai recipes and prepare traditional dishes like Som Tum, a spicy green papaya salad, or Tom Yam, a hot and sour soup? We hope they’ll leave you content and ready to create new content of your own.ยินดีต้อนรับสู่โปรแกรมของเราค่ะ Posted by Nopparat Yokubon - AdSense Thai Publisher Support

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As the summer draws to a close, it is with a heavy heart that I bring you our last Newbie Friday post. I hope you’ve enjoyed our words of wisdom over the past few months and have found the information useful. Our team will continue to update this blog with the most up-to-date AdSense news and information, so please don’t let this be goodbye. If you missed part of the series or want to re-read specific posts, just visit our Newbie label at any time and look for our summer-themed logo. So, from one oldie to many newbies, I’ll close out this season with a few final tips for our new publishers.Go wide and get rich (media)If you’ve just recently started with AdSense, there are two format-related tips I would instantly recommend. The first is to enable both text and image ads, which will increase competition among ads to appear in your ad units and may result in higher CPMs. Second, use some of our wider units, such as the 160×600 wide skyscraper, the 300×250 medium rectangle, or the 728×90 leaderboard. There are more rich media (image, flash, video and gadget) ads available in wider ad formats, and wider ad units are the preferred formats for advertisers looking to target your site. Again, increased competition or your ad space will help you maximise your earnings potential.Use channelsChannels are powerful reporting tools, sometimes overlooked by new publishers. They allow you to view the AdSense performance of a site, a specific page, or even a specific ad unit, which can help you see where your ads are performing best. You can name these channels, give them descriptions, and then define them as ad placements so that they are visible to AdWords advertisers.The secretAs top AdSense earners will tell you, when it comes to earning with AdSense, the most important thing is a policy-compliant site with good-quality, original content. Such sites attract users, relevant ads and, ultimately, revenue.Finally, we constantly maintain online resources like our AdSense Help Forum, Newbie Central, and our Known Issues page to share useful information with you. We hope you’ll use them to make the most of AdSense.Posted by Lucy McKenna - AdSense UK Publisher Support

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Yesterday, I received a call by a lady from Google Adsense team about optimizing some ads on one of my sites. She gave me few tips on how to optimize the ads on the pages to bring in more clicks and better eCPM.

Out of those, the one I would like to point out is this:

Test all your link placements on a page (may be sitewide) with the help of channels. Then find the placement which is giving you the maximum CTR. This many not be giving the maximum revenue, but maximum CTR.

Now edit the HTML of your page is such a manner that the visible appearance of your page is not changed, but that ad placement (which is bringing in high CTR) should come as the first ad from the Google adsense.

This will surely bring in more revenue as Google serves high paying ads first, followed by lower paying ones. So the ad-block which is coming first in the html of the page will be serving the highest paying ads. This may not be visibly the top ad placement.

I hope this small Adsense tip may be useful to my readers too.

[BTW: Sorry for not writing a post from such a long time. I was more than busy with things. Chemotherapy case study will be coming soon.]

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Skellie wrote this post. For more advanced blogging tips and strategies, visit her blog, Skelliewag.

When people think about making money with a blog, they tend to think about things like AdSense and affiliate links. You write good content, people come to your blog, people click on links, and you make a bit of money. How much money you make depends on how successfully you can multiply this process.

However, for some entrepreneurs this method of monetizing a blog is just one part of a larger business model that is much more lucrative than advertising on its own.

In this post I want to highlight 10 innovative and successful blog business models that do more than sell ad space or clicks. Is there room for one of these business models on your own blog?

(Please note that this particular post does not contain affiliate links.)

1. Teaching Sells / Blog Mastermind (Educational course)

Copyblogger sells TeachingSells.com

EntrepreneursJourney.com sells BlogMastermind.com

This business model involves selling an expert course on the back of a blog. Each blogger is regarded as an expert in their field and their free content demonstrates that they have plenty of useful advice to give.

These courses may only appeal to a small percentage of the host blog’s readership, so they are usually priced at the high-end to compensate. For this reason, courses must focus on sharing skills and methods that the reader values very highly.

Most commonly these are skills and methods that will–hopefully–yield more money for the reader than they spend on the course itself. If the course doesn’t have the potential to earn the reader money then it must impart a skill that has a very high non-monetary value. A Chess course might be worth $99 a month to someone who is passionate about Chess. A course in Mandarin might be worth $150 a month to someone who is relocating to China in three months and is determined to be able to hold conversations with locals as soon as they arrive.

The determining factor in success with this model is an understanding of what your readers value deeply, and providing them with that, either by providing them with great value or the means to achieve it for themselves.

2. IttyBiz (eBook)

IttyBiz sells Ninja SEO School

Naomi Dunford writes IttyBiz for online marketers and entrepreneurs who are ordinary people with a tight budget. She says her consulting clients were always curious about SEO and how to start using it for their benefit. In response to the demand she wrote the ‘Ninja SEO School‘ eBook. If you click the link you’ll notice that it’s no longer for sale, and I hope the ProBlogger mention hasn’t made Naomi regret the decision ;).

By making the choice to say the eBook would only be available for a limited time, readers who would have post-poned the decision of whether to buy the product until later (and then probably forgot about it) were forced to act quickly.

This is a very clever method to overcome one of the eBook’s weaknesses as a medium: its format makes it seem like the product will always be in unlimited supply, which can often provoke lethargy in potential buyers. Books in bookstores go out of stock, but eBooks technically never do.

If your eBook is expensive then it’s highly likely a potential buyer will think about the purchase for several days and talk themselves out of it. By creating scarcity you can motivate potential buyers to action.

Though there are many blogs funneling into an eBook, I chose IttyBiz as an example because of the clever use of artificial scarcity as a marketing tool. (Though if you emailed Naomi, I bet she’d still sell you a copy!)

3. ProBlogger / FSw / Smashing Magazine (Job board)

ProBlogger.net sells Jobs.ProBlogger.net

Freelance Switch sells Jobs.FreelanceSwitch.com

Smashing Magazine sells Jobs.SmashingMagazine.com

Vocation-based blogs like ProBlogger (bloogging), Freelance Switch (freelancing) and Smashing Magazine (design) are a perfect fit with the job board business model. These job boards that stem from blogs are usually monetized in one of two ways: advertiser pays a flat fee to post their job ad, which is the most common method and used at ProBlogger and Smashing Magazine, or job hunters pay a small subscription fee to have access to jobs, which is the least common model and is used at Freelance Switch.

Building a job board is likely to require development costs of at least several hundred dollars and possibly over a thousand, so it may be best to wait until your traffic levels are healthy before adding something like this to your blog.

4. PSDTUTS / SEOmoz (Premium content)

PSDTUTS.com sells PSDTUTS PLUS

SEOmoz sells SEOmoz PRO

These two blogs both offer members-only content for paid subscribers. At PSDTUTS $9 a month gives the user access to a large library of .PSD artworks and tutorials from well-known Photoshop artists. SEOmoz offers its ‘Pro’ membership at $49 a month, for which you receive SEO tools, guides and extra blog content. Both membership models are supplemented by a larger proportion of free content that serves to bring potential members into the blog and also as an advertisement for the content offered in the membership program.

While members-only blog content can be a lucrative business model you should expect to meet with criticism from readers who are struck by the double-wants of experiencing all your content while also not wanting to pay for it. The internet provides such an abundance of value for free that some people perhaps stop thinking about the creator’s need to be rewarded for their hard work. You should remind them of this and then focus on those customers who see ‘free’ as a privilege, not a right.

5. SpoonGraphics (Freelance services)

Blog.Spoongraphics.co.uk sells Spoongraphics.co.uk

Chris Spooner’s blog is a good example of a supported freelance business model. Freelance services are offered on a portfolio which is attached to his blog. The blog content deals with design and presents daily opportunities for Chris to demonstrate his own expertise as a designer to potential clients who might be reading his blog.

While it might seem counter-intuitive to write for other people in the same field instead of ordinary people who might be looking for a designer, many freelancers find good work covering gaps for other freelancers. For example, a freelancer who only knows how to code might hire another freelancer to create designs for him or her. As the web makes it easier to connect with freelancers across the globe this kind of collaboration is becoming increasingly common.

6. Remarkablogger / Muhammad Saleem (Consulting)

Remarkablogger.com sells Michael Martine

MuhammadSaleem.com sells Muhammad Saleem

Michael Martine writes a blog about blogging and offers consulting services as an off-shoot to the blog, targeted towards businesses who want a strong blogging presence. Muhammad Saleem is a social media power-user who also advertises social media consulting services from his blog. The premise of this business model is to build a profile as an expert in a specific area, give readers a taste of the kind of insights you can provide and then offer consultations to those who want to benefit from your knowledge on a deeper level.

The rates you can charge and the amount of uptake you get will depend on your topic as much as it does on your personal brand. People with entrepreneurial aspirations are more likely to need and be willing to invest in a consultant because they fundamentally expect to earn back more than they spend as a result of the knowledge they’ve gained. A life consultant or sports consultant or any other kind of consultant who might not be focused on helping the client earn money needs to provide immense non-monetary value instead.

7. Pearsonified / GoMedia (Digital products)

Pearsonified sells Thesis

GoMedia sells vector graphics and Photoshop brushes

The ‘Thesis’ theme has been everywhere of late. Probably because its creator’s blog has over 5,000 subscribers and he also seems to have made the right kind of friends. If you’re going to sell a product you’ve built then nothing will help your cause more than having a popular blog to back you up.

The GoMedia design firm does more. It uses a popular design blog (almost 10,000 subscribers) to sell both design services and products: the GoMedia Arsenal vector and Photoshop brush packs. Visitors are drawn into the site via the blog content and can then be funneled into either the branded services or products on offer.

8. LifeDev, Zen Habits and Web Warrior Tools

LifeDev and Zen Habits sell Web Warrior Tools

A blog can also be an excellent way to support your entrepreneurial projects and give them a kick-start. Leo Babauta (Zen Habits) and Glen Stansberry (LifeDev) partnered to create Web Warrior Tools to provide a platform for writers to sell their eBooks and have someone else market them. Both blogs link back to Web Warrior Tools and were able to promote it at launch. Instead of having to claw out an audience from nothing, the Web Warrior Tools website was able to launch with pre-existing hype and an immediate user-base.

9. NETTUTS (Magazine model)

NETTUTS.com

Based on the success of the Gawker Media network of blogs it’s becoming increasingly common to see blogs run like print magazines, with a team of paid writers and an editor, and with an entrepreneur or company behind them, using advertising and other methods to break even and, hopefully, making a profit once staff and running costs are subtracted.

This business model can be one of the most ‘hands-off’ as you don’t need to be involved directly in the running of the blog. That being said, paying writers and an editor can be costly, so most successful magazine-style blogs are quite highly-trafficked in addition to having the starting capital to run at a loss for some time, at least initially. NETTUTS is a web development tutorials site that runs under a magazine model, paying tutorial writers and an editor out of advertising proceeds.

10. Sitepoint (Branded products)

Sitepoint sells books and educational kits

Sitepoint is an exceptionally popular website for web developers and designers. Part of that website is a network of blogs featuring web development news, tips and theory. Former and current Sitepoint bloggers have gone on to publish books under the Sitepoint brand, which are then sold from the Sitepoint website or through other channels (such as Amazon). The books are prominently branded with the website and blog logo.

Your branded products don’t have to be books. Some blogs sell merchandiseprint magazines, audio books and courses, and other products.

***

I hope this post will show you some of the creative ways people are making money through their blogs. It can be easy to approach the challenge of making money online from a very narrow angle and blinker yourself to rarer possibilities that may be a better fit with your blog.

Most importantly, don’t be afraid to trail-blaze and invent a business model that is perfect for your blog, even if it doesn’t exist yet!

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If you’ve added an AdSense for search box to your page, you’re probably aware of the relevant search results it provides your users. That being said, a few publishers have asked us if it’s a violation of our program policies to perform searches in their own AdSense for search boxes. The short answer is no, this activity is not explicitly prohibited by our program policies.However, we strongly advise against using your own AdSense for search box for a couple of reasons. First, it can increase the chance of accidental or invalid clicks on the ads that appear on the search results pages. Second, this will inflate the number of queries in your reports, giving you an inaccurate picture of the activity on your site.If you’d like to use Google search, we recommend visiting Google.com or installing the Google Toolbar. And if you’re using Google Chrome, don’t forget that you can type search queries directly into your address bar.Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

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Readers with sharp eyes will notice that on some rare occasions, your ads may appear or act slightly differently than what you’re accustomed to. Rest assured that this is normal behavior that results from our efforts to improve the experience for all members of the advertising ecosystem. (You may have noticed a similar post about our search results on the official Google blog.)One way in which we achieve this is by making continued tweaks and innovations to the user behavior and appearance of our ads. In the past, these experiments have included changes to the font styling, coloring, spacing, and other aesthetic components. More specifically, changes such as redesigned ad units and arrows to show additional ads have stemmed from these tests. The purpose of these tests is to identify changes to our product that can bring long-term benefits to our publishers, your site’s visitors, and advertisers. Before rolling out a change to our ads, we test performance for a limited number of ad impressions, which may not apply to all publishers. Although we don’t notify publishers of these specific changes in order to prevent bias, we closely monitor the performance of these tests. We also welcome feedback from publishers, users, and advertisers, so feel free to drop us an email. Posted by Keith Mander - AdSense Product Specialist

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The Difference between Professional Marketers and BloggersI’m an Internet marketer who uses blogs to make money online. Most of my readers are bloggers who are trying to be Internet marketers. There is a difference. If you think that there is an actual debate over whether content or links are the most important elements in making money online then you are a blogger. If you know that links are all that matters then you are an Internet marketer.Quality content? What exactly is quality content? Really. Someone tell me. And while you are at it please tell me how a machine can tell if a post is written by the ghost of William Shakespeare or pounded out by a high school dropout. Quality is a subjective term and no two humans will ever agree on what constitutes quality writing never mind a machine doing it.Content is necessary to Internet marketing in so much as it is appropriate to the niche that is being targeted. Content is little more than using the right keywords in the right places and surrounding them with relevant text. The Google algorithm does understand how to rank sites based on these factors. It doesn’t rank sites on the basis of who writes better. Content only needs to be relevant, it does not have to be good. If you believe that it has to be “quality” content then you are a blogger who is targeting a “social” niche and you want your traffic to return again and again. Why I have no idea. If you have readers then you aren’t an Internet marketer. You are a social blogger.Internet marketers target niches that make money for them. They don’t target niches that attract bloggers. They don’t use social media. They don’t post comments on social sites. They don’t chat on forums. They don’t write for readers. They build sites that target specific terms and then they spend all their time gathering backlinks in order to rank number 1 on Google. I’m going to show you why social bloggers don’t have a chance against an Internet marketer.Credit CardsVic from Blogger Unleashed has mentioned the keyword “Credit Card” in his posts when trying to explain why making money online has everything to do with links and nothing to do with quality content. Relevant content Yes but quality No.The keyword “Credit Card” is one of the most contested terms online. The reason is simple. Rank well for the term and you will make money. I am going to show you how to do it.A professional internet marketer looks for two things when targeting a niche. A keyword that gets a lot of search traffic and a keyword that can convert visitors into buyers. They don’t spend 1 minute wondering if the niche will get readers or comments. A blogger looks for a niche that they think gets lots of traffic and then they build a site friendly to readers (meaning “other” bloggers). Later they wonder how they can turn their readers (you) into buyers. They are still trying to figure that one out. (Tell me why you don’t buy stuff on the sites you read regularly and you have the answer - bloggers don’t spend money.)Let’s look at why the credit card niche is so profitable. And why bloggers fail at dominating these kinds of niches - the niches that make money.Monthly searches for the term “Credit Card”. (Click images to enlarge)Google’s Adwords tool shows half a million searches for the term last month. This is an estimate. Keyword Elite shows 30k - also an estimate. I have said this numerous times before - don’t believe the actual numbers. These tools are useful for showing you which terms are more popular but the actual search numbers shouldn’t be taken as Gospel. These tools simply tell me that the term “credit card” gets more searches than any other related term (long tails). The Keyword Elite tool simply gives me an idea of Adsense CPC and how many advertisers are available. If the advertiser is paying $11 a click for a search listing then they are probably paying $4-$5 for content ads. This would equate to $2 clicks for you on your Adsense ads. This too is just an estimate and you could see much higher or lower CPC.Step 2 - Who ranks on top of the serp’s for the keyword “Credit Card”?Here are the top 4 sites. Two of them have the term in their url and two don’t. The 4th ranked site has the perfect url and doesn’t rank number 1. This just tells me that the 3 sites above number 4 have way more anchored backlinks. It doesn’t tell me who has “better” content. Let’s examine all four quickly. Guess what - not a blog among them for starters. They are all static web sites. Second they all have the same content - nothing unique or original. They don’t have quality articles - they are simply lead generation sites listing dozens of affiliate links for various credit card offers. Third, they don’t have Adsense on them. I’ll tell you why that is important in a minute. Oh btw - they are all “ugly” websites… do you know why? The same reason Google is an “ugly” website - these sites are built for functionality. They don’t cater to readers. They want visitors to show up and click a link. They don’t want readers hanging around reading and leaving comments or getting sidetracked with all sorts of “pretty” distractions that bloggers like to throw on their sites.What do you see when you examine these sites? I’ll tell you what I see…I see exactly how Google works.When someone types in “credit card” in the search engine Google has to decide what the intent of the visitor is for such a generic request. The visitor isn’t asking anything. So does Google think the visitor is looking for information on the “history” of credit cards? Or which credit card is the “coolest” looking? Or which CC is the most used? No. Google has decided that the most relevant sites for such a generic term must be sites listing “available credit cards” or a “list of credit cards”. They rightly assume that this is what the query is likely looking for. So why doesn’t Visa, Amex and Mastercard dominate this serp listing? Because Google knows that anyone looking for such well known brands would simply type in the brand names. Since they didn’t Google assumes that the visitor wants options. If you ask for a history of CC’s then you will get a “quality” blog article from about.com followed by a pbs.org blog article. Quality content? You bet. Will they make any money with their quality content. No. And neither quality article ranks for the term credit card. The point is that all you bloggers need to understand that content has to be relevant to the keyword queried. In this case the most relevant content for the term credit card is a page full of credit card offers and not quality articles about credit cards. The most relevant platform for this info is a static website. You can create a blog and write as many high quality articles as you want about credit cards and I guarantee you will never see page 1 on the serp’s for the term. Google is not looking for quality content. They are looking for “relevant” content. Period. A thin on content, heavy on affiliate products website is more relevant for the visitor, for this term, than your brilliant treatise on how evil credit card companies are. You now know what type of site is needed and what type of content the site should have to rank well for this niche. This isn’t my opinion. Google is telling you flat out by its own serp rankings.So how does the top site get to be the top site. Do they have better content? No. All the top sites have the same content.The top site has more quality keyword anchored backlinks than the the rest. Period.All of you that think quality content matters (as opposed to relevant content) think about this. What makes Google rank 4 essentially similar sites differently? I’ll show you.The top ranked site is creditcardguide.com and this is what it looks like.Here is a list of some of the backlinks this website has pointing at it. This is compiled with SEO Elite. I already knew the owner of this site knew their stuff but it only took 2 seconds to confirm it from the backlinks. Check out the “Anchor text” column in the SEO Elite screenshot. The keyword “credit card” shows up often and is cloaked in various long tails. It’s not just the two word term over and over. This site targets “all” the long tails and will rank well for a lot of them. This site gets a lot of search traffic on top of its main keyword. Note: Most sites will have an abundance of crappy anchor text - the url or the name of the website is the most common anchor you will see. These links come from social networks and friends and other bloggers who don’t know anything about keywords. When you see a list of backlinks that have more keywords in the anchor than crap terms you are looking at a site that controls the backlinks either because they own the linking sites (a farm) or they buy links. This site has almost no useless anchors - a sure sign that the owner controls the incoming links. The red arrows are pointing to three links that tell the whole story. You’ll also notice the site has several .edu links. These are all killer links. So did they come from stumblers and diggers? How about do-follow comments? Are they a result of article marketing? Bookmarking? Link exchanging with friends? Now don’t get me wrong. Getting links is tough and all these methods do work and bloggers use them to find links for their blogs. But. The pros don’t piss around with any of that. You are looking at a niche that makes real money and the people competing spend money to make it. This isn’t casual blogging hoping to make a few thousand a month. This is a business.Let me give you an idea about what kind of money is to be had. If I asked you who one of the biggest advertisers online is what would you say? The financial sector is a huge online advertiser. They spend billions a year doing what banks do - lending money in order to make even more billions in return. Is there anybody in the MMO or blogging niches spending that kind of advertising money? Can you think of any social niche that has that kind of money for advertising aside from the techie sector?Let’s say 500k people search for “credit card” each month and I’m going to be very conservative here. I noticed that the top site has an Alexa rank of 47k which means nothing except that this website does get a number of returning visitors who use the alexa toolbar. These visitors are most likely other marketers checking the rankings rather than real visitors (buyers) so I will lop off half the search numbers. This leaves 250K searches.Affiliates earn between $25 and $120 for each customer who qualifies for a CC. Some cards pay up to $60 just for a completed application never mind acceptance of the app. On any given day there could be 8000 people querying Google for the term “Credit Card” and 3/4 (6k) of these searchers will land on the top ranked site. Again being conservative, lets say only 1% click through and fill out a CC offer. That would be roughly 60 sign ups a day. 60 times an average commission of $50 is $3000 per day. $1500 per day if we only use the lowest commission rate of $25. This website realistically earns between $30,000 and $90,000 per month. It could be lower if the search numbers are way off or it could be a lot higher as well. Higher or lower - who spends more time working on their sites - you or the owner of this credit card guide? This owner doesn’t post or answer comments. They change some links from time to time and spend the rest of the time lying on a beach buying links. Do you still want to work 7 days a week posting fresh content to keep your readers coming back? Btw - I mentioned that there were no Adsense ads on the site. This tells you something considering 6000 visitors a day would likely click ads in the 6-8% range. (based on my own experience in similar niches). A 5% CTR would be 300 clicks at let’s say - $2 per click. $600 a day - not bad. The fact that they aren’t after Adsense just confirms that the commissions from leads is much higher than Adsense produces. (Never bleed visitors away from your main links with lesser links - focus on your money links)That’s a lot of money folks. Would I spend $10k a month buying links if the return was $60k? Yup. And so do real marketers. If you think you can compete in a niche like this without getting a ton of quality links then you are dreaming. If you think you can get those links using all the “social” means at your disposal you are dreaming. If you think writing “quality” content will get you ranked on page 1 for a niche like this - yes you are still dreaming. There is only one way in hell you can compete in this league. You buy links. And you buy better links than the competition. And you buy lots of them and you never stop buying them.I didn’t have to look very far to find the links I was looking for when examining this websites backlinks. The site has a PR6 link using the anchor “credit card”. It comes from a non-relevant site but that single link kicks the crap out of a thousand do-follow links you might try to come up with. Here is the page the link is on. http://genamics.com/privacypolicy.htm and the red arrow points to it in the screenshot below. The linking site itself is little more than a directory - a perfect farm blog used for passing high PR links for a price. The link in question is on a “Privacy Policy” page no less - a PR6 page. There is no reason for the link if you read the text. Can I prove this is a paid link. No. Do I know it is a paid link? I’m pretty sure. There are a few other links spread around the site that don’t need to be there as well. Spend some time on Digital Point and you will find all sorts of anonymous sites selling links. This is the type of link you can purchase for a few hundred a month through one of the link brokers you will find on DP. It is a great link. The page it is on is not likely to ever get slapped by G and the competition can’t really report it. The link is paid for but it will pass the test because it looks legit.If you go back and look at a few of the other links I highlighted on the SEO Elite image you will notice the website also has a link from the Wall Street Journal. Very sweet indeed. Is it paid for? Who knows - the WSJ like many media giants is busy trying to make money online too. Do they use a link broker? Maybe. Everyone is looking for a monetization platform that works. The WSJ has a number of blogs that it operates and the link in question is on WSJ’s blog “Independent Street”. The link is on a fluff post and could be paid for or it could be the result of just ranking number 1 for the term. I have also received a few links over the years from the odd Media powerhouse - the last time was from the LA Times linking to my Asia’h blog. I got the link because I ranked on top of the serp’s and the newsblog was looking for what it thought was a fan site. One thing I can tell you - links from the media giants are worth a lot of juice. This one is a PR5 link using the keywords in the anchor from an extremely trusted source. Beat that with your Digg friends.The last link I want to point out is the http://web.mit.edu/foley/www/ link. This is a anchored keyword link on a PR4 .edu page from M.I.T. The blog is another crappy university .edu blog but the creator knows what he is doing. Can you tell if the link is paid for? I probably made my point a few paragraphs ago. There is a huge gap between blogging for a few dollars and doing what the pros do. I’m not telling you all to run out and start buying links. I am telling you all to give the content vs links debate a rest. There is no contest - just in your very small pond out on the edge of the Internet universe. Professional marketers know what is needed to make money online.Links…And they know how to get them. And it isn’t using stumbleupon.As for content - let Google show you what is relevant for your niche. Who do they rank on top and what type of content does the site have.There is a huge gap between what the big players do to make money online and the social methods flogged by your local IM guru. Social traffic is for small players in a very small pond. Blogs can be used to make money online and fortunately for me most of the people using blogs are bloggers and not marketers. While they churn out quality content I churn out keyword relevant content and build links. They write for readers - I write for search engines. They don’t make money. I do.Nuff’ said.Cheers Griz

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Over the past month since AdSense have released AdSense for Feeds to the wider publishing community I’ve noticed a lot more of the bloggers that I’m tracking each day are including ads in their RSS feed.

When they first started appearing I noticed most bloggers had the ads positioned at the bottom of their blog posts - but in the last week more and more seem to have shifted the ads to the top of their posts.

Obviously positioning them this way makes them more visible to RSS subscribers and is likely to lead to a higher click through rate - but what cost does it come at?

Let’s take a look at a couple of examples:

For starters - here’s how the ads look underneath content (taken from TechCrunch - click to enlarge):

The ads slot in quite nicely - particularly those in the 468×60 format.

Lets look at some ads above content (taken from Chris Brogan - click to enlarge).

This first one is of a 468×60 ad.

In the 468×60 format I think the ad actually doesn’t look too bad. It does interrupt the flow of the post a little - but because it is narrow it isn’t too much for the eye to slip over it to the main content.

However look what happens when AdSense servers a different size ad:

While the 468×60 ads interrupt the flow a little - larger rectangle ads can be quite intrusive and distracting from the content of the post.

The problem that publishers face is that they have no way of blocking larger ads unless they opt for ‘text ads only’ in the setting up of their ads. If you select ‘image ads only’ or ‘text and image ads’ you run the risk of getting served the larger ads if there is an ad that AdSense deems relevant and potentially profitable for your post.

As you’ll see below - at present in the setup of RSS ads the ’size’ section says ‘feed units are automatically sized’.

The problem with just going with ‘text ads’ alone is that they are not as profitable as image ads (as premium advertisers usually go with images).

What I’d like to See AdSense Do

A number of suggestions come to mind for how AdSense could improve AdSense for Feeds:

1. Allow publishers to choose ad sizes - this way they could select 468×60 ads at the top of their posts and still serve image ads in that format.

2. Rotating positioning - I’d love to see AdSense allow publishers to rotate the ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ option so that on some posts they’d be higher and some lower. This might help combat ad blindness.

3. In post ads - this is a bit of a wishlist but I have heard a few publishers mention that they wish they could insert ads inside their content - say after the 2nd or 4th or 5th paragraph. This would put them down the post but close to content. It wouldn’t be for everyone but I suspect it could convert well.

4. Ads that Wrap content around them - one possible solution might be ads that align content around them. This could be complicated when images are used at the top of posts - but might help feeds to flow a little more.

What Should a Publisher Do?

I see three main options for publishers wanting to include RSS ads in their feeds:

1. put them below posts - this is what I do on DPS at the moment. While I’d like to have them higher I’m not willing to disrupt the flow as much as what the larger ones do in the above illustration.

2. put them above posts but only with text ads - this will increase visibility and CTR of the ads but probably earn you less per click/impression

3. put them above posts with text and image ads - for those publishers willing to ignore the disruption.

Different publishers will come to different decisions on this and I’m not going to judge anyone for the one they come to - however I think if AdSense could add a few more options for publishers they could help us all meet our goals of optimal profits AND optimal readability for our readers.

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As we mentioned a few weeks ago, you can use your AdSense account to display ads on any policy-compliant sites you own. This has often sparked the question among new publishers of ‘How many sites do I need to earn money with AdSense?’We’d like to stress that it’s not the number of sites you have, but the quality of those sites that will help you increase your earnings with AdSense. If you’re just getting started with your first website and the AdSense program, we recommend taking the time to build up your site with plenty of original, quality content — write about topics you’re passionate about, or which you have expertise in. When designing your website, keep our Webmaster Guidelines and, most importantly, your users in mind. Then, take advantage of our Webmaster Tools to help increase your site’s visibility in the Google search index, and try out the tips our Search Quality Evaluators have provided. Once you’ve built up organic traffic to your site, use Website Optimizer to understand how users interact with your pages and make improvements to your layout. And of course, during all of this, experiment with AdSense optimization tips to learn which colors, formats, and placements monetize best on your site.Finally, as we blogged about during this Newbie Fridays series, your earnings potential can go up as advertisers find that you’re sending high-quality leads to their sites. This won’t happen overnight, but with patience and hard work you can watch your efforts convert into a high-quality site and higher AdSense earnings. And you won’t even need a hundred sites to do it :)Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

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Have you ever wished that you could get more details of how your AdSense performance is going and wondered why Google AdSense and Google Analytics don’t have some way of talking to one another to give you more effective metrics?

Well it seems that the time is coming soon where you’ll be able to read AdSense stats in your Analytics reports. The kinds of stuff you’ll be able to see:

Which pages on your blog get the most AdSense clicks
Which pages have the highest CPM
Which pages have the highest CTR
AdSense graphs/trends
Which traffic sources generate the highest income

Digital Inspiration has just published some screenshots of the new reports that we’ll hopefully be able to find in Google Analytics soon.

For example this ‘Top AdSense Content’ page looks at your different pages of content and how they perform (click to enlarge):

This is the ‘AdSense Overview’ page:

The AdSense Revenue Page (which gives a graph of AdSense earnings over time)

‘AdSense Content’ Page

AdSense Referring Sites Page:

This kind of reporting is something that AdSense publishers have been asking for years. It is going to open up some amazing possibilities for optimizing your content for AdSense. The only question is - when will it become available???

Interestingly the AdSense blog is saying that AdSense will be down for maintenance this Saturday (13th) between 10am to 2pm PDT. Perhaps what they’re doing is getting this new launch ready?

Update

I’ve asked Google for comment on this and they responded with a ‘no comment’. However I’ve been hearing from a number of services that the maintenance this weekend is NOT to put this new functionality in place and that it’s probably a couple of weeks away before we’ll see this released.

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This Saturday, September 13, our engineers will be performing site maintenance from 10am to 2pm PDT. As is typical during these maintenance periods, you won’t be able to log in during these hours, but your earnings will continue to accrue and ads continue to be displayed on your pages.For those of you located in different time zones, we’ve provided the maintenance start time for a few cities around the world. Montreal - 1pm SaturdayMilan - 7pm SaturdayMoscow - 9pm SaturdayMumbai - 10:30pm SaturdayManila - 1am SundayPosted by Julie Beckmann - AdSense Publisher Support

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Following our announcement a few weeks ago, we’re happy to announce that Western Union is now offered as a payment method for publishers located in Panama. To sign up for payments by Western Union, sign in to your account and follow these instructions. Please also keep in mind that we’re only able to make Western Union payments to individual payee names, but not to businesses.Not located in Panama? We’ve been reading your comments on our other recent payment-related posts, and understand that many of you are looking forward to new payment options in additional countries. Please know that we aren’t able to provide details about when new options may become available, as setting them up can take time due to factors like compliance with local laws and tax regulations. However, we’re working hard to find more convenient ways to send you your earnings, and we’ll definitely announce any new options here. In the meantime, please feel free to keep leaving your feedback, and we appreciate your patience!Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

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AdSense publisher Next Small Things has long understood that search is the entry point for users to find what they’re looking for on the web. In fact, the idea for CoolChaser.com, a MySpace layout creation and customization site (and Next Small Things’s largest business to date), came from the observation that many web surfers were using the company’s search engine to find instructions to change their MySpace backgrounds. The observation and ensuing business idea has paid off, and in just one year CoolChaser.com has gained a loyal user base: over 200,000 users are now finding or creating layouts on the site every day. “CoolChaser has become a one-stop-shop for layouts because of the ease of use and the choice and ability for users to express what they feel at the time,” says founder Chao Lam. With over 20 million user-submitted layouts (and 3,000 created every hour), it was becoming increasingly difficult for users to find the layouts they were looking for. “We were getting a lot of requests from users to provide some sort of search mechanism so that they could easily find what they were looking for,” developer Sachiko Kwan says. As an existing AdSense publisher, Kwan decided to try AdSense for search and was immediately impressed by the quick setup process and the accuracy of the results. With the new SiteSearch feature, Kwan was able to restrict the searches so users didn’t have to leave the site to find what they were looking for. In addition, the new watermark feature allowed Kwan to add the search box without any rearrangement in the navigation bar.Most recently, Lam and Kwan began optimizing their search for better performance and user experience. If a user wasn’t creating a layout, they were looking for one. So Kwan moved the search box from the upper right corner of each page to the center of the header and also added a second search box to the bottom of every page, in case users who were done browsing needed to search again. On the search results page, she changed the ad borders to a lighter color to better blend in with the site’s pages.Within a week of making these changes, Lam and Kwan saw their daily search queries on CoolChaser increase by 40% and earnings more than double. Since implementing AdSense for search on CoolChaser, search has become the second most popular functionality behind creating layouts. Lam and Kwan continue to focus on user experience, and they are now working to refine search results using keywords and