Make Money from Blogs » Starting

Different advertising units offered by Google Adsense

ashish — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 19:06:35 +0000

If you are taking part in the Google Adsense Program, then this article is for you. Most people think of Adsense as the ads that show up in banners or big blocks of ads. However, there are multiple ways you can use Adsense on your blogs, and in one case, they do not seem like Ads at all. These various options are:

1. Adsense for content
2. Adsense for search
3. Adsense for Feeds
4. Referrals (retiring soon)
5. Video Units
6. Adsense for Mobile Content

1. Adsense for content: This is the most popular form of placing Ads on web sites. Content ads are relevant ads that can be generated in different sizes, with ads in the form of banners, skyscrapers, blocks, etc. There are many different shapes possible (view link). Ads can be image and video ads, and Google program policies allow you to have 3 such ads on any single page.
Adsense for content also lets you place link units on your site, and link units are an under-rated way to make money; but they allow you to place small ad units in places where you don’t have much space. They come in different shapes and sizes.
2. Adsense for search: Adsense for search lets you add the Google Search functionality to your site, and lets people search from there. The way you make money out of Adsense for Search is that when people search for things via the Search function, and if you click on the ads that get displayed on the search page, then you make money. Search gives you a lot of features, such as being able to display Search results on a page of your own site.
3. Adsense for Feeds is a very new feature that lets you place Adsense ads on your feed content. In case you don’t know what a feed is, a brief description: A feed is a format that allows your content to be delivered (and subscribed to) on the web, often as headlines, summaries or articles. Here is the Google Help site that allows you to view more details on how to get Adsense for Feeds added to your site (link)
4. Referrals: Referrals used to be more focused on a pay-per-sale model. Normally, you make money when people click on the ads, but for referrals, when people execute a transaction, the money is earned. However, in this case, the money per sale is typically more than the money per click, so this used to be an attractive option. However, Google is now retiring this program by end of August 2008.
5. Video Units: A way to embed relevant video content from Youtube. Simply embed a snippet of code and have relevant YouTube partner content streamed to your site. You can choose categories of video to target to your site, select content from individual YouTube partners, or have video automatically targeted to your site content. Companion and text overlay ads are relevant and non-intrusive. Some Help is available on this Google page (link)
6. Adsense for Mobile Content: For publishers who run sites that generate mobile content and are looking for a way to monestise this content. If you have a website optimized for mobile browsers, or are interested in creating one, you can start monetizing your mobile site by accessing a growing number of Google’s mobile advertisers. Some help for Adsense for Mobile Content is available on this link.

What is PageRank ?

ashish — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 17:40:05 +0000

Page Rank is a term that is quoted whenever people talk about how a site can gain popularity in Google search (and as we know, Google search is one of the top drivers for getting visitors to your web site). Of course, over a period of time, the eminence of Page Rank as a factor in making your site popular has varied over time; Google by itself never disclosed the exact significance of Page Rank in terms of determining the popularity of a site. However, Page Rank is seen as very important.
So, what is Page Rank ?
Page Rank is effectively a measure (a numeric value on the scale of 0 to 10) that determines how important a page is on the web. As per available information, Google uses the number of pages linking to a page to determine its popularity (a simplified explanation). If the page linking to your page is itself important, even better. So, for example, if your page shows up as a link on CNN.com or any other important page, then this improves the Page Rank of your page. A page with a higher PageRank is deemed more important and is more likely to be listed above a page with a lower PageRank. However, and this is worth repeating, PageRank is not the only factor determining how important the page is; but it is an important factor.
The importance of PageRank has been known to people for a long time now, and people are forever on the hunt for how to game this process; at the same time, Google is always monitoring and tweaking its algorithm to determine whether a method is genuine or not. So, using ling farms, buying paid links from high PageRank sites, and other such methods deemed to subvert the PageRank genuineness are penalized by Google. So, be careful on what you do. One good way to get a better PageRank over time is by contributing articles to websites that have articles on them. You can post a link back to your site in the article, and this is a genuine method. Similarly, write good content, and you will find more people will be linking back to your site. (This post is not about promoting your site, so will leave that discussion off; that will be covered in a future topic).

Documentation / Help when getting started with WordPress

ashish — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 08:57:07 +0000

You wanted to publish a blog. Great. After some thought about whether to use a free platform such as Blogger.com or WordPress.com (or many others), you decided to go with the current best if you want to have your own platform; that is, you decided to use WordPress hosted on a separate hosting server (at least in your own space), and you also went up and bought a domain and bought some hosting space (you can do both of these with a single web host – refer a previous article on this subject).
Now you have installed WordPress on this hosted space, and voila, you have your own blog to use. Now, you start having questions on topics such as themes, plugins, user rights, feeds, etc. Well, the best place to start with (and this is actually useful) is to go to the documentation for WordPress on this link. I have many times referred to this documentation when I needed help on something related to WordPress, and most of the times, I have found that the text here is easily understandable.
The top level index for this documentation deals with the following topics (and you can get into detail for each one of these)
- Getting started
- Working with WordPress
- Design and Layout
- Advanced Topics
- Troubleshooting
- Developer Documentation

Why do you need a good web host ?

ashish — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 06:19:59 +0000

Another subject that is critical for running a great blog. If you have decided that your blog needs to run on its own domain, and not a free site such as blogger.com or wordpress.com, and if you have decided to use WordPress (using WordPress rather than another application such as Movable Type, or using a site such as Blogger.com is a separate thread to be covered in another post), then you need to find a good web server that can will host your domain and your WordPress application. So why is getting a great web host critical to the success of your blogging efforts ? After all, it is just a simple matter of getting a place that hosts your blog, and is able to serve it to anybody who requests it; why not just go for the cheapest such service and save some money as well ?
If you are thinking this way, then you are wrong ! Plain and simple wrong ! If you go in for cheap, and not for quality, it can have an actual effect on the success of your blogging endeavors ! What are some of the points that you should look for when you go in for a web host ?

1. The uptime offered by the host should be as high as possible, typically 99.9%. Only a host with multiple fast connections can offer that kind of uptime. If your website is down when a person is trying to access the content, then they will just move on. Further, there are many hosted and Web 2.0 applications now that depend on the server being always on such as the case of Software As A Service applications.
2. A high level of security that comes from a commitment. Patches should be installed ASAP, firewall protection, and actual physical protection for the servers.
3. Protection against mishaps. Hosts need to ensure that your servers are setup with RAID protection, and quick replacement of affected hardware in case of failure. Further, daily site backups and a robust backup strategy are essential.
4. Spam filtering to prevent your sites from getting attacked and affected by mass spammers.
5. Availability of installed applications. Nowadays, web hosts offer a variety of installed applications in the area of Content Management Systems (CMS), Blogging platforms, Email systems, Shopping Carts, Discussion Forums, and so on. The installation of these are through a very simple process with almost no pain.
6. Access through FTP. Being able to push your data and content through FTP to the server is very easy through a user-friendly FTP system.

Here is a listing of the top web hosts in the industry, who offer relatively cheap along with excellent service:

Globat
vistaPages
MidPhase
BlueHost
HostExcellence
IX Web Hosting
HostMonster
HostPapa

Promoting your blog – some tips for starters

ashish — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 18:24:45 +0000

Now you have a blog up and running. How do you get people to come to your blog (including both regular and non-regular visitors), how do you get search engines to get your blog indexed (and make it come high in their search display so that more visitors can come to your blog through search); and most important of all, how do you keep people who come to your blog to visit on a regular basis, and even send details to their friends and family ?
This is an exhaustive topic, and not something that I can cover in this one post. The contents of this post are more in the nature of starter tips, not a detailed presentation of points to do. Think of this as the 101 class (and that too, the first few chapters). The post is meant for people who are not so conversant with what all to do. If you know the ins-and-outs of using Adwords to promote your blog, then you should write your techniques here (I welcome comments fomr Gurus about tips on what has worked for them). So, here goes with the tips:
1. Feed: Make sure that feeds are setup on your blog so that people know how to get content easily.
2. Most search engines have a link where you can submit a blog, search for those and submit your blog URL over there
3. If you write comments on other people’s blogs, do remember to leave your own Blog URL in the space provided (most comment systems allow you to enter your URL in a separate box, and then show it in a non-intrusive manner). If your post is intelligent, makes sense, then there is a good chance that other visitors will come to your blog.
4. In whichever blog system you use, there will typically be a method to ping blog directories; if not, then be sure to use this URL: http://www.pingomatic.com
5. If there are article directories such as http://blogcritics.com, or the whole list at http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/, submit your articles over there. Typically articles getting posted here with a link back to your blog can help you.
6. Don’t plaster advertisements all over your blog. You need to make money, and having ads is fine for that, but users should be able to find the content and not run away in frustration.
7. In your signature file in email, make sure that you add a link to your blog along with an appropriate comment
8. If you are writing blogs on specific subjects, make sure that your most useful / most read posts are easily accessible by people
9. Allow people to be able to send your blog as a link via email. For example, in Blogger, there is a setting that allows visitors to send a post via email. If a user is able to send your posts like this, this is free viral marketing
10. If you can, make sure that your users get the feeling that they are getting something for free. So, you can get users to subscribe to your email feed by promising to send them a list of free tips
11. Post on a regular basis. This keeps users coming back (it need not be every day, but setting a pattern helps)