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Adtoll, Ad-Money

Today I was looking for sites that serves banner ads to your websites and I joined some of them to evaluate their earning potential.

The first program I joined was AdToll.

The http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.quote.gif
insert blockquoteinterface looks good but when I tried adding my site, they won't allow free hosts (mine is hosted free on blogger). When I have my own domain name, I will try adtoll again.

Basically, in AdToll you sell some advertising space on your website and you can set your price. You get 75% of your price while AdToll gets 25% as commission. You can specify which category of ads you want as well as filter out adult ads.

Next program is Ad-Money

It has a very simple site layout, perhaps a minimalist. I thought it was supposed to be paid per impression but its paid per click. I sent an email to the admin regarding some questions. I will update this after I got the reply.

That's it for now. Still researching...

Diversifying with banners ads

Diversify with banner ads

Have you heard of the saying, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket?". In earning money, it means that you should not just rely on one income source. The keyword here is diversify.

One of the ways you can diversify is through Banner Ads.

What are banner ads/advertisements?

Banner ads are a form of advertising in the Internet. These are pictures that advertises other websites and clicking on them brings you to that advertised sites. There are two persons involved in banner advertising, the advertiser and the publisher.

The advertiser is the one who wants to advertise his site and owns the banners. The publisher is the one giving up some space (ad space) in his website so that the advertiser display his banner there. If you want to promote your website, your role will be the advertiser. If you want to earn money, your role will be the publisher.

How can a publisher (you) earn from displaying banner ads?

Every time the banner is shown in the publisher's website, that counts as one impression. Advertisers pay for these impressions counted per 1000 impressions. Usual rates for banners are a few cents per 1000 impressions. Some have 30, 40 or 50 cents per 1000 impression. It can also depend on the size of the banners.

What are the sizes of the banners?

Different advertisers have different sizes. Here are the common sizes as quoted from Wikipedia

* Sizes for rectangular/pop-up ads
o Medium Rectangle: 300 by 250
o Square Pop-Up: 250 square
o Vertical Rectangle: 240 by 400
o Large Rectangle: 336 by 280
o Rectangle: 180 by 150

* Sizes for banner/button ads
o Full Banner: 468 by 60
o Half Banner: 234 by 60
o Micro Button: 80 by 15
o Micro Bar: 88 by 31
o Button 1: 120 by 90
o Button 2: 120 by 60
o Vertical Banner: 120 by 240
o Square Button: 125 square
o Leaderboard: 728 by 90

* Sizes for "skyscraper" ads
o Wide Skyscraper: 160 by 600
o Skyscraper: 120 by 600
o Half Page Ad: 300 by 600

How can I maximize my earnings with banner ads?

Banner ads are not for everybody. If your site receives low traffic, then you won't make much with banner ads. However, if your site has tons of traffic, banner ads is very profitable.

Great! So where do I get banner ads?

I'm sorry to say I am still looking for an advertiser for that. If I find a good banner advertiser, I'll post it here at this site.

Just a little note, please do not fill your web pages with banners. One or two is enough, more is annoying to your visitors and they might never come back. ^_^

Banner Advertising is just one of the ways in order for you to earn money online. There are still other ways to earn money online. Always remember not to "put all you eggs in one basket".

Diversify with Affiliate Marketing

Diversify with Affiliate Marketing

Have you heard of the saying, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket?". In earning money, it means that you should not just rely on one income source. The keyword here is diversify.

One of the ways you can diversify is through Affiliate Marketing.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a synonym for reselling. Basically, we have three persons, (1)merchant, (2)affiliate, and (3)customer. All three must be present so that affiliate marketing will work.

The merchant is the one who has products he wants to sell to the public. The customer is the one who wants to buy a product. The affiliate is the one who becomes the bridge between the merchant and the customer. To be able to earn from affiliate marketing, you would occupy the role of an affiliate.

What does an affiliate do?

All an affiliate, that's you, needs to do is to inform the customer of the product and lead/refer him to the merchant's place to buy the product. Other people call it "presell". You are the one who is going to do the advertising for the product and act as the salesman.

How can I earn money in affiliate marketing?

Every time a customer you referred buys a product from the merchant, you earn commission. Different merchants offer different commissions. It could be a percentage of the sales price or a fixed price for every referral.

Referrals? Is this like a pyramid scam?

No. Affiliate marketing is not like a pyramid scam. Pyramid scams rely on new member's money in order to pay the one who referred the new members. Those who are at the bottom of the pyramid are the ones who will lose and you are required to pay a membership fee in order to join.

Affiliate marketing does not work that way. You don't have to invest anything except your time in promoting the product. As you can see, you are promoting real products to the customer. What the customer will be buying is the product and not a membership fee. There are no losers in affiliate marketing. The merchant gets a sale, the affiliate gets commission, and the customer gets the product he wants.

Affiliate marketing is just one of the ways in order for you to earn money online. There are still other ways to earn money online. Always remember not to "put all you eggs in one basket".

I can't find my site on google!

I can't find my site on Google!
Has anyone experienced this problem? It seems that my ecchi blog located at http://ecchicravings.blogspot.com could not be found on Google even if I used the keywords "ecchi cravings blogspot".

Here are my predictions on how this could have happened.

Switching blogging host but with the same blog name

Well, I did switch from ecchicravings.wordpress.com to ecchicravings.blogspot.com.

Duplicate content

I copied my posts (about 6 of them) from my wordpress to blogspot blog. However, the moment I finished copying, I deleted the entries in wordpress.

Post flooding

I was very excited to start the ecchi blog that I posted a lot in the first few days. I think it was 3-4 posts per day or more. Perhaps Google labeled that as spamming?

Google does not like ecchi!

But why? Ecchi is good!

Edit: Hmm it seems that "ecchi cravings blogspot" search on Google now shows my ecchi blog at the 1st spot. According to Google Webmaster Tools, Google last crawled ecchi cravings last July 5 (yesterday).
I tried other keywords and only my wordpress blog (supposed to be dead since I transferred to blogspot) is showing up in the results.

Does anyone have tips on what I can do for this dilemma? Thank you very much! ^_^

What is a niche?

This is one of the tips I usually get when I ask how do I earn in blogging. They would reply, "find a niche and blog about it". Ok, so what is a niche by the way?

A niche is a specialization or a specific category. It is something that we can focus on so that we can get visitors whom we are sure is looking for what our focus is. Let us say that our focus is on books, our visitors would be book lovers.

Let us go off line and think of how shops work. We have auto supply shops, electronics stores, computer rentals, bakeries, restaurants and even supermarkets. For example, an auto supply sells parts of vehicles and their targeted market is vehicle owners. Electronic stores sells electronics and I am sure you won't find someone looking for pastries in an electronic store. These are examples of what people call "niche markets". We can be sure that the visitors of these stores are interested in what the store is selling (think of targeted visitors).

In order to earn money from blogging, find a niche which you can focus on and blog about it. Do not stray away from you focus and put up relevant ads on that niche. Like for example, don't put up ads for dynamite fishing when you are blogging about having an aquarium. Instead put up ads about where to buy aquariums, acquiring fishes, cleaning the aquarium, and how to keep your fishes from dieing.

So in conclusion; "finding a niche and blog about it" is simply -> Build blogs that people will find useful <- (Quoted from Mr. Manuel Villoria)

Note: This is how I understand it through research of the word "niche". If anything I said is wrong or you don't agree, please feel free to enlighten me by posting a comment. Thank you.

Blogging for people or blogging for money

I was reflecting upon my blogging actions and asked myself, do I blog for money or do I blog because of my readers?

I'm going to be honest with myself and to everyone, when I started my new blogs, I was in it for the money. However, I realized, if I was the reader of that blog, will I still read it?

One personal experience with this is with my other blog, read manga online. (Manga = Japanese comics) Each page of the manga has been converted into a thumbnail and the person has to click on it to view the manga page. I also joined a program that pays you cash for every outbound link and since thumbnails are outbound links, I'm going to be earning a lot!

However, when I browsed the read manga online blog, I placed my self in the shoes of my readers. If I was to click on a lot of thumbnails just to view the manga, I would rather just acquire the manga from other sources (thus losing a visitor). I realized that this was a bad idea and changed the way the read manga online site works. Instead of using thumbnails, I tried to find ways to make the browsing of the page easier. I found the answer and when I browsed the read manga online blog, it looks better on a reader's point of view.

I changed my ways and now I can proudly say that I am blogging for my readers.

How about you? Do you blog for money or do you blog for your readers?

Your answer to this question can affect your blog. It can affect the way you write, the way you present your content, your blog template and your reader's image of your blog. Think carefully and reflect. I did and I'm happy with my decision to blog for my readers.

Top Ten search engines to add your site

If you want to add more traffic to your site, one thing you can do is to add them to search engines. There are a lot of search engines around the internet. You may want to add your site to all of them but I won't do that.

Why? Because I'm lazy. Instead of adding your site to every search engine that you can find, why not just add your site to the The Top 10 Web Search Engines & Directories instead?

Let me give a quick view of the top 10 search engines and directories and also the page where you can submit your url to them. (Note: I can't find the submit URL for #2, #4, #5, #6, #8 so if you know the website, please let me know so that I can complete the list. Thank you)

1. Google - Submit your site to Google
2. Vivisimo - Read Note 0
2. Yahoo - Submit your site to Yahoo
4. About
5. Ask /AskJeeves - Read Note 1
6. Dogpile - Read Note 2
7. MSN - Submit your site to MSN.
8. KartOO - (first time I heard of this search engine. Actually it looks cool, using flash and maps to display results instead of the conventional all text results)
9. Alltheweb - Submit your site to Alltheweb. Read Note 3
10. Dmoz.org - I can't access the page for now =(

Note 0: As you may have noticed, there are two #2s in the top 10. This is not a typo because the it is the results of a tie. (Edited after 1st comment hehe ^_^)
Note 1: Based on some postings in this forum, it seems that askjeeves / ask will just index you on their own and you can't submit to their submit manually for free or even if you pay (possible scammers).
Note 2: Since dogpile is a search engine that searches other search engines, the only way you can add your site is to add them to the search engines that dogpile searches. (eg. Google, Yahoo etc.)
Note 3: You may be wondering why the submit url for Alltheweb is the same as yahoo. Alltheweb states that their search results are provided by yahoo.

I am 67% addicted to blogging!

I was just doing my usual blog hopping and I managed to read this on Mr. Karlo the Addict Pinoy blogero, a test on "how addicted to blogging are you?"

I also took the test and here are my results. I am just 67%, about two-thirds, I guess that is ok. It just means that I have life outside of blogging. (points finger at those who scored higher) hehe

67%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Oh well, thanks Mr. Karlo for this post idea. haha I'm jealous! I wanted to have reached the 100% addicted to blogging mark but I would just be lying to myself.

So if you want to take the test, click here.

Lesson Learned : Easy way to make a new post, read other people's blogs. Haha.

June 2007 Earning Reports

Since this blog is about my experiences on trying to make money online, I think it is best to write a monthly report so that you and I will have an idea on my progress.

Let me check...

So for the month of June year 2007, my earnings are...

Adsense = $0.77
usercash = $0.18

I know that people are going to laugh at this pathetic earning rate but I just want to be honest. I am indeed trying and learning to make money online. Hopefully July will be an improvement. =)

Importance of reading the google adsense ads

Do you actually read (not click!!! READ) the adsense ads in your blogs? I usually ignore them but I discovered that reading these ads sometimes can actually give you some benefits.

Want to know how? I would like to share with you what I have learned.


Reading the google adsense ads...

can give you a some ideas for a topic (this is an ad from Let's make money, $10,000 from 1st month and still growing)

Some people write ad descriptions that are so exaggerated and it's hard to believe it in. Instead of telling yourself, "yeah right! who would believe that?", why not tell it to others by writing it in your blog. In this way, you can start a discussion in your blog.

can let you discover a good resource (this is an ad from hittail)

I was scanning at my adsense ad and an ad by hittail caught my eye. Hittail is a free service that tracks the search keywords leading to your site and gives suggestions on new topics based on those search keywords. It is a very useful tool.

can let you check if the ads are relevant to your content

The purpose of adding adsense to your blog is to provide your readers ads related to your content. Readers of a swimming blog won't be interested in ads about frog legs right? You can either filter out that ad or make sure your content is really about swimming and not frogs.

can give examples of ads that can attract people's attentions

The moment you stopped what you are doing and read the ad that you are seeing right now, I can say that the ad has done its purpose.

can give you something to read

If you don't have anything else to read, try reading google adsense ads. (hehe) Perhaps this is not a good reason since I don't think you can run out of documents to read.

So you see, reading (not clicking!) your adsense ads do have their own benefits.

Very important! Remember that clicking your own adsense ads in against Google's Terms of Service and this will result in your account getting banned. Don't risk it. =)

How to detect and remove dead links?

Dead links are links that points to web pages that can't be found. These are bad for your website since it can portray an image of a not managed or outdated site. The moment you find a dead link in your pages, you should remove it as soon as possible.

Knowing that you have a dead link is a good starting point. Now all you have to do is to find that anchor text that points to the dead link and edit/remove it.

Now the problem is how do you find a dead link? Here are some free tools that can help you in your search for dead links.

Google Webmaster Tools

I have been using this recently and found its features very useful. You can use Google Webmaster Tools to give a diagnostic test on you blog. Checking for dead links is one of the many features you can find while using this tool. As you can see from the screenshot, it reports to have found 2 "not found" errors and a link to the details is also given. Note that not found errors are synonymous to dead links. The details page shows you the address where the dead link points too.

However, my problem here is that, I could not find the anchor link that points to the dead link's address. If you do know how to find it using Google Webmaster Tools, please let me know.

Xenu's Link Sleuth

This software claims to find broken links on your site. Basically, what the program does is act like a search engine spider and scan all the links starting from your input page (usually the homepage). You can opt to let it include external links (links outside your domain) or just internal links (links within the domain).

If you are having a hard time understanding what I just said, think of a tree. Now imagine the trunk of the tree as your "input page" or homepage, and the stems are the links. The links branches out just like a tree.

All you have to do is input a page, click "OK" and wait for the software to finish. It will generate a report for you to browse through with lots of details. It is a very handy tool to find the pages the link to dead links and remove them.

Removing the dead links is currently a problem for my other blog. I have searched manually, used both tools but I could not find the anchor text that causes the dead link. For now, I am waiting for the next time Google crawls my site. (Google Webmaster Tools is able to you when Google last crawled your site)

Cure for must-check-blog-stats syndrome

If you are infected with the must-check-blog-stats syndrome and wish to cure that, then you have come to the right place.

I have lessened my urge to check my blog stats by making a few realizations. Instead of checking my blog stats, I could be doing some more useful things.


Instead of checking your blog stats...

I could write new content.

Blog stats just show you the visitors and page views of your blog. They won't help you attract new visitors. Remember that people go to your blog because of your content. Remember that the more content you have, the more "entrances" you have for your blog.

I could be reading other people's blog.

Each person has something different about them and you can discover them by reading their blogs. You can gain tips, lessons and even new friends by visiting other people's blogs.

I could be doing other things with my life.

These are just a few examples that you can do. You can sleep, eat, interact with people in real life, study, shout like a mad retard, play video games, watch tv, go for a swim, take a bath, dance in the rain, stalk your crushes, ask your parents for additional allowances, go to the mall, be a nuisance to your siblings, invite friends over to your house and of course, read my blogs.

As you can see, you can do a lot of things instead of checking your blog stats all the time. There is nothing wrong with checking you blog stats but you could be doing more productive things instead. Just remember that more content that your readers want, the more page views and visitors you will get for your blog.

Instead of letting the blog stats tell you how many visitors, let your content show you how many visitors you get.