New Year's Resolutions for AdSense Publishers
The dawn of 2006. It's traditional in many cultures to make resolutions for the new year. These resolutions often revolve (at least in North America) around losing weight and exercising more, but there are other resolutions you can make. Here's my list of possible resolutions for AdSense publishers to make. If you want to increase your AdSense earnings, here are the kinds of things you should resolve to do in the new year:
- I resolve to use channels effectively. Google gives AdSense publishers a simple tool to gather and analyze statistics, the concept of channels. If you have one or two small sites, for example, there's no reason why you can't go and create a URL channel for each page on your site. The time to do this would be now, at the beginning of a new month. Then watch those statistics and see which pages are the ones that are really making you money. You can also use custom channels to great effect, for example to gather stats on which ad formats work best for you. Smart publishers include the format name in the channel name so that they know exactly what's what when they're looking through the list of channels.
- I resolve to try out horizontal ad link units. When ad link units were first introduced, they didn't seem like an obvious winner to me. That changed, though, when Google introduced the horizontal format. I find that a well-placed horizontal link unit near the top of the page works well on most of my sites. Try it!
- I resolve to implement alternate URLs. The AdSense alternate URL feature lets you tell Google what to display when there are no ads available. If there's no alternate URL specified, Google displays a public service announcement. You might as well display an ad for something that either generates you more publicity, makes you money, or promotes a specific cause/site that you support. Creating an alternate URL isn't that hard, there are good instructions in the AdSense support center. You can even go so far as to make your own text ads, just like the ones you see here on this site (they're labeled “Ads by Eric”).
- I resolve to get more traffic to my site/blog. As I described it in The AdSense Formula, if you want more money you need to get more clicks. One way to get more clicks is to get more traffic coming to your site. And I don't mean using one of those “we'll send you 1000 visitors” schemes — they won't make you any money. You need qualified traffic, traffic that's interested in what your site/blog has to offer. So are you doing everything you can to promote your site/blog? Is the URL in your email and forum signatures? Have you written free articles? Have you done proper search engine optimization? I've listed a number of traffic tips in the past few months — have you followed any of them?
- I resolve to create a second site/blog. At some point, you'll hit a limit on the amount of traffic you can get to your site or blog. The next step, then, is to create a second site. Don't abandon your first site — unless, of course, it's something that can run on auto-pilot — but spend most of your time and energy on establishing the second site. You'll find the small, niche site strategy can work exceptionally well as a passive income generation tool. Some people create a new site every week. It's the shampoo principle: rinse, wash, and repeat.
- I resolve to try different ad formats. This is very basic, yes, but trying different ad formats is always a useful experiment. For one thing, if you have regular visitors (repeat visitors who don't click ads much) you may find it shakes them out of their banner blindness. Experiment — what works for you doesn't always work for other sites.
- I resolve to write original content. This is something I've always expounded. Write something original, don't just repost other people's material. Give people a reason to come to your site/blog. But you need to set aside time to do it.
Well, that's a good start at least. More resolutions tomorrow, perhaps? In any case, I wish everyone reading this a happy and healthy new year!
Eric Giguere is the AdSense expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google. Subscribe to his AdSense newsletter for more tips and advice on AdSense and content monetization.
One day left to vote for best AdSense Resources!
If you haven't voted yet for the Best AdSense Resources of 2005, now's the time to do it. Voting closes tomorrow night at midnight Pacific Time. So far, Darren Rowse of ProBlogger fame is leading by a wide margin in the personality and blog categories, but the other races are closer. Let the world know what you think!
Eric Giguere is the AdSense expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google. Subscribe to his AdSense newsletter for more tips and advice on AdSense and content monetization.
AdSense Traffic Tip: More on cross-promotion
Yesterday's posting about generating traffic via cross-promotion (in this case, participating in a book promotion for The Ultimate Lead Generation Plan that supports Habitat for Humanity) was a bit short, so I want to discuss this concept in a bit more detail.
Although I'm participating in a big promotion, most cross-promotion opportunities are smaller and easier to handle. All you really have to do is ask the other party for an exchange of information. One of the easiest ways to do this is to ask the other party for permission to reprint an article or posting from their site on yours. They're usually quite willing to do so providing you give them proper credit and a link back to their site. Article directories do this on a bigger scale, of course, but this kind of cross-promotion is more personal and more exclusive.
Another great way to do cross-promotion is with interviews. Find a willing interviewee, send them a list of ten questions to answer about themselves, their site and/or their topic and you'll get back enough material for one or two postings of your own. They get publicity, you get content — a perfect marriage of convenience. (I've done this before and been both the interviewee and the interviewer. It can be a lot of fun. I'm still willing to do it, too, if anyone's interested.)
Successful cross-promotions work best when both parties are interested in the promotion and both derive benefits from it. This book promotion that I'm participating in benefits me because it exposes more people to my book and gets me more subscriptions to my AdSense newsletter. But it also benefits the book author because it exposes his book to a wider audience, the readers of this blog. Similarly, when Andrew Bourland asked me to reprint one of the articles from my newsletter in his blog, I said sure — again, more publicity for my site and some new content (because those articles aren't available anywhere else yet) for his blog. A win-win situation all around.
A while back I came across a term for doing these kinds of win-win cross-promotions: “loverage”. You can read about it in the article Getting Your Book to #1 at Amazon.com. That particular use was in the context of book promotion (hence why I found it — authors are always looking for good ways to promote their books) but it applies just as well to getting traffic to your site/blog. It makes for interesting reading.
Eric Giguere is the AdSense expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google. Subscribe to his AdSense newsletter for more tips and advice on AdSense and content monetization.
AdSense Traffic Tip: Do a cross-promotion
Another way to generate some traffic for your site/blog is to do a cross-promotion with another site/blog or with someone else's newsletter. For example, right now I'm participating in a promotion for the book The Ultimate Lead Generation Plan. The author of the book is donating his proceeds to Habitat for Humanity while trying to make the book a bestseller at the same time. What they've done is quite clever, they've assembled a list of people who are willing to give out stuff for free to anyone who buys the book. They've lined up over 200 different bonus offers, including a little e-book I've written called the two words that can make you rich. Buy the book and you get all the bonuses.
Of course, to do this you have to be willing to share something with the others participating in the cross-promotion. So I'm making my little e-book available for free, as well as providing some other bonuses. Others do the same. So it's a win-win situation for everyone involved. That can be the real hard part, though, coming up with something that you want to share for free with others. It might mean some work on your part to do it, but sometimes you can “repurpose” things you've already written — collect a series of articles together into a little e-book, for example. Just try to make it as appealing as you can.
You'll want to pick and choose your partners for this kind of joint promotion carefully. This particular promotion appeals to me because of the charity aspect. Then again, there are so many bonuses available to the purchasers of the book that I'm not sure how much traffic I'll get — but they're sending out something like 10 million emails to promote it, so even if I get a fraction of a percent looking at what I have to offer, it'll be well worth it.
Eric Giguere is the AdSense expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google. Subscribe to his AdSense newsletter for more tips and advice on AdSense and content monetization.
CheeKui.com: A new reader-built site
Reader Chee Kui is pleased to announce his new site, CheeKui.com, a site about Chee Kui's lifestyle. He is, of course, taking advantage of my free listing offer to get mentioned here. Check out the site and send Chee Kui a note saying that you found about it here…
Eric Giguere is the AdSense expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google. Subscribe to his AdSense newsletter for more tips and advice on AdSense and content monetization.
AdSense publishers need to focus on SEO
My posting schedule's going to be a little light over the Christmas holidays, though I'll try to get my AdSense newsletter out shortly since it's behind schedule. (Don't forget to subscribe and get your chance at winning a signed copy of my book!)
Today's topic is searching engine optimization, perhaps one of the most important things an AdSense publisher can do to get traffic. A well-optimized page ranks highly in the search engines for specific keyword phrases. For many sites, it's through searching that new visitors find your site, so it's important to always think about what you're doing with the different parts of your page. Even bloggers using a standard blogging template should consider tweaking the template if necessary — it's not that hard, really.
For example, Graywolf is running an interesting experiment about page titles in his blog, trying to figure out what's the optimal type of page title to get good rankings in the popular search engines. Among the “in-page” SEO factors, page titles are one of the most important factors. In the Invisible Fence Guide, for example, I've been using keyword-rich page titles and I'm convinced it's helped the site rankings. Graywolf's experiment seems to support this, though he's saying that for good Google rankings you should also have the name of the site appended to the title. The truth is, of course, that only the people at Google, Yahoo! and MSN know for sure what really works and what doesn't work, all we can do is test things out. But it's good to keep an eye out for these kinds of experiments and to write your pages accordingly.
Eric Giguere is the AdSense expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google. Subscribe to his AdSense newsletter for more tips and advice on AdSense and content monetization.
Season's Greetings!
Since tomorrow is Christmas, things around here will be fairly quiet. I thought I'd take the time to wish all my readers a happy holiday season. Below is my virtual Christmas card featuring the entire family. (The portrait was done by Picture Yourself Photography. Bob is a very patient photographer!)
Since I always like to relate this to AdSense somehow: the picture above was taken for our actual (physical) Christmas cards. However, I asked Bob how much extra he'd charge to send the picture out in an email and on my site, and he said no charge, he was just glad I asked. And that's the same with a lot of things. Sometimes when you see something you'd like to put on your site, all you have to do is ask permission. Many times, you'll find that the owner is happy to share it with you.
And now, of course, Bob gets a link back to his site for his generosity with the picture.
Happy holidays!
Coming soon: The AdSense Movie
As someone pointed out to me early this morning, I made a mistake with my last posting. Instead of titling it AdSense Case Study: Stage 4 Ends, I titled it AdSense Cast Study: Stage 4 Ends. Apparently I'm studying the casting of an AdSense movie! Not really the best way to promote my ongoing AdSense case study, is it?
Now, I could easily go and fix the title of the posting. Fixing the underlying Web address (the URL) is a bit problematic, however, because if I change that I'll be invalidating any incoming links to that posting. So if I do change it, I'll need to make sure I get my site to redirect people to the new URL. I'm not going to bother at this moment, as I may have to start redirecting everything to the memwg.com domain in order to be able to show AdSense ads on this site again — so far it looks like Google won't allow me to do so on the MakeEasyMoneyWithGoogle.com domain. (They've definitely cracked down, a lot of AdSense publishers are reporting that they're not allowed to show AdSense ads on any of their domains with “AdSense” or “Google” in the name.)
This shows one of the downsides of blogging: because it's a more conversational and informal medium, it's also a lot easier to slip up and misspell or use poor grammar when making the postings. Even well-read bloggers like Seth Godin make these kinds of mistakes in their postings. (Unless, of course, they're deliberate misspellings meant to catch search engine traffic, as I mentioned just the other day…)
If anyone makes an AdSense movie, please be assured I'll be one of the first on board the production, though! 
Eric Giguere is the AdSense expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google. Subscribe to his AdSense newsletter for more tips and advice on AdSense and content monetization.
AdSense Cast Study: Stage 4 Ends
It's been awhile since I've discussed the ongoing AdSense case study, so let's discuss things a bit more before leaving Stage 4 of the Invisible Fence Guide.
Stage 4, as you recall, is all about using CSS to beautify the site. The idea is to rely as much as possible style sheets instead of HTML tables, both from a maintenance standpoint (it can be quite hard to figure out what's what when you're working on a page that uses tables nested within tables nested within tables ad infinitum) and from a search engine optimization (SEO) standpoint (because search engines can more easily interpret a page that focuses mostly on content as opposed to layout).
CSS is both very simple and very complex. Truly, CSS is simple. What's complex are all the bugs that you have to work around to get your page to display the way you want to in different browser versions. These problems will iron themselves out eventually, but it's certainly a pain sometimes when you want to do something fancy like caption pictures with CSS.
The three-column layout I ended up implementing on the Invisible Fence Guide is actually fairly simple to setup. The basic structure of the HTML is as follows:
<div id="outer_wrapper">
<div id="wrapper">
<div id="left">
put your left-hand column stuff here
</div> <– left –>
<div id=”sidebar”>
put your right-hand column stuff here
</div> <– sidebar –>
<div id=”main”>
put your center column stuff here
</div> <– main –>
<div class=”clearing”> </div>
</div> <– wrapper –>
</div> <– outer_wrapper –>
I should point out that the left and right columns have fixed widths in this layout, but the center column has variable width. This may not be what you want, but when you're showing ads on the left or the right it usually works well, because the ads normally have fixed sizes.
Here are the accompanying styles:
#outer_wrapper {
background: #ffffff url(background_3.gif) repeat-y left;
min-width: 950px;
}
#wrapper {
background: #ffffff url(background_2.gif) repeat-y right;
min-width: 950px;
}
#main {
margin-left: 170px;
margin-right: 200px;
padding: 1em;
min-width: 500px;
}
#left {
margin-left: 10px;
margin-right: 0px;
margin-top: 1em;
width: 170px;
float: left;
background-color: #FFFFFF;
}
#sidebar {
width: 200px;
float: right;
padding: 0.5em;
}
.clearing {
height: 0;
clear: both;
}
Note that the two wrapper styles use images as their background. These are just images that are the correct width for the appropriate column filled with the background color of the column.
You would adjust the column sizes appropriately for your site, of course. I'm using 170 pixels for the left column (where the AdSense ads are) and 200 pixels for the right column (where the site index and Chitika ads are).
I cobbled this layout together from various different CSS sites, looking for something that was simple and that worked in Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera. Feel free to base your own layouts on this.
Now we're going to move onto Stage 5, which will be about optimizing the site for advertising and for traffic generation.
Eric Giguere is the AdSense expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google. Subscribe to his AdSense newsletter for more tips and advice on AdSense and content monetization.
AdSense Christmas earnings
This year is going to be my third Christmas as an AdSense publisher since I joined the program in August of 2003, so I'm curious to see what my earnings are going to be like over the next few days. I suspect, though, that the day of the week on which Christmas falls has more to do with changes in earnings than the holiday itself.
Last year, for example, Christmas was on a Saturday and I had good earnings that day but piddly earnings the day before (Friday the 24th) or the day after (Sunday the 26th).
In 2003, on the other hand, earnings were flat on December 24 and 25 (Wednesday and Thursday) but robust on Friday the 26th.
It's actually hard to conclude much from this data — there are only two samples — but I'm thinking that if Christmas Day or Boxing Day (the 26th is a traditional holiday up here in Canada) fall on a Friday or Saturday, earnings will be good for those days. Maybe because people are generally at home and have lots of time to surf the net.
Or maybe it's just coincidence. I'll report back next week on what I see this weekend, because neither day falls on a Friday or Saturday this year.
PS: Vote for the Best AdSense Resources of 2005.
Eric Giguere is the AdSense expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google. Subscribe to his AdSense newsletter for more tips and advice on AdSense and content monetization.
AdSense webinar now available
A replay of Google's recent AdSense webinar is now available, though you need Internet Explorer to properly view it.
The Google Content Network
I'm always telling AdSense publishers to pay attention to what Google is doing with AdWords. AdWords is, after all, where your earnings as an AdSense publisher ultimately come from.
When you have some spare time, take a close look at the new Google Content Network overview, which defines more precisely what the “content network” (as opposed to the “search network”) is all about. Interesting reading, for sure, and it should clarify many of the questions you might have about smart pricing, the ad auction process, and other important AdWords program details.
The resource center was announced in the Inside AdWords blog, another great resource that AdSense publishers should monitor on a regular basis.
PS: Don't forget to vote for the Best AdSense Resources of 2005! The list of nominees is still kind of sparse, so feel free to nominate new resources in each category. In the personality category, JenSense's Jennifer Sleg (aka Jenstar) is neck-and-neck with ProBlogger's Darren Rowse. Their blogs are also running neck-and-neck, which I guess makes sense given that blogs are often intimately tied to their creators. Jennifer's blog just won the Search Engine Journal award for best Search Engine Marketing and Contextual Advertising blog ahead of Darren, but maybe Darren will win this round.
Big East Basketball Roundup: New reader-built blog
Reader Greg D. wrote to me to announce his new sports-oriented blog, Big East Basketball Roundup, which I hope readers of this blog will visit and send Greg a few words of encouragement. In his email, Greg said “I learned a lot from your book and decided to create a blog about the big east basketball conference as a result” and I'm happy to give him some free publicity in return.
The Affiliate Quandry
When a few weeks ago I introduced you to Bourland.com, I was really excited because it was providing reviews of e-books and software about AdSense and other content monetization programs without actually pushing any of those books/software. So I was naturally disappointed shortly after when Andrew Bourland decided to include affiliate links starting with his review of The Rich Jerk. Now, however, Andrew has recanted his ways and is going to stop including affiliate links in his reviews. I think that's great, because it will further the appearance of objectivity in Andrew's reviews. Not that they weren't already objective, it's just that having affiliate links sprinkled throughout the text makes it appear less objective.
This, of course, is one of the problems that anyone writing website and blog content faces: do you or do you not use affiliate links in your postings? Is it worth losing the appearance of objectivity by plugging a product or service?
The truth is that we all have different agendas. Part of this blog's purpose, of course, is to support the readers of my book and to provide added ammunition for others to buy it. To make it easy to buy, I provide you with a direct link to Amazon. In fact, I go out of my way to provide you with a quick one-click way to add the book to your Amazon shopping cart. And yes, I'm a member of Amazon's affiliate program, so if you happen to buy my book through this site I get an extra chunk of cash (very small — we're only talking about $0.60) for directing you to Amazon. But as the author of the book, you probably don't mind me using an affiliate link like that — especially if you know how much I make per copy in royalties anyhow. (Trust me, you don't make money a lot of money writing books, it's the other stuff that comes from book writing that makes authors rich. But only a few authors. Most of the unwashed masses of book authors, like myself, just do it out of fun, interest, ego and/or self-flagellation.)
The trick with using affiliate links is that they're best used with products and services that you can truly recommend. Besides Amazon, for example, I have no problem recommending my mailing list provider (AWeber) or my domain registrar (GoDaddy), because I like and use what they offer. Still, I have to think carefully about when and where to use the affiliate links for those products to not annoy and turn off my readership. Sometimes I wonder if I should be providing two links, one affiliate and one not, and let the user decide which to use. Or clearly mark them as affiliate links. But doing so would likely interfere with the flow of what I'm writing and in turn emphasize the affiliate links themselves, where before they'd be quietly buried in the text. It is a bit of a quandry, truly.
In that sense, then, being an AdSense publisher is much more palatable than being an affiliate. With AdSense, you're basically outsourcing all that nasty advertising stuff to Google so that you can concentrate on your content. You can have the appearance of objectivity because the ads get chosen automatically based on your content, not through some obvious machinations on your part to promote a product or service. I say appearance, of course, because many AdSense publishers do in fact go through machinations trying to get the “right kind” of ads to appear and cleverly positioning or otherwise emphasizing the ads (carefully, of course, to not violate the AdSense terms and conditions) in order to maximize clickthroughs.
In the end, you have to draw a line through the sand and decide how far you want to go to make money on the Internet. There are many ways to monetize content, for example, and while AdSense is perhaps the most obvious and best-known way to do it, it's not the only one. Maybe your audience won't mind if you stick affiliate links throughout the content. Maybe all they can stand are ads. It's really up to you to decide.
Eric Giguere is the AdSense expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google. Subscribe to his AdSense newsletter for more tips and advice on AdSense and content monetization.
Vote for Best AdSense Resources
The end of the year is the traditional time for voting on things, so I've decided to start my own poll for the Best AdSense Resources of 2005. Please take a few minutes to fill out the ballot form and vote for you favorite AdSense resources. Categories are: book, blog, case study, forum, personality, tool and website. I've added a few entries to each category, but you can nominate your own favorites as well, and please do so. You can also subscribe to a mailing list to be informed of the final results after the voting closes. Voting continues until the end of the year (December 31, 2005).
To be fair, I've disqualified myself from being nominated. I've also disqualified Google's own resources. The point of this poll is to reward the third-party resources that AdSense publishers like myself rely on.
Please let your fellow publishers know about the poll. The link is:
http://www.MakeEasyMoneyWithGoogle.com/polls/best-adsense-2005.html
It should be interesting to see what happens!
Eric Giguere is the AdSense expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google. Subscribe to his AdSense newsletter for more tips and advice on AdSense and content monetization.
AdSense webinar notes
Here are some notes I made on today's AdSense webinar hosted by members
of the Google AdSense team. This is not a complete transcript, I just wrote
down a few interesting (to me) tidbits. A lot of what they said wasn't new, but they did clarify some areas.
Referrals
- Referrals do not impact Smart Pricing.
- Referral buttons can be placed on non-content pages, unlike ads.
- You cannot encourage others to click referral buttons, but you can say
that you recommend AdSense or Firefox. - The referral rates are different for different countries.
- There are no text links yet, but it was implied that they are coming.
- Referral buttons no longer impact AdSense for content impressions.
Onsite Advertiser Sign-Up (OASU)
- Be sure to upload your logo and message and choose customized colors.
- The OASU login page is hosted by Google, which is why customization is important.
- Customization is done from within your AdSense account settings.
- But only one site is supported right now, so if you have multiple sites use a generic name like “Advertise on this Site”.
- On-site advertising leads to special campaign creation path in AdWords/
- OASU is on a CPM basis.
- You can refer advertisers to onsite sign-up without any problems.
Webinar Materials
The webinar materials will be available online shortly, including a transcript of the question and
answer session. There will be announcement in the Inside AdSense blog.
Eric Giguere is the AdSense expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google. Subscribe to his AdSense newsletter for more tips and advice on AdSense and content monetization.
New AdSense-YPN-Chitika Preview Tool
The folks at Digital Inspiration have just released the Digital Inspiration All-In-One Preview tool that lets website and blog owners easily preview what kind of Google AdSense, Yahoo! Publisher Network (YPN) and Chitika eMiniMalls ads will appear on a given page. Give it a URL and it will display you sample ads for that page from all three services. Very cool.
You can access the tool in two ways: directly from gooleadspreview.blogspot.com or via a browser plugin (Internet Explorer and Firefox are both supported). Give it a try.
As an aside, note that the tool is hosted on the blogspot.com domain, the domain that Google uses for free blog hosting. The clever guys at Digital Inspiration have replaced the blog template with a bunch of JavaScript that makes the blog look and behave like a conventional web page. Hadn't thought of doing that before, though readers of this blog will know that I'm not a big fan of hosting stuff on blogspot.com in case Google decides to pull your account for some reason. I'd recommend to Digital Inspiration that they place their tool elsewhere, to be honest, but what they've done is great.
Eric Giguere is the AdSense expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google. Subscribe to his AdSense newsletter for more tips and advice on AdSense and content monetization.
Google to display image ads on its own pages
According to the New York Times (reported via CNet) and other sources, Google is going to experiment with image-based ads on its search results pages. This is something very new that is stirring up some controversy, of course, since Google made its mark in online advertising by using text ads exclusively on the righthand side of a results page. According to the article:
One format being discussed is a box, which may include a photograph and a logo, that would appear on the main search results pages toward the bottom of the advertisements in the right-hand column. Traditional banner ads may appear on Google Image Search and the Froogle shopping site, which already include many photographs, an executive involved said. No advertising is contemplated for the Google home page.
Of course, Google has been in the business of selling image ads for a while now, though it's not clear to me how many people outside the AdSense/AdWords community know this. But the ads have been restricted to partner sites until now. The ad format they're mentioning above appears to be a new one, but in line with what Google is already doing. Don't be surprised to see it show up as a new AdSense format, too, if it really is something different.
The Google-AOL deal precipitated this, but I'm sure integration of image-based advertising with search results has long been on Google's radar. After all, they keep experimenting with different ways to present information related to what you're searching for, this is really just another set of experiements for them. Provided they weather the controversy well.
Eric Giguere is the AdSense expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google. Subscribe to his AdSense newsletter for more tips and advice on AdSense and content monetization.
Click the ads, please!
While I'm waiting for Google to re-enable ad serving on MakeEasyMoneyWithGoogle.com, I've decided to start showing my own text ads on the site. Using the code sequence I exposed in the first issue of my AdSense newsletter (subscribe to get it), I've come up with a few Google-like text ads promoting products like AdSense Empire, Traffic Equalizer and the like. These are the kind of products that would normally be advertised here anyhow, so I might as well include them in my own text ads.
These ads are implemented much the same way that Google implements its own ads, via an <iframe> tag that references a file that serves up a <table> sequence as shown in my newsletter, except I don't use any JavaScript at all in my ad serving scheme, just a bit of server-side scripting to randomly choose an ad. They're not perfect yet, still a few glitches, but these are nice alternatives you could use yourself on your own sites, either on their own or as alternate URLs for your AdSense ads.
The funny thing about all of this is that because I'm not showing AdSense ads on this site, I can all of a sudden encourage visitors to click the ads they see, because clicking doesn't make me money or cost the advertisers anything. So whenever you see an ad labeled “Ads by Eric” or “Add to your Amazon cart” or something similar, feel free to click away!
Eric Giguere is the AdSense expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google. Subscribe to his AdSense newsletter for more tips and advice on AdSense and content monetization.
Almost anyone can make money with AdSense
After yesterday's announcement of TideBlog.com, the reader who runs it wrote to me to say this:
That's actually the point of Make Easy Money with Google, that it's easy (once you know how) to make some money with AdSense, enough to cover your expenses of running the site and them some. I don't claim that you'll get rich, mind you, though there are ways to make a lot of money with AdSense. But that's the subject of a different book. Anyone interested in having me write such a book? Let me know!
Eric Giguere is the AdSense expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google. Subscribe to his AdSense newsletter for more tips and advice on AdSense and content monetization.