I'm going to interrupt my new AdSense case study to talk about a way that charities and non-profit organizations can make some extra money providing useful services for their members by combining Google Custom Search Engines with AdSense.

What's a Custom Search Engine?

A Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) is a new feature of Google Co-op, Google's project to allow for collaborative customization of Google search results. CSE lets you create your own versions of the Google search engine that emphasize, include or exclude results from specific sites. Multiple people/groups can collaborate to build CSEs that meet their specific needs while still taking advantage of the breadth and depth of Google's search engine.

Like AdSense, a CSE is provided to you as a snippet of JavaScript that you place on a page. You can customize the look and feel of the CSE (logo and colors) and let Google host it or else host it on your own site.

Monetizing Custom Search Engines

Google displays ads on CSE result pages, just as it would on its own search result pages. But here's where it gets interesting: if you're an AdSense publisher you can associate your AdSense publisher ID with the ads in any CSE you create. This means you'll get a share of the revenue Google makes when those ads are clicked, just as with AdSense for search. If your CSE is popular enough you could make some serious money.

How Charities and Non-Profits Benefit

So here's an idea you can pass onto your favorite charity or non-profit. If they don't already have an AdSense account (and I suspect most wouldn't), get them to apply for AdSense. Once they're approved, they can then create a CSE tuned to their specific needs. Usually this would mean emphasizing results from their own sites and the sites of related organizations. Or excluding sites that don't fit with organization's goals.

Once the CSE is running, place is on the organization's main site somewhere and encourage members to use it as their main search engine, possibly even making it their default startup page. (It would be neat, too, if Google extended its toolbar to direct queries to a user-specified CSE.) The organization would then enjoy additional revenue from its membership while providing them with a useful service.

There are some caveats with this, of course. For one thing, advertising in general may not be compatible with the organization's goals — note that Google allows non-profits and charities to remove the ads entirely. For another, the organization would have to be careful not to encourage or otherwise entice its membership to click on ads for no reason — the AdSense terms and conditions still apply.

Something to think about, in any case. If anyone tries to use CSE as a fundraiser, I'd love to hear about your experiences.

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Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. If you like this posting, why not link to his blog or bookmark it as one of your favorites?

It's been a while since I've done an AdSense case study like the one I did before for the electronic pet fence guide (which, BTW, I'm happy to note ranks 4th on Google for “adsense case study” — the first three are Google's own case studies). My (much needed) vacation last week in San Diego gave me the idea for a new AdSense case study focusing on travel. Let's build a travel site!

Travel is for Everyone

So why choose travel as a general topic? Because traveling is something that almost everyone does at some point in their lives. Some people travel to exotic locations far away. Some don't stray too far from their hometown. It doesn't really matter — if you've gone somewhere, you can write about it. And that means you can monetize it with AdSense. If you do it right!

The problem with travel is that it's an ultra-competitive topic. You don't have to use any fancy keyword tools to know this, just type travel into Google and you'll see that there are about 1,790,000,000 pages in Google's index containing the word “travel”. Forget about getting a good ranking. And getting your AdWords ad in the #1 spot for “travel” will set you back a few dollars per click.

But competition is good, because it means there's broad interest in the topic. It also means that there's a chance to make good money with AdSense.

The key to success, of course, is to go small. When real people think about traveling, they usually have a specific place in mind. They don't type “travel” into Google, they actually type things like “travel san diego” or “travel disney”. They want to see pages relevant to the journey they wish to undertake. They're looking for travel deals or travel information. And that's where you can jump in.

Documenting Your Travels

What we're talking about here is essentially documenting your travels. It's not hard to do. When you start planning a trip, keep all your reference materials handy. Take along a digital camera and take some pictures. Collect maps, brochures, pamphlets and other useful informational or promotional materials. If the trip is complicated, you can even write some notes during your travels about what you've seen, where you stayed, etc.

When you return from your travels, sit down and organize all the materials you've gathered and build a site or blog around them. Keep it focused, don't make the mistake of trying to expand your visit into a general guide to whatever area you were visiting. There are plenty of professional sites out there that create those kinds of sites. Your site needs to be more personal and more specific.

I'll be using my trip to San Diego as an example. I don't want to write a generic site about San Diego because I didn't see all of San Diego. But I did learn some interesting things about visiting San Diego:

• I discovered that staying in the Mission Valley area of San Diego, which came about mostly by chance because that's where the conference hotel (my wife was attending a conference) was located, was very convenient. Highways 163, I-8 and I-5 were in easy reach.
• Anthony's Fish Grotto has good seafood but a terrible atmosphere, they herd you in like cattle. And if, like me, you're not fond of seafood, the pickings are pretty slim.
• If you're a dog owner, Saturday morning on Dog Beach is lots of fun.
• We had exceptionally lovely weather due to Santa Anas, which I hadn't heard of before.

These things could all be incorporated into a site/blog about San Diego. If they're interesting to me, they'll be interesting to others traveling to San Diego as well.

There are some crucial decisions you need to make at the start of the project, however. What do you name your site? Should it be a blog or a standalone website? Should you document one trip or multiple trips? We'll tackle these next time.

Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. If you like this posting, why not link to his blog or bookmark it as one of your favorites?

It's not often that I plug a product on this blog — usually I'm telling you what to avoid buying — but once in a while I come across a product that is valuable enough to recommend to my readers. Here are four products I'd like you to consider:

• Build A Niche Store — For easily creating eBay mini-stores. I've posted about this one a couple of times over the last two weeks. What's neat is that if you visit the site and click the “Submit your site or blog” link and fill in a few details, the creators of Build A Niche Store will create a demo site for you based on the URL of a site you already own and would like to monetize with eBay listings. (See also the niche store example the built for me.)
• Affiliate Project X — If you've tried affiliate selling and failed to make much (or any!) money with it, I recommend you buy and read the Project X e-book. (See my review of Affiliate Project X for more.) I've re-read this book a couple of times now, something I rarely ever do.
• Turn Words Into Traffic — Natural traffic generation through article writing is something I've talked about before many times, but this e-book goes beyond what I've said and gives you tips and ideas on how to write good content. It's what I recommend for those who don't think they can write.
• Keyword Elite — Pricey, but perhaps the best keyword analysis software on the market today. (If you're more interested in search engine optimization, see also its sister product SEO Elite.)

And here's a deal for you: if you buy one or more of these products through my affiliate links above, I'll throw in some free keyword analysis for you: send in two keywords you'd like to know more about and I'll send you pricing and competition information about those keywords. Or if that doesn't turn your crank, I'll do a quick analysis-by-email of a site or blog you own and give you my recommendations for improving your AdSense earnings. (Please note that I'll do these things as my schedule allows and that the length and scope of the analysis will be at my discretion. I also reserve the right to refuse any request.)

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Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. If you like this posting, why not link to his blog or bookmark it as one of your favorites?