Buy Books and Software NOW for 2006 Tax Deductibility
The new year is approaching fast, which means the window for creating tax deductible expenses relating to your Internet business is fast closing. If you were thinking of buying books or software, now's the time to do it to ensure that the expenses are deductible for the 2006 tax year.
AdSense is a Business
If you've made even one cent from AdSense this year, you're running a business, whether you know it or not. The government's going to want to hear about the money you've made. And they will — remember those tax forms you had to fill out before Google would send you any money?
But if you're making money, you're also entitled to deduct certain expenses from that income. For an AdSense publisher this would include at a minimum domain registration fees, web hosting fees and some portion of your Internet connection charges. Even the computers and related hardware you buy will be deductible to some degree, most likely through some kind of capital depreciation. If you have a home office, you might even be able to write off part of your mortgage and related home maintenance expenses. (The rules vary greatly from tax jurisdiction to tax jurisdiction, of course, and you need to investigate what's right for you in terms of what can and can't be deducted — this post is not legal or tax advice.)
Not everyone realizes that books and software that directly relate to your business are usually tax deductible. Which leads us to…
The Uncommon AdSense Tax Special!
My new AdSense ebook, Uncommon AdSense, is officially launching on January 1 at a price of only $47. But I'm offering readers of this blog a pre-launch special: for the next few days, you can buy Uncommon AdSense for only $37, a $10 savings off the regular price. The details of the offer and the bonuses you get are on the Uncommon AdSense tax special page. Ordering is handled through ClickBank, which means there's an 8-week 100% refund guarantee period if you're not satisifed with your purchase. Payment can be made via PayPal or any major credit card.
Yes, the sales page is kind of lame right now, especially the book cover I created myself. I'm in the process of rectifying that. But if you're a regular reader of this blog you know that anything I write is of high quality, and Uncommon AdSense is no different.
Other Recommendations
If you're in the market for other books and software and want to buy them in the 2006 tax year, here are my recommendations in alphabetical order within each category. (I own all of these.)
Books
- AdSense Arbitrage and Leveraging. This is the book by Michael Plante that explains in great detail his AdSense arbitrage technique, a much more expanded version of the arbitrage experiment I'm running right now on this blog.
- AdSense Discovery. This is an AdSense starter package put together by Ben Shaffer that has pretty much everything you need to get started. (Well complemented by Uncommon AdSense, by the way.)
- AdWords Miracle. A good introduction to using AdWords effectively, with an emphasis on getting cheap advertising.
- Affiliate “Project X” (APX). A thought-provoking book by the author of AdWords Miracle that focuses on advanced techniques for affiliate selling. Note: if you buy AdWords Miracle (AM) you can get APX at a reduced price as part of the AM purchase.
- Turn Words Into Traffic. A great introduction to article writing for those who are afraid to write. Gives you simple techniques for writing articles and other content that you can use on your own sites or distribute via article directories.
Software
- Build A Niche Store. A PHP script that lets you easily add pages of eBay auction listings to any of your sites, letting you make money when you refer customers to eBay.
- Keyword Elite. Perhaps the best keyword list creation and manipulation software there is at the moment. Pricey, but well worth it if you're spending a lot of time doing keyword analysis.
But Don't Buy Too Much!
Whatever you do, though, don't overload yourself with too many things. It's better to choose one or two books (Uncommon AdSense is a great choice, hint hint) then to buy a pile of them and have them gather dust (figuratively) on your computer.
Eric Giguere wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. His goal is to get his AdSense blog into Matt Cutts' blogroll.
Keyword Elite AdSense Arbitrage Experiment (Part 5)
And so we continue the series. Please refer to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 if you haven't been following along.
Step 4: Content Creation (continued)
But first, a few more words about content creation. Someone asked me if it was necessary to use such a simple page template for this to work, especially if it was necessary to use CSS. No, it's not necessary. But I find CSS makes page creation much simpler. You can focus on the structure of the document — title, headings, etc. — without polluting the HTML with <font> and other tags. It makes for much cleaner pages, easier for web crawlers (including the AdSense crawler) to read. And for the humans editing them!
Also, I didn't follow my own advice when choosing the URL for the page, because Synclastic.com/spyware-removal-tips.html exceeds the 35-character limit for AdWords display URLs. The solution was to drop the “.html” part of the URL. This is a common scenario with AdWords, having URLs that are too long, and one strategy is to drop the unnecessary parts of the URL as the “www.” prefix and the “.html” suffix.
Step 5: Advertising the Page
With the page ready, we can now advertise it. You'll need an AdWords account for this, of course.
Assuming you have your account ready, you need two things to start the arbitrage process: text for an ad and a list of keywords. Let's start with the keyword list first, it's easier.
Going back to our initial list of keywords, remember that we chose to focus on spyware removers. That's what we optimized the content for. So that's what we need to optimize our ad for. If you read books like AdWords Miracle you'll learn two important facts:
- Build keyword lists around a single keyphrase
- Include the keyphrase in the ad
The goal is to promote relevancy between the ad and the keywords that will activate it and the page that the ads lands on. If all three are focused on spyware removers then it will cost us less to advertise, because we'll have a higher quality score. Keeping our costs as low as possible is key to making money with arbitrage.
So what I did was use Keyword Elite's filtering tool on the large list of spyware keywords I had built initially (and saved — remember to keep saving your lists as you go along) to exclude all those that didn't have “spyware remover” (note the singular form) in them. I then tripled the list so that the broad, exact and phrase forms of the keyphrase were in the list. I ended up with this list:
a good free spyware remover a good spyware remover absolutely free spyware remover best free spyware remover bps spyware remover completely free spyware remover download free spyware remover free adware spyware remover program free downloadable spyware removers free kazaa spyware remover free online spyware remover free spyware remover free spyware remover download free spyware remover reviews free spyware remover software downloads free spyware remover trials free trial spyware remover freeware spyware remover kazaa cydoor spyware remover kazaa lite spyware remover microsoft free spyware remover microsoft spyware remover norton spyware remover powerful spyware remover safe spyware remover shareware spyware remover spyware spyware remover spyware remover for mac spyware remover free trial spyware remover ratings spyware remover reviews spyware remover spy chaser spyware remover with a free trial spyware remover" spyware remover] webroot spyware remover where can i fin a free spyware remover "a good free spyware remover" "a good spyware remover" "absolutely free spyware remover" "best free spyware remover" "bps spyware remover" "completely free spyware remover" "download free spyware remover" "free adware spyware remover program" "free downloadable spyware removers" "free kazaa spyware remover" "free online spyware remover" "free spyware remover" "free spyware remover download" "free spyware remover reviews" "free spyware remover software downloads" "free spyware remover trials" "free trial spyware remover" "freeware spyware remover" "kazaa cydoor spyware remover" "kazaa lite spyware remover" "microsoft free spyware remover" "microsoft spyware remover" "norton spyware remover" "powerful spyware remover" "safe spyware remover" "shareware spyware remover" "spyware" "spyware remover" "spyware remover for mac" "spyware remover free trial" "spyware remover ratings" "spyware remover reviews" "spyware remover spy chaser" "spyware remover with a free trial" "webroot spyware remover" "where can i fin a free spyware remover" [a good free spyware remover] [a good spyware remover] [absolutely free spyware remover] [best free spyware remover] [bps spyware remover] [completely free spyware remover] [download free spyware remover] [free adware spyware remover program] [free downloadable spyware removers] [free kazaa spyware remover] [free online spyware remover] [free spyware remover] [free spyware remover download] [free spyware remover reviews] [free spyware remover software downloads] [free spyware remover trials] [free trial spyware remover] [freeware spyware remover] [kazaa cydoor spyware remover] [kazaa lite spyware remover] [microsoft free spyware remover] [microsoft spyware remover] [norton spyware remover] [powerful spyware remover] [safe spyware remover] [shareware spyware remover] [spyware] [spyware remover] [spyware remover for mac] [spyware remover free trial] [spyware remover ratings] [spyware remover reviews] [spyware remover spy chaser] [spyware remover with a free trial] [webroot spyware remover] [where can i fin a free spyware remover]
I created an AdWords ad group called “spyware remover” with these keywords (note that I also threw in “spyware” by itself, just to see how it fared, although technically I should put it in a separate ad group) and created a series of ads like these:
Spyware Removers?
Do you even need a spyware remover?
Not if you follow these tips!
Synclastic.com/spyware-removal-tips
Note that the words you enter into your ad are very critical, as they need to entice the user to click the ad and made it to your page. You'll probably need to play around with several different ad variations and see what works. Just remember to keep the ad very relevant to the landing page (your content page) and the keyword list.
Step 6: Enable the Content Network
One very important fact about this method is that it uses the Google Content Network almost exclusively. The content network consists of sites like yours and mine that display AdSense ad and link units. Prices on the content network are much, much more cheaper than prices on the Google Search Network, for reasons I've explained before many times on this blog.
After you've created your initial ad group, go the campaign settings page for the ad campaign and make sure that the content network is enabled and that separate bids for the content network are enabled as well. What this means is that you'll specify separate amounts for what you're willing to spend on the content network vs. the search network. You can even disable the search network entirely. In fact, you probably should, because even if you want to target the search network you should do so in a separate campaign so that the clickthrough ratio for the content network — which is going to be typically much smaller than that of the search network — doesn't affect your bidding for a good spot on the search network.
What I did, then, was enable the content network for the keywords shown above with a maximum bid price of $0.05. Now let's see what happens.
But that's next time…
Eric Giguere wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. His goal is to get his AdSense blog into Matt Cutts' blogroll.
Learn About the Google Content Network
AdSense publishers might find the Google Content Network webinar interesting. It explains what the Content Network (i.e. us AdSense publishers) is to AdWords advertisers. Many advertisers have ignored (deliberately or not) the content network because of click fraud and made-for-AdSense (MFA) concerns. With the recent improvements in the way Google is handling the costs of advertising on the CN, they're trying to re-introduce advertisers to the CN. The presentation is seven minutes long, so take a look. If you've never played with AdWords (though I recommend you do) then you'll learn a few things about what advertisers can do with AdWords.
Sponsored Link: Learn about AdSense arbitrage with the AdSense Arbitrage and Leveraging ebook.
Eric Giguere wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. His goal is to get his AdSense blog into Matt Cutts' blogroll.