I usually don't parrot what other postings are talking about, but all AdSense publishers should read Jennifer Slegg's posting about how Google is turning off the AdSense arbitrage taps. Apparently they've decided that the AdSense arbitrage business model isn't a good one and have been notifying publishers who are actively using the model — particularly those running “Made for AdSense” (MFA) sites — to let them know that their accounts are going to be disabled on June 1 if they continue to use the model.

A lot of people, especially AdWords advertisers, are saying “it's about time” that Google did something about the MFA sites and the arbitrage model in particular. Although I've dabbled in arbitrage myself — mostly as research for this blog — it's not something I do on a normal basis. I wonder if I'll receive a letter from Google or not about my past behavior…

In any case, if you are using arbitrage you should stop immediately sending AdWords traffic to your sites. It's unclear to me whether traffic from non-AdWords ad programs counts or not.

This is going to upset of a lot of people who are making a lot of money from arbitrage. For the rest of us, though, things will just continue as usual.

Sponsored Link: For a complete set of AdSense best practices, read Uncommon AdSense — for serious AdSense publishers only!

Eric Giguere is the author of Uncommon AdSense and the award-nominated (that just means it lost!) blog Make Easy Money with Google and AdSense.

Today I'm reviewing a free product of interest to all AdSense publishers, Brad Callen's Directory Submitter. Download it now while you read this review. (Only runs on Windows, though.)

Background

Brad Callen is an Internet marketer best known for his SEO Elite and Keyword Elite products, both staples for serious online marketers. You've heard me wax about Keyword Elite before in particular, including my free course on how to make money with Keyword Elite. Both SEO Elite and Keyword Elite are fairly pricey products, but they're good quality products and Brad gives great support to his customers. I recommend both.

Directory Submitter Standard Edition

One proven way to get traffic to your sites is to get them listed in authoritative directories. Directories are just websites that list and categorize other websites. That's how Yahoo! got its start — it was a big web directory to begin with. There are two benefits to being listed in directories:

• you get found by humans browsing for sites on specific topics; and
• you get extra search engine juice from the directory links.

The problem is that getting listed in directories is a tedious process. First, you have to find the directories in question. Second, you have to create an account for the directory. Third, you have to submit the details about your site. And you have to track it all. That's why products like Directory Submitter get written, to do away with some (but not all) of the drudgery.

Directory Submitter comes in two editions: Standard and Gold. The Standard edition is completely free and lets you submit sites to 350 different directories. The Gold edition costs $47 (which is cheap compared to Brad's other products) and lets you submit to over 1700 directories. All directories currently listed in either edition are free directories that do not require reciprocal links, which is a big plus. And the directory list is current and maintained by Brad Callen's staff.

Although I've upgraded to the Gold edition, this review is going to use screenshots from the Basic edition.

How Directory Submitter Works

Directory Submitter is very easy to use. Downloading and installing it only takes a few minutes, but you have to supply a valid email address as part of the process. (Again, this software only works with Microsoft Windows — Vista support is included, BTW.)

When you start the software, you're prompted to create a project. Each project represents a different site that you want to submit to the directories. There are three pages of information to fill out for each project. The first is basic information about the submitter (you):

Next, you provide information about the website, including different title variations (used to create the links in the directories), descriptions, and keywords:

That's all the setup you need to do. Spend some time thinking up good titles, descriptions and keywords, though. The titles you use will become the anchor text of the links back to your site, and of course the description should be something that will appeal to the humans reading the listings and make them want to visit your site.

Once your project is setup, it's time to submit your site. This is a semi-automated process. You start by clicking on one of the directories in the list, which brings you to the site submission page for the directory:

As you can see, most of the fields are filled out automatically for you based on the information in your project profile. You still have to manually choose a good category for your site and most of the directories require you to prove your humanity by filling in a “captcha” field. Still, most of the work is already done and when you fill out the other parts of the form you just hit the submit button and you're done with that site. You then move on to the next suitable directory in the list. Directory Submitter tracks when you last submitted a project to a given site, which makes it easy to know what got submitted where.

That's all there is to the product. Like I said, it's not a completely automated solution, but it's a timesaver. Submitting to 350 (or 1700!) directories will still take some time, so you'll want to do things in small clusters, maybe 10 to 20 submissions a day.

Make Money Selling Submission Services

I sometimes get asked what's the quickest way to get make money online. AdSense is not quick. Even selling affiliate products isn't quick money, though it's quicker than AdSense. The quickest way to get money is to provide a service for others and be paid for it via PayPal. So here's an easy money-making opportunity for those of you with time on your hands: setup a directory submission service using Directory Submitter. Offer to submit someone's site information for $10 or $20. You can post offers like this in various forums. All they do is supply the information about their site. You then do the work of visiting all the sites and submitting that information — work that's made a lot simpler with this software. You don't even have to use the Gold edition, you could get started with the Standard edition and then upgrade later when you've made a bit of cash and perhaps even offer a premium service to customers.

Just an idea…

Conclusion

I like this software. It's free, it works, it's simple, it looks good. Definitely recommended: download Directory Submitter now.

Sponsored Link: AdWords180 is a great book about cheap AdWords advertising. I can even get you a $30 discount — just send me mail for the details.

Eric Giguere is the author of Uncommon AdSense and the award-nominated (that just means it lost!) blog Make Easy Money with Google and AdSense.

One of the things I find myself doing now when setting up a new site or blog is favoring wider layouts than I did even a year ago, and it's something I think all AdSense publishers should consider now. The old web design books tell you not to go past about 550 pixels in size (for the content), but this ain't 2004 anymore. Here are some reasons:

1. Screen resolutions are higher.

Well, it's true. Older computers might still be running at 800 by 600, but higher resolutions are now the defacto norm. Especially when you consider how many people are buying widescreen monitors. Even laptops these days are going wide. Simply put, there's more horizontal real estate to use. Which means the wide AdSense ad and link unit formats can work well. And thin layouts look, well, dated.

2. Keeps more above the fold.

Look, you want visitors to click the ads, though of course you can't say that to anyone. (We'll keep it our little secret.) The wider layouts — when used properly — keep more content above the fold. And more ads above the fold. The less the visitor has the scroll, the better.

3. Better ad embedding.

Common wisdom says that the 338 by 280 large rectangle format works best (I've found it varies — test things yourself and see what works for you) when embedded right at the beginning of the content, right under the main heading, either floated to the left (my preference) or to the right. Here's the thing, though. If you've limited yourself to 550 pixels of width then that leaves only 212 pixels for the text immediately to the left or right of the ad unit. Add in whitespace and maybe a sidebar or two and you've got

text that looks like this, is therefore hard to read, and will often look ugly and break/wrap in strange places.

(If you're reading this in an RSS reader, the effect above is surely lost, so you might want to view this post in your browser to see it.) It's better to have at least the same width of space devoted to the text in question. In other words, your main content area should be 338 * 2 = 676 pixels wide. Add in a sidebar and some whitespace for margins and you're really looking at a minimum width of 850 pixels for your page to look good.

4. More whitespace!

So many layouts I come across make little or no use of whitespace. Whitespace is like silence in music — but rather than let me blither on about it, why not just read this great article instead?

Hmm, one more reason and I could have made this into another Top 5 list like my Top 5 Reasons to Marry a Geek. But no, I'm stopping at 4.

Don't be afraid to go wide with your layouts, and be sure to include lots of whitespace. I'm certainly not the only one thinking this way. Look at how many 3-column WordPress themes are showing up these days. Disney had it wrong: it's a wide world, after all.

Sponsored Link: AdWords180 is a great book about cheap AdWords advertising. I can even get you a $30 discount — just send me mail for the details.

Eric Giguere is the author of Uncommon AdSense and the award-nominated (that just means it lost!) blog Make Easy Money with Google and AdSense.