Simple Cash Blog: Simple Money-Making Techniques

In case you’re wondering where I’ve been, the family and I took a week off to drive to the New York City area and do some tourism, including a daytrip out to the Hamptons. We had a fun time, but it’s always good to get back home. I also had time to pick up and read The 4-Hour Workweek, which I’m going to dissect shortly in a separate post. (I recommend you read it, although I don’t agree with everything he says. But I think AdSense publishers can fit themselves into the 4-hour workweek model… more on that later.)

Aside: If you’re travelling to the NYC area with your dogs and plan on staying a few days, I highly recommend the Residence Inn in White Plains. The one-time pet surcharge is stiff (which is why I only recommend it for longer stays), but the spacious rooms and the (very!) pet-friendly staff made our stay very relaxing.

Back to reality, though. Before continuing my AdWords case study, I want to talk about an inexpensive membership site that will interest some of you. I think it’s the first membership site I’ve actually recommended to anyone. And, before I forget, be sure to read this post top to bottom — I have two freebies to give you, but you’ll need to read carefully.

The Rhodes Brothers

Regular readers may remember me mentioning the Rhodes Brothers (John and Matt) before. They’re the authors of two reports I’ve recommended to my readership, How to Quickly and Easily Get “.edu” Backlinks as well as EzineArticles Domination. They’ve actually written several other reports on various topics, not just Internet marketing. Their reports are always short, practical and inexpensive, so I’m usually happy to recommend them to others. Besides the two aforementioned reports, they offer:

There are a few new ones in that list that I just noticed! I’ll have to grab them… As you can see, though, the Rhodes Brothers’ specialty is making money via simple marketing techniques that anyone can implement.

Simple Cash Blog

One of their recent creations is a membership site called Simple Cash Blog. In this private blog, the Rhodes Brothers post articles and special reports describing the simple techniques they’ve used to build themselves a healthy and profitable online marketing business. Some (but not all) of the reports even come with resale rights so you can sell or give them out. So here’s your first freebie: download a copy of The Extremely Simple $500+/Month System For Newbies, which provides step-by-step instructions on how to get started making money on the Internet. I’ve seen ebooks with this kind of material sell for $47 or more. Read it and see the kind of quality content you get as a Simple Cash Blog member.

Here are some of the other reports and articles available to members:

The information is consistently good and the reports are well-written. For only $10/month I think it’s a no-brainer to join and learn a few things. If you need more information, see the Simple Cash Blog site for more details.

Oh, and subscribers to this blog (see here for instructions) get a second freebie, a copy of “How To Make $5,000+ A Month With Your Own Simple Membership Site”. See your feed for the download details.

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.

August 30, 2007 | Filed Under AdSense | 1 Comment 

230 “How Do I” Questions To Answer

As I work on the next installment of my Google AdWords case study, I thought I’d have some fun and use SuperSuggester again to generate another list of questions based on what Google thinks people are searching for:

Pages Suggestion
975000000 how do i make a website
972000000 how do i view history
742000000 how do i start a business
582000000 how do i 2 step
540000000 how do i videos
527000000 how do i start a blog
516000000 how do i create a website
469000000 how do i get there
436000000 how do i make money
423000000 how do i download music
412000000 how do i look
370000000 how do i create a blog
360000000 how do i set up a website
355000000 how do i network
267000000 how do i live without you
259000000 how do i change my name
253000000 how do i find my ip
233000000 how do i save money
231000000 how do i make an international call
220000000 how do i network my computers
219000000 how do i get you alone
218000000 how do i name my company
216000000 how do i get a new social security card
211000000 how do i network computers
204000000 how do i write a book
188000000 how do i print screen
172000000 how do i network 2 computers
159000000 how do i tell you that i love you
159000000 how do i tell you i love you
156000000 how do i know if im in love
154000000 how do i create my own website
150000000 how do i make my own website
145000000 how do i install linux
139000000 how do i die
139000000 how do i yahoo
133000000 how do i zip a file
131000000 how do i value my business
123000000 how do i network a printer
116000000 how do i start my own business
107000000 how do i tie a tie
101000000 how do i shot web
98700000 how do i find a person
93600000 how do i register to vote
93200000 how do i make google my home page
88500000 how do i zip files
87900000 how do i enable java script
87800000 how do i edit a pdf
87600000 how do i copy a dvd
87200000 how do i find someone
86500000 how do i vote
78800000 how do i write a letter
78300000 how do i enable javascript
76000000 how do i apply for section 8
72700000 how do i network two computers
70900000 how do i hide my comments
65900000 how do i make a resume
65500000 how do i speed up my computer
59800000 how do i join the police
54900000 how do i find out my ip address
53900000 how do i download videos from youtube
53500000 how do i download youtube videos
53500000 how do i find my mac address
52700000 how do i write a business plan
52200000 how do i value my car
51900000 how do i jump higher
51600000 how do i change my ip
50400000 how do i find my ip address
46400000 how do i open ports
46000000 how do i add songs to my ipod
44100000 how do i add music to myspace
43800000 how do i get on myspace at school
43600000 how do i sell my car
43300000 how do i ask a girl out
42800000 how do i add music to my myspace
42700000 how do i enable java
42500000 how do i register a domain name
40600000 how do i edit a pdf file
39700000 how do i work out percentages
38400000 how do i network my printer
37200000 how do i open a bin file
35600000 how do i work out a percentage
33800000 how do i join myspace
33500000 how do i join the army
32500000 how do i post a picture on myspace
32000000 how do i live lyrics
30400000 how do i ask for a raise
30200000 how do i lose weight
29000000 how do i turn on javascript
28800000 how do i join the fire service
28300000 how do i turn javascript on
27900000 how do i patent an idea
26700000 how do i add pictures to myspace
26100000 how do i view my ip address
25900000 how do i invest
20100000 how do i update my bios
19200000 how do i enable cookies
19100000 how do i incorporate
17200000 how do i uninstall internet explorer
16500000 how do i make my computer faster
16200000 how do i format my hard drive
15000000 how do i void a check
14800000 how do i change my ip address
14300000 how do i hack
11800000 how do i know if he loves me
11700000 how do i say lyrics
11600000 how do i write a resume
11300000 how do i write a cover letter
11000000 how do i put music on my ipod
10800000 how do i lyrics
10200000 how do i install ubuntu
8990000 how do i know if he likes me
7760000 how do i quit my job
7730000 how do i join the police force
7230000 how do i know if she likes me
6640000 how do i put pictures on my ipod
6590000 how do i get pregnant
6530000 how do i tell you lyrics
6500000 how do i turn off my ipod
6360000 how do i put videos on my ipod
6120000 how do i no im pregnant
6050000 how do i put movies on my ipod
5690000 how do i no if im pregnant
5680000 how do i reboot my computer
5500000 how do i know im pregnant
5020000 how do i know i m pregnant
4430000 how do i know if im pregnant
4430000 how do i make my own myspace layout
4390000 how do i access my router
4140000 how do i know if i m pregnant
4070000 how do i invest in stocks
4060000 how do i hide my myspace song
3950000 how do i write a bibliography
3350000 how do i delete songs from my ipod
3310000 how do i hide my myspace comments
3310000 how do i know if a girl likes me
3220000 how do i zip a folder
3130000 how do i delete cookies
3080000 how do i tell you that i love you lyrics
3060000 how do i breathe
3040000 how do i write a cv
3030000 how do i get a passport
3020000 how do i live without you lyrics
2980000 how do i put music on my psp
2830000 how do i put videos on my psp
2810000 how do i love thee
2790000 how do i deal lyrics
2590000 how do i update my psp
2370000 how do i get you alone lyrics
2360000 how do i take a screenshot
2350000 how do i breath lyrics
2330000 how do i quit smoking
2300000 how do i delete my yahoo account
2120000 how do i resize an image
2070000 how do i make a myspace layout
1990000 how do i increase virtual memory
1940000 how do i hide my comments on myspace
1900000 how do i find out what motherboard i have
1880000 how do i hide my song on myspace
1810000 how do i breathe lyrics
1810000 how do i play avi files
1760000 how do i change my msn password
1740000 how do i convert wma to mp3
1730000 how do i hide my friends on myspace
1670000 how do i apply for a passport
1630000 how do i hide my music player on myspace
1630000 how do i say goodbye lyrics
1600000 how do i delete my myspace
1590000 how do i juggle
1590000 how do i view hidden comments on myspace
1550000 how do i improve my credit score
1510000 how do i open a rar file
1510000 how do i open rar files
1510000 how do i use torrents
1500000 how do i unlock my phone
1480000 how do i open a .rar file
1460000 how do i hide my friends list on myspace
1450000 how do i open a torrent file
1440000 how do i vacuum a pool
1430000 how do i quit drinking
1430000 how do i unzip a file
1430000 how do i uninstall vista
1410000 how do i qualify for a mortgage
1410000 how do i reset my ipod
1380000 how do i change my myspace background
1380000 how do i qualify for a home loan
1370000 how do i apply for unemployment
1360000 how do i hide my ip address
1350000 how do i fix my head lyrics
1340000 how do i love thee poem
1280000 how do i enable dhcp
1280000 how do i wipe my hard drive
1250000 how do i erase my hard drive
1210000 how do i get a copy of my birth certificate
1200000 how do i increase my virtual memory
1200000 how do i vacuum my pool
1190000 how do i increase my metabolism
1170000 how do i find my wep key
1170000 how do i qualify for welfare
1160000 how do i qualify for unemployment
1150000 how do i qualify for medicaid
1140000 how do i obtain a passport
1140000 how do i qualify for medicare
1120000 how do i reformat my computer
1100000 how do i make a baby skin
1080000 how do i defrag my computer
1040000 how do i breathe mario
1040000 how do i love thee let me count the ways
996000 how do i get rid of ants
987000 how do i uninstall mcafee
970000 how do i join hogwarts
908000 how do i join a high school network on facebook
839000 how do i overclock
815000 how do i unblock myspace
787000 how do i reformat my hard drive
722000 how do i renew my passport
702000 how do i breath lyrics mario
700000 how do i breath lyrics by mario
541000 how do i get rid of spy crush
503000 how do i identify my motherboard
497000 how do i remove spy crush
439000 how do i breath mario lyrics
390000 how do i breathe mario lyrics
381000 how do i breathe lyrics mario
324000 how do i qualify for wic
267000 how do i open a data file
78900 how do i open a uif file
22000 how do i unfreeze my ipod
16300 how do i evolve rhydon
411 how do i remove spylocke
43 how do i join

You might be able to glean an idea or two for some new content for your AdSense sites from these questions, especially those near the bottom of the list that don’t have a lot of competition in Google’s index.

Remember, you can get SuperSuggester for free just by subscribing to this blog.

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.

August 23, 2007 | Filed Under AdSense | Comments Off 

Review: Cracking the Niche Code

I think that by now I’ve read a gazillion AdWords books, which is why I’ve been writing my Google AdWords case study as a kind of “brain dump” of what I know. And yet I went and bought another one…

Cracking the Niche Code is a new ebook by Lisa Ginger about using AdWords to advertise niche products, although you wouldn’t necessarily know that from the sales page. But that’s what it’s about. It’s over 100 pages long and reasonably priced (for an AdWords ebook) at only $47.

This is not a book about tricking Google or dominating other advertisers. What Cracking the Niche Code does is present you with a simple plan for testing the profitability of a niche with AdWords and a simple mini-site that you host on a generic domain. If it proves profitable, you move the pages over to their own domain and beef up the sales process somewhat. It includes instructions on how to avoid the “Google slap”, which is something I’ll be discussing shortly in the AdWords case study.

Overall, a pretty good book that appeals to those of you who like step-by-step instructions on how to do things. And there’s nothing dodgy about the material, either, unlike some of the more recent books I’ve read.

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.

August 21, 2007 | Filed Under AdSense | 3 Comments 

Did “Affiliate Rockstar Status” steal its biggest idea from “AdWords180″?

Last week you probably saw all the big-name Internet gurus hawking a new ebook called Affiliate Rockstar Status. What’s the book about? It’s about making money by promoting ClickBank affiliate products. It’s mostly no different than any of a dozen well-hyped ebooks like Day Job Killer, AdWords Miracle, Beating AdWords, etc. etc. Unless you’re new to affiliate marketing, there’s probably not much in the book that will interest you. Except for one tantalizing thing: how to get cheap AdWords advertising. Now that sounds really great, and it’s the thing that everyone seems to be focusing on.

Here’s the kicker, though: the method that Affiliate Rockstar Status is promoting is the same method that was first described in the vastly under-promoted book AdWords180. I’ve mentioned this book here before, and I’ve used the techniques described in AdWords180 myself to make a bit of money. Not a lot, because I just haven’t had the time to focus on it, but unlike most of the other techniques I’ve tried out I was able to make a profit with the AdWords180 technique.

I knew it was just a matter of time before the technique started showing up in other books, of course. I’ve seen it mentioned in AdWords Killer, which was updated recently. I’m sure it will be a core method in any AdWords book from now on.

That said, I haven’t seen these other books describe the technique in as detailed a fashion as the original AdWords180 book. Because of this, AdWords180 is still the book I recommend to anyone seriously looking to reduce their AdWords advertising costs — and willing to use the elbow grease necessary to do so.

That’s the downfall of the AdWords180 method, though, and something that’s prevented me from doing much with it. The method depends on using AdWords site targeting and finding specific pages on the Web that meet certain criteria for traffic. Finding those pages is a real pain. What’s needed is a good tool to automate some of the tedious gruntwork.

I’ve had a lot of fun and some good response to the tools I’ve been building lately, so I’ve decided to go ahead and build a tool for the AdWords180 technique. No name for it yet, but I have the basic algorithms laid out and I can use code from my existing tools to get it quickly off the ground.

So here’s the deal I’m going to make with you. If you buy ANY AdWords book that describes the AdWords180 technique through my affiliate link, I’ll give you a free copy of the tool once I release it. Besides AdWords180, this includes AdWords Killer and Affiliate Rockstar Status.

Of the three, the cheapest and most detailed is the original AdWords180 because I made a special deal with the author a while back for my subscribers to let them buy a limited quantity of the book at $67. However, everyone’s needs are different and so it’s up to you to choose which book is best for you. Just make sure that the ClickBank payment screen says “[affiliate=egiguere]” at the bottom when you go to pay! Yes, the offer is retroactive: if you already bought one of these books through my link, I’ll be happy to include you in the offer.

I will also offer the tool for sale separately for those of you who already bought one of these books from someone else.

You don’t have to buy any of these books now, of course, because the tool isn’t ready. I will announce it when it is ready.

As with all my tools, this unnamed tool will work on Windows, Macintosh or Linux systems. I actually have three tools out right now, the first of which is completely free to download:

If you have any ideas for other tools, I’d love to hear them. I’ve been toying around with the idea of creating a membership site that gives you automatic access to all the tools I create, too, so watch for an announcement about that (if I decide to go ahead with it…)

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.

August 20, 2007 | Filed Under AdSense | Comments Off 

Google AdWords Case Study: The Quality Score

More fun with AdWords! In Part 1 we dissected AdWords text ads and in Part 2 we looked at AdWords keywords. Today we look at the infamous AdWords quality score.

Note that we’re not yet talking about the cost of ads and how the bidding process works. Many people make the mistake of jumping into AdWords and spending a lot of money before figuring out there are other things they need to do first. So this approach may seem circuitous, but it will all make sense in the end.

The AdWords Quality Score

After many advertisers started abusing the system with spammy and often irrelevant ads, Google introduced the concept of a quality score in order to force advertisers to write better ads. The AdWords quality score (QS) really just extended the built-in dampening mechanism in the AdWords bidding process whereby ads with higher CTR (clickthrough rate) would over time dominate the ads with lower CTR, even if they were paying more. (Note that there is actually more than one quality score algorithm to consider, but usually the algorithm that interests advertisers is the one used to determine the minimum bid price of a keyword, as it directly affects their advertising costs. Unless told otherwise, then, you can assume that anytime someone says “quality score” that they’re talking about the minimum bid price quality score.)

Google does not disclose exactly how the quality score is calculated. They do admit that it considers a number of factors:

You can’t actually control all these factors, but there are some things you can influence:

Let’s look at each of these factors.

Factor 1: Keyword Selection

Many marketers spend most of their time trying to find the right keywords for their campaigns, in many cases too much time. I’m actually not going to cover this topic because it’s discussed extensively elsewhere and there are various tools you can use (free and paid) to generate lists of relevant keywords. Keyword selection is as much an art as it is science: think outside the box and pass a critical eye over each and every keyword you add to your list. Gone are the days when you generate thousands and thousands of keywords to throw into one or two ad groups to “see what sticks”.

Factor 2: Keyword Grouping

The rule of thumb for grouping keywords is very simple: all keywords in an AdWords ad group should be thematically related. Google understands keyword relationships very well, don’t forget that they’ve developed extensive technology in this area via the AdSense program. The simplest way to create a good-quality ad group is to ensure that each phrase in the group uses a common word or subphrase.

The ultimate ad group, however, consists of a single keyword or phrase, with up to three separate matching options for that keyword. (There may, however, be an unlimited number of negative keywords to ensure that the right queries will trigger the ad group.) This is a tightly focused ad group that ultimately delivers the best results as long as the ads and the landing pages also focus on the same keyword. You can also do very fine-grained tracking and split testing.

The downside of the single-keyword ad group is that it requires a lot more work to create and maintain all those groups, ads and landing pages. That’s why many marketers start with broader groups of thematically-related keywords and then split those groups down into smaller groups once it becomes apparent that some of the keywords in the larger group are converting better than others.

Factor 3: The Ads

Writing a good AdWords ad is hard. It’s a little bit like writing a haiku, since the limited line lengths and the editorial guidelines really constrain what you can do. And being able to tap into human psychology and getting users to click the ads in the first place is truly an art: this is why advertising copywriters exist.

That said, Google’s algorithms don’t actually understand or react to the ads like humans do. They look for things that a computer can determine, like whether the ad group keywords appear in the ad. Whether there are obvious “call to action” phrases. Whether the display URL somehow relates to the keywords. The more relevant the ads are to the keywords in the ad group, the better.

Factor 4: The Landing Pages

Google caused many advertisers a lot of grief when it added landing page quality to the QS calculation. This is what many advertisers referred to as the “Google slap”: if you had a (in Google’s view) poor landing page, you were “slapped” with (often much) higher minimum bid prices for your ads. It wasn’t unusual to see minimum bid prices jump from 25 cents to over $10 per click because of this.

The best way to understand how landing page quality affects your quality score is to read Google’s advice on how to create a quality landing page. Here are the general principles, however:

Creating landing pages that follow these guidelines takes substantially more work than just slapping up a single-page sales page, as many affiliates do.

That’s all for this installment. Next, we’ll look at a site design strategy based on what we’ve learned so far about AdWords.

Sponsored Link: Purchase the EzineArticles Domination reports and get a free tool I wrote as a bonus.

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.

August 17, 2007 | Filed Under AdSense | 4 Comments 

Google AdWords Case Study: Keyword Basics

Let’s continue with our Google AdWords case study. In Part 1 we dissected AdWords text ads. Today we take a look at keywords and how they’re linked with the text ads.

Note that the first few articles in this series are pretty basic, as I need to make sure we’re all on the same page when it comes to understanding AdWords. I’ve found that not everyone actually understands some of these concepts, though.

Keyword Targeting vs. Site Targeting

An AdWords ad campaign is a high-level grouping of ads. All ads within the campaign (which are further grouped into ad groups, which we’ll discuss shortly) share a number of characteristics: which geographies and languages they’re for, the total ad spend for the day, whether the ads are targeted at the search network (Google) and/or the content network (AdSense). Most of these things you can change at any time, but one of the things you have to decide straight off the bat is whether you’re using keyword targeting or site targeting for your campaign.

Keyword targeted ads are ads that are associated with specific search keywords. Essentially you’re telling Google to show a particular ad (or set of ads) whenever a Google user enters a search term that involves that keyword or keyphrase.

Site targeted ads, on the other hand, are targeted at specific sites that are in Google’s content network. Site targeting is the backbone of the AdWords180 technique (now being discussed in other AdWords books to some extent, including the just-released Affiliate Rockstar Status). It is not, however, the focus of most AdWords ad campaigns.

I just wanted to make the distinction clear, because this case study only deals with keyword targeted ads.

AdWords Ad Groups

Each AdWords ad campaign contains one or more ad groups. Within a keyword targeted campaign, an ad group consists of one or more keywords and one or more text ads. Using ad groups lets you manage large lists of keywords and the ads that go with them.

When one of the keywords within an ad group matches a search that a user is making, Google displays one of the ads in the ad group on a search results page. You have no real control over which ad gets shown other than to tell Google that you want all ads shown evenly (if there are N ads that are to be shown T times, each ad is shown T/N times) or that the ads that are clicked on more often (i.e. they have better ad copy) are to be favored over the others. Each ad group typically only has a few ads that vary only slightly from each other for split testing purposes.

Although it’s possible to create ad groups with thousands of keywords, in general it’s a bad idea to do so. The best ad groups have a small number of thematically-related keywords — we’ll see why this is important when we discuss quality scores.

Keywords

Finally we get to the keyword themselves. In AdWords terminology, a “keyword” is a phrase of one or more words. Each keyword has a matching option associated with it. The matching option controls how the keyword is associated with the searches that users are performing on Google:

There’s actually a fourth matching option called negative matching that modifies the other three options. Negative matching excludes search queries that contain the given keyword/phrase.

Broad matching is the default matching option: just the keyword/phrase by itself. For phrase matching you surround the keyword/phrase with quotation marks. For exact matching, place the phrase in square brackets. Here are some examples:

    soccer equipment               broad match
   “soccer equipment”              phrase match
   [soccer equipment]              exact match

The negative options for these are:

    -soccer equipment               negative broad match
   -”soccer equipment”              negative phrase match
   -[soccer equipment]              negative exact match

See the AdWords help pages for more details on negative matching.

Why all these matching options? There are two reasons. The first is that they allow you fairly precise control over which specific search queries you want to target, including which ones you want excluded. The second reason is that you can bid separately on each variation of a keyword: you might be willing to pay more for someone who is doing an exact search for a product you’re promoting than someone who’s just search for broader information about the product category.

Creating the matching options is a pain to do by hand, though, because normally all you have is a list of keywords. Keyword Elite has an option to transform a list of keywords to include broad and/or exact match versions of keywords. Or you can use the free online AdWords Wrapper tool.

That’s it for today. Next time we’re going to look at the AdWords quality score and how keywords, text ads and landing pages are all related.

Sponsored Link: Purchase the EzineArticles Domination reports and get a free tool I wrote as a bonus.

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.

August 15, 2007 | Filed Under AdSense | 1 Comment 

EDUBacklinkFinder: New Tool For .EDU Backlinks

Not too long ago I started selling a report by the Rhodes Brothers called How to Quickly and Easily Get “.edu” Backlinks that describes a simple, but very manual, technique to get .edu links back to your site. To sweeten the deal I offered a bonus report of my own that improves their technique. Now I’m making it even better by throwing in a new tool that makes the process a lot less tedious.

EDUBacklinkFinder

The tool is called EDUBacklinkFinder, and it’s very similar to the EzineDominator tool I released for use with the EzineArticles Domination technique. Like it and my free SuperSuggester tool, EDUBacklinkFinder is written in Java and so runs on all Windows, Mac and Linux computers — so it can be used by anyone. Here’s a shot of what it looks like:

All you do is create a text file with a bunch of keywords and point the tool at the file. The tool goes and generates an HTML file that you then load into your browser:

In other words, the tool does all the hard work of finding the candidate sites for those backlinks.

You can get EDUBacklinkFinder for free just by ordering How to Quickly and Easily Get “.edu” Backlinks for only $7.50:

(If you’ve already bought the report from me, you’re entitled to a free copy of the tool — just forward me your PayPal receipt.)

The “.edu” backlinks technique still requires some effort on your part to complete, but the tool makes it much easier. And it does work. It’s a great way to get some good links back to your new AdSense site, for example :-) Just be smart about the linking.

Sponsored Link: Have a dog that’s running loose? Read my Invisible Fence story for some advice.

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.

August 14, 2007 | Filed Under AdSense | 2 Comments 

Google AdWords Case Study: Text Ad Basics

Today I’m starting a new series. You may remember my AdSense case study almost two years ago where I showed step-by-step how to build a simple informational site (this one was about my experiences with an Invisible Fence brand pet containment system) that is monetized via AdSense. This series is going to be similar, but this time we’re looking at the flipside of the process: using Google AdWords to send targeted traffic to a site. This is not a course on copywriting, rather it’s a course on minimizing your AdWords costs. Getting people to click your ads in the first place is an art that I’m not going to discuss except in passing, although it’s definitely something you should study.

What does AdWords have to do with AdSense? Plenty. The ads you’re showing on your sites as an AdSense publisher all come from AdWords. I’ve always argued that every AdSense publisher should investigate AdWords to properly understand how the entire contextual advertising infrastructure works — see tip #10 on my original AdSense Tips page.

Please note that you’ll get maximum benefit from this case study if you work along with me. This means you’ll need an AdWords account. You’ll need a credit card, but the cost is minimal — it’s $5 to sign up. See my AdWords overview for more information.

We start by looking at the basics.

AdWords Text Ads

When AdWords started, the only ad type you could create was a text ad. These ads would show up (and still do) on the right hand side of Google search results. Since then, of course, Google has greatly expanded the types of ads that AdWords advertisers can publish: image ads, video ads, mobile ads, radio ads, etc. But the default ad format is still the text ad and it’s the format that everyone associates with AdWords. And it’s all we’re going to look at.

An AdWords ad is very simple. It consists of five things: a headline, two description lines, a display URL, and a destination URL:

Here are descriptions of each part:

As I said before, this is not a course on copywriting, so I’m not going to talk too much about the first three lines of an ad, other than to say that writing good ad copy in such a constrained space (25 characters of title + 70 characters of text) is very hard, especially when you consider the myriad AdWords editorial guidelines that further restrict what you say and how you say it. We will discuss these lines later when we talk about associating ad copy with landing page copy, however, but for now we’re going to focus on the display and destination URLs.

The Display URL

The display URL tells the user where they’re going to end up if they click the ad. If the display URL is not a full or partial match of the actual landing page URL as shown in the browser after the ad is clicked then Google will disable the ad. No deceptive ads, in other words. Marketers try various clever techniques to get around this rule, of course, but most of the time the offending ads don’t stay active very long before being disapproved.

The display URL minimally consists of a domain name, which is the domain name of the site that hosts the landing page. The “www” prefix, if it exists, is usually dropped from the URL, as shown in the example above with “mensa.org”. The URL can be capitalized or not, as you prefer. Thus “Amazon.com” and “amazon.com” are both acceptable. The domain must be valid, however.

The URL of the actual landing page must have the display URL as its prefix, ignoring the initial “www”. In other words, if the display URL is ericgiguere.com/books then the landing page must be something like www.ericgiguere.com/books/j2me/index.html or www.ericgiguere.com/books/midp. The landing page www.ericgiguere.com/about/biography.html is therefore not acceptable because it doesn’t start with ericgiguere.com/books.

Practically speaking, then, the shorter the domain name, the better, because display URLs are limited to 35 characters of text. Including keywords in the display URL (which you do — we’ll see why later) is much easier to do if the domain name is short.

Only Unique Display URLs Are Shown

There’s one important wrinkle with the display URL that is especially important to affiliate marketers. If two or more ads targeting the same keyword use the same domain name in the display URL, Google will display only one of the ads. The best performing ad is chosen, of course. This means that if you try to send traffic to “Amazon.com” and Amazon itself is advertising on those same keywords, your ad probably won’t be shown because Amazon’s ads will normally outrank yours.

We’ll talk more about this later, but it’s important to be aware of this limitation.

The Destination URL

The destination URL is where the user initially lands after clicking the ad. Sometimes this is the actual landing page. In the example above, for example, the destination URL is the “www.mensa.org/stupid” page.

Often, though, the destination URL is not the landing page. The destination URL must ultimately lead to the landing page (via browser redirection) but it may jump through a number of other pages on the way to the landing page. This is often done for tracking and/or analytical purposes.

Say, for example, I wanted to promote a dog training guide called SitStayFetch. Even though the display URL would be “KingdomOfPets.com”, the destination URL would actually be something like www.synclastic.com/dogtraining/sitstayfetch?adgroup=dog+training to funnel the user through my affiliate link for the book via a script I have installed on one of my sites. This ensures that I get credited if they proceed to buy the book. Ultimately, though, they’d land on www.kingdomofpets.com/dogobediencetraining/, which matches the display URL of the ad. (This is assuming that my ad gets shown, of course, something that’s unlikely given that other affiliates would also be targeting the “KingdomOfPets.com” domain and the no-duplicate-domains rule would kick in.)

The destination URL can be anything as long as it’s 1024 character long or less and it eventually redirects to a page that matches the display URL.

Next Time

That’s all we’ll talk about this time. Next time we’ll look at AdWords keyword basics.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment here and I’ll be happy to clarify the material.

Sponsored Link: Purchase the EzineArticles Domination reports and get a free tool I wrote as a bonus.

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.

August 13, 2007 | Filed Under AdSense | 5 Comments 

RSS Subscriber Increase = Falling Alexa Rank + Less AdSense Revenue

As regular readers know, I’ve been on a push lately to increase the number of subscribers to this blog. I’ve even started giving away stuff to my subscribers by making downloads available only via the RSS feed or in the email versions of my posts. (See the subscription page for both options.)

I was pretty sure that one of the side effects of this push, however, would be to see a big drop in my Alexa rank. And that’s exactly what’s happening. Here’s the graph for the last three months:

As you can see, the site’s about to consistently fall below the 100,000 mark.

Do I care about my Alexa rank? Not really. It’s an imperfect measure to begin with and by encouraging people to use RSS I get a better feel for how many people are actually reading my material and what they’re responding to. I can also have public conversations with my readers via the comments.

But if you’ve monetized your blog then be aware of the downsides of increasing your subscriber base, especially with AdSense. RSS subscribers generally don’t see your AdSense ads because they read your posts through a specialized feed reader. This is one reason I’ve long inserted “Sponsored By” links at the bottom of my posts — it’s a subscriber-friendly monetization technique.

As your subscriber base increases, though, other monetization opportunities may open up. At some point I recommend displaying your subscriber count on the blog using recognized stats (like Feedburner) in order to convince potential advertisers that your words have “reach”. (Not that those stats are perfect, either — my Feedburner stats don’t count the 100+ people who subscribe to this blog via email, for example.)

Sponsored Link: Purchase the EzineArticles Domination reports and get a free tool I wrote as a bonus.

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.

August 10, 2007 | Filed Under AdSense | 5 Comments 

Used Bicycle Guide: A Reader Testimonial

Every once in a while I get a letter from a reader that really makes my day and gives me some much-needed justification for all the effort I put into this blog. Here’s an unsolicited testimonial I received yesterday, quite unexpectedly, from someone who’s just getting into the AdSense game with a site about buying and fixing used bicycles:

Eric,

I have been a regular reader of your website for more than a year. I purchased and read both of your AdSense related books. The information from the website and books has been very helpful.

Recently, I took the plunge and developed a website — UsedBicycleGuide.com. I followed your advice of developing a site with good content on a topic where I had some knowledge. I did not try to create a site focusing on the highest paying keywords, but rather focused on something I would enjoy developing. I used the hosting service that you suggested; ResellerZoom; and a template that I believe that I got from a link on your site.

Even though the site has only been live since last night, the results are very encouraging. I have already received over 1100 hits and have made a few dollars in AdSense revenue. I have received several e-mails from readers that have given me ideas for additional content.

I think that the site has a tremendous amount of potential. I will focus on improving the website, adding content, building traffic and will look at some of the affliate programs you have suggested (Amazon has a large amount of bicycle related accessories). Needless to say, I will be using many of the techniques that I have learned from you.

I recall that you had an offer to list websites developed by your readers on your website. I would certainly appreciate a link and I would be glad to put one on my website for you.

Thank you very much and I will continue to update you on my progress.

Michael

Thank you, Michael, for those kind words, and of course I’m happy to provide you with a link or two back to your site. You’re off to a great start with your site, and here is some free advice on how to make it even better:

The key here is to keep at it and to slowly add content and get traffic to your site. And to have fun doing it!

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.

August 10, 2007 | Filed Under AdSense | 1 Comment 

280 “How To” Questions To Answer

Running out of ideas for things to write about? Why not see what kind of questions people are asking Google. A lot of questions are asked in “how to” format, as in “how to find a business name”, so I ran the phrase “how to ” (notice the space character at the end) through the SuperSuggester tool and it came up with the following 280 suggestions:

Pages Suggestion
1640000000 how to make out
1090000000 how to name a business
948000000 how to make a website
924000000 how to videos
823000000 how to find people
791000000 how to video
691000000 how to start a business
660000000 how to name a company
617000000 how to network
550000000 how to value a business
549000000 how to .tv
548000000 how to read music
547000000 how to 1 2 step
536000000 how to 2 step
500000000 how to create a website
477000000 how to 6 step
458000000 how to read a book
410000000 how to make money
391000000 how to net send
373000000 how to learn english
355000000 how to xml
353000000 how to 3 way call
349000000 how to open data files
316000000 how to value a company
288000000 how to yahoo
260000000 how to save a life
253000000 how to 6 pack
228000000 how to build a computer
197000000 how to network computers
196000000 how to build a website
193000000 how to save money
189000000 how to jump high
183000000 how to find someone
176000000 how to write a book
173000000 how to buy a house
169000000 how to 2 step video
167000000 how to xbox 360
166000000 how to be happy
165000000 how to 1990
162000000 how to apply make up
156000000 how to 360
147000000 how to interview
147000000 how to 3 point turn
141000000 how to xp
140000000 how to write a check
137000000 how to yo yo
131000000 how to vote
131000000 how to zip file
128000000 how to zip a file
118000000 how to network a printer
116000000 how to quote
114000000 how to open an ipod
103000000 how to eat out
101000000 how to tie a tie
101000000 how to zip
99700000 how to use photoshop
97500000 how to not eat
93700000 how to dance
92200000 how to youtube
91200000 how to fight
89700000 how to use excel
81500000 how to zip files
77300000 how to enable javascript
77200000 how to play tennis
76300000 how to 180
74500000 how to xbox live
74400000 how to know if a girl likes you
71800000 how to draw people
65400000 how to draw
62300000 how to download from youtube
60900000 how to fish
60700000 how to jump a car
59700000 how to install windows xp
57600000 how to download youtube videos
57100000 how to network two computers
53900000 how to 3 way on a cell phone
53500000 how to download videos from youtube
52300000 how to make a resume
52200000 how to gain weight
48600000 how to write a letter
48100000 how to earn money
46400000 how to find ip address
44600000 how to add music to myspace
44500000 how to open ports
42600000 how to write a business plan
40600000 how to lower blood pressure
39700000 how to invest
37600000 how to write a song
36300000 how to play guitar
35500000 how to make a bomb
34100000 how to jump higher
32800000 how to play the guitar
31200000 how to view hidden comments
29500000 how to play poker
29500000 how to paint
26200000 how to sing
26100000 how to hack
26000000 how to lose weight
26000000 how to quit
23900000 how to kiss
23800000 how to ask for a raise
22400000 how to vpn
21400000 how to 2 step dance
20900000 how to 4 wheel drive
20800000 how to install ram
19600000 how to ask a girl out
19600000 how to enable cookies
18500000 how to get a girlfriend
17900000 how to 720
17800000 how to cut hair
15800000 how to zero a scope
15300000 how to install fonts
15100000 how to get a passport
14200000 how to 501c3
13400000 how to void a check
11800000 how to quit job
11700000 how to quit a job
11100000 how to eat healthy
11000000 how to kiss a girl
10700000 how to get pregnant
10700000 how to jump start a car
10700000 how to yo-yo
10400000 how to install ubuntu
9700000 how to write a resume
9550000 how to use bittorrent
9370000 how to write a cover letter
9210000 how to read tabs
8530000 how to make ice cream
8160000 how to get a six pack
8010000 how to write an essay
7980000 how to negotiate
7420000 how to quit your job
7120000 how to yard sale
6960000 how to yoga
6710000 how to drift
6560000 how to lose a guy in 10 days
6440000 how to get abs
6000000 how to use a compass
5780000 how to swim
4310000 how to zip files on a mac
3710000 how to zip a folder
3610000 how to write a bibliography
3590000 how to write a cv
3460000 how to cook rice
2930000 how to zip files on mac
2920000 how to tune a guitar
2880000 how to lose weight fast
2780000 how to french kiss
2780000 how to quit smoking
2670000 how to do magic tricks
2670000 how to make sushi
2560000 how to hack a myspace
2500000 how to knit
2490000 how to hack myspace
2340000 how to fall asleep
2260000 how to play chess
2210000 how to hide comments on myspace
2030000 how to build a deck
2030000 how to quilt
1980000 how to play craps
1950000 how to flirt
1910000 how to ride a motorcycle
1900000 how to crochet
1880000 how to read guitar tabs
1880000 how to 50 50grind
1870000 how to remove wallpaper
1850000 how to 180 on a bike
1850000 how to 2-step
1820000 how to yarn over
1800000 how to draw cartoons
1800000 how to skateboard
1780000 how to cook salmon
1770000 how to tie a bow tie
1770000 how to use torrents
1730000 how to apply for a passport
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