OPAD Day 27
Incredible, today is the last day of February! I’ll be posting the entries for the last two days of the One Page A Day challenge later today. Don’t forget you have until the 10th of March to add in all your content.
Leave your links for Day 27 here…
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Eric Giguere is the author of several printed books and knows a thing or two about content monetization. Subscribe to his AdSense blog today and never miss any of his insightful comments. And the not-so-insightful ones, for that matter.
OPAD Day 26
Still behind on these entries, sorry about that. The One Page A Day challenge ends tomorrow! Incredible! My contribution is the AdSense Arbitrage Loophole I just posted.
Please add your entries for Day 26…
Sponsored Link: PLRSiteBuilder is an easy way to create and maintain content-rich websites written by yours truly. Try it today!
Eric Giguere is the author of several printed books and knows a thing or two about content monetization. Subscribe to his AdSense blog today and never miss any of his insightful comments. And the not-so-insightful ones, for that matter.
The AdSense Arbitrage Loophole
One of the concerns I’ve had with the AdSense Resurrected business model is the reliance on pay-per-click (PPC) traffic. The idea is simple enough: place AdWords ads (targeting the content network only) that direct traffic to your AdSense sites. Visitors will sign up for your freebie/newsletter/course and/or browse through your site. The problem is that this model looks a lot like the AdSense arbitrage model.
AdSense arbitrage is something we’ve discussed here before. It’s a tricky and risky way to make money by sending low-cost traffic to an AdSense page/site with higher payouts. It’s not for the feint of heart, trust me.
Not so long ago, though, Google decided that it didn’t like the AdSense arbitrage model and started terminating AdSense accounts using that business model.
As usual, though, Google’s never explicitly announces what it’s doing in these situations, so I thought I’d go ahead and ask Google myself. I was already having a conversation with them about a site of mine that was having some issues, so I thought I’d ask them if it was OK to use AdWords to send traffic to a page displaying AdSense ads. Here’s what they told me:
It is acceptable to use AdWords or other advertising programs to drive traffic to a site with AdSense ads. However, the site must contain what the ads promise and the site must be compliant with Google Webmaster Quality Guidelines and Landing Page Quality guidelines.
So there we have it. It is perfectly fine to send traffic to your AdSense sites via AdWords as long as the ads are relevant and the site is a quality site — good content, good navigation, etc. Which means that the “AdSense Resurrected” model is fine, assuming the sites you build meet adhere to those guidelines and the ads are relevant and correct. So if you’re offering a freebie to entice visitor to sign up for your list, mention the freebie in the ad and make sure the landing page has a subscription form on it.
AdSense arbitrage isn’t dead, it’s just more regulated.
Sponsored Link: PLRSiteBuilder is an easy way to create and maintain content-rich websites written by yours truly. Try it today!
Eric Giguere is the author of several printed books and knows a thing or two about content monetization. Subscribe to his AdSense blog today and never miss any of his insightful comments. And the not-so-insightful ones, for that matter.
OPAD Day 25
Friday’s the last day of the challenge, which I’m sure many of the challengers will be quite relieved to reach… Post your contributions for Day 25 of the One Page A Day challenge.
My contribution is a new dog training and care tips site built using a souped-up version of PLRSiteBuilder I’ve been working on. (Hence my being so quiet as of late…)
Sponsored Link: Learn the keys to search engine success with 26 Steps To 15K A Day.
Eric Giguere is the author of several printed books and knows a thing or two about content monetization. Subscribe to his AdSense blog today and never miss any of his insightful comments. And the not-so-insightful ones, for that matter.
OPAD Day 24
Day 24 of the One Page A Day challenge. My contribution (I’m still behind) is a Squidoo page on free keyword tools that expands on a post I made here.
Leave your links for Day 24…
Sponsored Link: Learn the keys to search engine success with 26 Steps To 15K A Day.
Eric Giguere is the author of several printed books and knows a thing or two about content monetization. Subscribe to his AdSense blog today and never miss any of his insightful comments. And the not-so-insightful ones, for that matter.
OPAD Day 23
You know, when I started the One Page A Day challenge, I didn’t think I’d be the one falling way behind… been doing some programming and some non-Internet writing. Ah well, I’ll just have to work hard to catch up. I’ll count my post on free online keyword tools as one of them.
Go ahead and post your entries for Day 23.
Sponsored Link: PLRSiteBuilder is an easy way to create and maintain content-rich websites written by yours truly. Try it today!
Eric Giguere is the author of several printed books and knows a thing or two about content monetization. Subscribe to his AdSense blog today and never miss any of his insightful comments. And the not-so-insightful ones, for that matter.
Free Online Keyword Tool Roundup
The Google Suggest Explorer keyword tool has been revamped a bit. It now shows you recent and popular searches on the home page, and you can drill down to get more extensive lists of the top queries and recent queries. It’s quite fascinating to see what people using the tool are searching for. (Warning, some of the searches are “not safe for work”… hey, it’s not me entering this stuff!)
The Suggest Explorer is just one tool you can use, of course. Here’s a list of other free online keyword research tools that I find useful. (Each link opens a new window.)
- AdWords Keyword Tool
- This is the same tool that AdWords advertisers have access to from their AdWords console. It lets you get keyword suggestions from Google and information about search volumes (but only in general terms) and pay-per-click bids (only estimates). You can also use it to generate lists of keywords based on a URL, which is useful for seeing what Google thinks your page is really about.
- Overture Keyword Selector Tool
- The granddaddy of them all, the one everyone mentions. Overture was a company that Yahoo! bought back when Yahoo! thought it could compete successfully against Google. It’s slow, unreliable, but it’s free so people put up with a lot of crap… It shows daily search volumes, normally you multiply by some factor (some say 4, some say 8, do your own testing) to get the “equivalent” Google search volume.
- Digital Point Solutions Keyword Suggestion Tool
- This one generates keywords suggestions from both Wordtracker and Overture and tells you estimated search volumes for each.
- Wordtracker Free Keyword Suggestion Tool
- Wordtracker is a subscription keyword service, but they offer a pared-down free tool that displays the top 100 related keywords and their estimated search volumes. If you want more data, you’ll need to subscribe to their service.
- NicheBOT Classic
- NicheBOT Classic uses Wordtracker data but displays it quite nicely and provides estimated search volumes for the different search engines.
Bookmark this page, as I’ll keep adding to the list.
Sponsored Link: PLRSiteBuilder is an easy way to create and maintain content-rich websites written by yours truly. Try it today!
Eric Giguere is the author of several printed books and knows a thing or two about content monetization. Subscribe to his AdSense blog today and never miss any of his insightful comments. And the not-so-insightful ones, for that matter.
OPAD Day 22
Wow, just a week to go… Please post your entries for Day 22 of the One Page A Day challenge.
Sponsored Link: PLRSiteBuilder is an easy way to create and maintain content-rich websites written by yours truly. Try it today!
Eric Giguere is the author of several printed books and knows a thing or two about content monetization. Subscribe to his AdSense blog today and never miss any of his insightful comments. And the not-so-insightful ones, for that matter.
OPAD Day 21
Please post your entries for Day 21 of the One Page A Day challenge.
Sponsored Link: PLRSiteBuilder is an easy way to create and maintain content-rich websites written by yours truly. Try it today!
Eric Giguere is the author of several printed books and knows a thing or two about content monetization. Subscribe to his AdSense blog today and never miss any of his insightful comments. And the not-so-insightful ones, for that matter.
OPAD Day 20
Please post your entries for Day 20 of the One Page A Day challenge.
Sponsored Link: PLRSiteBuilder is an easy way to create and maintain content-rich websites written by yours truly. Try it today!
Eric Giguere is the author of several printed books and knows a thing or two about content monetization. Subscribe to his AdSense blog today and never miss any of his insightful comments. And the not-so-insightful ones, for that matter.
OPAD Day 19
Yesterday was Day 19 of the One Page A Day challenge. My contribution is for Day 12, and it’s the Guerrilla Balance Sheet review I posted this morning.
Leave you entries here, as usual. The month will soon be over!
Sponsored Link: PLRSiteBuilder is an easy way to create and maintain content-rich websites written by yours truly. Try it today!
Eric Giguere is the author of several printed books and knows a thing or two about content monetization. Subscribe to his AdSense blog today and never miss any of his insightful comments. And the not-so-insightful ones, for that matter.
The Guerrilla Balance Sheet
If you’re like me, you’ve probably read a book or two written or co-authored by Jay Conrad Levinson. He’s the author of Guerrilla Marketing, the book (published in 1984) that encouraged its readers to explore unconventional promotional methods to reach their customers without requiring big marketing budgets. Guerrilla Marketing spawned a whole series of “Guerrilla” books with titles like Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days, Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants, Guerrilla Marketing for Writers, etc. There’s an updated “Guerrilla” book on Internet marketing coming out within the next year, too.
Today, Jay has released a 61-page special report called The Guerrilla Balance Sheet. It sells for only $7, which is quite reasonable. It’s really more of an e-book than a special report — I’ve paid up to $97 for documents with less content. (But that’s a different discussion.) There’s a lot of emphasis on out-of-the-box thinking in order to make money from marketing tasks that you need to do anyhow.
The Guerrilla Balance Sheet is about turning your marketing expenses into money-making activities. Instead of spending money on marketing, make money by marketing. They do this by introducing the “FeBeNe” method, which is a made-up acronym from “front end” (Fe), “back end” (Be) and “never-ending” (Ne). Kind of a silly name, really, and their website is named accordingly: FeBeNe.com. But let’s ignore the name issue and look at the content.
The three steps of the FeBeNe model bear a lot of resemblance to what many Internet marketers call the “purchase funnel”, although Levinson & co. claim it’s not the same thing — and they’ll tell you why in an upcoming teleseminar for purchasers of the report. I can’t agree or disagree with that statement because I don’t know what their explanation is. But the steps are simple enough:
- Front End — create an educational information product that “thoroughly addresses the reader’s initial questions and explains why these answers are so important” as well as “the benefits of taking this information to the next level”.
- Back End — any purchase after the Front End that either “invites your customer to an ongoing opportunity” or “offers an incremental larger purchase”.
- Never End — any purchase with a recurring billing.
Levinson & co. promise to reveal all the secrets to creating the never-ending income in the teleseminar.
This is more of a motivational book than anything else. It discusses several examples of being paid for your marketing — from handing out business cards when you’re performing magic tricks (when you’re a magician) to (if you’re Newsweek) creating high-end, glossy magazines that are really extra-long sales letters in disguise.
Ultimately, this report is itself a sales letter for Levinson’s upcoming book, Guerrilla Information Marketing, and of course the teleseminar. The book in fact ends with an affiliate marketing sales pitch: if someone buys the special report you’ll get $5, and the person who referred that affiliate will get $1.
The authors claim that the FeBeNe method is revolutionary, but we don’t get all the details yet so it’s hard to judge that claim. I doubt it’s revolutionary, it’s probably more about avoiding mistakes in creating the right purchase funnels and how to create low-attrition paid newsletters and membership sites. I think the upcoming book will be an interesting read, the “Guerrilla” books always are. This report has a lot of the same feeling to it and will appeal to the readers of those books, but if you’re a long-time Internet marketer you won’t learn anything new just yet.
Sponsored Link: PLRSiteBuilder is an easy way to create and maintain content-rich websites written by yours truly. Try it today!
Eric Giguere is the author of several printed books and knows a thing or two about content monetization. Subscribe to his AdSense blog today and never miss any of his insightful comments. And the not-so-insightful ones, for that matter.
AdSense Niche Ideas (Part 4 of 4)
Here’s the final installment of the AdSense niche ideas series. Don’t forget Part 2 and Part 3 as well.
- personal loan
- How many loan variations can we target? Plenty!
- pet insurance
- I always wonder if it’s worth it. Have yet to get it, though.
- phone psychic
- Which is better, phone psychic readings or phone ….?
- pos hardware
- pos software
- Here the “pos” refers to POS — “point of sale”, i.e. credit card and debit card processing.
- print on demand
- One of my writer friends has a great POD site.
- projector lamp
- Expensive things, those project lamps. Probably some good ad action here.
- quick cash
- If you want quick cash, don’t bother with AdSense. Run a WSO!
- real estate license
- real estate school
- real estate software
- I hear there are some good real estate deals in the US right now.
- san diego dentist
- san diego florists
- san diego real estate
- We really enjoyed our last visit to San Diego. If you’re a dog lover, go and visit Dog Beach and watch the doggies frolick, lots of fun!
- secured cards
- Secured credit cards are essentially just prepaid credit cards… if you don’t pay, they just take the money you deposited with them already.
- settlement loan
- This niche was unfamiliar to me, but then I don’t live in a litigation-happy country. Apparently you can get loans to finance your ongoing legal bills when you sue big companies.
- stairlift
- Stairlifts make it easy to go up and down stairs. As the North American population ages, expect to see more niche opportunities related to senior citizens.
- students insurance
- It sucks to have stuff stolen from your dorm room.
- transfer balance
- Lots of competition for this one — credit card companies love to have you transfer your outstanding balances to them.
- travel reward credit card
- It’s amazing how quickly the points rack up. Or maybe that’s just my wife.
- vasectomy reversal
- Not interested, but thanks anyhow!
- wedding registry
- Doesn’t stop you from getting crap, but at least it won’t be duplicate crap.
- zone diet
- Is this still a fad?
That’s the list… or most of it, at least. Maybe it’ll give you some ideas of topics to pursue for your own AdSense empire. Remember what I told you in the AdSense crapshoot — sheer volume is the easiest way to rack up the AdSense bucks.
Sponsored Link: PLRSiteBuilder is an easy way to create and maintain content-rich websites written by yours truly. Try it today!
Eric Giguere is the author of several printed books and knows a thing or two about content monetization. Subscribe to his AdSense blog today and never miss any of his insightful comments. And the not-so-insightful ones, for that matter.
OPAD Day 18
Today is Day 18 of the One Page A Day Challenge. My contribution today is for Day 10, actually, and it’s a post on GeekAffiliate titled The Squeeze Page Secret where I explain something I’ve realized after experimenting with squeeze pages for list building.
Everyone post their entries for Day 18 here.
Sponsored Link: Learn the keys to search engine success with 26 Steps To 15K A Day.
Eric Giguere is the author of several printed books and knows a thing or two about content monetization. Subscribe to his AdSense blog today and never miss any of his insightful comments. And the not-so-insightful ones, for that matter.
OPAD Day 17
Here’s the Day 17 entry for the One Page A Day challenge. I’ve been quiet because I’m doing some firefighting for a couple of my sites, and am also trying out the basic “AdSense Resurrected” technique (see AdSense business plan) and will have much to report about things.
In the meantime, though, please post your entries for Day 17.
Sponsored Link: PLRSiteBuilder is an easy way to create and maintain content-rich websites written by yours truly. Try it today!
Eric Giguere is the author of several printed books and knows a thing or two about content monetization. Subscribe to his AdSense blog today and never miss any of his insightful comments. And the not-so-insightful ones, for that matter.
OPAD Day 16
Day 16 of the One Page A Day challenge. Leave your links here.
OPAD Day 15
OK, Day 15 is actually the midway point of the One Page A Day Challenge, since February this year has 29 days. So now we’re at the midpoint. Actually, past it now since today is February 16. I’ll post the OPAD Day 16 entry later today.
I keep being pleasantly surprised by the quality and variety of the posts. Kudos to everyone who’s participating so far…
Sponsored Link: Learn the keys to search engine success with 26 Steps To 15K A Day.
Eric Giguere is the author of several printed books and knows a thing or two about content monetization. Subscribe to his AdSense blog today and never miss any of his insightful comments. And the not-so-insightful ones, for that matter.
OPAD Day 14
Well, we’re officially at the halfway point of the One Page A Day challenge. Only 15 more days to go! My contribution for Day 9 (yes, I’m still behind!) is the post I just made about fake identities.
Some of the contestants are find the challenge… well, challenging. Overall, though, there seems to be a lot of enjoyment from the posters. Keep up the good work, folks!
Sponsored Link: Learn the keys to search engine success with 26 Steps To 15K A Day.
Eric Giguere is the author of several printed books and knows a thing or two about content monetization. Subscribe to his AdSense blog today and never miss any of his insightful comments. And the not-so-insightful ones, for that matter.
Creating Fake Identities For Fun And Profit
The need for a “fake identity” happens to most AdSense publishers at one time or another. There are good reasons for using a pseudonym of some kind. Sometimes it’s just because you’re discussing something embarrassing that you don’t want to associate with your own identity. Or it can be something controversial. Or something stupid. Or something that doesn’t fit with what your current audience expects. (Many popular authors, Stephen King being a case in point, have published books under pseudonyms just for that reason.) So how do you go about and do it? Here are some tips.
The Name
You’ll want to start by choosing a name for yourself. There are many random name generators online that can be used for this purpose, but this random name generator is the one that I like best because of it’s simplicity. Most of these sites pull their names from census data or from genealogical data. (Of course, you’ll want to find a name generator that works for the language and ethnicity you’re targeting… most of the name generators are English-based.)
Don’t be afraid to use the opposite gender, too. It can be more appropriate for certain purposes.
Run the name generator to generate some likely possibilities. Then do a search on Google — put the entire name in quotes to do phrase search — and see how popular they are. You probably want to stay away from names that are identical or similar to those of well-known figures. An easy way to make a name unique is to add a middle initial or two, although I don’t think you usually have to go that far.
The Email Address
Next you need an email address. There are two ways to do this:
- A free email service like GMail. This is the simplest and cheapest option. It may be hard to find a good email address, however, and some services frown on individuals having multiple email identities.
- Your own hosted domain. Any half-decent hosting package includes email access for the domain, ideally with unlimited email addresses. You can create as many email addresses as you want and you get to choose exactly the ones that appeal to you.
If you’re going to use a hosted domain, however, you must use privacy protection on the domain. Otherwise all your personal details will be revealed for all the world to see and it won’t take someone long to figure out that “John Kershit” is really “Lina Joergensen at 123 Whatever Avenue, Santa Clara, California”. Or that there’s some kind of relationship there. Adding privacy protection to a domain usually costs extra, but some domain registrars offer it for free. I like 1 & 1 for that reason — no extra charge.
The Picture
Getting a picture for your fake identity is tricky, and in general it’s best to avoid it if at all possible. It’s one thing to have a name that’s the same as someone else’s, it’s another to take someone else’s picture and pass it off as your own. I don’t normally go that far. If you need to do it, do it carefully is all I can say…
That’s it! Remember, though, that often you can get away without having any kind of special identity. Hide your private information using domain privacy and create generic email addresses like “info@whatever.com” that simply forward to another email address. That’s enough for most purposes.
Sponsored Link: PLRSiteBuilder is an easy way to create and maintain content-rich websites written by yours truly. Try it today!
Eric Giguere is the author of several printed books and knows a thing or two about content monetization. Subscribe to his AdSense blog today and never miss any of his insightful comments. And the not-so-insightful ones, for that matter.
OPAD Day 13
Please post your links for Day 13 of the One Page A Day challenge. Goodness, I actually posted this on the correct day.
Read Eric Giguere’s unofficial AdSense blog.