In the past, I’ve written about only showing Google Adsense to search engine visitors, so as to decrease the chance of being smart priced. In this post, you’ll see how to improve the technique outlined previously, so that you can make more money.

Background On Smart Pricing

By now, most people know that Smart Pricing is a penalty Google applies to Adsense accounts that don’t convert well for the advertiser, resulting in you earning only about 10% of what you’d normally earn per click.

I’m not going to go into more detail than is absolutely necessary in this post, so if you want more information on Smart Pricing, see my post on how smart pricing may cost you money or for the ultimate description, see Grizzly’s Optimization Tips for Adsense.

For now, you just need to know that only certain visitors are going to click Adsense ads and buy something from the advertiser. Who? It’s not your regular readers. It’s not the stream of visitors from StumbleUpon, Digg or Sphinn. It’s the search engine visitors.

Search engine visitors provide targeted traffic for the advertiser, which converts well. The other sources don’t. If the majority of your traffic comes from the social news sites, then you’re in danger of being smart priced. That’s why I chose to show Adsense only to search engine visitors.

The Original “From Search” Function

In my original Shylock Adsense Plugin – Hack To Avoid Smart Pricing post, I provided two approaches: one based on hacking just the Shylock Adsense plugin; another on a more generic solution that can be called from wherever you want (within the Shylock Adsense plugin, the sidebar, single.php, etc).

In this post, I’m using the second approach as it has a wider application. This was originally explained in the Hacking Shylock Adsense AND Sidebars section of the previous post. This worked by adding the following function to functions.php in your theme’s folder (wp-content/themes/yourtheme folder, where yourtheme is the name of your theme):

function scratch99_fromasearchengine(){
  $ref = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
  $SE = array('/search?', 'images.google.', 'web.info.com', 'search.', 'del.icio.us/search', 'soso.com', '/search/', '.yahoo.');
  foreach ($SE as $source) {
    if (strpos($ref,$source)!==false) return true;
  }
  return false;
}


This function was then called from the Shylock Adsense plugin, a sidebar widget, or anywhere else you may want to, via the following code:

if (function_exists('scratch99_fromasearchengine')) {
  if (scratch99_fromasearchengine()) {
    INSERT YOUR CODE HERE
  }
}

Obviously, INSERT YOUR CODE HERE needs to be replaced with whatever code you want to show the search engine visitors: your Adsense code if it’s in the sidebar (using the ExecPHP widget) or the Shylock Adsense code (see my original post for more details).

Problem With The Original Function

As Zath pointed out in the comments, the original function only works on the first page the visitor lands on. If the visitor subsequently navigates to another page on your site, the ads disappear. This is because the http_referer is no longer the search engine, it’s now the page where they landed on your site.

Of course, that means they no longer have the option to click an ad before leaving the site. I wasn’t worried about this, because I figured not many search engine visitors would go to another page on my site. I was wrong!

Leaving Money On The Table

According to Google Analytics, over the last month, visitors arriving at this site from a search engine read 1.54 pages per visit. That means that every second visitor is clicking another page.

Every second visitor! That means I could be serving up 50% more ads to the sort of visitor who is likely to click ads!

I decided I better change the way I was doing things, so that search engine visitors see ads on every page they visit at my site. Fortunately, this is fairly easy to do, by setting a cookie that identifies search engine visitors.

New “From Search” Function Using Cookie

Here is the solution I’m now using on this blog.

First, the you need to add some code to functions.php in your theme’s folder (wp-content/themes/yourtheme folder, where yourtheme is the name of your theme). The following should be added immediately before the ?> at the bottom of the file:

$ref = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
$SE = array('/search?', 'images.google.', 'web.info.com', 'search.', 'del.icio.us/search', 'soso.com', '/search/', '.yahoo.');
foreach ($SE as $source) {
  if (strpos($ref,$source)!==false) {
    setcookie("sevisitor", 1, time()+3600, "/", ".scratch99.com");
    $sevisitor=true;
  }
}
 
function fromasearchengine(){
  global $sevisitor;
  if ($sevisitor==true || $_COOKIE["sevisitor"]==1) {
    return true;
  }
  return false;
}


Note: In the setcookie line, you must change “.scratch99.com” to your own domain!

The fromasearchengine function can then be called from wherever you want to use it (to check if a visitor is from a search engine or not). This is explained further below.

Notes About The New “From Search” Function

The code that detects whether the user is from a search engine has been moved out of the fromasearchengine function, into the body of functions.php. This means it will only run this code once per page load, rather than every time the function is called, which may be several times per page load (I call it from Shylock Adsense and from the sidebar).

Also, the $sevisitor variable was introduced because the cookie can’t be detected on the first page view. The cookie is set on the first page view, but the $_COOKIE function won’t see it until the next page view. The above code checks whether the $sevisitor variable is set (ie it’s the first page view) or whether the cookie is set (ie it’s a subsequent page view).

I had one problem with setting the cookie via WordPress, but it doesn’t affect the final solution above, so I leave that for a future post.

Calling The New “From Search” Function

To call the new fromasearchengine function from Shylock Adsense, edit the shylock_adsense.php file which comes with the plugin. Look for the following code (on line 325 in version 1.2):

function shylock_adsense_filter($content){
  global $id,$user_level;
  $output = $content;

and replace it with:

function shylock_adsense_filter($content){
  global $id,$user_level;
  $output = $content;
 
if (function_exists('fromasearchengine')) {
  if (fromasearchengine()) {


Then go down to about line 364 and look for:

  return $output;

and replace it with:

} } return $output;

Alternatively, to call it from a PHP sidebar widget or somewhere else (such as single.php), you would add the following code in the appropriate place:

<?php if (function_exists('fromasearchengine')) {
  if (fromasearchengine()) { ?>
    INSERT YOUR CODE HERE
<?php } } ?>

replacing INSERT YOUR CODE HERE with your Adsense code or whatever else you wanted to show the search engine visitor.

Final Thoughts

Using this technique, to set a cookie to identify search engine visitors, then only serving Adsense to such visitors, should help you make more money, while avoiding being smart priced. However, as always, it pays to experiment with Adsense and monitor the affects on your income.

Of course this technique will have other applications as well, allowing you to serve whatever content you like to search engine visitors. I hope some of you find it of use.

Happy Chinese New Year! The arrival of the Chinese New Year seems like a good time to announce my new blog at jobsinchina.com. Primarily a blog, for now, JobsInChina will cover issues related to living and working in China.

What JobsInChina Will Offer

I’ve been wanting to write about China and my experiences here for a long time. This gives me the outlet. I’ll write about anything related to China: daily life, culture, travel, news articles, amusing stories, pictures I’ve taken, etc.

I’ll relate these back to living and working in China, because the primary focus of the blog is to help people understand what it’s really like here.

The site will also aim to provide resources for people wanting to live or work in China. I plan to add sections covering work visas, legal issues, etc. This part of the site will build up slowly, as I’ll need to research it carefully.

It’s also quite likely that at some point in future, the site will list jobs available in China. This will probably be done in partnership with an existing job listing provider.

There are lots of possibilities with JobsInChina. I’ve taken the unusual step of leading with a blog and adding other services later. That doesn’t mean that those services won’t be provided in future.

Why Lead With A Blog?

I’ve owned the jobsinchina.com domain name for four years, but never done anything with it. My original plan was to create a job listing service, but I was too busy to put it into action. Time passed and the opportunity was lost. There is now a lot of strong competition in this area and a new job listing site would be unlikely to succeed (without a lot of money behind it).

However, my experience with More Than Scratch The Surface made me confident that I could create a successful China-related blog. I realised that the easiest way to succeed with the www.jobsinchina.com domain would be to build the blog first, then leverage that to add the other services later.

Besides, I wanted to write about my experiences here in China anyway!

Monetization Of JobsInChina

If I can build the JobsInChina to a reasonable level, it will offer some good monetization options, including:

1. Adsense (search traffic only): While not a high paying niche, it should work reasonably well, once search engine visitors start to arrive. With lots of content, it should be able to attract reasonable search traffic.
2. Affiliate Reviews: A blog lends itself to reviews of products related to China: books, DVDs, language software, cameras (to take with you).
3. Direct Advertising: This may be where the real money comes from, once traffic reaches a certain level. Potential advertisers include large chains of English language schools in China, corporations hiring in China, companies selling China-related products, etc.
4. Partnerships: I won’t talk too much about this now, but once the site is reasonably successful, it will open the way for partnerships with job listing sites and other China related sites.

I’m sure more opportunities will arise as things proceed.

Adsense Related Posts Explained

Regular readers will have noticed a lot of Adsense related posts recently, including:

1. The Adsense Dilemma (Or How To Make Money)
2. How To Avoid Adsense Smart Pricing On Blogs
3. Shylock Adsense Plugin – Hack To Avoid Smart Pricing

These all came from the planning for jobsinchina.com. My first thought was to create a Made For Adsense mini-site, but I soon decided that I wanted to create a blog, so I could write about my experiences in China.

At that stage, I realised that a blog with good content, would be less successful with Adsense than an MFA site with mediocre content. This lead to the "don’t solve their problems" theory outlined in the Adsense Dilemma post. As part of researching that post, I learnt more about Adsense Smart Pricing and the high risk blogs have of being smart priced. That lead to the second post. The third post was my solution to the problem.

So that’s why I’ve been subjecting you to all these Adsense related posts!

Ultimately, I decided to go with a blog for JobsInChina with the plan to expand into other services later. This will mean a lot of extra work, but should result in better monetization options once it’s reached a certain level.

Final Thoughts

I’m excited about JobsInChina and I’m really going to enjoy writing about China. If any of you are interested in learning more about China, or what it’s like to live there, join me at Jobs In China. Happy Chinese New Year!

More Than Scratch The Surface has finally been penalised by Google. I noticed today that my toolbar PageRank has dropped from PR4 to PR0. It appears to only be a toolbar PR penalty – I am still in the same place in the SERPs.

I say finally, because I’ve been watching other sites get penalised, while mine remained untouched. The cause of my penalty: two sponsored posts I wrote about three months ago. Until now, Google hadn’t noticed them.

Goodbye PayPerPost

Like RT, I’ve said goodbye to PayPerPost. I only did two sponsored posts and it’s almost 3 months since the last one. I initially stopped doing them because I couldn’t find any fitting the subject of this blog. Then, as more and more blogs were penalised by Google, I decided to hold off doing any more.

I thought about adding nofollow to the links when Terence Chang recently lost his toolbar PR. I’m not sure why I didn’t. If I’m honest, I guess I thought that if Google hadn’t already penalised me, then they must have missed me. So if you are thinking about fixing any issues on your site, do it today!

I’ve now added nofollow to the links and requested reconsideration via Google’s Webmaster Tools. Now, I wait and hope my toolbar PR is restored.

Why Am I Worried About Toolbar PR?

Cynics will be asking why I’m so worried about toolbar PR, given my somewhat anti-Google stance on previous posts, such as Final Thoughts On The PageRank Debacle and I Signed Up For PayPerPost.

There are several reasons for my change of stance:

1. Originally, I was angry that so many fine bloggers were penalised for what was normal practice. It felt like Google was being very unfair. I’ll admit I didn’t know anything about Google’s Terms Of Service at the time. Since then, I’ve come to realise that Google had stated that the nofollow tag must be added to paid reviews and advertising. I still feel that Google should have communicated this better to the average blogger before penalising them, but in hindsight, they could have reduced real PR rather than just toolbar PR. A turning point in my attitude came when I read a well-considered defence of Google.
2. I originally thought, like many others, that I didn’t need Google. I’ve since come to realise that although it may be possible to have a successful site without Google search traffic, this traffic is where most of the money is. Search engine visitors are the one who are most likely to click ads or buy something (whether from Adsense or Amazon). Turning your back on Google’s search traffic has to be considered as shooting yourself in the foot. If I value the search traffic, I have to play by Google’s rules. I’m now happy to do so: In fact only 3 days ago, I turned down an approach to buy links on my site.
3. I was making very little from Adsense at the time and it appeared that sponsored posts were a better option. This may indeed be the case for some blogs, but I’ve come to understand Adsense much better since then. As I’ve learnt more about Adsense, it’s started performing better – and it’ll only get better as my site grows. Long term, Adsense is a better option.
4. Although toolbar PR is pretty much irrelevant (it’s your real PR and position in the SERPs that really matter), most people don’t realise that. Why is that important? Well, it’d important if I wanted to sell links or write sponsored posts, because they’re based on toolbar PR, but I’m not going to do that! However, I’ll be moving to Brisbane in about 3 months and I’ll be looking for a web-related job. You never know, a PR4 website may help me get such a job, a PR0 site probably won’t!

Final Thoughts

I didn’t have to post this. Google don’t care whether I make this post or not. I could have just requested reconsideration quietly without mentioning it and most people wouldn’t have noticed. But that’s not my way. If I feel I’ve made a mistake, I’ll put my hand up and admit it.

In the past I’ve said things that were anti-Google and pro-sponsored posts. At the time I believed what I said and there is an element of truth in those statements. It may be that for some people, sponsored posts are the best way to monetize their sites. It’s quick and easy money for a small blog, while Adsense won’t start working well until you’ve built your blog up and you understand how it works a little better.

However, I’ve come to realise that in the bigger picture, Google search traffic is a very important element of a successful site. It’s not something I want to lose, so I’ll play by Google’s rules. Today, I’ve only lost my toolbar PR, tomorrow it may be my real PageRank and my position in the SERPs.

In my last post, I mentioned the danger Adsense Smart Pricing poses to blogs. Blogs are particularly vulnerable because most blogs don’t work well with Adsense. In this post, I examine the issue further and look at a couple of potential solutions for WordPress users – but there’s a twist in the tale.

What Is Adsense Smart Pricing?

First, lets look at what Smart Pricing is. In my last post I said:

Not many people have heard about Adsense Smart Pricing and there’s little information about it. It appears that if you have a low CTR (under 1 or 2%), you may be penalised, so you only get about 10% of what clicks are worth.

This was based on Courtney Tuttle’s recent explanation of Adsense Smart Pricing. The theory is that having a low CTR (below 1 or 2%) will result in a penalty, so you only receive about 10% of what clicks are normally worth.

The Danger To Blogs

Simply put, the typical blog is in danger of having a low CTR because they rely heavily on regular visitors and social traffic (such as StumbleUpon). Both of these groups are unlikely to click ads, resulting in a lower CTR. In particular, a burst of traffic from StumbleUpon is likely to have disastrous effects on CTR – a large number of impressions with very few clicks.

Search engine visitors do click ads. There are many factors that go into how high your CTR is, but it’s accepted that the higher the ratio of search engine visitors, the higher the CTR. While most blogs get search engine traffic, the majority of their visitors come from other sources.

This blog’s CTR is well under 1%. That’s not surprising given the target audience and the fact that only 25% of traffic comes from search engines, but it also means this blog is in danger of being smart priced by Adsense.

What Can Blogs Do About Smart Pricing?

The solution seems simple – to me anyway. Why not just show Adsense ads to search engine visitors only? This should result in a much higher CTR. Of course, a few clicks may be lost, along with a lot of impressions – but it would be worth it, if the value of clicks were higher as result.

I went ahead and did it on this blog. You won’t see Adsense here, unless you came via a search engine. I’ll tell you more about how I did it later.

Does It work?

It’s early days yet, but I’m still getting clicks (I don’t seem to have lost any) and my CTR has moved from well below 1% to around 2 or 3%. It’s looking good, so I decided to write a post explaining how to do this.

But Here’s The Twist!

When writing this post, I went digging for some official information about Smart Pricing. There is very little to be found. The best I could come up with is The Facts About Smart Pricing from Google’s official Adsense Blog. This is more than two years old.

Importantly, it contradicts what Court says. Here’s a quote from the post (emphasis mine):

The percentage of clicks that convert for an advertiser is the most important factor in an advertiser’s ROI, so it’s not only possible, but common, to have a low CTR and a high advertiser conversion rate. It’s also possible to have a high CTR and a low conversion rate. Don’t remove the AdSense code from your site just because it has a lower CTR – it may be one of your best converting sites.

Did Court Get It Wrong?

Yes, I think so. I have the greatest respect for Court and he has a lot more experience with Adsense than I do. He’s basing his theory on what he’s personally seen, others verify it and Google’s statement is ancient.

However, it seems more likely that Google would use advertiser conversion rate, rather than CTR, to determine whether Smart Pricing is applied. After all, Smart Pricing is all about Google delivering value to the advertiser.

Does this make a difference?

Only a little. There is probably a high correlation between high CTR and high advertiser conversion rate, because both are a product of targeted traffic.

People who are searching for a solution to a problem are more likely to click ads promising a solution. They are also more likely to buy something from the advertiser than a regular visitor who wasn’t actively searching for something.

So a high CTR probably means a high advertiser conversion rate. Showing Adsense to search engine visitors only should also result in a higher advertiser conversion rate and help prevent you getting smart priced.

However, you should try to determine if you’re smart priced before taking action. Don’t just disable Adsense because you have a low CTR.

Are You Smart Priced?

It’s hard to tell, as click value varies from ad to ad and from niche to niche. If your clicks are only paying 10 cents, then you are probably smart priced, but there’s no real way to know.

The only way is to experiment and see if the click value goes up. Try showing Adsense to search engine traffic only – you’ll lose some clicks, but it should result in higher CTR and higher conversion rate. It may take a week for you to see the benefits and you need to monitor how much you’re making closely.

If your earnings don’t improve, then maybe you weren’t smart priced. If that’s the case, undo the changes!

Is This Blog Smart Priced?

As I mentioned earlier, the CTR on this blog is way below 1%. In fact it’s below 0.2%. So I should be smart priced right? But I don’t think I am.

In the past, I’ve had periods where I was only getting 6 to 10 cents a click, but for the last month or so, I’ve been getting 30 to 90 cents a click. I think that’s probably about right for this niche. If someone out there can confirm this, please let me know!

Even though I think I’m not smart priced, I’m going to stick to my plan to only show Adsense to search traffic. I’m confident that search engine visitors are the ones who click my ads. I’ll use Adsense on other projects, so I want to protect myself. If this blog gets smart priced, so will all my sites.

How To Show Adsense To Search Traffic Only

I’ll mention two possible solutions for WordPress users:

1. The Who Sees Ads Plugin

One solution for WordPress users is the Who Sees Ads plugin. This has the ability to display ads for search engine traffic only. There are many other options, but this is the only one we are interested in. It works with the Adsense Deluxe plugin, which many people use, and can control ads in the sidebar as well as in the post body.

If you use Adsense Deluxe or manually insert Adsense code, then this is the solution for you. I won’t go into how to set Who Sees Ads up to display ads for search engine traffic. Just follow the instructions from the plugin’s home page. You want to set if Visitor comes from a search engine to display and turn the rest off. If anyone wants me to give detailed instructions on how to do this, leave a comment below and I’ll do this in a future post.

2. The Shylock Adsense Plugin

Personally, I prefer the Shylock Adsense plugin because it places the ads for you. Most plugins require you to manually enter a HTML comment where the ad should appear (in each post). This affords greater control on where they appear, but means they can’t be moved without editing each post! With Shylock’s system you specify where ads should appear (eg top right of the post, middle left, etc) and Shylock adds the Adsense code to all posts.

A key feature of Shylock is that it allows you to only display ads on posts older than a certain number of days. If you set this to say 14 days, ads will not appear on new posts, meaning the majority of regular readers and social traffic won’t see them. This will certainly improve CTR and advertiser conversion rate, but there are a couple of problems:

1. It only works for ads in the post body. Ads in the sidebar will continue to appear to everyone.
2. Some regular visitors, social traffic, people following links will visit old post and be shown ads. It’s best if it appears for search traffic only.

As my sidebar ad is my highest earner, I’m not willing to give it up. Therefore, I decided to hack Shylock and the sidebar, so that ads are only shown to search engine traffic. This sounds complicated, but it’s actually quite simple. This post was supposed include instructions on how to do this, but I think I’ll leave that to a separate post, later this week.

The Final Word

Adsense Smart Pricing is something everyone wants to avoid, but the average blog is in serious danger of being smart priced. The solution may be to show ads to search engine traffic only. However, don’t assume that a blog is smart priced simply because it has a low CTR – do some testing to see if this is really the case.

Got an opinion on this? Let me know!

Adsense – some love it, some hate it. It doesn’t work for all sites, but there’s no denying that on the right site, it can make a lot of money.

Most beginners don’t understand what type of site it works well on. They slap Adsense on their blog and expect the cash to come rolling in. Of course, it doesn’t. Why? Because Adsense doesn’t work well on their type of site.

In this article, I explain the underlying principle of Adsense and look at the attributes of sites that are successful with Adsense.

The Underlying Principle Of Adsense

First, we need to understand the underlying principle of Adsense. I’ve seen people skirt around the issue, but I’ve never seen anyone actually come out and say it:

For Adsense to work well, your content should not solve the reader’s problem. If you solve their problem, they won’t need to click the ads.

If you leave the reader needing more information, you increase the chance of them clicking a contextual ad which may solve their needs.

The better your content is, the lower your click through rate (CTR) will be.

So Should I Start Writing Mediocre Content?

No! Not unless it’s for an MFA site. If you start writing mediocre content on a blog, you’ll lose your readers and your blog will start to fail on all fronts.

For a blog, you need great content. This increases readership, encourages other sites to link to you, leading to more traffic, a higher PageRank, etc. Take the great content away and your blog will fail. Blogs can make money from Adsense, but they generally have a low CTR.

For an MFA site, good content is less important. These sites don’t rely on the content to promote the site – they are more likely to use Article Marketing. They typically have mediocre content and, as a result, a high CTR.

Other Factors Affecting Adsense Success

There are many other factors affecting the success of Adsense, including:

1. Target Audience / Ad Awareness

Its well known that experienced Internet users are less likely to click ads than newer / casual Internet users. This appears to be related to visitor awareness of what’s content and what’s an ad. Experienced Internet users can spot ads a mile off and avoid clicking them.

The topic of a site determines the type of visitor it receives. Sites about web development, making money online, etc will attract visitors who are experienced Internet users and mostly Adsense blind. Sites about knitting or pets will attract visitors who are more likely to click ads.

2. Where Do Your Visitors Come From?

Does your site cater for regular visitors or search engine visitors? What about social traffic, such as that from StumbleUpon?

Regular visitors don’t normally click ads. They come to read your content and go away happy, their goal fulfilled.

Search engine visitors do click ads. They arrive at your site seeking to address a specific need. If your content doesn’t solve the need, they’ll keep looking. If they see a related Adsense ad, they are likely to click it.

Social traffic visitors don’t normally click ads. What’s more, a surge of social traffic results in high traffic with few clicks, drastically lowering your CTR, which can result in you being Smart Priced by Google (more on this later).

3. Niche / Value Of Clicks

Having a high CTR is great – but what if most clicks only earn you 6 cents? To make serious money from Adsense you need to target high paying niches.

4. Traffic

Even if you have a low CTR, decent money can still be made with high traffic. After all, 1% of 1000 is the same as 25% of 40 (it is: trust me, I checked).

However, you probably need upwards of 10,000 unique visitors a day to make serious money. At that point, you’ll be earning more from other sources, but Adsense can supplement that nicely.

5. Adsense Smart Pricing

Not many people have heard about Adsense Smart Pricing and there’s little information about it. It appears that if you have a low CTR (under 1 or 2%), you may be penalised, so you only get about 10% of what clicks are worth.

Note: If you have a WordPress blog, it may be worth using the Who Sees Ads plugin so that only search engine traffic see Adsense ads. I haven’t done this on this blog yet as I’m looking into another option at the moment.

Putting It All Together

To gauge how successful a site is likely to be with Adsense, all these factors need to be taken into account. If a site is weak in one area, it can still be successful if its strong in the other areas. That said, lets take a look at the ideal site for Adsense and the ‘Anti-Adsense’ site where it won’t work well.

The Ideal Site For Adsense should have mediocre content, be targeted at search engine traffic and be in a niche which attracts inexperienced web users and high clicks. With all that in place, the higher the traffic the better!

Adsense Won’t Work Well on sites with good content, regular readers and social traffic, especially in niches which attract experienced web users or which have low paying clicks.

Okay, if you haven’t figured it out yet:

MFA sites are very close to the ideal site for Adsense.  The only struggle they have is with achieving high traffic, but the traffic they do receive is targeted traffic, resulting in a high CTR, so they make money.

Blogs are much closer to the anti-Adsense site. For a blog to be successful, they have to embrace many of the things that don’t work well with Adsense. For Adsense to work on a blog, you’ll need traffic and LOTS of it – although some niches may be moderately successful with only medium traffic. If you’re in the making money online, blogging or a technical niche, best of luck!

The Adsense Dilemma

If you really want to make money with Adsense, then you have to face up to the fact that you’re unlikely to do so with your blog. You then have a choice:

1. Persist with your blog. Try to build it into a top-of-niche, high-quality blog, with lots of traffic. This will take a long time and you won’t see much money until you’ve ‘made it’.

OR

2. Forget your blog, at least for making money purposes. Instead look into creating MFA sites.

That’s the Adsense dilemma. What will you do?

The Final Word

A lot of this has been repeated in various places around the Internet. I’ve tried to pull it all together. The one thing I haven’t seen written elsewhere, is the theory:

Your content shouldn’t solve people’s problems if you want them to click Adsense ads.

If you disagree with me, tell me why! If you agree – what will you do?

Addendum

Something I’ve been thinking about recently is Adsense optimized WordPress Themes. If you’re starting multiple blogs and your goal is make money by running Adsense on them, then getting some themes already set up for Adsense may be the way to go…

A lot of my favourite blogs discuss making money online. I’ve been plotting how I can get in on the action – but I recently had a revelation. While reading about the many different strategies, I’d lost sight of what’s most likely to make me decent money online: leveraging my existing skill set.

Do I Want To Make Money Online?

Yes! When I started this blog, the purpose wasn’t to make money from it. I only wanted to cover my hosting costs. Slowly, I’ve started thinking it would be nice to make more money from it. Maybe take my family out to dinner. Maybe pay for a holiday. Maybe, just maybe, even make a living online…

Why the change in my goals? Because I read so many blogs that discuss making money. That’s right – I’m blaming you guys!

So What Ideas Have You Been Putting Into My Head?

There are a lot of great posts out there about making money online.

Some cover strategies that could generate extra income from this blog, such as Affiliate Marketing, creating and selling an ebook or information product, sponsored posts or displaying ads from WidgetBucks, TLA, Kontera, etc.

Others involve creating additional sites. For example: building niche mini sites and promoting them through article marketing or starting an online store.

All of these sound possible to me. I’m convinced I could successfully implement these strategies. In fact, I’m planning to put more than one of these into place in the near future (but that’s a story for another day).

No Magic Solutions

One thing has stood out with everything I’ve read. None of these strategies will make me rich overnight. Many people point out that making money online is not an easy business. It’s possible, but it’s hard work and slow progress.

So, let’s stop for a minute. I’m spending lots of time learning something new, which is going to be hard work and take time to pay off? That’s fine. But why not make money from what I already know? I should be able to start earning right away. I’d forgotten the simplest route.

Leveraging Your Existing Skill Set

It will be different for everyone, but I’m sure that everyone has some skill or talent that they can leverage to make money online.

Think about your skills. Are you an SEO expert? Provide a website review service. A niche marketer? Provide a consulting service for starters. An architectural assistant? Do some freelance work. Get the picture?

Of course, many people do this already, but I haven’t seen anyone writing about it as a way to make money online. I’m not sure if it’s because people think it’s obvious or whether it’s not glamorous enough. Maybe it’s because there’s not as much mileage in telling people to do what they already know!

Whatever the reason, if you’re not utilising your skills you need to think about how you may be able to do this.

Argument Against Leveraging Your Skill Set

There is an argument against offering services which use your skill set: In most cases, it won’t lead to passive income. To keep the revenue stream going, you will have to actively keep working.

It may be better to spend the time developing passive income streams, which only require minimal work to maintain.

But There Are Follow-on Benefits

In addition to the immediate monetary benefits, there are follow-on benefits of offering services based on your skill set.

Providing services can help you position yourself as an expert in your niche, driving your blog forward and leading to greater opportunities down the line. It’s likely to lead to loyal readers, higher traffic, increased advertising income, higher sales of ebooks and so on.

How I’m Going To Leverage My Skill Set

What skills do I have? I can write WordPress plugins and develop websites.

I have other skills too, but these are the ones I think will best translate into online income. When I answered a WordPress Plugin Rewrite Challenge, I realised there’s a market for custom WordPress plugins and plugin modification that I can tap into.

I’m now offering services, including custom WordPress development. I’m not expecting to make a lot of money (one plan is free!), but it’s more likely to provide an immediate revenue stream than the other strategies are. I’ll persist with those as well, but services offer better short term value for me.

The Final Word

If you don’t offer services based on your existing skill set, you need to consider what services you could offer. By all means, pursue other ways of making money online, but don’t pass up an option which may lead to easy money.

What do you think? Let me know if you agree, or if you think I’m wrong!

When I started blogging five months ago, I hadn’t even considered the possibility of writing sponsored posts. To be honest, I only wanted to write original content and I was against memes, awards, sponsored posts, etc.

I’ve just signed up with payperpost, so obviously my views have changed!

Why? Mainly because of the many blogs I frequent which include sponsored posts. In general these are well done and don’t detract from the site – in fact they often add value to the site. RT at Untwisted Vortex always makes sponsored posts entertaining and informative. They are worth reading even if you don’t need the sponsored service right now. I’m guessing people will remember his posts when they do need that service.

Now, why did I choose PayPerPost? Here are some of the reasons:

1. I’ve read many reviews of sponsored post services and PayPerPost always seem to come first.
2. Most of the blogger I know that write sponsored posts are using PayPerPost.
3. RT from Untwisted Vortex has been an inspiration to me in many ways and he recommends PayPerPost.

PayPerPost also have a reputation for having lots of opportunities and are known for being reliable (in terms of payment), two things which are important to bloggers.

At the end of the day, PayPerPost was really the only contender.

Will I make lots of money through PayPerPost? Who knows! Probably not enough to give up my day job, although it seems there are some bloggers who come close to that.

Personally, all I want is to cover my hosting costs and to occasionally take my family out to dinner. Google Adsense definitely isn’t going to allow that. PayPerPost will.

22 cents actually. A day or so after enabling Google Adsense, my blog generated its first income from a click. A day later, another cent appeared. I’m not sure where the extra cent came from. It’s not from a click and it can’t be from impressions. I guess Google were just feeling generous.

Not Adsense!

I’ve read many posts recently saying that Adsense doesn’t perform as well as other options. Some people are even removing Adsense from their sites. It seems that Adsense is no longer the flavour of the month.

As I’ve said elsewhere, I know that Adsense will probably not work well with this blog’s content or with my target audience. I know there’s a chance it may even drive some readers away. I know there are other ways of monetizing a site. Despite all this, I am giving Adsense a whirl. Why?

I’m starting to do a little freelance web development. Adsense does suit some sites very well and is popular with my potential client base, so I need to have first hand knowledge of working with it.

I’ll also be trying out other options as well, but don’t worry, I’ll keep the ads to a minimum on the site. Making money is not the primary aim of this blog.

Obsessive Behaviour

Of course, despite my previous statement, I fell into the very common trap of checking the Adsense site every 10 minutes to see if I was a millionaire yet. Not quite, but that first 21 cents felt almost as good!

I quickly tired of constantly checking the total, but didn’t give up. Instead I installed the AdSense Earnings Reports plugin which displays your Adsense results in the Admin area of WordPress. Unfortunately the plugin didn’t work for me (nothing happened, the stats weren’t populated, not even to say 0).

Then I read a ‘Top xx Firefox Extensions’ post (I lost the URL unfortunately), which lead me to the Adsense Notifier extension for Firefox. I spend more time in Firefox than I do on my Admin screen (in Firefox), so my obsession can be fed more easily with this! However, there is a problem with it. You must manually log in before it will work (it should log you in automatically).

My guess is that Google has changed something recently that has broken both the plugin and the extension. Then again, I can’t find any reports of other people having problems, so it may just be me.

Anyway, my obsession is fading now. I’ll just check it one last time…

Ad Placement

For the moment, I am putting one 468 x 60 Banner in the post body, one 120 x 240 Vertical Banner in the sidebar and one referral unit in the sidebar.

I have tried to blend the ads in by using similar colours to my theme. I don’t want them to stand out too much and annoy everyone. Neither do I want people to be blind to them.

However, I have placed a border around them as I don’t want them to blend in too much and have people click them by accident (although this seems to be essentially what many Adsense gurus recommend).

I’m interested in any feedback on this. As a reader, do you prefer ads to stand out clearly, or do you prefer them to blend in? If you use Adsense on your site, have you found it to be better to blend them in?

Displaying The Ads

There are quite a few WordPress plugins for displaying Adsense, but at the moment I’m using a ‘home grown’ solution for the post body. I wrote a quick plugin (took 5 minutes) that replaces a tag I enter with my Adsense code.

This is probably not the long term solution. I’ve had a quick look at the Adsense-Deluxe plugin, which seems pretty powerful. I’ve also been hearing good things about the Shylock Adsense plugin, so I may have a look at that. Any advice is welcome.

For the sidebar, I’m using the Google Adsense widget plugin by Otto. I tried text widgets at first, but I use quite a few already and after a while it’s hard to remember what Text 4 is for. Otto’s plugin gives you widgets which are basically text widgets but with Google Adsense in the widget title.

The number of Adsense widgets is restricted to 4 (the maximum number of units allowed under Google’s old Terms of Service). These days you are allowed up to 11 units when you combine ad units, link units, referrals and searches. I’m not planning to use that many, but if I do, I could always use text widgets for the extra ones!

The Final Word

I’m looking forward to seeing how Adsense works. I’ll probably play with the positioning and type of ads to see how they perform. It’s a learning experience for me.

If you have any tips for me, please leave a comment. Thanks.

Most bloggers think that selling dofollow links is bad, right? But what if you do it in a roundabout way, without really intending to? Let me explain…

It started when I read Blog Begging or Donations? on the Cayman Host Blog. This discusses whether the rise of donation plugins like Buy Me A Beer or Buy Me A Coffee is a good thing or not.

While I can’t see myself ever asking for donations for a normal post, I am considering it for my DualFeeds plugin page.

It came to me that I should create a list of links, on the plugin page, to anyone who donated. This seemed like a nice gesture for people willing to give me some of their hard earned money.

Then I thought, “Hey, they’d benefit from the fact that I have nofollow disabled – maybe that’s even an incentive for them to donate”. Not only are they rewarding me for the plugin, they are getting a dofollow link on a page that might end up with a decent PageRank (the decent PageRank might be some time away, given this is a new blog).

But it raises questions in my mind. Is it okay to give links to people in return for a donation? Am I crossing the line if I use the dofollow link to sell making a donation?

Of course I haven’t actually decided yet whether I will ask for a donation, but I’m interested to know what you all think about this.