Adsense - Don't get banned!

Recently, I have heard of people having their Adsense account being banned. Sometimes, people try to outsmart the system by generating 'unnatural' clicks but Google is pretty smart, so don't mess with them.

Firstly, a bit of explanation of what 'Adsense' is in case you are not aware. In layman's language, Google has come up with a clever system to allow you to put advertisements on your website or even at your blogs. These are Ads that you can see even in my blog. If you noticed on the top and at the bottom of this post, there's this 'Ads by Goooogle', well those are the Adsense Ads. These are paid advertisements that advertisers pay Google (also known as Adwords) a certain fee whenever readers click on them. For more information, check out google.com/adsense

Now, some people may think, hey! Why don't I set up a page with Adsense and get all my friends to click on it! DON'T! Read the guidelines on this, Google is not stupid!

In case you find it a bit messy to read the tons of terms and conditions, I'll put it here for your convenience in point forms. For detailed explaination go to the Adsense Help Centre to read more.

• Don't click on your own Google ads.
  


• Don't ask others to click on Google ads.
  (most common folly)


• Don't employ pop-up prompts or automatic software installations.


• Be aware of how your site is promoted.(means be careful when purchasing traffic or setting up ad campaigns with 3rd parties. Make sure, they don't display your site that has adsense as a popup or as a result of a software application. That's not allowed)


• Don't place Google ads on sites that contain prohibited content. (well, you should know what they are :P )


• Respect Google trademarks
  (basically, don't use their trademark, logos, web pages or screen shoots without approval)


• Don't tamper with the AdSense code.


• Provide a positive user experience. This one means not to use excessive pop-ups, or sneaky tricks to get traffic etc. Don't deceive users, that what it means)


• Provide a good environment for advertisers. (again, no dirty tricks to trigger clicks)


• Be responsive. (Ok, this one says if you get an email by the AdSense team, you'd better respond! So make sure your email id is correct!)

Well, there are more. But these serves well for newbies for the time being (so as not get overwhelmed!). Once you get a hang of it, you can check out more of the policies.

- The Hunz -

Cheap domain names

Here's a great place to register your domain names PLUS I'll share with you a secret to get an even better deal! (while it last, that is. Read On..)

Go check out namecheap.com (no affiliate links in case you are wondering!)

Why is it a good deal? Unlike GoDaddy, this one gives you a F-REE Whois Guard worth $4.88 for 1 year! And the price is $8.88/yr, compared to GoDaddy's $8.95/yr.

If I have found this earlier, I wouldn't have spent more on GoDaddy and to think I even paid extra to get my 'whois' information private!

For those who do not know what is 'whois guard', well here are some basic background. When you register a domain name, your details will be stored with the registrar. Now this is public info and you can always find out who registered a domain name using 'whois' function available at most domain registration sites. Now if you do not want to let people know your details for example your address etc, you can subscribe to the service to hide it. In this case, namecheap.com gives you that protection for 1 year F.R.E.E!


NOW, here's an additional tip to get a better deal. Once you have chosen a domain name in your shopping cart, before you click on the purchase, there's a field for you to fill in a coupon code.

Type in "bestvalue" (without the quotes) and 'magically' $8.88 becomes $7.99
Well, not exactly magic but this is the coupon discount. I'm not sure who it's for, but heck, better use it while the offer is still on!

- the hunz -

Google Ranking and Nichebot

Was just checking my google ranking, a search on "internet wealth code" (with the quotes in the search box) and you'll see my blog page ranked 13th that means on 1st page!! Yay! Cheap thrill! Anyway, try "internet wealth" and "internet marketing" as keywords, my blogpage is probably lost in some black hole.

Now, if you like to know the ranking of your websites in Google for the different keywords instead manually counting them using Google search, here's something nifty that you can use. Checkout out nichebot.com

How do you use this site? It's also a great site to do keyword research. Keyword research helps to give you an idea what people are looking for and the keywords that was used to do the search. If a particular keyword or phrase was been searched very often, it can be assumed that there's a large market for it, so we can think of providing some product for it. However, a good market may also mean a lot of competition.

So how can we find out from the internet? One way is to go to inventory.overture.com to check what are the popular keywords, and then to google to check out how many sites are already listed using the keyword. That's good but that's a bit tad tedious.

That's why using nichebot, 'keyword discovery' is so much better. You can find out how many people have searched for the keyword, how many pages in Google having the exact keyword and thus calculate the competitve ratio for you.

For example, if you use the keyword 'singing', nichebot automatically compile the figures for you, i.e the number of times these keyword was searched for and then the number of pages that are listed in Google that uses the exact keyword. For this example of 'singing', well with a ratio of 1928.36, (no of pages over no of searches) it's definitely an overcrowded keyword to compete in. Instead, why not try something like 'singing auditions' instead. With only a ratio of 2.76, it looks a better keyword to use for your product then. So that's how you can do some market research to decide what products to create.

And back to the what I was talking about earlier. Use the 'Google Ranking' to find out how your website fare with different keywords.

Backup!

Here's a good lesson to learn if you are an internet marketing newbie.

Always BACKUP!

Here's a lesson I learnt. As you can see I have an opt-in box that is linked to 1ShoppingCart.com. But right now, if you key in your name and email and hit 'submit' you end up in their website instead of my personal thank-you page (and inadvertently advertise for them, how smart of them).

Well, it wasn't suppose to be that way but only because my membership expired.

My gripe is that they did not warn me that my account was expiring so I forgot to renew it and I lost all the mailing list that I collected before it expired. Well, initially I thought of continuing my membership with 1shoppingcart but this incident made me decide to install my own autoresponder php software in my host instead. At least I have better control of my mailing list and not have to pay monthly fee for their services.

That said, it's also wise to periodically export your mailing list and files to your own computer or other backup devices. Why?

Here's another lesson I learnt from my friend. If you have gone to www.EarnReadingEmails.com, you would have noticed that website experienced a server crash and all data were lost!!

I used to take for granted that the hosting company would be responsible for backups etc but here's the reality.

Unless you sign up for a dedicated server package (which normally cost a hefty sum a month!) your hosting package (maybe about USD8-9/mth)is actually a shared server package and the hosting company will not necessarily do backup for you.

And you can't blame them. Why? Because backups will slow down access to the website because of background processes and most importantly, it's not cost-effective to do it. (you only paid a meagre sum a month remember?)

And best of all, my friend highlighted to me that if you look closely at the terms, it's clearly stated that the hosting companies are NOT responsible for loss of data! So he learnt a good experience (he lost 3,500 members!) whereas I had a good OPE (other people's experience) learning moment!

So, if you are going to do some serious work with your website, don't take for granted the hosting company will do everything for you (unless you pay them) Instead, remember to BACKUP!

-The Hunz-

Affiliate marketing

From the last mastermind session, it was clear that while some of us are slowly picking up the basics like registering a domain, getting a webhost, getting the hang of starting a blog, Adsense Ads etc, most are still lost as to"What's next?", "I don't have a product, what do I sell?"

At the end of the exercises, it's natural to be anxious to want to earn some income online but it seems like there's so much more things to do before one can really see some cash flowing in.

If you are still a bit newbie like me, you probably haven't got your own product to market yet. We are probably still in the midst of creating the product and worst still, haven't got a clue how to start!

Does that mean then we'll have to wait for an apple to fall on our head to get some 'Newton' revelations on what product to create? Or if our product is work-in-progress that we can't make money online until it's ready? Heck no!

So it's no surprise when I asked around my fellow mastermind group members what they think they want to venture into next, affiliate marketing seems the popular choice.

The beauty of affiliate marketing is that by doing it, you also gain some experience on what kind of products are sellable. And of course, the product is ready made, the sales page is there for you, the payment etc are all taken care off. All you need is to know how to market it.

Yet, some of my mastermind members still had difficulty in understanding affiliate marketing and how to start. So I decided to dig out whatever there is that I have came across that is good material.

Basically if you remember my earlier post, I did mention about Ewen Chia. He's one of the KING in affiliate marketing having won international competions in this area. Ewen started without any product and through his years of figuring out how to perfect affilliate marketing,
has got a pretty good handle of what it takes to be a Super Affilliate.

I was reading one of his ebooks, Affiliate Money Machine and I thought it was a very good ebook for beginners because it teaches you step by step to understand Affiliate marketing.

If you are interested in this ebook, I've set up an autoresponder (Have to practice what you learn right?!) so if you subscribe with your name and email, you will automatically have access to it. You can either subscribe using the opt-in on the sidebar on the RIGHT side of this page..
...Oh yeah, did I mention it's FREE? ;)