AB WEBS: Earn Money Online

Showing posts with label Earn Money Online. Show all posts

Friday, September 9, 2011

How do I earn from AdSense

NOTE: I am putting 2 sons through college via AdSense, and doing it quite comfortably, so I have no hesitation in recommending you try it if you have similar needs. You can apply for an AdSense account via the "Generate revenue from your website. Google AdSense" referral link at the top of the left sidebar. You will need a website for them to review when you apply. A blog will do. For beginners, I think this Dummies Guide to Google Blogger ("online book" in progress. Use the CONTENT at the top of the main column" can help you get started off quickly

For more information, read the rest of the post. You can earn via referral links like that once you get an AdSense account. I will put a link to a post I will publish later to show how you can earn via referral links like that later.

Someone asked these questions about AdSense, and I though I might as well answer them in a post. Will expand on this post as I have more to add.

1) How can i earn from Google AdSense.
2) How will i be paid for it .
3) Do i need to pay anything to Google for this .
4) If i need to pay anything how much it is .
5) Will my personal information will be kept confidential.
6) Do i need any special software.

But before you can earn anything, you will need a website. If you don't have one, you can start a blog, and Dummies Guide to Google Blogger will guide you. Then you will have to apply for an AdSense account. You can do that by clicking on the text link that says "Generate revenue from your website. Google AdSense" at the top of the right sidebar.

Products related to AdSense

How can I earn from Google AdSense

You can earn from Google AdSense in three ways:

Contextual Advertisements

By placing contextual text or images ads on your sites. These ads are of two types - CPC (Cost per Clicks) ads for which you will only be paid if readers click on the ads, and CPM (Cost per 1000 impressions) for which you will be paid for just displaying the ads on your site, irrespective of whether the readers click on them or not. Although it is Cost per 1000 impressions, you don't need to reach 1000 impressions to be paid, but you would be paid proportionately for each click. The figures are given as cost per 1000 impressions because if they are given as cost per impressions, the figure will be so small that it will be below 2 decimal points. However, in the long term, CPC and CPM ads should give equivalent earnings to you.

Types of Contextual Ad units

There are 2 type of contextual advertisement units that you can put in your site - ad units and link units. Ad units displayed the ads directly on your site. An example is the Wide Skyscraper Ad unit you see in the left sidebar in this blog. You will be paid as explained as above. An example of link unit is the one you see just below the title of this blog in the Header. You will not be paid for clicks on links in link units. However, clicking on one of them will cause a page with ads relevant to the title of the link. You will be paid as explained above for clicks or impressions as explained above. The maximum number of Ad units you can put in a page is 3, and the maximum number of link unit is 1.

AdSense Search

You can put up to 2 AdSense search boxes on your site. They can be just for searching the Web, or they can be used for searching only the content of your site. You will not be paid for readers for using the searchbox, only if they click on any ads that may be displayed in the search result page.

Referrals

You can also earn by referring people to join AdSense or AdWord, or to get other things like FireFox with Google toolbar, Google Pack, Picasa. You can see examples of referral text links at the top of the right sidebar of this blog. You can place a maximum of 2 referral buttons or text links per product on your sites, and if your readers click on these, you may be paid under certain conditions. Currently, there are 4 referral products that available - Google AdSense, Google AdWords, FireFox with Google toolbar and Picasa (now being replaced by Google Pack, depending on which country you reside in). For Google AdSense, if your reader join AdSense via your referral button, you will be paid US100 if they manage to earn US$100 within 180 days (6 months). For Google AdWords, if your reader sign up and spend US$100 within 90 days, you will earn US$20. For FireFox with Google toolbar, if your reader download, install and runs the browser for the first time, you will be paid up to US$1 depending on their geographical location. For Picasa, when a user you've referred to Picasa downloads and runs the product for the first time, you will earn up to US$1, also depending which geographical location.

UPDATE 2 February 2007: The pricing structure for AdSense and AdWord have been improved and it is now easier to get a referral fee for them. If within 180 days, the person you referred to AdSense earn their USD5, your account will also be credited with USD5. If within the same period, they earned USD100, your account will be credited with an additional USD250. In addition to these, if within any 180 days you referred 25 publishers who each earn more than $100 within 180 days of their respective sign-ups and are all eligible for payout, you will be awarded a $2,000 bonus (bonus payouts are limited to 1 per year).

When an advertiser (AdWords) you refer spends $5 within 90 days of sign-up (in addition to the $5 sign-up fee) you will be credited with $5. When that same advertiser spends $100 within 90 days of sign-up, you will be credited with an additional $40. If, in any 180 day period, you refer 20 advertisers who each spend more than $100 within 90 days of their respective sign-ups, you will be awarded a $600 bonus (bonus payments are limited to 1 per year).

How will i be paid for it

You will be paid if in a month you earn US100 or more. If you earn less than that, you will not be paid, but the amount will be carried forward and you will be paid when the total reaches US100 or more. You will normally receive your payment by check sent to the address you registered when you apply (even if you don't live in the US). Some countries have the option of being paid by EFT (Electronic Fund Transfer) where the payment is transferred by wire, and will be faster and cost less than being paid by check.

Do i need to pay anything to Google for this

No, you do not need to pay anything to Google. However, for earnings obtained from ads via AdSense searches, some amount may be deducted for the cost of performing the search, but the amount deducted will never be more than what you earn.

Will my personal information will be kept confidential

The only information that anyone can get from the Web is your AdSense ID (which can be obtained by viewing the source code of pages which have your AdSense ads, but which will be useless to them as far as getting personal information about you.) No other personal information is displayed anywhere on the Web.

Do I need any special software

No, you don't need any software or download anything from AdSense. To participate, all you need to do is to sign into your AdSense account and generate the scripts you need to add to your site to get the AdSense products displayed.

It is very easy to apply for an AdSense account. All you need is a website which some content (someone got his account approved by having just one post in a blog), click on the "Generate revenue from your website. Google AdSense" text link at the top of the left sidebar and fill in your particulars

Getting AdSense Products on your Site

If you are new to AdSense, you can learn how to generate the scripts needed from these posts and how to blend the colors to the colors of your site (click BACK button to get back to this page).

Generating Revenue by Email Marketing

This blog has mainly concentrated on ways of earning revenue from a website, mainly through advertisements, particularly the popular Google AdSense. This must mean a passive stance - waiting for visitors to come to your site. You may do various things to increase traffic to your site, for example using SEO (Search EngineHow to build traffic to your website.

There are other ways of earning from the Internet. While search engine marketing (SEM or paying search engines to put your links or advertisements as sponsored results in SERP or search engine result page. Others have included SEO as part of SEM) has been placed as the most effective marketing online tactic, email marketing has been place second, which is not bad.

If your blog is a business blog or you have a blog with many loyal followers, you should perhaps consider using Email Marketing in addition to your normal way of generating income from your site. You may of course try to earn from ads or affiliate links on your blog from returning visits and may try to encourage that by adding an email subscription box to keep loyal readers of updates, but set the feed to short so if they want to read the full post, they will have to visit your site.

If you have an idea of, say, starting an ezine (e-magazine), you will need to build up an opt-in email list by putting an opt-in box on your website. I have, however, tried to find a free opt-in box for a blog, but was unsuccessful. You can get a free online form for your visitors. If you have the intention, you can google the 2 terms using the search box above (tick the WEB radio button) and I am sure eventually you will find something that will suit your needs. I will make a note and try to make a post on putting an online form for blog later when I have time, and when I have done that, I will put a link to that post here.

It will make getting an email list of interested (and targeted) subscribers easier if you have some useful information that people will want to download and in the process of getting the download, an option to subscribe to your list.

While email marketing may be the second most effective way of generating earning online, without the proper software, a lot of hard work will be involved. Not only that, certain things which may help you, or may even be essential to you, will not be available to you without the proper software. This is where ViperMailer comes in. They offer features like Account Overview Control Panel, Contact Group Management, Importing your Contact Lists, Managing your Contacts, Creating your Message Content, Managing your eMail Campaigns, Graphical and Spelling Mistakes Error Prevention, Provide Customizable Mailer Templates, including the possibility of creating your own Custom Templates, Printing Detailed Reports for your Records or Meetings. You can view the details of their features at ViperMailer Features. Their pricing for their services are based on the number of contacts in your Contact Lists and for a full listing of their pricing plans, go to ViperMailer Pricing Plans.
I was looking for one particular essential feature in their site, that is an opt-in box for your site, but it was not list of features. Maybe I will make it my good deed of the day by suggesting they add that to their list of features because I believe having an opt-in box is absolutely essential if you don't want to accused of sending spam, and if you have a double opt-in box, that is even better.

Email Marketing

Unless you are very blessed and potential customers get to know about your business and
business come to you without any effort on your part, to make your business successful, you will have to do marketing. Marketing can take various form. One of them is email marketing. Email marketing is direct marketing via electronic means, that is, via the Internet and electronic mail or email.

The first step involved in email marketing is of course preparation of the content of the email. The next step is to send it to recipients identified as potential customers. This means you must have a targeted marketing list or mailing leads which you can build up yourself or purchase.

The kind of mailing list you use will of course depend on the kind of business you are in. If you are in the business of mortgage or business related to mortgage like for example mortgage insurance, you will of course use a mortgage mailing list which you can build up yourself or to save time, purchase from a reputable source.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Comparison: Google AdSense and Amazon Affiliate

Before we make any comparison between Goggle AdSense and Amazon Associates, let us first discuss the type of online advertisements.

CPC (cost per click): also know as PPC (pay per click). Publisher get paid only when visitor click on an advertisement. No click, no pay

CPM (cost per thousand impressions): Publisher get paid each time a CPM ad is displayed. Amount paid per impression (amount paid each time CPM ad is displayed) is the same irrespective of whether visitor click on the ad or whether an action (like buying something) by visitor is induced by the CPM ad. CPM is called cost per 1000 impressions because the amount paid for a single impression is usually very little, so that amount per impression is multiplied by 1000 to create a figure that is more meaningful.

CPA (cost per action): Also called PPA (pay per action or pay per aquisition), CPA ads require visitors to do more than just clicking on an ad. Publisher get paid only when a visitor who clicked on a CPA ad acted upon the advertisement such as buy something, filled in a form or other pre-defined action. No action, no pay.

Comparison between Google AdSense and Amazon Associates

Google AdSense serves all three types of ads - CPC, CPM and CPA and thus has a huge inventory to draw from to display in a publisher's website or blog and thus gives publishers a better chance of getting income from publishing content. Furthermore, CPC and CPM ads offer an easier path to earning something from ads as compared to CPA ads which require action.

However, AdSense ads uses Javascript. Blogs using the Blogger platform for their blog cannot copy-paste Javascript into their posts (post editor) and thus faces restrictions within the actual content, a section much more visible to visitors (and thus more effective) than places like the sidebar, footer, etc.

Amazon uses both Javascript as well as active hyperlinks. Such hyperlinks (HTML) can very easily be incorporated any place which allows HTML and that include posts like this one.

For example, I can incorporate an Amazon ad within this sentence by making reference to blogging. Try clicking on this link or the preceding link and you will discover that you have ended up in Amazon's site and if you purchase anything from Amazon, a commission will be paid.

However, as mentioned above, Amazon Associates serve only PPA ads (visitor need to purchase something) which means earnings are harder to generate. My experience is that earnings from AdSense is many times more from than Amazon Associates.

Shelf life (Paste and forget)

Google AdSense is very much a "paste and forget" operation because a publisher only has to paste AdSense's Javascript in the proper place and forget about it. AdSense will continue to serve relevant ads there without publisher having to do anything.

Amazon Associates however have such thing as time limited special offers which expires and after which expiry date, the links need to be removed. Amazon Associate can also link to a specific product or page which has a shelf life (expiry date), for example, link to a book. Books can become out of print which then render the Amazon link irrelevant. (This is why I usually link to a search page which never expire)

Trade shows - my recent experience

I recently had been to 2 major trade shows related to home improvements as I am currently renovating my house and am in the market for stuff like cooker hoods, hobs, oven, counter tops, wash basins, tap fittings, shower heads, shower screens, hot and cold mixers, toilet bowls, etc.

In both trade shows, there were many very attractive trade show displays on all kind of products related to home improvement. In one of the trade booths, there was one exhibitor displaying what he called Nano cloth and his demonstration was so effective I purchase 4 of them.

In both trade shows, all the exhibitors were competing for the attention of visitors and from what I observed, if they want to be really effective to grab attentions, they should place logo floor mats all over the trade show area.

At the end of one of those trade shows, about one hour before closing, they made an announcement that the loading (and unloading) bay will be closed at 10.45pm, only 45 minutes after the end of the trade exhibition. What I observed was even before the trade show officially ended, many exhibitors were already packing up in their hurry to meet the unloading bay closing time. I feel that the organizers were very unfair to both the exhibitors as well as the visitors. I think if the exhibitors had used truss to construct their trade booth, they should be able to dismantle them much faster and they probably would not need to be in such a hurry.

I can see that trade shows are very effective as I was induced to purchase many items from the exhibitors, many of which in fact are not planned.

Trade exhibitions, booths, trusses, logo mats

Taking part in trade exhibitions is one of the best way to promote your money making outfits and getting yourself and your products known. However, to be effective, you need attractive exhibit booths to attract the crowd to your booth.

However, because you will probably be participating in more than 1 trade shows, your booth should be lightweight so that they are easily carried around plus once on site, also be easily opened up and expand to fill a large space. These requirements are easily fulfilled by lightweight collapsible exhibition truss.

I would bet at a trade show, the largest surface area and thus the best area to push yourself and your products will be the floor. What better thing to do than to place logo floor mats where they cannot fail to be noticed.

So to make your efforts in participating in trade exhibitions worth the trouble, the trick is to make your trade show displays attractive and crowd pleasing and you will be on your way to success.

Participate in trade shows and give a cost effective boost to your business

In the past 11 months, I have visited numerous trade shows. Judging from the crowd that a trade show can pull in, I believe I can safely say that participating in trade show is probably the most effective way to give a business a boost. Essentially, not only are visitors an audience targeted towards a theme, a trade, they are mostly all motivated buyers already in the mood to buy.

With well selected trade show exhibits plus well selected table top display to showcase the products and services your company has to offer, visitors also will receive an education on choices that are available and the pros and cons of each product or service.

One may also try to add a bit of drama and capture the allure that the sight of some nice all season directors chairs with the logo of your company prominently imprinted onto the chair backs, your company will avail itself of loads of favorable publicity and brand your brand into the deeper recesses of the visitors' brains.