Earn Money Online

SEO and earning money online

2009-07-17T07:38:00.003+02:00

There's been quite some feed around the make money niche. Google changes it's algorithms nearly daily so it's hard to keep up with staying on top of the serp's.

I've been building some links as well for myself. (example here) Yes, yes it's for my dutch blog again and the competition for that keyword 'earn money' (geld verdienen in dutch) is really laughable. The number one spot has about 110 backlinks and they are all from referal link websites selling strange products and services. Get back to me within this month and you'll see me on top there :D

Greets

Geld verdienen op het internet

2009-07-14T09:38:00.001+02:00

I just want to let you know that I started another blog called Geld Verdienen en it's in dutch :D

It's about the same topic but I'll try to be more active here as well as I got tons of other projects.

Cheers,

Mark

How to Earn Quick Money Online

2009-05-03T14:29:00.004+02:00

Make Money Online with AdSense

When it comes to earning money online quickly, then there is hardly any way to do it. You'll only be able to do it via black-hat techniques that don't last long. However they will get you the big cash right from the start till a few days. What I am talking about is: exploiting link switching in order to make Google think that you are getting more inbound links while actually you're just changing the link's anchor text.
However, once Google reindexes you they will also need to reindex the content as well. So after a week or even a few days, the links will be gone and the total amount of backlinks will disappear, making you unable to earn money online.

With Adsense, the possibility is high that you won't earn a lot without good traffic. To get good traffic you need backlinks, I'm always saying this. Backlinks with the right anchor text will get you higher in the search engine result pages. Thus giving you more traffic per keyword, and that results in more adsense earnings, considered you have the right placements and colors.
If your purpose is to earn money online then you need to focus on blending your ads inside your content, getting the users click on the ads is of course what you want. However let's say only 1 to 3% of all search engine visitors click on ads. A lot of people say: Write quality content, post 5 times per week or something similar and wait a few years to get to the top. With more content, you will rank for more long tailed keywords. What I'm going to say is not new, it's been confirmed all the time. The only way to be successful is getting quality backlinks (high Page Rank) to link back to your website. If possible make sure they are one way links since Google values that more than two way links.

The average internet user got used to the fact that a link to another resource is in most cases colored BLUE so blending ads in this case is very important. The tactic here is to make the users leave the blog as soon as possible by either clicking on an ad or by closing the browser.

So let's leave it like this. Get traffic, throw AdSense on your website. Do a little on your design, meaning you must blend your ads right into the content. Take my blog for an example, it's perfectly optimized for AdSense in every way. Also I'm benefitting from Blogger's age so I get in the better search results places than self-hosted websites. And it's even free.

What else do you want? :) So go out there, and start pouring up backlinks to your website and see the money flowing in.

How to Increase AdSense CTR

2009-04-09T10:16:00.004+02:00

Earn Money Online by Optimizing AdSense CTR

In my last post I've been talking about how to increase your AdSense earnings via, if you just joined me on this blog and haven't left yet because of it's beauty ;) - then you can find the post here: Increase AdSense revenue. Anyway I'll be going more into detail here and hope you will learn how to optimize your ads. Keep in mind that I'll only be discussing white hat methods because I don't want my readers to get into trouble using black hat techniques found elsewhere on the internet.

First off, we have to take a look at what platform you are using. If you are using wordpress then some of my tips here won't be that appropriate to an extent. However I'm using wordpress myself and I know that there are some plug ins available to block AdSense ads from appearing if you are obtaining social traffic instead of search traffic. In the last post I've explained the reason for this: social traffic is not converting well into clicks as opposed to search traffic.
This is important as it will allow you to use AdSense on a blog that is not necessarily built as an AdSense blog. If you take a look at my blog here you immediately notice the ads up there, above the fold. Ideally you should make every blog just for AdSense if your purpose is to earn money online. However most of you are trying to build up a steady readership and a good design, unlike this one, is always welcome then.

Back to basics: the idea of AdSense is to get users to click the ads. Sounds obvious doesn't it? However you are not allowed to encourage readers to click the ads, by all means don't - it's against Google TOS, and will get you banned. So how do we get the users to click the ads safely?

The first most important thing you want to do is get rid of all the exit points going out of your website. By this I mean you want to restrict the options your visitors have of leaving your site. Ideally there should only be two. They can click the go back out button (or close the tab/browser) or they can click the ad. In reality you will have to add a few more bells and whistles just for appearances.

The second thing is to give them a reason for clicking an ad. This can be achieved by using your content or making your blog so ugly (hint :P) that your visitors aren't even bothered to read your blog and search something else before leaving. Remember: spammy content will get you banned anyway.

Note: in the early years of AdSense people created websites JUST for AdSense with no content at all. I still remember those websites how had 6 ad units all over the page, with nothing else on it. They got banned a few moments later of course. So to not get banned from AdSense you have add a few bells and whistles to your site in order to make it look like it's not just about AdSense ads.

But here's the thing: the more you disguise the fact that your site is built around AdSense the less effective it becomes. The more it looks like "just for AdSense"site the more effective it becomes. The thing here is to find a middle spot that will get you a lot of clicks but won't get you banned.

The safest way to use AdSense is to throw it on your real blog. Remember the very first blog you started? The one that was on his way to become the next A-lister? It probably died some time ago. Anyway that was my story - yours could be different. The thing is if you slap AdSense on your blog it might be a safe way, you won't earn money at all. I see it all the time - people moaning that they are only earning $5 per month from AdSense and start yelling in comments on other websites how this is possible. I follow the link from the commenter and when I analyze his website I can see exactly why he is not making any money from AdSense at all.
He has all the wrong traffic coming to his blog, using the wrong ad formats and having his AdSense tucked away inside the bottomright corner because he thinks the ads are kinda "ugly" and doesn't want to scare his readers away.

If you want to earn money with Adsense then you have to build your blog around it and only it. Basically you throw your blog at AdSense rather than throwing AdSense at your blog. Hard to understand but if you want to earn money with AdSense, you have to build it from the ground (which is AdSense) and start building it up.

On the other hand we have blogger: it's ugly(!) - simple to use - search engine optimized (SEO) out of the box - and above all: free. It ranks well because of it's trust with Google and of it's age.
Now we also have wordpress: it creates a lot of users which want to become the next A-lister. Which is a perfect opportunity for blogger to earn money with. I've stated in my last posts that you can't really earn money with social traffic, well I have to correct that: It is possible.
This blog is ugly by all means I agree, it's a strategy. It is still ugly as hell and because of that and the prevalence of Wordpress users. Guess what - a lot of your readers get here - take a quick look - mutter to themselves "what the hell is this - a crappy Blogger blog - what could I learn here? Hey what's this ad about?" Click. I shit you not.

The point here is that there is a so called standard set nowadays for wordpress blogs. People in general and not just bloggers - expect an good looking layout for a website. This means even a random person can spot an ugly blog from a mile away. Guess what - they do the same thing your readers do - take one look and think to themselves that this crappy looking site can't have what I want and leave. The thing is that if they were looking for information on, for example, a computer and happen to see a big ad for the computer right in front of their face as they decide to leave then they will click the ad.

There is a reason for placing the big rectangle right under my title and above the content - any new visitor on this blog that doesn't want to read my content will either click an ad or back away. The thing is if you want to earn more money - simply get more backlinks to your website containing the right anchor texts with your main keywords in them. You will simply increase your traffic because 1 simple reasons (this is an example): if you have a blog with a daily visitor count of lets say 3000 unique and your CTR is ranging from 1% to 2% depending on the day. You can't increase your CTR that much - why? because 99% of the people on the internet knows what ads are what not. However there are ways you can increase them if your placements are far from optimal. There is a so called Google AdSense Heatmap which tells your the location you need to place your ads in order to perform well. The darker the orange spots are the better the Ads will perform - whereas those white spots aren't performing at all.

Best AdSense Placement

If you are just new to the whole blogging scheme, by all means - try out every singly ad spot and learn how to insert an ad to a location. Once you know that you can start optimizing your blog using the heatmap and I'll get onto the colors you should use (read below). Now that we are done I can tell you: slap a big rectangle(336 by 280) right above your content. It's the best performing ad location and the big rectangle is the best performing ad unit - no question. Don't try and meld it inside your text. Don't put the post title above it. Don't try to hide it in any way. Just have it sitting there getting in your visitors face. You are trying to make money with Adsense. Any visitor that has not seen an ad unit is a missed click chance. You are not trying to get long term readers or returning visitors, they do not click the ads. (well maybe just to be nice towards you, but they are not incidental)
If you have a CTR of 1%, play a little with ad placements and see what happens. The only way to earn more money is to increase your traffic.

I try to blend my ads inside this theme I have running here on blogspot. A good idea because it will still be ugly but it will not look like an amateur has put it together. May sound funny, but there is a difference between looking ugly and looking like you do not know what you are doing. Ugly is fine as long as your site looks like it's been built around it and doesn't look like it has been abandoned for years. This blog is plain, flat and straight to the point - it's well designed for it's purpose.

Best AdSense Colors

In general, using more friendly colors such as black on a white background works best. The color blue has been used all over the internet the past years and the average internet user just got used to the fact that a link to another resource is colored blue. Just like pricing a product $0,95 is a psychology. Ending a price a at $7 or $27 is also a very common way to price a product. It's the same for internet - people created habits on how things should work. If you deny this you won't get a lot of clicks. Put yourself inside the visitor and think of ways how they want an ad to look like.
Also about the borders, stay away from them. You only announce to your visitors that they are dealing with an ad without even looking at it. There was a case study on Banner Blindness a while ago, and this explains that the average internet user got used to any ad format that looks like a horizontal banner. Even if it's just an image - people will ignore it. Then again: go for rectangled units or squares.

Content

The content on your blog is very important. First of all you don't want to get banned from having a spammy AdSense blog. If your not providing usefull information then you run the risk having people reporting you.

The most important thing about content is how you get it optimized for the keywords you want to rank for. Also giving the fact that the AdSense crawlers take the relevancy for showing ads from your content it's important to highlight text you want the bots to show ads for.
Use your main keyword in the URL, Blog Title, Post Titles and Headers. Use as many related long tail keywords as possible in your posts. If you write extremely large posts then you will give Google a lot more text to draw keyword phrases from. (Hence this post is long :P) The more phrases you give Google. The higher the chance is you rank well for long tailed keywords and this is also where you get your first search engine traffic from. In time: as building backlinks with your main keywords you will see a increase in traffic.

I'm writing these long posts just to bore you, hoping you click an ad on the way out of this blog. Hehe just kidding. This doesn't really work of course. I write long posts to rank well for certain earn money online keywords. The main goal is to have users click on an ad or leave before they ever reach the content. Thus if you made it this far: congratulations but also a thank you from my side :)

If your visitors won't leave before they reach the content, then the content is the second wave for an attack. Structuring your post in such a way that the visitor will have questions when done reading your content. Don't overdo your content, provide just enough info so they still have questions. That way they will keep searching for an answer and in the hopes you have targeted ads they can find the info there. Giving you a click - voila. One example: take the computer again. Do not tell them where to buy one because that's what your ads are for. Write posts reviews computers because this will give you targeted ads and a higher CPC (cost per click). Tell them which is more eco friendly - produces less noise and is faster than others.

How you should write your content is up to you, I am by no means a perfect writer and will never be. I try to read my own blog posts over before I publish them but for some reason I read over my own mistakes. Probably frustrating the grammar police visitors. How you write a post also differs from the niche your in: Celebrity niches tend to be short posts but publish a lot more per day, scientific posts should be posted once or twice per week and long. What I am telling you is how I optimize for Adsense in a very general way.
Two niches can differ a lot and that is why you need to be creative. Think out of the box to be successful, which is hard I know but you have to learn it just by experimenting all the time. You may think you have the best ads, but try to use different post titles and see what other ads are displayed and what their CPC is. You may find that an ad that doesn't pay out more CPC than others, but they could be clicked more than the higher CPC ones. Giving you more revenue in return.

Always take a look at your keyword analytics (such as Google), it will tell you a lot how you should/and for which keywords you need to get more backlinks to. You could be find by a visitor for "Compare Computer Specs" but if all your backlinks are anchored with Computer Specs, and noone finds you. Then you've found a keywords phrase that get you traffic you haven't optimized for. Thus: Create a post with that title and topic. And you might even get more traffic and better ads to show to your visitors. My point is - don't look for a set of steps that you follow on every niche. Use a broad outline to set up a blog and then be ready to modify it as you make progress.

Holy I've been writing a lot now, but I think I should sum it up a bit. The main thing here is: get keyword anchored backlinks. Play a little with your AdSense colors and placements(blend inside content). Without traffic you won't earn anything. So get out there and get some white hat backlinks to your website. I'll be making a list for you where to get them. It's hard and time comsuming. But it will pay out in the end. I need you to realize this because many of you will set up a perfectly optimized blog and then get frustrated when the traffic doesn't show up. If you are starting out pick a niche with little competition - set the blog up and you will find that you can get top ranking without a lot of backlinks. You won't get much traffic or make much money but it will show you that the system works. This will give you the confidence and more importantly the patience to tackle a better niche the next time.

Cheers,

Hydra

Earn Money Online with Social Traffic

2009-04-02T16:03:00.005+02:00

Is it Possible to Earn Money Online with Social Traffic?

One question that has been asked around the internet for a while now. If you know the answer you get a million dollars, yet people are desperately trying to earn money through social networks like Digg, Stumble Upon and Entrecard. Unless you have a steady stream of readers, which a lot of websites just don't have, you won't make money from social traffic at all. Actually, everyone should know by now, that social traffic hardly converts into buyers for your affiliate products. To be frank, the only real money that you can make is indirect. Like sites that have attracted a big enough audience to practically sell advertising.

Now there is the so-called A-list blogs which I'm talking about, you might have read it somewhere else. Those blogs have, for some reason, managed to attract ten to thousands of readers (one good example is always problogger - 80k readers so far and 170k on his DPS blog) and are able to sell advertising as a result of their large readership. When they post their earnings, people are eagerly trying to duplicate their success.
Without prevail of course, since the tips of the A list are always vague and not to the point. I want to make some suggestions on the other hand which do not include social networks (I'm not really into them since they suck up time and aren't really paying out). There is one thing that most are forgetting: the search engines. This is where you want your traffic to come from, because: they tend to click more on ads and you can also build up a large readership in a while.

If your purpose is to earn money online then you need to focus on blending your ads inside your content, getting the users click on the ads is of course what you want. However only 1 to 3% of all search engine visitors click on ads. A lot of people say: Write quality content, post 5 times per week or something similar and wait a few years to get to the top. What I'm going to say is not new, it's been confirmed all the time. The only way to be successful is getting quality backlinks (high Page Rank) to link back to your website. If possible make sure they are one way links since Google values that more than two way links.

Write a few articles including your best keywords in the title, page, in the post and if possible in the URL of your website. This will greatly increase your chances of getting higher in the serp's, this is called Onsite SEO. However you also need backlinks, lots and lots of them. It's a never ending cycle, since all your competitors in the niche are updating their website probably daily as you need to do aswell. By getting quality backlinks inside posts, sidebar links and other promotion types etc. on other websites is your best way to get your site to #1 position. This is called Offsite SEO.

This blog, which you are reading right now (if you even came this far without clicking away ;), like many would have done), is actually one of my creations to earn money online from AdSense. I try to not post everyday because that will not help me getting higher in the serp's. Once again, it's all in the backlinks.
I've been quite successful consulting others how to change the colors and placements of the AdSense ads on their website.

There are some reasons why I made this blog so crappy looking, first off I made the text color on the sidebar blue to match the colors of the AdSense units. From there on I placed an Ad unit right above my first post - and just a tip: keep it to 1 blog post per page because this will give you the most targetted ads - and a link unit right under the description. Once again - they all match the same color.
The average internet user got used to the fact that a link to another resource is in most cases colored BLUE so blending ads in this case is important. The tactic here is to make the users leave the blog asap by either clicking on an ad or by closing the browser.

These are just my 2 cents :)

Cheers,

Hydra

How to Earn Money Online

2009-04-01T16:47:00.000+02:00

No joke: Earning Money Online

You are probably wondering why this blog looks so "nice" -ahem- there are some explanations for that. First off, I'm implementing AdSense to this Earn Money Online blog, main reason is that I need a passive income.

To have AdSense on this blog, I tweaked the layout so... that all the title colors of the ads are #000fcc and rest(text + URL) colored black. This will focus all the attention to the title and as all the links on this blog are colored the same, it will take longer to interpreted that something is an ad.

I've been teaching a lot of people on DigitalPoint why it is important to have the same URL and text color in your AdSense ads. Numerous people asked for a review of their website and it just jumps to my attention how some noobs can design their ads. Take for example this website:

(First off, if you are fimiliar with the AdSense Heatmap then you'll laugh at the next website link I'll give you. If not, look at the heatmap and )
Check the placements of the ads on this website. He placed his ads right inside the white zones. This will produce almost no activity for his ads = no clicks but a lot of impressions.

Why even put your ads on a website which will make it look less popular, if you place them on white zones. BTW we did a review for this guy which can be seen here on screencast.

I don't want to turn this post right into a AdSense tips post, because I'll do that another time. To Earn money online can be done with either white hat/grey hat or black hat methods.
Although you want to stick with white hat methods, such as long term blogging. Black hat techniques can be quite effective on the short term.

Black hat techniques will often leave you banned, so I suggest you to use a "friends" account if you really want to try it. These techniques are often used with trends like American Idol, starting a blog from scratch - put AdSense on it - and get links from authority blogs and your own flagship blog to instantly rise in the serp's and start pouring in the traffic.

Privacy Policy

2009-04-01T14:09:00.002+02:00

This website/blog uses third-party advertising companies to serve ads when visiting this site. These third parties may collect and use information (but not your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, you can visit Google's Advertising and Privacy page.

If you wish to opt out of Advertising companies tracking and tailoring advertisements to your surfing patterns you may do so at Network Advertising Initiative.

Google uses the Doubleclick DART cookie to serve ads across it's Adsense network and you can get further information regarding the DART cookie at Doubleclick as well as opt out options at Google's Privacy Center

I respect your privacy and I am committed to safeguarding your privacy while online at this site http://earnmoneyonline-forbeginners.blogspot.com/ The following discloses how I gather and disseminate information for this Blog.

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This Blog contains links to other sites. Please be aware that I am not responsible for the privacy practices of these other sites. I suggest my users to be aware of this when they leave this blog and to read the privacy statements of each and every site that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this Blog.

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I use outside ad companies to display ads on this blog. These ads may contain cookies and are collected by the advertising companies and I do not have access to this information. I work with the following advertising company: Google Adsense. Please check the advertisers websites for respective privacy policies.

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If you have any questions or concerns please contact Hydra at mailforhydra@gmail.com.

Earn Money Online For Beginners

2009-04-01T08:21:00.001+02:00

So here it is, Earn Money Online.

This newly blog will learn you exactly how to earn money online, which include tips for beginners. Because everyone was a beginners once, and there will always be some, there will be some resources here which you can use to grow your blog using AdSense as moneymaker.
If you have any questions regarding earning money online, drop me an email and ask anything SEO, AdSense and other related things :).

I've analyzed the competition on this level, and I must say: for the keywords "Earn Money Online" there aren't that many competitors. I mean, check out the backlinks for the number 1 on the search page. He only has keywords targeted for Work From Home and Make Money Online, and some other sub Earn Money at home keyword phrases.

So why does he show up as number one? There are several reasons for this; he has several keywords earn money online, although they are part of a bigger keyword phrase. His blog is already of old age, compared to others. I must say this blog is hosted under blogspot, so ideally I will benefit from the Age of blogger aswell.

I'm going to end this post here, since this post will most likely not be read by a lot of people :).
The trick is of course to get to the top of the search engine and start bulging in the traffic those keywords can produce. I'll monetize it using AdSense, I'm also a AdSense Consultant, since it's the best way to earn a passive income online. This, however may take several months.

So enjoy your stay here,

Cheers,

Hydra