How To Make Money Blogging With Google Adsense And Affiliate Marketing

It’s important to understand how to use Google AdSense (or similar ad networks) and affiliate links effectively in order to make money blogging. But which advertising technique makes more money?

This article will show when to use Google AdSense ads, and when to use affiliate links to maximize your blog’s ROI (Return on Investment).

Before we compare and contrast each method of advertising, it is important to note that neither will work withouthigh quality content to drive targeted traffic.

High quality content is what drives engaged visitors in sufficient numbers to make blogging, as a business activity, worthwhile financially.

How to choose the best advertising technique

The type of content on your blog plays a pivotal role in which type of advertising is more effective. Successful advertising requires relevant, or targeted, ads shown to as many people as possible.

The relevance of an ad is determined by the subject matter of the content on a webpage.

Focused content and good SEO mean that search engines will send traffic based on the search keywords used.

Only people who are predisposed to reading your content find it in the first place, via search. That’s why implementing killer SEO is so important.

If your advertising strategy is properly implemented, then people reading your content are predisposed to clicking on ads or affiliate links because they offer products and services they are already interested in, generating revenue in the process.

Google AdSense ads

Google AdSense is an ad serving network that allows you to create custom ads and ad channels, and display text, image or rich ads using embeddable code snippets.

AdSense ads are easy to customize and configure so that they integrate seamlessly into your blog. However, there are limits to this configuration. For example, it is not possible to select custom ad sizes.

Google’s embedded ad code snippets analyze the content of the pages they are in, as well as the demographics of the visitors, and select the best ads to display from their vast, global stable of advertisers.

Advantages of Google AdSense:

·        Contextually aware

·        Geographically targeted

·        Easy-to-implement

·        Displays international ads

·        High CPC (Cost Per Click)

·        Large network of advertisers

All of the above points make Google AdSense a great option for anyone looking for low maintenance, targeted ads.

However, Google AdSense may not be the best option for everyone.

Disadvantages of Google AdSense:

AdSense doesn’t always get the contextually aware part entirely correct. For example, a blog on African wildlife and conservation may result in Google displaying ads for hunting safaris – obviously not appropriate for people who care about animals.

It is possible to block ads by various criteria, but it can be difficult to do this ahead of time (i.e. you may only find out about an offending ad once it is already displaying on your blog).

Also, while AdSense has a huge network of advertisers, it may be that it struggles to find the right advertisers in your particular niche. In which case, it may show more generic, less effective ads, and revenue will drop.

It’s also not possible to control pricing. A highly focused blog may not generate large volumes of traffic, so it becomes important to have a high CPC (Cost Per Click). This can be difficult to achieve with AdSense.

Affiliate marketing

Many online retailers and other businesses offer affiliate partnerships to help market their products and services. In return, affiliates receive a share in the profits.

Be warned that affiliate marketing is likely to undergo some big changes in the latter half of 2012 as a result of Google’s announcement that it will display paid product search results above organic search results.

The most successful of all affiliate programs is Amazon associates. But, there are also several large affiliate networks offering affiliate relationships with a wide range of businesses in a wide range of categories.

If you haven’t already, check out:

·        Commission Junction

·        LinkShare

·        Google Affiliate Network

Adding affiliate links and ads to your content allows for fine-grained control, but it comes at a price…

Advantages of affiliate marketing:

·        Manually targeted

·        Easy to use

·        Control over which ads and links display

·        Ability to select ads based on payout

·        Ability to select advertisers based on performance

In effect, affiliate ads give you complete control – you can decide which product or service to show at a particular point in, on, or around your content.

Disadvantages of affiliate marketing:

The primary disadvantage of affiliate links is that payout is not determined by clicks. While Google ads pay you whenever someone clicks on the ad, a click on an affiliate link has to result in a defined conversion before payment is made.

Visitors who click on an affiliate link may decide not to purchase the product or service displayed on the target page. In which case, not only is there no revenue, but the visitor has also left your site (most likely never to return).

While payouts can be very high for a conversion (in some cases, thousands of dollars), the conversion rate may be very low.

Affiliate links may also not be appropriate for international visitors. For example, a business may only serve customers in the U.S, in which case, the affiliate ad is effectively wasted space for anyone outside the U.S.

Which advertising method makes more money?

The answer depends on the type of content, and the audience.

While affiliate marketing has many disadvantages, its main advantage is that it has a relatively high payout per action. If you are able to focus your content and reach the audience you intend, then affiliate links are an ideal advertising method because it is likely that you will achieve a fairly high EPC (Earning Per 100 Clicks).

If your audience is less defined and more dispersed, then AdSense offers great advantages in terms of providing nicely targeted ads without requiring effort on your part.

In general, I use Google AdSense to bring in my baseline ad earnings – earnings that tick over nicely on a daily basis. I use affiliate links when I know precisely who the visitor is, and what they are looking for.

I hope this article has helped clarify which advertising technique, or combination of advertising techniques is right for your blog.

How do you use advertising to make money blogging? Are you selling your own ad space? Which advertising technique is the most effective on your blog, and why do you think this is the case? Share your advertising experiences in the comments or join the conversation on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Author: David Mercer; Article source: http://www.business2community.com/blogging/how-to-make-money-blogging-with-google-adsense-and-affiliate-marketing-0202802

My 10 Tips Of Getting Into Google Page 1

Right now, Google dominates the search engine market.  If you want the greatest return on your investment then you will need to focus the bulk of your time on Google.

In my endeavour of the past 10 weeks on getting my blog into Google page 1 of search results, I have learnt a lot and I am still learning every day.  In this post I would like to share 10 tips and learnings.

1. Exactly how Google ranks one site over another is one of the most closely guarded secrets of the web industry.
2. It appears that the ranking for my blog changes almost on a daily basis, and the ranking differs from one country to another.
3. Search engines are continually evolving and the algorithm Google uses to rank sites changes constantly.
4. I highly recommend a powerful yet easy-to-use tool called Webfire to guide your optimisation and tweaking towards getting into Google page 1.
5. Research and select the keyword that you would like to get ranked.  Use a free tool called Google Adwords Keyword Tool to help analyse and select the targeting keywords relevant to your chosen niche market.
6. Wherever possible, include the keywords in your domain name.  In the case of my blog, I have incorporated the keywords "how to make cash money" in the domain name http://how-to-make-cash-money.blogspot.com.
7. Use Google Analytics or the Blogger Stats tool to track daily traffic volume and traffic sources.  I did not realise that my blog has been ranked into Top 20 until one day I saw “Search Keywords” section showing people came to visit my blog by searching Google on the keywords of “how to make cash money”.
8. Ensure the Title and Description sections of the website to have the exact match of the targeting keywords.  In my case, I have embedded “how to make cash money” into the Title and Description sections of my blog site.
9. Build as many backlinks as you can.  I find that this is probably not the most important determinant to Google ranking, as my blog site has only 6 backlines so far.  Having said that, I suspect the ranking will improve as I build lots of more backlinks in the comings weeks.
10. Post relevant articles regularly, at least two to three times a week.  It appears that relevancy and consistency is highly valued by Google in its ranking.  I am now aiming to get my blog into Google Top 3 ranking in the next few months.  

You can help me achieve this by engaging and interacting with my blog such as leaving a comment, sharing the post by clicking the social media buttons below the post to share my post via email, tweets, facebook, and g+1.

Thank you in advance for your help!

Yes, I made it! Google Page 1 and Top 10 Ranking in 10 Weeks!

I am thrilled to share with you an exciting news that this blog has now achieved a Top 10 Google ranking and appeared on page 1 of Google search results, on the keyword of "how to make cash money".

• #7 ranking in the US 
• #8 ranking in the CA
• #9 ranking in the AU
• #10 ranking in the UK

  

After noticing the blog site made into page 2 of Google on Sunday, I made some simple tweaks on the blog title and labels. I am pleased to see that the website has subsequently moved up its ranking to page 1 on Tuesday.  It is indeed a great feeling to achieve a Top 10 Google ranking for my blog in just 10 weeks!

It appears that one of the biggest factors in getting your site ranked on page 1 of Google is having a good title tag.

Many sites out there have their title tags as "untitled" or "home" -- that's like shooting yourself in the foot and asking Google to slap you across the face!

When you have the RIGHT keywords in the right places like your title tags, you can rock your Google rankings.


With the aid of a tool called Webfire, I can check that my blog has the right keywords in the title tags.  It also gives me confidence that I can possibly crank up the Google ranking further if I start building some backlinks - my blogsite currently has only 6 backlinks according to Webfire.

I will keep you posted of my progress and continue to share my learnings with you.

Top 20 Google Ranking

I am delighted to share the news that this blog has been recognised by Google as a Top 20 web site on the keyword of "how to make cash money"!


The rankings table below indicates that this blog site is ranked #18 in the UK, #18 in New Zealand, #19 in the US, and #29 in Australia.  These rankings mean that this blog site will appear on page 2 of the 395,000,000 Google search results when people type in the keywords "how to make cash money" in UK, US, and New Zealand.

I created this brand new blog site in late February 2012, and after a few idle weeks I started posting on the blog.  Given that there are 395,000,000 competing sites on the keywords of "how to make cash money", it is indeed very encouraging to achieve a Top 20 Google ranking in 10 weeks.


I will now aim to achieve a Top 10 Google ranking for this blog in the coming weeks.  I will share my learnings, tips and tricks in the endeavour to achieve a Top 10 Google ranking to get into page 1 of Google search results.

How to Make Money With Social Media and Affiliate Programs

Since the number one question we get asked by our certified text message marketers is "How can I make money with social media", we thought we'd devote a quick article on the subject. Making money using social media is not a hard process, but it is a process and a significant amount of time must be devoted to it, especially at the beginning. But once that's done, the process gets a bit simpler as you continue to get checks in the mail on work that you did months ago. Here's a step by step formula for getting started.

1) Decide upon a niche marketing for what you want to concentrate on. Sounds simple, doesn't it, but this is the most crucial step in the process, because if you don't pick a topic that you're interested in yourself and can devote hours of work into it, you won't be successful. Think long and hard on this - it's crucial. Example: get a free WordPress blog.

2) Create a product or service based on the niche market you decided upon in step 1. No product? No service? No problem - it's easy to find affiliate programs out there that already have excellent products you can market and sell for a commission. Example: In keeping with the Free WordPress blog offer in step one, we hooked up with the folks over at Social Spin and became an affiliate of theirs marketing their FREE WordPress Blog offer.

2) Create a Facebook page, or group, or fan site, or whatever. The point is, get on Facebook. Then fill out your profile with information congruent to what the niche market you decided on in step one.

3) Likewise, create a presence on both Twitter and YouTube, creating a user name for these platforms with keywords based on your niche marketing. Example: twitter.com/textmessager (the Twitter account for GottaGoText.com). Note the username account has the word "textmessage" and the core company business is text message marketing.

4) Now that you're on all the social media platforms listed above and have affiliated yourself with a product and/or service (all at a total cost of $0.00 so far, by the way), go to a domain register (such as GoDaddy.com) and buy a ".com" domain (not a.net, or a.info, etc.), preferably one that contains keywords on your niche market. Unfortunately, most of the "good names" are pretty much taken, but you can still find word combinations that may make sense. Example: "freeblog.com" is probably taken, but "socialmediafreeblog.com" may not be.

5) The next step is crucial as well - use your domain name as a blog. Blogs will get you much better (and faster) free search engine traffic than you'd normally get from a static site, and WordPress Blogs are really excellent in integrating with social media features.

6) Now that you're all set up, you must link all your social media sites, (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, your website blog, etc) together, to create a ring of trackback links that the search engines will love. Your total investment to this point is the $10 you probably spent for your domain name. Sweet!

7) Now for the hard part. You must constantly update your blog, your Facebook, your Twitter, and your YouTube account with engaging content that provides value to your readers and inspires them to take action. What is that action? - to buy the service or product created in step 2. And what's the key to that action? ENGAGING CONTENT. Your failure or success in social media hinges on your ability to bring original content or to suggest interesting options from other unique content sources in a manner personal to you (and you alone) so people perceive you as an expert in your field. Read that last sentence again and again until it fully sinks in.

Be aware: this process does not happen overnight and at the very start, you'll be working like a dog and most likely seeing very negligible results until things start kicking in. Of course there are ways to accelerate this process, but most involve spending tons of money on AdWords, advertising, SEO experts, etc, - money that you don't really need to spend if you have the drive and patience to do it the right way.

Every day, you need to write articles. Create videos. Engage with others on Facebook and Twitter (without appearing "salesy"). Your goal is to provide information so people "like" you enough to buy your product or service (or the product and/or service you're promoting). As time goes by and you become more established in your niche, you won't have to work as hard creating the content you'll need to create at the beginning.

This entire process literally costs basically nothing (other than time). That's why social media makes such a great business. And depending on your own product or service, or how well your affiliation program pays, you can make a TON of money if you follow steps1-7 correctly and diligently. Lastly, when you're ready to spend some money on marketing, invest in a good campaign video email marketing software package, ComF5 costs $40/month, and a text message marketing service (GottaGoText.com has accounts starting at $50/month for text message marketing directly to social media sites) to bring your social media business to an even higher level and hopefully generate more and more sales.

Social Media - the best business vehicle on the planet!

By Ron Costa.  Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/4728276

How Lady Gaga Created a Web Marketing Spectacle for Born This Way

"The web is what you make of it,” reads the parting text in Google Chrome‘s latest commercial featuring Lady Gaga.

It’s a simple eight-word slogan for Google’s web browser but it represents so much more when you connect it to Gaga, who took to the web this year to create an inescapable marketing spectacle for her Born This Way album.

In the months leading up to the May 23 album release — and even now — Gaga has paved a path for stars and brands to get inventive with the ways they use digital and social media to promote themselves and connect with fans.

The 25-year-old is no stranger to success on the web. She remains a heavyweight on major social networks: In the past year, Lady Gaga was the first artist to reach 1 billion views on YouTube; she beat President Barack Obama to10 million Facebook fans (she’s now closing in on 35 million); and most recently, she was first Twitter user to acquire10 million followers.

The promotional juggernaut further ramped up her all-encompassing web presence, fostering partnerships with Zynga for the FarmVille-inspired GagaVille, Starbucks for a massive scavenger hunt, VEVO for exclusive premieres, HBO for a concert special, Rdio for free lifetime subscriptions, iTunes for a promotional countdown, Best Buy and Livestream for an album signing and Gilt Groupe and Amazon Cloud Player for deals.

“Gaga and her team are some of the best marketers around; they understand the importance of integrating social with traditional media, engaging audiences in real-time, and most of all, telling a story that is relatable and worth spreading,” said Alexa Scordato, a Gaga fan, digital strategist and community manager for MAT@USC.

Even Lady Gaga’s critics have to acknowledge the magnitude of her marketing medley: “I’ll probably get cyber bullied after this from all her Little Monsters, but I’m not a huge Gaga fan,” said Romey Louangvilay, senior account executive of digital and social media at Euro RSCG PR. “With that said, I give her credit for her artistry and marketing genuineness.”

Below, we’ve compiled a huge swathe of the digital and social media initiatives behind Gaga’s Born This Way. Flip through the roundup and then let us know in the comments which tactics you thought were most creative or most ridiculous.

What Can You Learn From Gaga?

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“She’s mastered the art of [the] launch,” Scordato said. “Every new video or album release is always an event. She and her team recognize that millions of views or album sales don’t come overnight.”

The takeaways are:

• You need to build momentum with elements of surprise along the way.
• Integrate. Make sure all your marketing channels are working together to promote a single brand identity and message.
• Use your fans as your best marketing asset. Encourage and remind them to tell your story and never forget to thank them along the way.
• Give people something to love. If you can do that, you’ve won half the battle.

By Brian Anthony Hernandez. http://mashable.com/2011/05/24/lady-gaga-case-study/

Twitter Money - 3 Tips to Make Money With Twitter

So you want to make money with twitter? Well who doesn't. Twitter appears to be one of the most popular social networking machines around, and you can quickly get twitter followers that you can make money of. But how to do it. Here are a few ideas.

First, there is direct selling. You can send tweets to your followers about this great offer you have, or this great affiliate product that of course you earn commission on. You put the link to the offer in your tweet and hope that your followers will click on it, and even better, buy the product so you earn commission.

It's a little tricky to do all this in 140 characters (the maximum length of a 'tweet'), but it's possible if you shorten your affiliate or product link by using one of the many shortening tools available online, such as bit.ly, budurl.com or tinyurl.com. Check them out.

You can also mention the link in your public profile that people get to see. I'm not totally sure if all this works. I do, however, have some evidence for myself that direct sales work, albeit not with overwhelming success. It's modest. But still, modest free money is still pretty good!

The second way to make money with twitter is to send people to a freebie opportunity. You put a link in your tweet to a CPA (=Cost-Per-Action) offer. CPA might be a whole new topic for you, and you may need to read up on it.

With CPA offers you can promote offers that would earn you a small amount, say a dollar. The good thing is that for these offers people often just have to leave an email address or ZIP code, and then they get a chance to win an iPod, or win a certain amount of money for free shopping or whatever.

This stuff can do well for you, especially if the offer is related to your interest. This method is similar to the one above, but the offer is attractive as it doesn't cost anything for your twitter followers.

The third and last tip I'll give you is perhaps the best: make money with twitter by giving away a free gift, a report, ebook, video etc. when people enter their email address in your opt-in box on your website. So you send a tweet with a link to your freebie, and build an email list. Then you can market to that list later. Making money from your list is much more lucrative than direct sales to twitter traffic, even though that has also worked for me.

There is one important thing. For any or all of the above methods to work, you need to get a large enough amount of targeted (like-minded) twitter traffic to your offers. So first, do try and build up enough of a targeted twitter list to be successful.

Article source: http://EzineArticles.com/2311083

Mapping World Social Media Trends

Facebook's growth is increasingly fuelled by users in emerging markets, including Latin America and the Middle East. But it still faces local competition in many countries.

It’s been a tough week for Facebook, with share prices falling sharply after its widely hyped IPO. But that doesn’t change the fact that the social networking giant now reaches roughly one in eight of the world’s population.

And it’s still growing fast internationally, especially in developing countries in Africa and Latin America.

According to a recent report by the International Telecommunications Union, social media use has now passed the billion-user mark. Of these, 900m have Facebook profiles. Its massive global following translates into big opportunities for social media marketers to connect with customers in emerging markets.

In the last year, Facebook has overtaken local competitors in many countries, including Brazil. It edged past Google’s Orkut earlier this year. It also overtook the home-grown Hyves in the Netherlands, which saw usage drop 38% in 2011. High-profile users and its “real name policy” helped drive up usage in Japan, where it’s outpaced Mixi, and now battles Twitter for the top spot.

More than half of Facebook’s revenue now comes from outside the United States. According to its own figures, it has achieved an impressive 85% market penetration in Chile, Venezuela and Turkey. This compares to just 60% in the USA and UK. And it’s growing fastest in Latin America and the Middle East, fuelled by growing, young, middle-class populations.

That’s not to say other networks aren’t giving Zuckerberg’s creation a run for his money. The world social media map is more diverse than it might appear at first glance. Twitter is the second most popular network in many countries, and is expected to grow four times as fast in the USA this year.

Both these two have still to overcome their ban in China under censorship laws. Instead, the socially-engaged Chinese online population turn to Qzone, Renren, and Sina Reibo, a micro-blogging site similar to Twitter. Youku is a local version of YouTube. Even if the ban is relaxed, it will still be difficult for newcomers to establish themselves in a crowded market.

In fact, Facebook’s performance in Eastern Asia has been disappointing so far. In South Korea, one of the most tech-savvy nations, users still overwhelmingly prefer Cyworld. This was one of the first networks to successfully make a profit by selling virtual goods. And in Japan, Mixi is managing to hold its own when the high number of mobile users are taken into account

Mobile use has clearly proved a headache for Facebook, since the company has still to make any “meaningful revenue” from its growing number of mobile users. This could prove more of a challenge as it begins to depend more on emerging markets for growth. In much of Africa, Asia and Latin America, a large proportion of web users are “mobile-only” and rarely, if ever, use computers.

One rapidly expanding market is India, as more of its vast population gets online. It’s predicted that there will soon be more Indian than American Facebook users. But most of them still rely on mobile connections to get connected, due to limited broadband coverage and the expense of laptop and desktop computers.

And even in Western countries, smaller “niche” networks are gathering market share. LinkedIn is building on its reputation as a site for business networking, while Xing plays a similar role in northern Europe. The two Russian giants, Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki, are both looking at extending their reach into Eastern Europe and have recently launched in more languages.

For marketers, Facebook and Twitter might be the top two, but this isn’t the case everywhere. The growing importance of China and Russia means it’s certainly worth paying attention to other key players.

With the total number of social networkers expected to reach 1.43 billion this year, it will be interesting to see the winners and losers. The social media map is still far from a homogenous one.

Image credit: Vincenzo Cosenza

Article source: Christian Arno, http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/10019-mapping-world-social-media-trends