Wednesday, April 9, 2008

What are Bidvertiser Ad Types ?

BidVertiser supports 5 groups of ads: Banners, Buttons, Inline Ads, Skyscrapers and Free Design. All ads are fully customizable.

Banners :
Full Banner (468 X 60)
Leader board (728 X 90)
Half Banner (234 X 60)
Vertical Banner (120 X 240)

Buttons:

Wide Skyscraper (160 X 600)
Skyscraper (120 X 600)
Half Page Ad (300 X 600)

Rectangles :
Medium Rectangle (300 X 250)
Vertical Rectangle (240 X 400)
Large Rectangle (336 X 280)
Rectangle (180 X 150)

Buttons:
Square Button (125 X 125)

Free Designs:
Free Design 1 (200 X 250)

What is Bidvertiser ?

BidVertiser is an advertising company, launched back in 2003 like Google Adsense, YPN, etc. If you have a website or blog you can be a publisher and you can improve your income from the by displaying ads.

The concept of Bidvertise is quite simple. Advertisers are bidding for your advertising space and the highest paying ads will end up being shown on your website. So you can continuously increase your revenue with the time.
I would underline some other advantages of the program.

  • Low payout level ($10) and the fact that Paypal is supported. (Adsense minimum payout is $100)
  • One vital benefit Bidvertiser has over other networks is the fact that their ads are highly customizable (you can alter text/font sizes as well as the dimensions of the ads, something which AdSense, for example, does not allow) .

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

MSN Ad network

Microsoft Ad center is the Microsoft inventor to grab ad revenue market share. Until the beginning of 2006, all of the ads displayed on the MSN search engine were supplied by Overture.

In November 2006 Microsoft Acquired DeepMetrix(a company situated in Gatineau, Canada) that created web-analytics software. Microsoft has built new product AdCenter Analytics based on the acquired technology.

In October, 2007 the Beta version of Microsoft Project Gatineau was released to a limited number of participants. But still Microsoft Adcenter is not available for publishers. But you can find publisher link at :

http://advertising.microsoft.com/publisher


Differences between Google AdSense, and the Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN)

  • Adsense has more ad unit choices. Adsense also has a search button that YPN doesn’t. Google offers image ads also.
  • YPN only offers the traditional ad sizes, and ads for RSS feeds.
  • AdSense accepts all international publishers; YPN does not allow international publishers while it’s in beta stage.
  • YPN pays higher commissions than Google Adsense to the publishers.
  • YPN allows publisher to select ad categories.
“Ad categories serve as suggestions and will be used in combination with other technologies to determine which ads will be displayed on your web site. Selecting ad categories for a web page does not guarantee that only ads from those categories will appear.”

What are the Similarities between AdSense and YPN.

1 They both have similar ad format and largest publisher and advertiser networks.
2. Both offers ability to advertise on RSS feeds.
3. They don’t allow Google & Adsense to run in same web page.
4. Minimum payment is $100.
5. They don’t disclose how much you earn from each advertiser or category.
6. Terms and condition are similar.

YPN vs Adsense

YPN can be used either in custom mode or contextual mode. You can choose ad categories to show your ads. But in Adsense you can’t select ad categories.

Google Adsense also allows image ads other than text ads. But YPN does not allow image ads.
Please remember that your site is deferent. The result wills will be varied from site to site. Your ad placement, traffic numbers and demographics will affect overall results. So you have to do your homework to explore which is better.

Yahoo Publisher network

YPN can be considered as one of the best alternative to Google Adsense. Yahoo is one of industrial giant who can challenge Google monopoly. Yahoo is a trust worthy company. So there is nothing to worry about payments.

YPN serves contents based ads same as Google Adsense. But unfortunately YPN is still in beta stage. You should have valid U.S. Social Security or Tax ID number, and web site content that is predominantly in English and targeted at a U.S. user base to participate in the program.
Let us see some characteristics of the program.

(1) Free to join.

(2) Content related ads.

(3) Not permitted to display ads from the other network on the same page at the same time as your Yahoo! Publisher Network ads are displayed.

(4) Cost-per-click basis, so advertisers are charged only when Internet users click on their ads.

(5) Ability to filter competitive listings.

(6) 4 Payment methods.

(7) Minimum payment amount $100, but for paypal method $50.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Adsense and Blogger.com

If you are a blogger who wants to earn extra income from blogging, this article is for you. Blogging is a very interesting topic these days. Search engines like Google loves fresh contents. Blogging is an ideal way of feeding the hunger of Search engine robots. Please remember that you don’t have to spend nothing other than time and effort.

There are plenty of websites who provides free Blogging templates (wordpress, Blogger). Blogger.com owns by Google which has in-build control panel to easily integrate Adsense to the blog. So you don’t have to worry about cut and pasting Adsense coding.
Blogger helps you to place ads on header and footer of the page or between posts. Optimizations options are available through the blogger control panel.

You can easily get approval for Adense account if you are applying through blogger account.

So start blogging with blogger.com and make an investment for the future.

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Cost Per Impression (CPM) Ad Networks

Primarily CPM Based Ad Networks

CPC (Cost Per Click) Ad Networks

CPC (Cost per click) ads are the most famous Ad networks these days. So here are some links which might be useful. I will be covering most reliable ad networks in detail in this blog.

Cost Per Action (CPA) Ad Networks

Friday, January 18, 2008

“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” theory for ad publishers

As you know every business should have a start. You will start your business with minimum resources and gradually develop. Later you may realize that you have to diversify your business to optimize profit and minimize risk.
Micro and macro business environment is ever changing. So your revenue will change accordingly. Political, social, economical, environmental factors will play vital role here.

So investment diversification was practiced by lot of business entities to minimize risk. We can simple call it as “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” theory.

This theory applies to internet advertising business also. Long term success and survival should be the core interest of a business entity. Short term profit will make you happy but it can lead to total destruction.

So when you are developing your business think about the theory and try to diversify your business. Too much diversification will reduce your profit. So practice it for optimum level.


You can consider different CPC providers like Adsense, Bidveriser, Clicksor and different affiliation like CJ, ebay. There are lots of alternatives available. So its up to you to explore.

Why Adsense alternatives ?

There may be lot of reasons you to consider Adsense alternatives. I would like to explain some of them to support you to get a better start. My main objective of this site is to discuss in detail about Adsense alternatives.


Few reasons to consider Adsense Alternatives :
(a) You are not accepted to Adsense program.
Sometimes Google may not accept your application for Adsense program. So now you have to consider using Adsense alternatives.

(b) Your account banned by Adsense
Your account may ban by Google due to various reasons. Generally it may be due to invalid clicks or breach of Google TOC.

(c) Adsense may not give you enough revenue
Adsense use smart pricing(No one knows the formula) which is depending on your site impressions, CTR and ECPM, etc. So it may not work well for you.

(d) You want to earn some additional revenue while keeping Adsence.
Sometimes you may decide to add some other advertiser to the same site without breaking Google TOC.

(e) Don’t put all your eggs in one basket
This is a very important lesson we have to learn everyday. You may have Adsense account with hundred sites generating thousands of dollars. But what will happen if your account ban by Google for any reason. You will loose all your income. So don’t think to keep one advertiser just considering profitability factor only. Profitability is not the only issue you have to consider.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Why Google Public Service Ads Displaying On My Site?

You may sometimes notice Google public service ads on your site and wondering why these ads are displaying. There may be few reasons.
(1) Your page is not yet crawled by Googlebot
(2) There are no relevant ads for your site contents
(3) The theme of the site is not unitary

What are the reason you to hate these ads ?
(1) Not generating revenue
(2) Its is spoiling your site appearance.

If your site is not yet crawled, these ads will soon disappear and you don’t have worry about it. But if your site contents have no relevant ads, then you may have to take necessary steps to avoid displaying these ads.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Best way to earn 100$ per day from Adsense.

You may wondering how you can earn 100$ per day from Adsense. Will you able to create site with that much of traffic ?

Let us do simple calculation to simplify our target.

If you are getting 0.2 average dollar per click your need 5 clicks to earn a dollar.

So 100$ = 100*5 = 500 clicks

If your CTR is 5% your page impressions are ;

=500/5*100

=10,000

Will you able to get 10,000 page impressions pay day? If your answer is no, there is nothing you to get disappointed.


Let me tell you another way to achieve same target.
Creating 100 sites which earns 1$ per day.

You may find that second option to not very realistic. But what will happen if you try to achieve that target. You may probably end up with somewhere between both options. (Eg: 10$ per day from 10 sites). So simply your goal should be to create more and more content rich sites. First start with sites what really interests you. Do what you are good at. You will definitely end up with your goal.

Monday, January 14, 2008

Five reasons not to use Link Units.

As I describe in previous post Link units are form of text advertising offered by Google adsense, When user clicks on this link a list of Adwords page will load. If user clicks any link on the resulting page you will generate income.

As this method is new and does not contain general ad format visitor’s may click on the link.

I would like to highlight few reason as to why you should not implement link units to your site or blog.

(1) It takes 2 clicks to earn from it. After clicking first link user may not click on result page. Sometimes user may close the browser and stop viewing your site anymore. Some user with little internet knowledge may think that all your site links are like result page. Your site loyalty and page views may effected.

(2) Readers generally likes to find information from single click. He may not like to end up with another link page.

(3) Since a link unit does not contain any description about the URL, user cannot get quick idea about the link.

(4) They are too deceptive, giving the impression that other links may also result to the same ads and could eventually discourage readers not to click on links anymore. If user was not happy with his first click results he will never click again as he knows that he will end-up with same link page. (It happened to me I came across with link units for the first time.)

(5) If any user who is frequent to your site will see almost same ad link which is already immune to him.

But please remember that there are two sides for every matter. For example some users may expect list of links to visit and collect more information. So he will happy to see this ad unit and outputs lot of clicks to your bucket.

So please remember you have to analyze details as per your case. Sometimes this method may suit your needs. After all Google will never introduce something if it is not productive.

What is Adsense Link Unit ?

Most of people knows what Google Adsense ad units are. But some people may not familiar with Link units. Purpose of this article is to discuss about Link units.

Link units are also contextual targeting. User may taken to list of adwords advertising page when clicking on Link units.



This is Google Description on Link units :
Link units are a new form of text advertising that we’re offering to our AdSense publishers. Using the same contextual targeting algorithm that targets Google ads to your content pages, link units display a list of topics that are relevant to your page. Each topic, when clicked, brings the user to a page of related advertisements.


FAQ

(1) Did I get paid when user clicks on link unit ?
No. But if user clicks any link on adwords site you will be paid.
(2) Where I can place link units?
More focused contents where visitors are searching for information on specific subject.
Small areas where you have free spaces.
(3) Can I add Links units other than standard ad units ?
Yes, you may place up to three link units on a page, in addition to the three standard ad units
and two search boxes you're permitted to display. Just make sure the page complies with
Google program policies

Using Adsense Competitive Ad Filter to increase Google earnings.

I think all you have experienced Adsense with 0.01 dollar clicks. One reason for this is your CTR is low and because of Adsense smart pricing you are getting lower amount. But another reason for this is MFA sites and low CPC sites.

What are MFA sites ?
MFA stands for Made For Adsense. You may notice that there are lots of MFA sites around the web. This is where Google Adsense website become Google adword advertiser. So some MFA sites fix low CPC for their adwords.

That’s the theory. Now we can see how to identify and remove MFA sites from our Adsense account.
We need two tools for this task.
(a) Adsense Competitive Ad Filter
(b) AdsBlackList.com ( There may be lot, Do a Google search ..Let me know.. )

AdsBlackList.com is a website which has online free tool to generate list for MFA and Low CPC of Google advertiser.

Ok now follow these steps.

1. Go to http://www.adsblacklist.com
2. Register free and log in
3. Go to ‘My Account’ ->’Add New Domain’ . Now add your domain and follow instructions
4. Go to ‘Generate Filter List’ and follow instructions
4. MFA and Low CPC list will be displayed.
5. Copy all and insert to Google AdSense Competitive Ad Filter [MAX 200 URLs per 1 Google AdSense Account]

You are done now. You can expect 20% increase of your Adsense revenue.

Please keep me updated on your success.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

8 tips to optimize Adsense Revenue

Optimizing Google Adsense is a very important topic. When I first introduce Adsense to one of my website I had around 200 page impressions per day with zero clicks. Then I was able to get some clicks by changing ad type and colors. But my CTR was very low(0.1%) . So I earn US$ 0.01 per click. But later I did more research and change my banner setting and my CTR increase to 8% and earning increased accordingly.

So If you want to earn from Adsense it is compulsory to do a optimization. Otherwise you will not able to earn something even for a coffee.

I would like to give you some tips to optimize Adsense.

[1.]
Select the Google Adsense Ad type that fits your design best - and gives the best CTR.
Following formats are said to have higher CTR.
• Skyscraper 160x600 with text ads.
Placement: Left or Right side
• Big Rectangle 336 x280 with text ads.
Placement: Top or Middle

But you have remember that you site is unique. So you have to continue in changing layouts to identify what formats are performing for your setup.

[2.]
Bending color scheme that fits the design of your pages. This is very important.
Users may not like to click on Adsense links if they feel those are not part of the site content. So you have to make user feels that Adsense is part of the page contents. For example if your site background color is white you can use Adsense banner without a border. You can use your site link color same as Adsense title color

"Here simple rule is Adsense should not be an alien to the site."

[3.] Create content rich keyword rich website. Then Googlebot will able to serve you with highly contextual ads ultimately increases your CTR.

[4.]
SEO (search engine optimization)
• Use a METATITLE, that defines what each page is about.
• Use METATAGS, to define the keywords that match your page content.
• On the first line of the page, give a descriptive title of your page in tags.
• Try to avoid using top navigation, use left navigation instead.
• Always create a robots.txt file.
• Remember to create a sitemap file.
• Use Google webmaster tools and identify what keywords are serving your site better.

[5.] Optimize your website for high paying Adsense keywords.You can make a big difference in your Adsense income if you can identify higher paid keywords. Google Adsense clicks varies from 0.00 to several dollars per click. But here there is something you have to think first before chasing for keywords. Your site content should match with keywords. Otherwise it will damage site’s content and reduces your CTR. If your site contents are really connected to higher paid keywords you can earn more from Adsense. There are several tools available on the net to identify higher paid keywords. Do a Google search.
Please, always remember to write your content for your readers not for Adsense, since this can result in having your Adsense account terminated, and all your earnings will be lost

[6.] Increase website traffic of your site.
Increasing website traffic is the basis to earn from any advertising program. But you have to keep in mind that you have to increase correct traffic.
There may be three traffic sources:
(a) Direct
(b) Referral
(c) Search Engines
Generally users who comes from search engines will click on your ads if ads are relevant. But returning visitors and direct visitors may not click on ads. Specially technical visitors and bloggers are not generally clicking on ads. So do a study to identify who clicks your ads. You should increase traffic that could increase hits otherwise you CTR will reduce and revenue will be reduced.

[7.] Use Google Adsense Adlinks on your site.
This new type of Google Adsense Ads, have a different layout and function that the usual Adsense ads. When you add Adsense Adlinks to your WebPages your visitors will be presented with 4-5 links. Each link represent what google determines to be the most relevant keyword for your site. Since this a new format users may not identify this as an ad. So your CTR will increase.

[8.] Use Google Adsense site search.
Why don’t to implement Google Custom search to your site or blog. User users will be able to search directly on Google from your site. Besides providing a search field, you will also have the added benefit that the search result page displays Adsense ads. Any clicks on these Ads, will be counted as clicks created from your website, and can thereby potentially increase your Adsense income.

How to avoid accidental clicks on your own Adsense ads ?

Many publishers face’s a great challenge to prevent themselves from accidentally clicking their Google Adsense ads. Accidental clicks may lead to zero income or account ban in the worse scenario.

So what is the ways to prevent accidental clicks?
(A) Best way to prevent is to be more careful when you are navigating through your site. Think twice when you are going to click something.
(B) Use Google Adsense preview tool. You can download it from
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=10005
If you are using this tool you can see how Adsense serves your site and also you can click on those links. Your click will not be counted.

(C) You can use some tricks to prevent Adsense ads being displayed. Here is one popular method work for me.

Add this line to the end of the C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file on every system you use:
If you can’t find hosts file, do a file find to locate ‘hosts’ file.

127.0.0.1 pagead2.googlesyndication.com

No more AdSense ads. If you want to re-enable them temporarily to check layout issues, etc., just edit the same file again and comment it out by putting a # in front of the 127.0.0.1.


And on most UNIX systems, you can edit /etc/hosts and add

127.0.0.1 localhost pagead2.googlesyndication.com

(please note, the 127.0.0.1 entry will probably -- SHOULD probaby already exist, so just append to it)

But please remember if you use this method you may not able to Adsense ads even from other sites.

Friday, January 4, 2008

What is accidential clicks ?

Accidental click may occur when web master clicks on his own ads accidentally when he tries to click on some other link of his site. Some publishers have placed their ad units so close to clickable content that users accidentally click on the ad instead of the site content.

But this type of ad placement may not violate Google program policies but increases the risk of invalid clicks.

So Google recommends maintaining sufficient distance between your ad and any element of the page.

Google has changed their text ads slightly to help reduce accidental clicks. In the past, users could click on both the background and full text of an ad, but now they can click only on the title and URL of a text ad. By allowing users to click only on the ad title and URL, accidental clicks may be reduced. But some publishers have noticed a reduction of Adsense income due to this slight change.

How google track invalid clicks in your adsense.

As we all know click fraud was a big headache for Google and advertisers. Advertisers faith on Google Adwords may reduce due to click fraud. So Google has developed sophisticated system to detect the invalid clicks, and result in termination of the cheaters' account.

In this post, I will summarize those ways that Google depends on to detect whether the clicks on your site are invalid or not. Google will not ban your account immediately. Rather, they will first flag your account to monitor closely. If you continue to generate invalid clicks Google will ban your account for sure.

But what are the methods practiced by Google to detect click fraud?

1. IP Address
It is the easiest way to identify click fraud . If those clicks on your ads are originated from the same IP Address as the one used for accessing your AdSense account, your account is flagged. But keep in mind your IP address can be shared. So someone else in your network will get the same as your IP. So Google can understand that. But still they can identify click fraud from IP.

2. Click Through Rate (CTR)
Normally, Click through Rate should be less than or equal to 10%. Otherwise, Google will flag your account. For your information, normal CTR should ranges from 0.5% - 10%.
Remember if your site content are not unique or not attractive how can you expect more traffic and higher CTR.

3. Cookies
Most home users do not use static IP Address for Internet connection. In most cases just disconnect and reconnect will give you a new IP Address. But don't forget, Google has set cookies on your computer. They can trace these cookies and see whether they originate from the same computer. If you clear cookies each time when accessing Adsense Google will have a clue that you are doing something bad.

4. Physical Location
As you know Google has hired best in the market, they have sophisticated technologies to track users. They can trace traffics origin down to the small town. So, using different computers with different IP address does not secure anything. So, don't try to click your ads in various internet cafes. Google will catch you sooner or later.

5. Click Pattern
It is also suspicious when people click on their clicks and then exit immediately (hit-and-run). But normally, people will surf for a while inside your pages and then click on the ads they want. Even after click ad they will use back button to further browse your site.

6. Click Pattern
If user click ads on particular site happily but never clicking on other websites will trigger Google.

7. Click Pattern
And why is it that people accessing these sites direct (type-in URL or from bookmark) tend to be very active ad-clickers compared with those referred from search engine or other sites?

8.Other Google Services
Don’t think that Google will only track your Adsense account IP. Apart from Adsense, Google also provide a series of services.(Gmail,blogger,Google Earth,youtube,Search,Toolbar,etc). Google can track you down from those services.

9. If your search engine rank is low and your site does not have enough back-links but get high traffic will make Google to flag you.

Thursday, January 3, 2008

How Adsense has changed internet behavior.

There were lots of advertising methods prior to Adsense. Google themselves had Adword campaign to display text advertisement on their search pages. But placing Google ads on someone else’s website had a revolutionary effect on Web.

One of the main challenge faced by a web marketer is getting advertisements to place on their web site. They have to launch proper marketing campaigns to find correct sponsors. It’s a timely and hardy process.

But after introduction of Adsense, publishers no longer need to launch campaigns to find advertisers for their website, Google will do it for them. All the hard work will be done by Google so publisher should only worry about his site traffic.

So lots of small and medium publishers are benefiting from Google Adsense but advertisers who already have their ad campaign may not fully benefited by the program.

If we consider advertiser aspects, what advertiser really expecting is traffic. Not just traffic, traffic which can convert to sales. As long as his objective is satisfied he will be happy. He may not worry about where his advertisement will display.

But there are some known disadvantages of the program. One of the main disadvantage of the program is indirect promotion of garbage and spam sites. Some webmaster are creating spam sites just to collect Adsense income. So overall quality of the web may decrease.

Google has attracted lot of other competitors due to the success of their Adsense program. Yahoo and Msn will soon launch their worldwide ad network to complete with Google. This will make a big difference in marketing strategy of web including Google.

Disadvantages of using AdSense to publishers

  • One of the main disadvantage of Google Adsense is publishers don’t have a clue about the percentage they will receive. You have to implement Adsense and then have to wait and see.
  • Even though you have option to filter URL’s , you will still receive inappropriate ads.
  • Adsense does not rotate their advertisements, so eventually your click through ratio will decrease, as repeat visitors are less likely to click through them. Google will hopefully attend to this matter.
  • Google stats does not reveals user behavior stats such as what banners are clicked by users or what keywords are referred.
  • Google Adsense also has the disadvantage of not paying enough for their search program. Other similar programs pay higher rates.
  • Adsense has also become so popular that people can distinguish them from other adverts. Therefore people may choose to ignore them without even paying them a thought.
  • One major disadvantage of Adsense is they will disconnect publisher account for invalid clicks. They are very arrogant on click fraud. So innocent publisher me loose his account by a click attack launched by a third party. Google should reduce revenue of invalid clicks without canceling the account.

Some Of The Don't For Adsense

  • I would like to tell you that the first rule of this game is play it fairly. Don’t try to do any tricks. If your site has hits you will earn otherwise you will not earn a cent. Think about new ways to increase your site traffic. Make your site interesting for users without spending time to trick Google.
  • Don’t spam or create useless contents. I know it’s hard to put 100% unique contents to your site. But try your maximum to put at-least 70% of original contents.
  • Don’t click on your own ads and encourage others to do so.
  • Read Google terms and conditions and don’t break the rules.
  • If you did any thing wrong and you believe if might effect your reputation with Google please write to them.

Why join Adsense ?

You may wondering whether you should join the Google Adsense program or not. However, if you have some free ad space on your website(s) and you want to earn some extra cash from it, you should certainly consider joining Google Adsense.
Some times you may find it as a very easy and stable income source for you. I would like to highlight few reasons for you to consider joining Adsense.
• You don’t have to worry about changing ads or selecting categories Google will handle everything.
• Google adsense serves non intrusive ads, compared to popins, popouts, floating ads etc.
• Display well written content related advertising, that will match your site topics.
• Save time finding advertisers for your ad space.
• No programming skills needed. Average internet user can easily implement Adsense.
• You can change the colours of the adsense ads displayed, so that they fit your current site layout.(Blending options)
• Google adsense serves the best ads for your pages from over 150.000 AdWords advertisers.
• Google adsense is easy to join, most websites with original content gets accepted.
• If you can earn from Adsense you may surely get paid. You know for definitely its not a scam.
• Adsense payment scheme is the best among the other CPC ad market.
• Adsense provide simple and easy to understand stats.
• You can filter 200 URLs, so you can block your competitor ads or any ads not reaching your standard.

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

What is Adsense ?

Adsense is an ad serving service run by Google. Publisher’s can enroll with Adsense to earn money from their web or Blog while advertisers can promote their product or services through Adwords.

Adsense is a very simple and proven solution that already pays for hundreds of thousand of blogs/websites across the world. Also, AdSense is provided to you by Google which not only makes it reliable but also trustworthy. Once you have earned money from Google, you can actually trust them to pay it to you.

Publisher can earn money when user clicks on Adsense ads. Google is currently beta testing a cost-per-action based service.

Google uses its search technology to serve ads based on website content, the user's geographical location, and other factors. Adsense has become a popular method of placing advertising on a website because the ads are less intrusive than most banners, and the content of the ads is often relevant to the website. So webmasters may have higher potential of earning through their web or Blog.