Make money with adsense

Make money with AdSense guide table of content

Before we get into the details, let's summarize our Make money with AdSense guide. Our comprehensive guide includes the following four chapters:

How to increase Click-Through-Rate (CTR) How to build traffic (impressions) How to increase Earnings-Per-Click (EPC) Important things nobody tells you about (vital but often neglected)

(The table of content has been moved to a separate page. Click the thumbnail to see the Make money with AdSense guide table of content.)

How to make money with AdSense - tips & tricks - CTR

All approaches described in our Make money with AdSense guide provided below are based on many years of experience with making money online, were tested many times, and are continually being improved. Because Internet is quickly evolving, neither of these approaches are set in stone. Most of them evolve and their implementation depends on the content of your web site, on your visitors, on your niche, and on your situation. Nevertheless, if you take the time and customize our tips and tricks to your needs, you can bet that you WILL make money with AdSense!

Ad blending

Many people that want to make money with AdSense and are new to web design think that putting a frame around their AdSense ad unit and giving it background color will improve the Click-Through-Rate (CTR). Unfortunately, the opposite is usually true. Statistics proves that ads that look as much a part of your web site as possible generate the most clicks. There is a reason for this. People do not want to click ads. They want to click something that interests them. If you design a colorful and attractive banner that screams "Hey, I am advertisement, click me!!!!!" a such ad will get the least response. If you blend in your ads, readers will see the ads as helpful links not annoying adverts.

Ad placement next to a picture or photo

Our experience shows that placing an image or photograph right next to an AdSense ad greatly improves Click-Through-Rate (CTR). The idea behind this make money with AdSense tip is that images and pictures tend to attract attention and the result is always more clicks than before.

Ad placement in hot spots (heat map)

If you want to make money with AdSense, you have to pay attention to where you place your ads. Most web site templates are built so that they allow addition of a 728x90 px banner at the top of the page. The truth is that these banners are very little effective. Most visitors completely avoid them. When designing your web site, use the top-to-mid section ("above the fold") on the left side of the screen for advertisements. That is the section where your visitor's eyes go first, and where they spend the most time.

Second, if you have the technical abilities, try to place ad units right into articles. These are the most effective spots with the highest conversion rates (e.g. Click-Through-Rate). So-called heat map can explore the most effective spots for your ad units (See here for more details on heat map: Heat map and how it relates to making money with AdSense)

Ads should look like organic parts of your website

Second, to make money with AdSense, your AdSense units need to be positioned in a manner that would make them look like organic parts of your website. You can for example create a link AdSense ad unit and place it to the spot where most visitors expect some menu.

Size of the Google AdSense ads

This is often neglected and may seem trivial, but it can have significant impact on the money you make with AdSense. It is better to use wide ad boxes (banners) because they are easier to read than tall and narrow ad boxes (skyscrapers). We are used to reading across the page so the brain is happier to digest the horizontal ads which means more clicks and therefore more money with AdSense for you.

Limit the number of links on a page

When you have too many links on a web page, the probability that your visitor clicks an ad decreases. So, the advice is to display only the neccessary links.

Limiting the number of links per page also relates to concept called pagerank sculpting which in other words means directing page rank (i.e. page popularity in search engine terms) only to those pages where you need it. Pagerank sculpting is a page-level granular technique that large web sites and portals use to manage their search engine ranking. (See here for more on pagerank sculpting: Pagerank sculpting.)

Banner blindness

Banner blindness relates to the following question: "Should I use text-based or image AdSense units?" People are tired of clicking ads, and when they see one, they tend to avoid it, unless it really really catches their eye. People learned to be immune to ads because they are everywhere. There is just too many of them around us. So, if you use image AdSense units, you will see lower Click-Through-Rate (CTR) compared to text-based ads. On the other hand, because image ads get clicked less, advertisers have to bid higher which means higher Earnings-Per-Click (EPC). You get paid more for each click, so at the end you might make more money with AdSense that way.

To answer which is better whether image or text ads: "It depends." You can make money with AdSense with both image and text ads. Fortunately, there is a very easy way to determine which ad type generates more revenue for you. Set up 2 channels in your AdSense account and tie one of them to a text-based banner and the other one to an image banner. Run each banner for 2-3 weeks and then compare which gives you more total revenue.

AdSense-to-content reverse engineering

If you really want to make money with AdSense, you have to think outside the box. Most people usually write a page, throw in a few AdSense ad units, and that is it. Matching the content of Adsense ads to your content does not always work perfectly, and you often get ads that are about something that does not relate to your web page content. Wise AdSense money makers carefully study the AdSense ads that are common at their web site and then develop content that is closely related to those ads. AdSense reverse engineering should not be your main activity, but it can explore some profitable content in addition to your core business.

Make money with AdSense - tips & tricks - impressions

Next we will talk about strategies related to building traffic and increasing impressions.

Build traffic

To make money with AdSense, you do not need to have zillion of pages on your web site. It is better to have 100 high-quality content pages with thousands of visitors than to have thousands of low-quality pages with low traffic. The reason is in two ways: A) People like to come back to good web sites. They often spread the word of mouth and bring new visitors. B) AdSense is better at ad targeting when it finds good content. Constantly building organic traffic is the most effective way of increasing AdSense earnings and this make money with AdSense tip.

Nevertheless, keep in mind that the traffic cannot be generated overnight. You have to give your site some time.

Add your URL to search engines

If you want to make money with AdSense, you have to be indexed by search engines. You can either wait until a search engine finds your web site and indexes its pages (which can take months for new and small web sites), or you can add your site manually. See this article: How to add URL to Google. Do not focus on just Google. Add your web site to Yahoo, MSN, and others too.

Increase your Google crawl rate

In case you use only a few web pages to make money with AdSense, you can skip this section. But if you ad new pages to your web site frequently, you might want to tell Google to increase the frequency with which it crawls your web site. This will get your new web pages listed in the search engine more quickly. See here about How to increase Google crawl rate.

Submit your sites to social networking and bookmarking sites

This Make money with AdSense tip is a bit time consuming but no less important. If you want to increase your site impressions, people have to find you. This is important not only for people but for search engines as well. You need to have links back to your web site if you want get indexed by search engines.

Submitting to bookmarking sites is in fact one of the most effective ways to make money with Adsense. The reason is that targeted traffic will tend to spend more time at your web site. The more time visitors spend at your web site, the higher the chances they click your AdSense ads. Here is a list of some top social sites:

http://www.technorati.com
http://www.digg.com
http://buzz.yahoo.com
http://del.icio.us
http://www.stumbleupon.com
http://www.goarticles.com
http://www.articlesbase.com
http://www.articlebiz.com
http://www.articlecity.com
http://www.easyarticles.com
http://www.ezinearticles.com

Keeping track of all these sites and submitting to all of them is an overkill, but if you have a good article, submitting it to these services will help your AdSense earnings a lot.

Your success with submitting your articles to these sites depends on three factors.

1. You need to submit your article to bookmarking services that are as relevant to your subject matter as possible.
2. Your article headline has to be very attractive for readers to open your article.
3. Your content must meet the promise of your sensational headline.

Anything less will leave your visitors feeling cheated and annoyed which is the exact opposite of what you want.

Create Google sitemap

We know, this Make money with AdSense guide is getting long, but there is still a lot that needs to be explained. Google sitemap is one of the tips to help you to make money with AdSense. New and small web sites are handicapped by Google. When Google visits a small or new web site, the crawler visits only a few web pages at a time, and it may take many months before Google indexes all your web pages. You can speed up the process by telling Google where to go and what to index by providing the Google sitemap: How to create Google sitemap.

Build links

Here is another Make money with AdSense tip from our guide that relates to impressions. We already said it, but this is so important that we must say it again: You need to build links pointing to your web site. Exchanging links with other web sites is one way. Referencing your web site in articles, discussion forums, or blog comments is another way. One important advice is that you should focus on exchanging links with web sites that have content similar to your web pages.

Get listed in directories

This relates to building links and increasing impressions, but we feel it is important to mention this make money with AdSense tip separately. Getting listed in GOOD and RESPECTABLE directories not only brings you visitors but also helps to build your web site image. Some directories help you also with your search engine ranking. For example, get listed in the DMOZ directory, and you make money with AdSense in a blink of an eye.

It is important to mention that not all directories are equal. Although every single link theoretically gives you some juice, you want to avoid low quality directories, and especially you want to avoid link farms. You want to avoid link farms at all costs! Google hates low quality directories and link farms.

Participate in discussion forums

Writing posts in discussion forums is a great technique to build traffic and make money with AdSense. Writing posts in discussion forums benefits you in two ways: A) page rank, B) traffic. It is obvious that when someone mentions your web site in a discussion forum, other people will visit you -- not much to add to that. The other point is that when you participate in discussion forums that do not use the nofollow tag (See here: nofollow meta tag) and do not block link juice flow through other means, those links pass page rank and help you in search engine rankings.

Note, avoid spam forums. Look for forums that have content similar to your web site.

Do not underestimate email signatures

It is no surprise that people greatly underestimate the power and potential of email signatures. Email signature is a viral marketing tool. Emails get forwarded all the time and are often copied to many unknown people. If you want to make money with AdSense, create a signature in your email that points to your AdSense web site.

Note, writing effective email signatures is not easy. A straightforward advertising message is not always the best option because people do not like to be directed to go online. For example, using famous quotes with a link to your web site is more effective method and another great way that helps you to make money with AdSense.

Use the gold you have in your mail box

We are all receiving tens or hundreds of unsolicited emails to our email boxes every day. Why not take advantage of these? You can make money using these emails. The idea is that senders of unsolicited emails patiently await every responce they get. They do not get too many responses to their emails because everyone uses spam filters nowadays, so you can be sure they are glad for every reply they get and do open it. You can take advantage of this and send them a nice catching email that will invite them to your web site.

Install "E-mail this article"

Maybe you have noticed that some web sites include the "E-mail this article" feature. Take a look at the bottom of this article. Scroll down, and then come back. This feature allows a visitor to enter someone's email address into a form and email a link to this article to a friend (please, do so). This allows people to send your post or article to other people and is a great tool in our Make money with AdSense guide. The E-mail this article feature won't produce any immediate and noticeable results, but more and more people will become aware of your web site over time, so this functionality allows others to publicize your web site for you (for free) = more AdSense money for you!

Give something to your visitor

In general people like web sites where they can download something for free, such as MP3 files, software, etc. These are the biggest money making web sites. Try to deliver content which includes something for download (maybe an eBook?). A such content will make visitors to come back.

Use AdWords to bring traffic

Ok, now we are getting tough with our Make money with AdSense guide, but keep reading. This tactic focuses on impressions and is more difficult to achieve, involves some risk, but has potential for unimaginable returns. Some people made a fortune on AdSense, see here for a few examples of people's checks: AdSense revenue and AdSense earnings.

The success of your AdSense money making scheme depends on the volume of traffic you are able to generate for your website. You can try various marketing tricks, but so do thousands of other people. This has led many developers to try out Pay-Per-Click advertising to bring traffic to their web sites. You do this through advertising your own web site through Google AdWords (if you are lost, see here Difference between AdSense and AdWords). I hear you asking "How do I make money with AdSense, when I am supposed to spend for every click in Google AdWords?"

Full explanation of this approach would require an article on its own, so we won't get into the details, but the concept is that you market your web site through AdWords using some cheap keywords (See here: How to find cheap AdWords). Your web site must be designed so that your visitors (that you lure in through AdWords) click an ad which based on the content of your web site is a high-paying ad (for example web sites about mortgages have high EPC).

There are however risks involved in this make money with AdSense technique. If you do this wrong, you can spend more in AdWords then you make with AdSense. Google also does not like this approach.

 

Now let's get to the third part of our Make money with AdSense guide.

AdSense make money guide
(part 3 - tips & tricks - EPC & vital but often neglected know-how)

Should you have questions about how to make money with AdSense, please, visit our SEO discussion forum.

free website monitor and performance tools

http://mon.itor.us/

The 4 C's: CPM, CPI, CPA and CPC

The most common pricing model for banner ads is cost per thousand impressions (M is the Roman numeral for 1,000) or CPM. An impression is counted when a visitor views a page on which an ad is displayed, regardless of whether the visitor clicks on the ad.

Cost per impression, or CPI, is basically the same metric: Divide the CPM by 1,000 to get the cost per impression.

Cost per action (CPA) pricing is any formula in which advertisers pay not for viewership but when visitors perform a certain action in response to the ad, such as filling out a registration form, entering a contest or making a purchase. Advertisers often like this pricing model because they pay only for measurable results; they pay per customer action.

The strategy might be risky for you, though. A poorly designed ad might not generate any clicks, so you'd end up not making money because of your advertiser's poor design or copywriting abilities. Keep in mind, too, that the site being advertised on is usually expected to track customer actions; advertisers do not have access to the site's log files or to the information provided by the ad serving company, if there is one.

Cost per click (CPC), a form of CPA pricing, is a good pricing model for sites just starting out. Because there's less risk to the advertiser, this model is often more appealing to advertisers who haven't done business with you before. After your site gains momentum and begins to show more value in terms of traffic and number of advertisers, you can graduate to CPM or CPI pricing.

CPM and CPI pricing make the most sense when branding and/or customer awareness are among the ad's objectives, and when advertisers know they're reaching a highly qualified and desirable audience regardless of whether any immediate action is taken. After determining whether you'll base your rates on CPA, CPC, CPM or CPI, you'll take that information and develop your rate card and online media kit.

Decide on the minimum number of pages an advertiser can contract for and whether you'll allow discounts. Depending on site traffic, you might make the minimum number of impressions purchased from 100 to 10,000. Also, many popular sites offer volume, frequency and/or ad agency discounts. Agencies receive a discount to encourage repeat orders.
Flying the Banner

Before you begin selling ads, you'll need a mechanism for displaying banners on your site.

Banner ad rotation software, such as Open AdStream, lets you set up and maintain multiple ad rotations so all your advertisers receive equal treatment. The software can control how often and where a particular ad appears on your site, based on how much the advertiser paid. Prime page locations cost more.

Most of these software packages feature sophisticated tracking features that enable you to offer your advertisers complete ad performance reports at the end of a campaign.

Banner ad networks, such as DoubleClick or 24/7 Media work on your behalf to sell and serve your advertising inventory. Ad networks can simplify banner ad sales for those who lack the time or the expertise to handle administrative and sales functions necessary for a full-scale banner ad effort.

Ready To Sell Banner Ads On Your Site?

By Julie Martin

Before you can sell banner ads on your site, you'll need to determine who's visiting your site and who would want to advertise to this audience. And how do you know if you have enough traffic to attract advertisers?

Following are some guidelines to help you determine if selling ads on your site is feasible and, if it is, tips on how to price your ads and serve them on your site.
Targeting Audience, Advertisers

The first thing you need to ask is, "Who are my visitors and potential advertisers?" Site visitors and site advertisers are not necessarily the same.

Consider an online art gallery whose primary visitors include art buyers and the artists selling art on the site. Which of these groups would be the best advertisers? Probably neither. The best advertisers would be businesses that want to reach these two groups. They might include online art supply stores and frame shops.

Content is king. Content can mean interesting articles "How to Market Your Art" might appeal to the artists as well as useful services, perhaps an escrow service to benefit buyers. Now that you've identified your visitors, you need to develop content that appeals to them.

Why? Because the better the content, the higher the traffic and the more impressive your traffic numbers will be when you solicit other businesses to buy advertising. And the type of content on your site reveals something about the interests of the people who visit it.

This is valuable information; advertisers want to know the audience they reach.

It helps if your site has features that drive visitors to categorize themselves according to their interests and that help them easily find the content they want. The features will help you identify the most popular content and possibly charge higher ad rates for those pages. In addition, they can help you continue to produce relevant, attractive content that keeps people coming back.
Looking Good

Where your visitors come from, how they arrive and where they go on your Web site are very important for making your site look attractive to advertisers. Repeat traffic, usually visitors who have bookmarked the site, is extremely desirable because it means viewers will see ads more than once.

Frequency of exposure to an ad increases the probability that a viewer will click on it. And if you know where your visitors come from, that helps advertisers target their ads. You can track visitors' IP addresses and use them to help determine what part of the country visitors live in and/or which company they work for.

You'll need to gather demographic information to help advertisers target their ads and know they'll reach the right audience.

Smaller sites can use online surveys to encourage visitors to share valuable information with them that can be used to develop a detailed user profile.

Larger Web sites with more traffic might consider hiring an independent auditing company to profile their audience on an annual basis. This verifies that their demographic information is accurate and nonbiased.

Rates are typically based on the number of page impressions served up by the site, as well as by the server architecture used. Prices start around $900 (U.S.) per site traffic audit. Some auditing services charge a set-up fee.

For auditing information, visit the Audit Bureau of Circulations, BPA International or Nielsen Media Research.
What You're Worth

Ad rates are based on several factors, one of the most important being the amount of traffic your site receives. Advertisers and agencies usually seek sites at least 6 months old that receive 500,000 or more impressions per month.

Don't despair if your Web site doesn't have quite this much traffic. Although sites with huge amounts of traffic generally can command higher rates, niche sites that have a highly targeted and desirable audience still attract advertisers.

A common banner ad package consists of 100,000 impressions and costs from $20 to $100 per thousand impressions. Rates from $25 to $70 cost per thousand (CPM) are average for popular sites. Remember, most sites have repeat visitors, and most visitors view more than a single page per visit, so 100,000 impressions might represent 10,000 to 30,000 unique visitors.

In some cases, impressions are guaranteed; in others, they are estimated. Some sites will charge a flat rate for estimated impressions. If the delivered impression count is higher, some sites let their advertisers keep the "overdeliveries" at no extra charge.

Other factors that affect banner ad rates include:

* Banner size. Industry standard banners sizes are 468 x 60 pixels and 234 x 60 pixels. Larger banners cost more. You can put a limit on banner file sizes(7 kilobytes [KB] to 10 KB, for example) to keep download times to a minimum.

* Supply and demand. Ad space on sites that appeal to a prime target audience can fetch a higher price than space on sites targeting a broad, general audience. Depending on your industry, your site's branding and the availability of your inventory, you can develop an appropriate fee structure.

* Competitors' rates. The best starting point for determining what to charge advertisers is to learn what sites similar to yours charge. If you feel you can afford it, you might want to offer a slightly better price at first to attract business. The easiest way to do this is to call a company and ask. Companies serious about business list phone numbers on their Web sites.

* Audience profile. The more targeted your audience profile, the more you can charge. The more targeted your advertising is, the more you can charge. For example, on the Wall Street Journal's site, you'd pay $64 CPM for advertising on a specific site within WSJ.com, $79 CPM for running a banner ad to coincide with editorial content on that site that appeals to certain viewers, and $98 CPM for targeting your audience based on profession, gender, industry or company size (rates effective July 7, 2000).

* Statistics. If you can show advertisers visitor return rates, average length of visit, average pages viewed per visit, click-through rates, viewer-to-customer conversion rates and so on, you can give them a feel for the loyalty of your site visitors. This justifies higher pricing. You can get this information by using traffic analysistools.

What is CPM, CPC, CPA and CTR ?

CPM means Cost Per Thousand. (M is the Roman numeral for thousand â€" and so Cost Per Thousand).

This is the amount you will pay the ad-network or website publisher to show your ad a thousand times on their website or across their ad-network.

Whether your ad is shown only once to each visitor (Unique Impressions) or any number of times â€" is something that you will have to work out with the nad-network or the website.

CPM rates were once (pre yr 2000 bubble-burst era) as much as $75, but have now dropped to as little as $1 CPM.

CPC

CPC means Cost Per Click. This is how much you would pay the ad-network or website every time a visitor clicks on your banner. CPC rates can be as high as $3 per click or as little as 5 cents per click. It depends on your product and your market - amongst other factors, the more competition there is â€" the higher you will probably end up paying as you compete with competitors.

CPA

CPA means Cost Per Action. The Action could be any of the following types of actions â€" A visitor clicking on your banner coming to your site and filling up a simple enquiry form (CPR â€" Cost Per Registration) , or if the visitor makes a purchase (CPS â€" Cost Per sale). It could be a flat fee or a percentage commission of the sale made. Affiliate-Networks like www.commissionjunction.com , www.linkshare.com and www.clickbank.net have very good software systems in place to track all this and provide statistics to online merchants and publishers on their network of websites.

I have explained in detail what an Affiliate Network is, in another section. They basically, allow publisher websites to sign up for free so they can start earning commissions on sales arising out of the traffic they send to online merchants. The Affiliate Network tracks all this using their system and code merchants and publishers are required to place on their website. Publishers can sign up for free mostly, and in some cases online Merchants are required to pay a one time setup fee and possibly a monthly fee with commissions â€" eg. As in commissionjunction.com . A very popular site that is free to Merchants is Clickbank.com network.

CTR

CTR is Click Through Rate. This is the percentage rate at which people click on your ad banner. If your banner ad is seen by 100 people but clicked by one person â€" then it’s CTR is 1% or .01

Similarly, if your ad banner is seen 100,000 times and in the same time period it is clicked 2000 times â€" then your banner CTR is 2% or .02 .

This is how we calculate CTR …

(Number of Clicks / Number of impressions) x 100

Example, for above case it would be â€"

(2000 / 100,000) x 100 = .02

CPM, CPC or CPA … which is best for my ad campaign?

Your choice will depend on various factors. Sometimes companies such as Pepsi, would just like to enforce their brand and be seen across many websites, without any need for the user to click on their banners. This is a brand hammering strategy, and a CPM deal would be preferred.

Apart from the above mass branding effort, the decision to go for a CPC, CPM or CPA ad becomes a calculated decision when you have a product that you want to sell on your website.

Would you pay the publisher for only visitors he sends you? or would you pay him for every thousand ads he displays for you?or would you pay him a commission on sales from visitors he sends you?

This is tricky. You may need to read the paragraphs below slowly, or even several times over to get the gist of what I am saying …

To help you decide, you should first run a pilot CPM campaign that will help you gauge results. Your CPM campaign and number of Clicks on your banner, will let you know exactly what your CTR (Click through Rate) is for your banner.

Your CTR will help you decide your campaign type - CPM or CPC ? If your CTR is high, you should go in for a CPM, if its low you should go in for a CPC.

The reason for this is simple. If you have a low CTR then you would rather only pay for the low traffic that comes to your site. If your CTR is high , then you don’t mind paying CPM - because your cost will not escalate for more and more visitors that come to your site, but will remain the same.

I will explain the above, with a couple of examples -

Example 1

Lets suppose a website that you want to advertise on charges a CPM of $5.00 and a CPC of 50 cents.

And, you need to decide if you should go in for CPM or CPC ?

Lets suppose you first buy 1,000,000 impressions.

This works out to $5000 ($5 per 1000 impressions x 1000)

Now lets suppose your CTR is not good and is 0.2 % (or 2 clicks per 1000 ads)

Now, you need to calculate the amount you will pay of you had bought a CPC.

If your CTR is 0.2% and you display 1,000,000 ads, then this works out to …

.002 x 1,000,000 = 2000 clicks.

So essentially you have paid $5000 for 2000 clicks or $2.50 per click!!

This means that I am better of buying on a CPC basis, because one click there costs me only 50cents! And if I go for CPC, then I will get 10,000 clicks for $5000 … which is 5 times more than the clicks i get in the CPM model (2000).

Example 2

Lets assume that your banner ad turns out to be very good and gets a very good CTR of say 5%

Now you need to decide ..CPM or CPC.

Lets analyze as above -

I paid $5000 for 1,000,000 ads at 5% CTR

That means 5% x 1,000,000 ads were clicked on , which equals

= .05 (5%) x 1,000,000 = 50,000 clicks!

So for $5000 i got 50,000 clicks.

Now, if I had bought on a click basis, then at the CPC rate of (50cents) I will pay

50,000 x $0.50 amount for 50,000 clicks, which is $25,000 (5 times what I would pay with CPM, for the same traffic)

So, I am better of buying with a CPM system for this banner ad campaign

What about CPA ?

I have dedicated a separate chapter for this. This system is gaining popularity slowly. It seems to be the fairest system of all the three methods â€" specially when you are selling a product or service. Both Google and Yahoo are leaning towards taking their CPC system into a more fair and measurable CPA system. Google has recently launched Google Analytics and Google’s version of PayPal (Google Checkout) - that is a positive and firm step towards its CPA plans. Selling ad-space on your website - how much can you charge?

Nowadays CPM rates have fallen from highs of $50 to $10 to $2 in many cases.

If you have high traffic you may approach ad-networks, and they will serve out the ads for your website. They will give you a piece of code to insert into the pages of your website. You will get a Username and Password to login to a control panel area on the ad-networks main website, to see how your site is performing. Ad-networks pay you based on CPM or CPC, depending on what their client (the advertiser) opt for. They will take from 40% to 60% commission. This is acceptable, considering the fact that they get you the clients and revenues, and they have to manage all the advertising technology and payment systems.

Most of these ad-networks require that you have a certain number of impressions per month to qualify to become part of their network of websites. For example, DoubleClick requires at minimum 5 million monthly page impressions. There are many mid sized networks, like www.Advertising.com , www.fastclick.com , www.ValueClick.com (only CPC, owned partially by DoubleClick) and even smaller ad networks like, www.burstnet.com . You should visit www.adbalance.com to get a complete list and brief on popular ad networks.

Banner Management Software

If you would like to manage your own Clients and their banner ads for your website, you will need to develop an ad-serving engine or license a third party engine and install it on your website. You can get a list of free and paid software scripts that you can install on your website from www.cgi-resources.com or www.hotscripts.com

Author :Vishal Lamba

Five strategies that you can incorporate today for Increase Traffic

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1. Squidoo is a place where you can post your articles of information about a topic. Write some valuable content to drive traffic. There are several benefits to this strategy. It is monetizable (split profits), you can build content that can be found in the network and the search results, and you can build inbound links (traffic) to your website.
2. HubPages is another place where you can post articles. It is very search engine friendly and may outrank your regular blog posts in the search engine results pages (but that’s OK). It has a 60 percent revenue share program and allows you to insert your Google AdSense to make kickbacks from the advertising of content-sensitive ads.
3. Wetpaint is a free wiki that’s quick and easy to use for posting “How to” articles on their large network. Include good links coming into your site and your wiki can also show up in the results pages.
4. Twitter lets you find and interact with people with similar likes and dislikes. You can twitter (call out) your best posts to drive traffic to your site or to any of your social media pages. However, don’t twitter all your posts and mix up what you twitter though (for example, wiki posts, HubPages posts, your blog posts, and so on). Don’t do irrelevant posts directly to anyone and don’t spam @someones. Read my blog post on "How Twitter Can Help Online Marketing and Tips".
5. TubeMogal lets you create and upload videos to TubeMogal, and it submits the video to other sites, such as like YouTube, Viddler, and so on. There are many video strategies to massage your search engine results pages and drive traffic to your site:

• Create video blogs, such as ”How to” videos, informational videos, or tours.
• Read your text posts to the camera.
• Create daily videos – make a commitment that the camera goes on.
• Create a top X list on video, such as the top ten Christmas gifts for boys. Top ten lists are good and usually rank well in the network and the search engine results pages.
• Encourage people to leave comments on your video.
• Screen cast a video tour (for example, Camtasia) of your world. People can watch how you are moving on the computer. Take them on a tour of your site, how to sign up, or even talk them through a PowerPoint presentation.
• Save blooper videos and compile them together. People see you as a human being and usually love them!
• Create an “About us” video.
• Encourage video contests – Don suggests to have a process in place where the submissions transfer the rights to your company though.
• Twitter your videos.
• Embed your videos in Squidoo and HubPages.
• Submit your videos to Podcasting directories.

Using Social Media To drive Traffic

SMO, or Social Media Optimization, helps build website traffic by using social media based websites. The dawning of web 2.0 has seen many different social media websites crop up in an equally large number of different guises. Content sharing, social bookmarking, and collaborative websites form the basis of this initiative and it is these types of websites that you need to use in order to leverage the power of the social web.  In today's article written by Matt Jackson, we'll show you how to take full advantage of social media to start driving traffic to your website.



SMO as Guerrilla Marketing




The nature of Social Media Optimization is such that it could be considered a form of guerrilla marketing. Website owners and blog owners have the choice of either investing money or their own skills and time in order to generate traffic from social sites. As long as your efforts are directed appropriately, the more work you put in the more reward you will reap.



SMO as a Link Building Technique



Social optimization also has a happy side effect - it helps to build your link profile so you will usually gain search engine traffic in the long term. Becoming a part of an online community is essential to your social optimization and this, in turn, will naturally provide links to your website. The links will usually be from relevant pages based on a similar topic to that of your page. The more popular social sites are also given a lot of weight by certain search engines.



Optimize Your Existing Site



Create genuinely interesting, intriguing, or informative pages. Include images, links, video, and collaborative tools so that visitors really get involved when they do visit your site. SMO is basically digital word-of-mouth and, if your website doesn't provide some kind of appealing experience to your visitors, then it simply won't attract the positive word-of-mouth that you want.



Add new pages, if necessary, so that you can include more information. However, don't just add pages for the sake of it - ensure that each page really does have something unique to offer. A website still needs to be well structured.




Get a Blog



Add a blog. Every website has potential blog posts in it so find yours and start blogging regularly. Blog posts tend to attract links from other blog posts and those in turn will spread the word of your website. The more popular your blog becomes, the more value it is perceived to provide and the more visitors you will continue to get.



Be active in those blogs that are within your industry and use your link where permitted and relevant. Don't spam because that will lose you more friends than it will make but, if you provide relevant information and a forum or blog allows you to link to it, then provide an insightful comment and provide a link.



Be Active



Being active is a vital part to your whole SMO campaign. Simply registering with social bookmarking sites and content sharing sites is not enough. You need to be involved, post regularly, and generally become a part of the community. If you don't have the time or the inclination to do this, then find somebody else to do it instead.



Some Social Sites To Join




You really do reap what you sow in terms of SMO. Determine the sites that are most suitable to your website, join them, and become an active member. Choose some broad topic sites as well as some that are specific to those interested in the industry in which you operate or topic that you cover. Look at social news submission sites, content sharing sites, bookmarking, and networking sites and try to get a broad coverage of all of them. Here are just a few of the sites you should seriously consider using:



Social News/Media Sharing Websites



• Reddit - Reddit is a very popular social news website that boasts a lot of subscribers and covers a wide range of topics.



• Digg - Initially, Digg was reserved to technology and related topics but is now a broad topic news site that again has a lot of subscribers and regular readers.




• Newsvine - Not as popular as the two above but offering a slightly more formal tone to its content. Again, a good range of topics are covered.



Social Networking Sites



• MySpace - It may be largely riddled with spam, but there are still too many genuine users for you to ignore MySpace. You don't have to be an unsigned band to take advantage either.



• Facebook - Has caused quite a stir and offers users the chance to create and distribute their own applications as well as content. Another very popular site.




• LinkedIn - LinkedIn is a social networking site dedicated to professionals and businesses. It can really help to build a huge network of partners, customers, and other useful contacts in a business network.



Social Bookmarking Websites



• del.icio.us - Register, store bookmarks that you find useful, and include a bookmark to your website and use a public profile.



• Stumble Upon - Same again. Alternatively, you can add a Stumble icon to each of your pages, blog posts, and other media and let your readers do the walking for you.




Buttons For Your Pages



Many social websites provide a button that your readers or visitors can use to automatically add a page. Bookmarking and content sharing sites, in particular, have these buttons and, if you've ever read a website or an article site, then you will have seen the Digg This and Stumble buttons at the bottom of each entry. Users registered with these sites can click the button and quickly add your page. The most popular websites are usually displayed on the high traffic home pages delivering yet more visitors to your site.



Offering Quality



The Social Internet has opened up a whole new avenue for promoting your business, but it needs to be done properly and carefully. Simply tagging, bookmarking, and sharing every page you have regardless of its quality will not bring you the desired results. You may find that it does you more harm than good in the long run.