Are you really earning from Adsense?

The sole purpose why I am writing this blog post is because I have received many complaints from fellow bloggers that they do not earn as expected from adsense. Everyday hundreds of bloggers start off their money making expedition with a hope that after few months or years they may be earning high by participating in programs such as Google Adsense.

After few days or weeks most of them leave blogging because they do not earn even a buck. Some may be cheating by clicking on their own ads or asking others to do that or just participating in programs that gives automated clicks. Such bloggers are either “banned” immediately or when they are about to receive their earnings.

When they are banned, they leave blogging. Then, a few honest publishers are left who are literary embarrassed by their earnings even after getting traffic or page rank. Most of them also leave blogging until they are fed-up. Then a few remain who just wait for the day when they would be the next Darren Rowse.

But that’s the truth, you can’t earn living by your Adsense earnings. According to me only few like Darren, Amit would be really making something out of adsense. Both of them have published a post on how much they earn. It goes in thousand’s $ per month.

Even bloggers like Peter Chen are hardly able to make out 200 $ per month which is not acceptable for a comfortable living

Tip:- First make blogging your part time job. When you realize you have got an alexa rank of below 100,000 gear up and be a full time blogger.

But all bloggers have got something in their part from where they can really earn from blogging.

-Start off with a blog.

-Post your content like a reputed teacher even though no one may be reading it!

-Submit your blog to as many blog directories as you can.

-Wait three moths until you get assigned a decent page rank.

Now what you have got is a page rank. Sign up for some other earning programs {like text link ads, pay per post}. If you have got a page rank around 3 or more, you can earn around 10 $ per sponsored post. You can do a sponsored post after every three days. That means you will earn around 40 $ in a week. Which in turn says 200 $ per month! How is that for a part time blogger. Slowly and steadily your site will get popular. More high Page rank means more $’s per post. A page rank five site can have sponsored post of upto 50 $ ! Just imagine !

Or maybe you might be interested in selling off your links?

Blogs like johnchow.com are selling links from their blogs at 300 $ per month that too with a page rank of 4.

Google Page Rank Updated for April

The long wait is now over.As I hinted in my previous articles, Google Pagerank in Google Toolbar is going to be updated in April and whoila, its updated as expected.

Here are some sites that changed their page ranks in my notice

Webtalks has now jumped from zero to 3
Digital Dreams jumped from 1 to 3
Rediff.com jumped from 7 to 9
Statcounter.com slipped from 10 to 9
Gmail.com slipped from 10 to 9

I did some experimenting with my pagerank. let us see the results

I created a temporary page in Google Pages for Blog Reviews. I forgot to put the rel="nofollow" attribute on its link.As a result the page has a page rank of 2 just because I added it into my sidebar

Now the chain of pagerank goes on..

The Review my blog page was linking to two pages,Webtalks{this one only} and another temporary page on googlepages. The second temporary page too got a pagerank of 2. So this gives us hints about Google Technology.

Another interesting fact was that the Google counted sites which were linking to me in April first week,because I am sure that there are many more sites that should have been their in Google's linking index.

On the basis of this information, we can say that the next 'complete' PageRank update will take place on 28 July 2007 and it will count links that are linking as in the first week of July

Conclusion::
A link from my site will fetch you pagerank of 2.Google Technology respects those sites which are linking to very few other sites

Tips for getting site listed in Google Directory

Google Directory (which uses listings of Dmoz the largest Human Edited web directory on the internet). Open Directory Project is basically from the Netscape. Google Directory uses Dmoz’s listings and then refines through its own technology. You would be in benefit if you have your site listed in Google Directory not because of Page Rank or Traffic jump but your site would also have a higher status in the web. Infact everyday thousands of bloggers submit their site. Getting into dmoz is not easy but also not impossible.

What I have learnt from my 10 day experience is that Due to large volume of applications everyday, dmoz editors review your site in a hurry. They might not be visiting your site in that depth. Here are few tips that will definitely increase your chances of getting into dmoz.

As said in dmoz guidelines, submit to the deepest sub category you know where your site suits. For eg, My site should be listed at Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Weblogs/FAQs,_Help_and_Tutorials/
This will make your reviewing process quick. Although editors have an option to transfer a site to another sub category, but they generally don’t do that.

Editors visit your site’s front page only (in most cases). What they will be observing is your layout and content.

I am not permitted to disclose a blog which was deserving a place in my category but it wasn’t listed because it was not well organized. Basically all blogger and wordpress blogs have good layouts, so you shouldn’t be experimenting much. I’ll prefer you force your visitors to scroll vertically instead forcing them to scroll horizontally. Its not that your theme is attractive, it should be that your links are well built up and tested.

Suppose you own a blog. Don’t put rubbish items in your posts totally off topic. They may be like that I am planning to shift or anything else. Post only what your visitors want to read.
P.S. you can have a status box like mine for such things [see left sidebar]

You can have a look on other sites listed where you think your site should be listed and then compare

Do not flood your page with affiliate links. Editors take this very seriously.

While giving your site’s description, do not use short forms of words like info, tech etc. Editors generally do not accept such applications because it makes it different for users of other tongues to get them translated.

A dmoz listing update takes time. It may vary from one minute to one year depending on editor. So if you want to check the status of your application { whether still under review, accepted or rejected }, you can visit dmoz resource zone.

My Site is not updated by Technorati

Technorati, an online directory of blogs, a website that has an collection of all posts, blogs ,tags currenlt present in the blogosphere. It would really be an embarrassing situation when a webmaster finds his blog his blog ranked above 3,000,000. Technorati basically indexes all blogs and their posts whenever they are published on any blogging platform. If you are the owner of a blog, you can claim it by three methods. Claiming gives you advantages of Technorati profiles, Technorati Widgets and Tagging your Website. But recently, Technorati had been followed by a bug which resulted in Technorati missing some blog posts and even complete blogs {including mine} after giving rapid pings too. Most of these problems were faced by webmasters who use blogger. Since I was also the one affected, my stats used to say something like that ::

Title:: Webtalks::You are Welcomed
Links:: 0
Rank:: 3,000,000 +
Last Updated:: 90 Days ago.

Plus it was saying that I haven’t published any post yet

I really felt embarrassed when I found such ranking of my blog. I tried to contact the Technorati Support via mail. But they did not reply me for over 3 weeks. Sometimes there used to be an automated response that I should validate my feeds. But as I am using the blogger platform, I was quite sure that my feeds were valid. When they did not responded my query over a long time, my patience broke and I contacted The Technorati Media Person. Suddenly I discovered hat Technorati have mentioned this problem in their blog post. I found the trick and visited their discussion forum. Their I reliased that Technorati Developers are active responders to the queries made by the Technorati Members. I posted on my problem. The next Day, BINGO! , my blog was updated which now looked something like this.




So its my advice to bloggers who are facing problem like me, Please post your problem on discussion forum at Technorati Support.


Anyways my Technorati Blog Favorites were also affected so you can now re-add this blog as your favorite if you are a Technorati Member.



And if you have Technorati Links, you have money, Check out this cool tool which is purely based on Technorati back links

My blog is worth $29,920.62.
How much is your blog worth?

For bloggers who want to show off , you can display your Technorati Rank, Purple Moggy has a nice hack

Which online tracker is the best?

This topic maybe the third most flooding object in my inbox.There are many big names in this category like urchin(Now Google Analytics), Sitemeter, Statcounter. etc. So lets start reviewing them one by one

Google Analytics
A very powerful tracker.Gives you all soughts reports. I recommend this for professional webmasters as Google Analytics gives you all soughts of reports from Marketing tools to Site Overlays.Their is no such limit on your usage

Where it wins it?
Free, Fantastic Graphics and Google Powered.
Where it loses?
um..... very complicated for a begineer

Statcounter
A very simple, instant and easy to use tracker. It has also got some options that suits the logs of an big organisation's website .
Where it wins?
umm.. its basically less complicated than Google Analytics.
Where it loses?
Limited free Log size

Last of all I would like to mention my favourite tracker. Any guess? No not Sitemeter its MyBlogLog.

Reasons::

Gives you three stats, where readers came from - what readers viewed - what readers clicked.
This helps me a lot as my site offers templates.I can come to know which template you ere looking for ( In Google) and which template you downloaded.{Currently, most downloads are of Minima White }Gives in a sought of feedback. Plus an inbuilt community for blogs which offer in a sought of social networking(Psst.. you can view/join my community here } plus some cool widgets like most popular outgoing link and recent readers.


Although I have installed all three of them because each one has an special feature

Planning to shift to a custom domain?

Do you own a domain? So why to blog somewhere else ? Custom domains enable you to post on a domain via blogging service providers like Blogger , Wordpress etc. I am also plannng to do the same but there are disadvantages too.

My Backlinks and Search Engine ratings would be lost if I shift. Although according to Google, they will divert all the backlinks and SERP rating to the custom domain. But why to take the risk ?

Lets learn from the previous experiences of bloggers.

Insideorkut had a page rank of 7 but when they shifted, they dropped down to zero page rank

Instablok had a page rank of 0 but they shifted , there page rank increased to 4

problogger.net was initially started with a custom domain only

Another interesting observation of mine is people usually choose a Wordpress powered blog when they shift.Why?

Here I have drawn some conclusions

* Wordpress enables users to upload files wher as Blogger does not have any such options as yet.

*Don't mind , but according to me, Wordpress has some clean and appealing templates.I really like them { Psst... you might get the clue of my new blogger template under progress }

But still this step will involve a lot of risk. Hats off to a 12 year old problogger David who recently shifted at techzi.net.

I am looking forward for buying an domain at GoDaddy but I still need your help. Donate if you wish[See left column ] .

Own a blogger Custom template

So, Do you want a fresh and unique look to your blogger blog ? I have got something in store for you. Just tell me how you want the template to look and I'll take care of the rest. These templates will definitely fit into your budget. Just tell me how much your budget is... I'll manage the rest. Please note that I am currently accepting only those applications who are paying me. Sorry for those who wanted free templates.A minimum of 50$ budget please.

Just fill out the form below, I'll give you the status, when your blogger template would be finished.

I am accepting payments through PayPal or any Credit Card. For more on payments, you can mail me.

Update:Due to large number of requests I'm receiving, chances are I may not be able to reply.You should still fill up the form so that I can manage the database and do your work as soon as possible.

Name:
Email Address:
Your (blogger) blog URL
Your Budget ( in U.S. $ )
Number of columns	2 column 3 column
Brief Description which colors you want

New blogger templates (XML) 3 columns

These all are free to download XML templates which will work with the new blogger {blogger beta}.Most of them are 3 columned ones.They have a back link back to this page.You can remove it if your want.If you want to motivate me, the donation option below is all yours.

How to install your template
Step 1.Click on Template title (For eg. "Minima White")


Step 2.Goto Edit template section of your layout tab


Step 3. Upload it from the place where you saved it.

Important: Widgets
By installing any one of these templates, there are chances that all your widgets are lost(means all your customization is lost and only default template would be their).
It is recommended to backup your widgets. [Guide to backup widgets ]
A warning similar to the one given below will be displayed while installing them, Click Yes.


Update(s) 1/11/2008

Known issues :- After going through your comments,I'm posting about issues which are common

Son Of Moto Template
The bug's fixed and template updated, it should be green now.

Rounder's Template
The template experiences a sidebar drop in IE.Under Scanner

Header Image
It's been observed that the template isn't permitting images.the temporary solution is that you delete the 'Header' page element.Then re-add it using 'Add a Gadget' link in the layout section.

XML Errors
Instead of copy-pasting the code,try downloading it and then uploading.For downloading Right click on the template link you wish to download and select "Save Target As" in IE or "Save Link As" in Firefox.Then upload it from Edit HTML section of the Layout Tab.

Current templates available

Minima White



Minima Black



Minima Blue



Minima Ochre



Son of Moto



Ms.Moto



Dots



Dots Dark



TicTac



Tic Tac Blue



Denim



Denim Washed



Denim Light



897



565



Thisaway



Thisaway Blue



Rounders(01)



Rounders(02)



Rounders(03)



Sand Dollar



Herbert




Scribe



Harbor



Troubled installing them? just buzz me and I'll solve your problem

How does Google Index Images?

Well thats an interesting question, How Does Google Index Images?
Google Maybe the most comprehensive image search provider of the web. But some webmasters don't know how to get their images indexed by Google.

Googlebot as we all know ignores images. So, how the damm it has an image search?

If your site is "Search Engine Friendly" and is a bit old, then Google must index its images too.A bit old site is required because Google dosen't update the Image Index "frequently"

If you are an impatient Webmaster, like me, Google Webmasters have an option for Enhanced Image Search. If you choose to enable enhanced image search, Google will use tools such as Google Image Labeler to associate the images included in your site with labels that will improve indexing and search quality of those images

For those who don't know about Google Image Labeler.Google Image Labeler is a new feature of Google Image Search that allows you to label random images to help improve the quality of Google's image search results.

In this You'll be randomly paired with a partner who's online and using the feature. Over a 90-second period, you and your partner will be shown the same set of images and asked to provide as many labels as possible to describe each image you see. When your label matches your partner's label, you'll earn some points and move on to the next image until time runs out. After time expires, you can explore the images you've seen and the websites where those images were found. And we'll show you the points you've earned throughout the session.

it is not necessary that you do a bit of "labeling" to get your images indexed.Few more tips are that you

• Make sure the page topic corresponds to the search term
  
• Make an image of standard size{like 800 x 600 }
  
• Make the image in .jpg or .gif format.{Not necesarry, but recommended }
  
• Use the search term in the alt attribute, the title attribute and make sure that you have included the width and height declarations

Blog Review- LiFe disguised in HuMoUr

LiFe disguised in HuMoUr is a blogger blog written by an Indian named Mitesh Asher.This blog basically have posts on

• Fun


• Humor


• Entertainment


• India


• Life


• Rare Pictures

Suggestions::

1. Change the template into a three column one with less width so that visitors with small screen resolutions don't need to scroll horizontally.
   
2. No need to waste that precious place for date.It can be aligned below the title
   
3. POST REGULARLY
   
   Adsense Tip::
   A Google Search Box below your Blog's Title

To Get your blog/Site Reviewed for free, apply here

MetaTags For Adsense

Webtalks reader Umesh had some problems with metatags. Metatags are usually used for dynamic content. Such content maybe what robots of Search Engines see when they visit your site. All of the meta tags are placed in the head section of any html or xhtml file. Metatags are commonly used to describe a site, give the site’s keywords, give the site’s coding language, Verify your site in Google Sitemaps. This description comes below the link and Title of your website in Search Engine Result Page. If you want add a description and keywords of your site/blogger blog ,copy paste these codings into the head section of your webpage
<meta name="description" content="Replace this with your site's description"><br /><meta name="keywords”" content="Replace,This,with,keywords">
Adsense ads on your site are displayed relevant to the content of your site. For more accuracy of these ads, you can choose some keywords which suit your site and place them in the meta tag. Adsense ads then will start getting displayed according to site’s keywords. However Google Adsense will take some time to update their ads. Note that this method is used to refine ads for your website and not a specific webpage. The most accurate method which can refine the ads according to the webpages is by Section Targetting. For enabling this, You have to put two simple code lines in your template. They are
<!-- google_ad_section_start -->

<!-- google_ad_section_end -->
Between these lines, you should place the post body.

Create your own Advertise on this Site through Adsense

Let’s assume an advertiser comes across your site and feels it would a good site to advertise on. You don’t want to lose this advertiser, right? That’s where Onsite Advertiser Sign-up comes in: Advertisers can create site-targeted campaigns directly from your site through this link
..The ‘Advertise on this site’ link will no longer appear on your ad units following last week’s ad format change, you can still display a separate Onsite Advertiser Sign-up link on your site

This is a fully customizable link and its benefit is of Having more interested advertisers bidding on your site means increased competition -- which in turn translates into higher revenue potential for you. Copy paste the following coding in any webpage.Remember to change the referring URL to your site's URL and the Publisher ID to yours
<a href="https://adwords.google.com/select/OnsiteSignupLandingPage?client=ca-pub-XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX&referringUrl=http://yoursite.com/">Advertise on this site</a>

Blogexplosion violates Google Adsense Policies

Blogexplosion.com, is very popular these days as it increases the traffic to your blog or in their words "explode your blog's traffic".Unfortunately it violates one of Adsense Policies. I just confirmed it from Adsense Team that it is not a valid way increasing traffic.According to Adsense Team, no publisher can increase traffic to their blogs by submitting to sites like BlogExplosion.
Banned Publishers have started complaining that BlogExplosion is just a Directory.

No words have been heard from the Blog Explosion Team as yet. Google has not disabled the accounts of all adsense publishers participating in Blogexplosion. Google Adsense , according to me are disabling only those accounts whose visitors clicking the ads are referred through Blogexplosion

So, Beware , if you are an Adsense Publisher partcipating in Blogexplosion

Google Notebooks added to Google Search Results

If you use Google Notebook, you'll find a new link at the top of search results pages: "My notebooks". For many of us Google Notebook might be new.So the my notebooks icon might not be appearing on their search result pages.

Google Notebook as the name suggests is used for adding notes for a website.Google Notebooks have an extension which can be used for adding notes from any website.

If you haven't installed that plugin, its available from here
For those users who do not have plugins will see a simple Note This Snippet in the end line of the website description.

Google Apps referral for US publishers only

Google Adsense Referrals for Google Apps which were anounced on 2nd this month are only for Google Adsense US publishers.
For those who didn't knew about Adsense referrals for Google apps, here are its feautures::

• Google Apps provides customized email addresses (powered by Gmail), Google Calendar, Google Talk, Docs & Spreadsheets and Page Creator, all for free for your domain. Best of all, everything is hosted by Google, so there's no hardware or software to download, install or maintain.


• You will be credited $5 when someone clicks the referral ad from your site and signs up for Google Apps with a domain that has not already been signed up for the service.
• Currently available only in English

Well any Adsense publisher might love this feauture to be on their sites but Google Adsense have put this referral in beta test, meaning that only US Adsense publishers can have them on their website. On being asked their response is that US publishers provide their Social Security Number while Publishers from other countries do not.

Why to use a preferred domain?

The first and the most major factor that will affect your website’s search engine ranking and page rank will be its domain. For example, this blog is having two domains ,i.e., http://webtalks.blogspot.com and http://www.webtalks.blogspot.com.

Any person will say these two means the same thing. But you are wrong. Googlebot and other search engine robots take this as two different websites. Now all my backlinks and page rank is on the http://webtalks.blogspot.com domain. What if a person visits the other domain and says this blog is not even indexed by Google! Now I kept on thinking what can be done to solve this major problem.

Then I ended up with two main factors.If you are submitting your site to a directory or any other website, make sure you submit the same domain only. If the directory has the different domain, change it immediately .

Fortunately, Google Webmasters have a solution to this. They have an option for your preferred domain in Google Sitemaps. In this, you can choose the domain in which you have the maximum back links. What Google will do is to display only the preferred domain in their indexes thus making the visitors visit the domain you have preferred. I have also applied for it and you may now see some backlinks to my http://webtalks.blogspot.com domain.

To prefer your domain go to Google Sitemaps, verify your site and then choose preferred domain. If you have any problems with verification of your site, you can have a look at A Complete Blogger Guide.

How link exchange can affect your Traffic

We have been talking about Google Page Rank since a long time. To have a page rank, you need links. For links, you do Link Exchange Programs. But let me tell you two important things, Page Rank is not everything and Google is smart enough to catch you while you are exchanging links.
According to me Page Rank is not everything. Lets take an example. Search for “Webtalks” (without quotes) in Google. This blog will be listed at the first place above another page. Now just compare the Page Rank of the 2nd postion page and my blog. The other page has 3* Google Page Rank and my blog isn’t assigned a Page Rank yet( but will be soon) but still my page is listed at top as this blog is “SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZED”.

Now you think that if you get an link from a page of page rank, take 7, your page rank will be boosted. Absolutely wrong.

Page Rank is calculated by a formulae. This is a very complicated one, but I have a an example.If we have a link from a page of 7 rank, your page rank should be 0.2/10 almost negligible thus zero page rank(if calculated according to formulae). Google appreciates genuine links or in other words, one way links.

Most of these links are commonly found within posts. For example you know a webpage which has good templates and want your visitors to visit that page, you will place a link within your post to the page which has templates wheras the page which you are linking to you isn’t linking back, in this case the crawler will remain on the page you linked to and will improve the page’s Search Engine visibility.

Now the big topic is HOW TO GET ONE WAY LINKS?
Have money? Try some business boosters for a decent amount.

Don’t have enough budget?
CONTENT IS THE KING AND DESIGN IS THE QUEEN . If you impress your visitors by any of the one, I am sure this will give you one way links. It will take a decent amount of time. Even a blog like labnol didn’t have one way links for 9 long months. But what the webmaster did is hardwork and put in decent efforts.

Today he earns around 50,000 $ per month and has a minimum of 60 visitors online. Take inspiration from him. It has come to my notice that many blogs are started to earn some income. The webmasters are on their full best in the beginning 7 days. Then their interest begins to drop. Two reasons are they don’t have traffic, they don’t have any sought of Page Rank or are not indexed by Search Engines so their earnings don’t increase.

Let me tell you kindly, you have to put in efforts for 3-4 moths consistently to have a Page Rank/Traffic. Its not just that you have links pointing to your site. As far is indexing is considered, even my blog took two weeks to get indexed in all search engines.
So its my advice to new webmasters. Never loose hope in yourself. If you know that you can succeed, definitely you will succeed. For those who want to get in Google, I have an review my blog option. Through which, I will review your blog, link your blog and even to some extent a provide a bit of traffic

When is Google Page Rank updated?

Ben, a reader of this blog has a blog. He started his journey in the blogosphere in February 2007. He drafted me a mail complaining that he doesn’t have a Google Page Rank as yet. He also mentioned that he is getting many inbound links from other websites with high page ranks. So I went on a survey to find what the reality was.

I took my blog and checked that who links to me from here. I have got a total of 28 msn links, 65 yahoo links but only one Google back link. That is why this blog doesn’t have a page rank yet. This shows that yahoo is the most frequent updater, then msn and last is Google. The Google‘s cache of the page which is linking to me dates back to February 27, just two days after I started this blog. Naturally, my blog wouldn’t have any visitors or back links at that time (It was too new). It is true that Google counts only the pages which have page rank of 1 or more. Now the interesting thing was, one of my favorite blogs, Blogger templates is having a page rank of 7* and is linking to me. Still Google has not indexed the link.

Google Page Rank is an algorithm which calculates the importance of your web page on the basis of Inbound links from other indexed sites.

So we know Google last updated it on 27 February 2007. Google Algorithm was sleeping in March. Possibly the next update will be soon. Experts say that Google Page Rank on the Google toolbar would be updated in the first half of April.

So lets keep our fingers cross and wait to see whether we get Page Rank increased this time or not.

Update:: seochat.com has an interesting future page rank check tool . Try that out

Future PageRank Tool © SEO Chat™ URL Valid URL Enter Captcha To Continue To prevent spamming, please enter in the numbers and letters in the box below