The Death of Google Adsense And Other Myths

Recent changes in the Google Adsense program has many online website owners and marketers seriously concerned. Many have seen their Adsense profits and income flatline... seen their four or five figure monthly Adsense income disappear overnight. For many the Google Adsense bubble has burst.

What happened?

First, Google made a change in its Adsense program, letting advertisers choose between putting their ads in the search results or on the content pages of Adsense publishers. Search won out and started to receive the higher bids. Search results convert better than content ads.

Next, Google has cracked down on Junk Adsense sites, like they should. These sites consisted mainly of software generated re-hashed search engine links and were totally annoying to say the least. But Google also cracked down on 'squeeze pages' or 'affiliate landing pages' - a lucrative source of income for many online marketers, mainly because these pages helped marketers build an opt-in list or use permission based email.

The results of these changes produced an Adsense meltdown for many online marketers.

Some Internet marketers are speculating recent changes could even mean the death of Adsense. One online marketer, Scott Boulch even published a free report entitled 'The Death of Adsense".

Many affiliate marketers would agree with Boulch on some of his points, especially the obvious fact that using Adsense on your web content is starting on the bottom rung of the online marketing ladder. Instead of receiving pennies per click with Adsense, alert marketers and webmasters have already discovered that by using CPA (Cost-Per-Action) and direct affiliate links, they can produce significantly more revenue from their web pages. Why earn pennies per click when you can earn $5, $10 or OVER $100 per click?

But the fine people at Google are catching on...

In the past Google has made its own swing to the Cost-Per-Action direction with its referral system for the Firefox Browser and giving webmasters credit for signing up Adwords and Adsense accounts.

Many online marketers believe Google needs to expand on these baby steps and open their Adsense affiliate program up to third party products/advertisers. In a recent company statement Google offered some hope: "We're always looking for new ways to provide effective and useful features to advertisers, publishers, and users," the company stated "As part of these efforts we are currently testing a cost-per-action (CPA) pricing model to give advertisers more flexibility and provide publishers another way to earn revenue through AdSense." Basically, in cost-per-action, advertisers pay for leads, purchases or customer acquisition. It would help with the click fraud issue and the monetary returns could potentially make Adsense's revenues pale in comparison.

As more and more commerce goes online... acquiring customers for such diverse services as insurance, real estate, telephone, marketing, web hosting, travel, mortgage loans, cable TV, banking... you name it, almost any service or product sold in the marketplace is now turning to the Internet for customers and lifelong clients.

Enormous sums of money will change hands. Perhaps, the most lucrative of these is customer acquisition. Advertisers are turning to the Internet and webmasters/marketers for acquiring these lifelong customers for their respective services and products. Businesses and companies are quickly realizing paying an attractive lead generating fee/commission is smart business. They quickly build a client base for their services or products and quickly recoup their expenses - realizing in the long run these leads will generate huge profits.

It can also mean huge profits for the CPA networks like ValueClick's Commission Junction and Rakuten's LinkShare who supply the advertisers with publishers and website marketers to harvest these leads. It can be a lucrative venture for all involved, especially for those online marketers who have cornered the search engines for lucrative niche markets in big ticket items. Even small ticket items pay quite well for those marketers who know how to market online.

Contextual advertising is fine, but CPA (Cost-Per-Action) will offer much better returns for the website owner. Making any profitable site much more profitable. It will and is opening up a whole area of marketing opportunities that never existed before we had the Internet. Creating a complex structure of advertisers, publishers and the Affiliate/CPA companies that connect the two.

Of course, cutting out the middle man has always been even a more profitable venture for most marketers. As more and more webmasters realize they can make much more with dealing directly with companies, rather than going through a middle process like Google Adsense or the countless other affiliate/CPA networks ... online marketers can reap even bigger rewards.

For an online marketer when you get a phone call or email from the CEO or the affiliate manager with a company or service you're promoting with your website - you know you have made it! Dealing directly with a company usually means bigger commissions and special exclusive deals just for you or your sites.

Only fly in the ointment, all that extra paperwork and business wheeling and dealing. Many marketers and website owners like the idea of someone else handling all the tracking, collecting payments, promotional materials... they just like to sit back and build more websites and content. It gives the affiliate marketer a lifestyle that they are looking for on the web. They just like to market and promote with their sites and let someone else worry about the details. Therefore, there will always be a place for contextual ads like Google Adsense... Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.

However, could CPA be a better alternative for the current Adsense contextual ads?

Google would be the natural choice for a middleman if there ever was one. Besides, many savvy marketers know the Google brand name is trusted online, any product/service promoted through Google would be an easy sell. Many argue Google already dominates the web, why should it not be the one to handle these CPA transactions through its Adsense program.

On the flip side, over countless updates and changes to its indexing, many webmasters have experienced more than a few negative dealings with Google. Many have won, many have lost in this Google Age, but all have realized riding the Google Search Engine is like running with the bulls at Pamplona, totally thrilling unless you're one of the unfortunate few who get trampled in the process.

About the Author:
Titus Hoskins.
The author is a former teacher who now works full-time online operating numerous websites, including two sites on Internet marketing. For the latest web marketing tools try: Internet Marketing Tools For the lastest trade information in your own industry try: Free Trade Publications Copyright © 2006 Titus Hoskins.
Submitted: 2006-09-24
Article Source: GoArticles

Google Adsense

here's an all about Google letter. It didn't start out that way, but when my fingers got typing that's what flowed out of them.

My brain could have had something to do with it too. But not a lot. It's still quite muddled from being ill.

Hope you find this stuff below useful.

1. Google Adsense stuff

I've heard that Google have been getting tough on Adsense sites recently, investigating sites displaying Adsense and removing ones which don't meet the criteria.

You see, what's happening is that people are getting approved for one site, then adding the code to other sites they own.

That's fine by Google as long as the new sites have nothing wrong with them/don't break Google's small print.

Well some of that small print is mighty small and two friends have written to me this week to say their sites have been banned in the past 7 days.

Why?

Well both for the same reason. They both put a lot of work into building new content sites and put the Adsense ads up on almost every page.

But it was obvious that the sites had no purpose other than displaying the Adsense code.

They didn't try to get subscribers to their ezines, they didn't promote affiliate programs, etc.

All they did was have good quality targeted content + Adsense.

Now you might think there's nothing wrong with building a site like that, but Google just doesn't like it when it comes to Adsense.

One friend sent me the letter Google sent him. Here's part of what Google had to say:

"Ads may not be placed on pages published specifically for the purpose of showing ads, whether or not the page content is relevant."
______________________________________

Ok, so seeing that having quality content isn't enough, what can you do to make sure your own Adsense sites don't fall foul of the rules?
______________________________________

Well what you have to do is give your sites an extra purpose.

Here are a few ways of doing that:

# also display some affiliate links on the pages, and include an affiliate graphic or two.

# perhaps run a news ticker. You can get good ones from a number of sources, but one of the best is http://www.moreover.com which has newsfeeds covering a huge variety of niches.

# link to authority sites on the subject, even though they're probably not linking back to you.

# start an ezine and have a subscribe box displayed prominently on each page.

# if your site is about online business/marketing give away a free ebook or two. But make sure they're quality one's you can customize with your affiliate links so that you stand a chance of profiting from them.

# have a poll running on your site. I use a good one from One Minute Poll

If I were you I'd do all of them.

2. Google Adwords Traffic:

One way of GUARANTEEING plenty of visitors from Google is by buying Adwords.

If you do it right you can make a fabulous income. If you do it wrong, you'll be well out of pocket.

Recommended Adwords Resources ->

Chris Carpenter's GoogleCash ebook, which details how Chris makes a living from Adwords. An excellent resource.

I'm a big user of Google Adwords to promote my many mini sites. And it's now made easier because of the help I get from using GoogleCash and AdWords Analyzer. Read the page listed below to follow this strategy (it works).

http://www.ozemedia.com/google-adwords.htm

3. Google and blogging...

Google is still ranking frequently updated Blogs very high. And having your own blog (and keeping it to the theme of your main site) could be a great way of getting more traffic.

To learn how to do it well I'd like to recommend you read James Maduk's Blogging Secrets which is a really good multimedia ebook. Very tasty.

Like his excellent Google course "How to Get Ranked #1 On Google" it's a combination of Audio / Video / Whiteboard Training and Screen Captures. (plus you get 4 Hours of bonus audio interviews from his private E-learning sessions.

If you're thinking of blogging for profit you need to read this first.

4. More Google Stuff...

Your commercially oriented sites probably took a rankings kick in the guts in the last Google update.

Don't worry, you're not alone. This site lets you enter the main keywords for your site and see how many other sites with the same keyword phrase have dropped in rankings.

Not really useful, but interesting.

http://www.scroogle.org/

More useful - in fact a MUST READ if you're at all interested in learning more about how and why Google's latest update is affecting your sites - is a detailed online report "A Statistical and Experimental Analysis of Google's Florida Update" written by Leslie Rohde who developed that marvelous ranking software Optilink.

There's no charge to read it, though Leslie could easily have packaged it up into a "special report" and sold it.

When you've done with reading it though, I seriously suggest taking a look at Optilink.

Leslie is one of the most knowledgeable search engine people around, and the Optilink software works a treat.
_______________________

Looks like an Adsense competitor is on the way early in 2004 http://www.quigo.com/adsonar.htm

Overtures efforts in this field are in beta, with some major sites already running content matched Overture advertising, (and rumors that it's going to be opened up to all of us) and Commission Junction have got a contextual advertising/content matching solution in the works - though unlike Adsense it's very unlikely to offer pay per click.

You can get more on Overture's Content Match here and while you're there you might want to consider advertising on them. I've had an account there for years now and get tons of traffic to my mini sites. A friend of mine, Paul Manuel, wrote a free report
detailing how he makes a great living from his Overture advertising. you can get it here.

Ok, one last Google thing: Trackmeat.

It's no cost software that saves you logging into Adsense 50 times a day to check how your commissions are doing.

Once you install it and click "Go" it minimizes right away, and your AdSense income will update down in the taskbar and system tray at intervals set by you.

It also works for Commission Junction.

(note: I haven't used this software, so I'm not recommending it, just informing you that it exists)

About the author:
Phil Wiley is the author of the best selling book Mini Site Profits www.minisiteprofits.com and writes the free weekly Letter from Phil at www.ozemedia.com
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More Profit By Customizing your Google Adsense Ads

If you've even done a little studying on how to maximize your revenue with Google Adsense you have already learned that integrating these ads within your site's content is a key to getting solid click through performance. Make your visitors think the links in the ads are actually part of your site and they are more apt to click.

This can be accomplished in a multitude of ways: Randomly inserting the ads within the textual content of your site, using Link Ads in typical menu locations, placing large image ads where a logo may appear and the list goes on and on. This is all well and good, however, by customizing the look of your Google Adsense ads you further integrate this powerful revenue tool within your site.

Everyday surfers are becoming more and more savvy at avoiding our attempts at getting their clicks and procuring their money. They have seen the typical Adsense ad over and over and over and are quite aware that when they click it, they will be leaving the site and will probably be hit up with some type of sales pitch. Thus, customizing your ad layout gives you one more weapon to combat their intelligence and get their clicks.

The most important customization that should be made is to the background color of the ads. By setting the background to the same color as where the ad is placed you are allowing it to blend in and appear even more like the content on your site. As visitors are reading your web site they will come across your integrated ad and are more likely to feel that it is a viable part of your site's content and click. Modifying the background color of your Google Adsense ads is one of the easiest ways to garner these clicks. More clicks, means more money!!

By taking that one step further you can also customize the border color of the Adsense ads. It's as simple as changing the background color and is offered as an option when you set the ad up. There are two different ways you may want to approach doing this.
One, you may want your ad to stand out and look like a ‘menu block' on your website. Simply set the border color to that of other ‘blocks' on your site and let Google populate your new ‘menu' with relevant advertising. Two, set the border color the same as your background color. In doing so you will cause the ads to not stand out as much and will look more like a part of your site.

To go even deeper and make the ads look more like part of your site, change the text and link colors to match that of your page. Again, this can be done simply when setting up the ads and will deeper camouflage the fact that the links and text are ads. Another tactic is to change these colors to make either the links or the text stand out and appear as if they lead to more important and in-depth information.

When employing one or all, or a combination of these simple effects you will be able to take your Google Adsense income to and further enhance your online business.

Good Luck.

About the Author:
The Google Adsense Money Machine
Matt is the owner operator of Work at Home Internet Marketing – a free resource for the work at home internet marketing professional or newcomer.
Posted: 26-08-2006
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com