How to Start Making Money Off Adsense Right Away

Well, now that we’ve all got our blogs up and running… it’s time to start thinking about… ah… MAKING MONEY.

The truth is, it can take YEARS to make money blogging. It takes time to start getting traffic. But, I’m of the opinion that you should start monetizing your blog right away. The reason why is, there is nothing quite like seeing your blog make money to motivate you to make it better and get more traffic — even if, at first, your profits probably won’t pay for a burger and fries.

The easiest, simpliest, quickest way to start “monetizing” your blog — geekspeak for “making money off of” — is to use Google Adsense.

For people knew to this, the search engine Google makes money two ways:

1. By SELLING ads through its Adwords Program; and

2. By BUYING ads (or, more properly, brokering ads) on people’s websites through Adsense.

Some people, like me, use both: I BUY advertising through Adwords and I SELL advertising through Adsense (although not on the same sites, a violation of Google’s dreaded Terms of Service).

It only takes a few minutes to get up and running with Adsense — and like everything else associated with blogging, putting Google ads on your blog comes down (once again!) to merely copying and pasting blocks of HTML code.

I have about a dozen blogs at the moment but only one or two are making me any real money through Adsense — but it’s starting to add up. A few months ago, I started making $10 a day through Adsense… then $20… now $30. My goal is to get up to $100 a day on a consistent basis or $3,000 per month.

One thing that REALLY make a big difference for me was using “Adsense optimized WordPress themes” for my blogs. My Adsense income literally TRIPLED almost overnight when I switched themes.

Here is a link to some cool “Adsense Optimized WordPress themes.” The one I like a lot is “BlueSense.” (However, I’m not sure if this is available through the free WordPress site.) I installed it on my hosted websites by FTPing the files to the server like I describe in this video here.  Here’s a little blog on natural cures I started that uses BlueSense (although I modified it to more like “Greensense.”  It really shows you you can change the colors to fit your blog and get maximum impact for your Adsense ads.

Once again, these Adsense-optimized WordPress themes are FREE!  Just download the file to your computer and then follow my instructions for uploading it to your hosted site.  Easy as pie.

Of course, you have to already have an Adsense account to make use of these themes.  Perhaps I will do a video on that topic soon.

Followup #2 to “JoshMadeCash.com” Review

Well, surprise, surprise: The “JoshMadeCash.com” — or “GoogleTreasureChest.com — folks billed my credit card $72.21 on June 1st… even though I canceled my “free trial” within minutes of ordering it and sent not one but TWO emails to their customer service email address.

Here’s what happened.

1. I noticed a charge for $72.21 for “Google Chest” on June 1. The telephone number on the charge was 1-888-526-1248.

2. I called that number and got a call centre. I think it was in India, judging from the accent. The very nice operator located the charge but said that she regetted she herself could not refund the charge. She gave me another telephone number for “corporate” and, she said, they could give me a refund. She did offer, however, to “cancel” my “account” — an offer which I happily accepted.

3. I then called the number the first operator gave me – 1-866-951-1406. This time I got a male American operator who said… I would NEVER believe it… but he was just a call center for a number of products. And guess what? The “new management” of Google Treasure Chest just switched call centers within the past 24 hours. Imagine that? Alas, he did not have the new number of a new call center… but… I could call him back in a day or so and he may have it then. I could also try checking on the GoogleTreasureChest.com website to see if they have a new Customer Service number.

So: It looks like I’m out 72 bucks, folks! I’ll see if my bank will reverse the charges on what is increasingly looking like a pretty nasty operation… but I’m not sure if they will. This is what happens when you review Internet Marketing products. Every once and a while, you get a scam operation that doesn’t honor its own Terms of Service.

Follow-Up to “JoshMadeCash.com” Review

Well, this gets interesting. At the end of April, I get this message on my voicemail from a young gal who says she’s from CBS News. I called her back and she says she’s a producer from CBS and that they’re working on an investigative story on “JoshMadeCash.com” — about whom, she tells me, many, many people are quite upset.

The producer asked me about my earlier review of the ads and products. But like some other TV people I’ve encountered, this producer seemed functionally illiterate when it comes to the Internet and computer technology. She kept talking about how you “put” ads on Adsense… and I explained that, no, Adsense is a system in which Google puts ads on your websites and blogs, not the other way around. Adwords is Google’s program for buying ads to promote your websites. I then gently suggested that, if CBS News is planning an “investigative report” into alleged Internet scams, they’d better first learn the difference between Adwords and Adsense.

Then, about a week later, I got a thin 5-x-7-inch cardboard envelope in the mail with the headline, “MAKE MONEY FROM HOME.” The return address was:

Google Treasure Chest
837 E. 9400 S Ste 233
Sandy UT 84094
866-951-1406 MF 9am-5pm
support@googletreasurechest.com

Inside contained a CD-Rom disc with the same headline, “MAKE MONEY FROM HOME: The Easiest Way to Make Money Online,” with pictures of falling dollars on it.

The envelope flap had a note:

“Welcome!

Are you ready to start working from home?

Congratulations on becoming a member of the most popular work-at-home community on the Internet. Each day, hundreds of people begin their own journey to personal freedom by working at home — when they want and how they want. We’re so glad to have you!

To begin your own journey, insert this CD into your computer and scroll through the various video, audio and e-books that will help you start making money from home right now. Everything you need to know is just one click away.”

When you insert the disk in your CD-Rom player, you see that it does, indeed, have literally DOZENS of ebooks… a bunch of flash video instructional videos… and programs and templates for Internet marketing. It appears to be a grab bag of ebooks available at other places on the Internet but some of them seem well worth reading, especially for beginners. Below are some screen shots of what’s on the disc (click on the image for a higher-resolution view and so you can read the names of the e-books better):

 

Here is a screen shot of some of the instructional videos available.  (You have to know how to unzip these files and view them on a Flash Video player.)

Once I went through the disc, I fired off an email to the email address on the envelope, thanking them for their “free trial” but insisting that they cancel so I would not be charged anything.  Here is my email:

From: Blog Classes
Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 4:22 PM
To: ’support@googletreasurechest.com’
Subject: Please cancel trial membership.

 

Thank you for your free trial.

 

Please cancel my membership per the terms of your Terms of Service.

 

Username: bob@blogclasses.com

Password: XXXXXXXXXXX

 

Robert Hutchinson

 

P.S. A CBS News producer, who called me last Monday, is apparently doing a story about your website(s). They want to know if you honor cancellation requests as per your original “JoshMadeCash.com” ad.

My conclusion? It seems to me that “JoshMadeCash.com” actually does fulfill the underlying promises of its Internet ads — at least in the sense that they do provide you with dozens of e-books, instructional videos, templates and pieces of software that would be useful to people trying to learn how to make money on the Internet. However, they provide no guidance or help in navigating through all this material — and they do some sort of “bait and switch” by automatically signing up prospects for a “free grant” website that automatically bills you $24.87 a month. If I were advising them, I would say that, as soon as someone signs up for their “free trial,” they should get an email that says, “In about two weeks, you’ll get a cardboard envelope with a CD in it. This CD contains dozens of e-books, instructional videos, templates and software that will help you get started making money on the Internet. You will also gain access to our website with additional tools — for which you will be charged $24.87 a month for as long as you wish to continue. If you do not wish to have access to this website, simply click here, cancel and you will not be charged a penny.”

A note like that would provide complete honesty and transparency upfront and would keep “JoshMadeCash.com” on good terms with government regulators and out of the spotlight of news media like CBS News. Too often, these Internet marketers try to pull these semi-shady offers when they really don’t have to: the truth works just as well. There is enough material on the CD that they could just flat-out sell it for $24.95… or even $99.00… and avoid all the hassles of the phony “free trial” offer and the inevitable cancellations and complaints.

Review of “JoshMadeCash.com”

Firefox does a pretty good job of suppressing popup ads… pretty good but not 100%. So, today I’m reading a news site and up pops a popup ad for something called “JoshMadeCash.com.” It’s obviously a pitch for a Google Adsense course or tool… and, since I’m on a campaign to review every Adsense product I can find, my interest was piqued.

The headline said it all: “Would You Like to Make $5,000 or More a Month Posting Links on Google?”

Gosh, I sure would, Josh!

Then came the subhead: “Get paid $5 to $30 for every website link that you post on Google. No one needs to buy anything from you or Google in order to get paid. Weekly paychecks are sent & you can work from your home computer or anywhere with internet access.”

Get paid $5 to $30 for EVERY website link I post on Google? I wasn’t entirely sure what that means. With Adsense, you don’t post a “link” on “Google.” You post code on your website that then allows Google to run Adsense ads on your site… and you get paid whenever someone clicks on one of those ads appearing on your site.

Still, I thought I should check it out.  It offered a standard small trial offer ($1.97 “shipping” charge) and I assumed

that this would revert to some sort of monthly charge after the trial (I was right about that).  The pitch was that I pay $1.97 to try out their “Google Software Kit.”  All I have to do, the form says, is send for my Google Software Kit.. then “Use simple typing skills to fill out online forms”… and the result will be “watch the money come rolling in.”  Sounds good! Earlier, in his sales letter, “Josh” does imply that what he is selling is something that helps you make money with Google:

How to get started

Step 1: Go to this link, fill out a basic online form and hit submit at Google Biz Kit. Pay the $1.97 for shipping.

Step 2: Follow the directions on Google Biz Kit and set up a Google account. Then they will give you the website links to post. Start posting those links. Google tracks everything.

Step 3: Google will start sending their first check to you in about 48 hours. Or you can start to have them wire directly into your checking account. (Your first checks will be about $500 to $1,200 a week. Then it goes up from there. Depends on how many links you posted online.)

I figured this must be a VERY introductory course on Adsense since the sales letter talks about “setting up a Google account” and “they will give you the website links to post.” So, I filled out the form and waited to receive my “Google Profit Software Kit.”  Many of these Adsense products do come with sometimes-useful online tools or pieces of software that actually are worth the money.  I thought “Josh” must be selling something like that… some “tool” or website that made identifying profitable Adsense niches easier.  Something like that.

So when the email I was expecting arrived… I was shocked.  Instead of getting some software or a link to an online Adsense tool… I was directed to a bland website with seemingly generic information about applying for government grants and that had NOTHING to do with Adsense.  It appears that “Josh” is fulfilling his promise with a monthly recurring subscription to a website about grant-writing!

The email explains that, after my initial trial period, I will be billed automatically and monthly for $24.87.  Here is what they said:

Dear Robert Hutchinson,

Welcome to GrantSpring.com. We are excited that you have taken advantage of our risk free trial membership. This email is your activation email for our exciting new product - GrantSpring.com. Using your login information below, you will have access to a huge library of current, available grants. We’ll even show you how to write your proposal and give you examples to look at. The tools and resources provided in our website will help you with all the unknowns about the billions of dollars available to you.

To get started right now:

1. Click on this link http://www.grantspring.com

2. Enter the following information on the site :

Username: XXXXXXXXX
Password: XXXXXXXXX

---

Please read the following information:

We have processed your free trial request for GrantSpring.com and your account has been set up.

After the free trial period has expired, you will be charged the monthly fee, and all charges are subject to the Terms and Conditions listed on the site.

Your membership fees will begin on 05/19/2009, at which time your account ending in XXXXXXX will be charged $24.87.

This will be a recurring transaction, and your account ending in XXXXXXX will be charged $24.87 every month thereafter to maintain your membership.

To avoid being charged, you must cancel your account prior to the end of your trial period.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for improvement, please contact a Customer Support Representative via email at support@grantspring.com.

We look forward to serving you!

Thank you,
GrantSpring.com
Phone: 1-888-247-2155
Email: support@grantspring.com

Well. I was disappointed, to say the least. I fired off an email to their customer support department, saying that I would like to cancel my membership. We’ll see if they honor that.

Needless to say, you have to be careful when buying Adsense products like these. There are some very useful products out there… but there are also products that won’t help you a bit when it comes to making money with Adsense.

Review of Adsense Overdrive

I first heard of Adsense Overdrive, ironically enough, when I spotted an Adsense ad on one of my blogs: Well, that looks interesting! The Adsense ad promised “A Secret Three Step Formula That Will Beef Up Your Earnings!” I certainly would like that. And a “secret” three-step formula sounds intriguing. Not wanting to violate Google’s Terms of Service, I resisted the temptation to click on the ad and instead entered the URL directly:

http://adsenseoverdrive.com

What I found was a very slick, very persuasive sales letter for Adsense Overdrive that kicked up the promised benefits more than a notch. I was particularly impressed by the “deck” copy: “Caution: This blueprint is so effective it may feel as though you are engaging in ‘blackhat’ tactics. Rest assured, every method is 100% legitimate and legal.”

So, as part of my campaign to buy every Adsense product I can get my hands on, I decided to check this one out. I clicked on the order button at the bottom of the sales page and discovered that this was a low-cost e-book that I would buy through Clickbank.

I was already a bit disappointed — what sort of “secret” formulas would I discover for $24? — but I went ahead and bought. What I got was a 50-page PDF with triple-spacing and almost no original information whatsoever. In other words: The company selling this e-book put all their money and effort into their very slick sales letter (great job, guys!)… and NONE into their actual product.

Put simply: this sucks!  Oh, yes, it does tell you some basic info… but nothing you couldn’t discover for free simply by using Google.  It’s 50-plus pages of triple-spaced fluff.  Don’t bother.

Lesson #9: How to Create and Use Web Signup Forms on Your Blog

I jumped a little out of order on this video lesson. One of my subscribers actually asked about this and so I decided to do this video right away. She wanted to know how you do one of those sign-up forms you see that pop into view and partially obscure the web page.

They’re called “hover boxes,” and, although some people hate them, they are two to three times more effective than most other types of sign-up forms.

Like almost everything else associated with blogging, they are also super-easy to set up and use. If you can copy and paste this sentence, you can set up a web sign-up form. That’s about all the computer skills you need.

Anyway, check out this new video lesson. I bought a new mic and you can actually hear me now.

Is It Possible to Make Real Money with Adsense?

I thought I’d comment on Daniel Lyons’ recent column in Newsweek. Lyons, who said he was a fanatical blogger, complained that he never made any real money with Google Adsense — despite the fact that he got as many as 1.5 million unique visitors to his site on a given month. That flood of visitors, which any blogger would kill for, earned Lyons the princely sum from Adsense, he says, of $1,039.81. To say Lyons’ column is discouraging for bloggers is an understatement.

Yet something about it all just doesn’t make sense to me. I know very little about Adsense, because I use my blogs primarily as lead generators for my businesses, but what little I know tells me that Lyons must have been attracting the wrong sorts of people to his blog — and thus the keywords he was using were low-bid words.

I’ve experimented a little with Adsense and my results, while certainly not spectacular, have been a lot more encouraging than Lyons’. For example, one blog I created, as a test, only gets 135 visitors a day. Yet it nets about 7 clicks a day for an average of $4.35 per day in Adsense revenue.

Okay, so Lyons is right: I’m not going to get rich off of this. But that’s $130 a month ($1,566 a year) for a blog that cost me $10 a year to set up, 30 minutes to create, and which I ignore completely. This blog is set up to syndicate news articles about a particular health topic so it requires no maintenance whatsoever. (It did, however, require some time before I got the traffic I have now… about a year.)

My success with this one test has encouraged me to set up a dozen new test blogs. If I could consistently make $4.35 a day with one blog, I would gladly create 100 like it — assuming, of course, I could identify sufficiently high-paying, low-competition keywords that would attract enough traffic. Revenue of $435 a day still isn’t going to make you rich, but it would be a nice supplement to anyone’s dwindling retirement savings.

As part of my BlogClasses.com curriculum, therefore, I’ve decided to throw myself into Adsense to find out the truth. Is Lyons right — and no one makes any real money blogging, or at least with Adsense? We all know that Internet marketers can make money — literally millions — but they do that with Joint Venture deals and email marketing, NOT with pennies-per-click Adsense. Yet Adsense is the only program many bloggers use… largely because it’s so easy to set up. Joel Comm allegedly makes more than a thousand dollars a day through Adsense, so it’s worth seeing what he does, at the very least.

I’ve decided to set aside a few thousand dollars and buy every Adsense product I can find — products that claim they can help you make real money using Adsense — and try them out. I’ll review them as I use them and tell you, in detail, which ones are worth buying and which ones suck. I’ll also tell you if they improve my Adsense revenue on my test blogs.

I just bought one product, for example, that really, really sucks (although it contains good information for complete beginners.) Here’s a link to the pretty good sales page:

http://www.adsenseoverdrive.com/

I spent $24.00 for this through Clickbank. What I got was a 50-page PDF with triple-spacing and information so general and vague it was an insult to any experienced blogger. You get traffic by posting interesting content. You should experiment with different Adsense formats, colors and placements. You should make sure you’re using high-paying keywords. A total waste of time for anyone but the most inexperienced neophyte.

My next purchase will probably be Joel Comm’s products. I’ve already bought his book, The Adsense Code, but he has a whole array of Internet products and courses. I’ll let you know if any of them are worth spending money on.

Until then, keep blogging. And don’t let Daniel Lyons discourage you too much. I have a feeling that, while his experience as a blogger was no doubt disappointing, it doesn’t have to be that way for everyone.

Need website in a hurry?

If you need to get a professional-looking blog or website up in a hurry… and don’t know ANYTHING about website design… and don’t want to spend HUNDREDS of dollars on a professional web designer… here’s what you need to do.

You can get a very professional-looking, easy-to-use website up and running in ONE HOUR. It will cost you about $7.95 per month for the web hosting and nothing else.  What’s more, each ADDITIONAL website you create will only cost you $10 per year.

Here’s how.

Step 1: Sign up for a web hosting account with BlueHost.com. It will cost you about $95 for a whole year but you can get it for as little as 3 months, if you want something temporary. This price INCLUDES the cost of the domain name… unlimited email addresses… and, if you want to create another website, the additional website is only $10 for the whole year (including domain name). This step only takes about 5 minutes.

Step 2: Install WordPress on the BlueHost account. If you don’t know how to do that, watch the video below that explains everything in just 21 minutes. The actual amount of time it takes to install WordPress on the BlueHost system is about 1 minute.

That’s it.  The beauty of this approach is that it lets you create unlimited websites for just $10 per year… including the domain name AND webhosting.  You can’t beat that.

Step 3: Pick a FREE WordPress template that you like from the hundreds that are available through WordPress.  We will cover this in a future video.

Step 4: Design a professional-looking BANNER for the top of your site. This, too, will be covered in another video.

Step 5: Create the pages and posts you want for your site. These can include products and services, sale items, contact information, you name it. Use the blogging (center) section of the WordPress template to write regular updates.

That’s it! This entire process should take no less than about 30 minutes, tops.

Newsweek Columnist Says You Can’t Make Money Blogging

By Daniel Lyons
Newsweek

For two years I was obsessed with trying to turn a blog into a business. I posted 10 or 20 items a day to my site, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, rarely taking a break. I blogged from cabs, using my BlackBerry. I blogged in the middle of the night, having awakened with an idea. I rationalized this insane behavior by telling myself that at the end of this rainbow I would find a huge pot of gold. But reality kept interfering with this fantasy. My first epiphany occurred in August 2007, when The New York Times ran a story revealing my identity, which until then I’d kept secret. On that day more than 500,000 people hit my site—by far the biggest day I’d ever had—and through Google’s AdSense program I earned about a hundred bucks.

Over the course of that entire month, in which my site was visited by 1.5 million people, I earned a whopping total of $1,039.81. Soon after this I struck an advertising deal that paid better wages. But I never made enough to quit my day job. Eventually I shut down—not for financial reasons, but because Steve Jobs appeared to be in poor health. I walked away feeling burned out and weighing 20 pounds more than when I started. I also came away with a sneaking suspicion that while blogs can do many wonderful things, generating huge amounts of money isn’t one of them.

Now others seem to be riding the same downward curve, with euphoria giving way to exhaustion. Michael Arrington, whose TechCrunch blog empire attracts 6 million readers each month, has gone on a monthlong hiatus after three years of nonstop blogging. His break was prompted, he says, by burnout and by the craziness of the blogosphere (he says he’s been stalked, threatened and spat on) and not by the fact that he’s been trying to sell his company for a year and hasn’t been able to find a buyer who’ll pay his price, which is rumored to be $100 million. Gawker Media, a leading network of blogs, recently laid off all but one of its writers for Valleywag, its tech blog, which has struggled for three years. In January Pajamas Media, a collective of right-wing political bloggers, shut down its ad network, which CEO Roger Simon says “was a money loser for three years.”

In late 2005 a columnist who writes for the ABC News Web site predicted that by 2010 the blogosphere would create “a whole new group of major corporations and media stars” and that “billions of dollars will be made by those prescient enough to either get onboard or invest in these companies.” (He was responding to an article I’d done that criticized some elements of the blogosphere.) This guy was right on the first part, sort of. But as for those billions? Last year the total spent on blog advertising in the United States was a mere $411 million, according to researcher eMarketer. That represents only a sliver of the $23.7 billion spent on U.S. Internet ads last year, which is itself only a fraction of the $276.8 billion spent on all forms of advertising in the U.S. By 2012 blog ad spending will reach $746 million, while overall online ad spending will hit $32 billion, eMarketer says. More money was spent on e-mail advertising last year than was spent on blog advertising—yet you don’t see anyone touting e-mail as the next big billion-dollar media business. Technorati, a blog researcher, estimates that bloggers who run ads earn an average of $5,060 per year. Don’t call the Ferrari dealer just yet.

Advertisers shy away from blogs because they’re too unpredictable and because few blogs attract anything approaching a mass audience—and even those that do face so much competition that ad rates remain pitifully low. “A lot of expectations are coming down in terms of monetizing social media,” says Paul Verna, an analyst with eMarketer. ” People have not figured out a clear way to monetize some of these vehicles.” The bad economy compounds the problem, Verna says, but the real issue is “the lack of a clear business model that can generate substantial revenues.”

To be sure, some blogs are little goldmines. Gizmodo, a gadget blog run by Gawker Media, had record traffic last month, with 98 million page views, and is “fantastically profitable,” Gawker CEO Nick Denton says. Dooce, a personal-diary blog run by a husband-and-wife team, does between $500,000 to $1 million a year, according to Federated Media, which sells ads for the site. Arrington says TechCrunch did $3 million in 2007 and even more in 2008. He says he could sell the company today, albeit for a lower price than it would have fetched a year ago.

Those success stories keep money pouring into the space. The Huffington Post raised $25 million just a few months ago. The Daily Beast, led by editor Tina Brown, raised money from Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp. for its launch last October. (Disclosure: Diller is a director of The Washington Post Company, which owns NEWSWEEK.) Then again, The Huffington Post and The Daily Beast aren’t really blogs —they’re media companies that happen to feature, among other things, the work of some bloggers. Some A-list bloggers have found that the best way to “monetize” their work is by returning to the much-maligned “mainstream media”—like political writer Andrew Sullivan, whose blog, The Daily Dish, now runs on The Atlantic Monthly Web site. Presumably Sullivan makes a decent living. But as for that vision of the guy in his pajamas making millions with a blog? Or that one about investors raking in billions by betting on that guy in the pajamas? Take it from someone who dreamed the dream: I wish it were true, but right now it’s looking like yet another high-tech fairy tale.
Article originally published at Newsweek.com

Blogging for Your Business

It’s almost a given now that if you have a website, you also have a blog. The question for small-business owners is: Is blogging, twittering, etc., really worth your time?

A lot of bigger companies have decided it is. Just check out this list of 50 companies and how they are using social media. In these examples, I think you can find what TO do and what NOT to do when it comes to promoting your business with social media.

Check out British Airways’ Twitter account. It looks like the subject lines of items in your junk mail folder. Why would anyone follow you to see that? Those who would are more likely to be annoyed than intrigued. What’s worse, there’s no touch of any kind of human voice to these entries. A machine is cranking these out, for all we know.

That’s fine for a big company like British Airways, but a small-business owner does not have the time to write and post things that nobody reads. If you treat your blog as an advertisement, no one will read it, because people don’t seek out advertising. They seek out interesting and thoughtful content. That comes from having a personal touch and displaying your expertise on your subject matter.

THE GOOD

Here’s the blog of Marriott Hotels CEO Bill Marriott.

Notice how it’s written in first person, like an actual blog that someone would seek out. Notice the use of pictures—again, content that people would seek out. Most importantly, it’s about subjects that are interesting and beyond the scope of the company, like John McCain and the Beijing Olympics. OK, so the post from September 8 resembles the adspeak that you do NOT want to do, but looking at the blog as a whole, I think it’s pretty good.

Instead of outright promoting your company on your blog, if you write about interesting subjects in your own voice, it will actually get read—and that’s what actually promotes your company and makes social media worth your time. Read more