Making Money Blogging – Blog Stew

I’ve spent the last few days producing content for a number of my newer sites.  Its been pretty fun to my surprise.  The sites involve topics that I have interest  in.  This has helped to no end with content production.  One of my newer sites revolves around the Apple iPhone.  Owning one myself for the last 4 months I’m finding it very easy and enjoyable to produce the original content required.  This only further cements the fact that starting sites in niches you have interest in make the whole process faster, more productive and easier overall.

Then I moved on to the mind numbing task of adding a few sites into and endless list of web directories.  I know the value of these links is fairly low in 90% of cases (I’m talking free directories here) but its still worth spending time I would other wise be wasting, adding to them.  After a while it does become quite relaxing!

Anyway, back to the submission…

Google Adsense

Google Adsense can be daunting for people new to the advertising format.  This post will outline what Google says for first time Adsense users.  I’ll also give some opinions on what they say.  Again please understand this is aimed at people newish to Adsense, that’s not to say it might contain some things people who are more familiar with the format can take away and learn from.

So lets get stuck in, I’ll list the guidelines in bullet points then break them down.

Basic Adsense user guidelines

• Use text and image ads.

Text ads have more ads per ad block.  So you might lean towards thinking ‘there’s more ads so more chance of people clicking on them right?’  This is not entirely the case.  People find images a lot easier to look at, also they may be animated giving the eye more incentive to look in there direction.

• Use wider ad units.

Bigger ads.  The bigger they are the more chance people have of seeing them.  But remember not to go overboard, people are still going to visit your site looking for quality content, not an ad fest.

• Use channels to monitor ad performance.

Make sure you use these, its easy for first time or new users to ignore this.  They will allow you to monitor the exact amount of turnover each add is producing.  Naturally from that data you can then begin to fiddle with your ad design and placement.

• Ensure your site is Google policy compliant.

If its not then expect to get banned!  Or thrown so deep into the google black hole (sandbox) you’ll never come back!

• Good quality site content.

This is what will make people keep coming back!  As I’ve said before, sites that I’m interested in writing for tend to do better performance wise.

• Original content.

Copy and pasting jobs can be good for some sites, however its generally better to produce your own stuff, then with some luck you will get well known for it!

Keep reading on after the split….

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