In my last post I have showed you one of the examples of how to make money with Tweeter via sponsored tweets and how much Ad.ly is paying some of the mega tweeter users. Today I will share some of my thoughts explaining why everyone thinks that they will do a better job than any other Sponsored Tweet companies. Keeping in mind that if a company is successful, the investors aka the tweeter user will have a hefty return aka higher pay out per tweet and more referral bonus.

Information is the key to marketing, more targeted audience that you will have, more revenue you will generate. As of now, most of the advertisers found a way to display their content within 140 characters at a time, but they don’t really know who they are reaching and what their habits are. Ad,ly, started by Sean Rad, a 23-year-old entrepreneur, appears to have found a way to deliver what any marketer wants: targeting. Ad.ly gathers information from Twitter users’ accounts about their tweeting subject histories and makes it available to advertisers. The advertiser, therefore, can make better, more educated decisions that will lead to targeted advertising with a better result.  And for the tweeter user’s standpoint, Ad.ly pushes a tweet every other day from a Twitter user’s account (of course with user approval). The tweeter user sets the price that the advertiser will pay.

Take a look at the images above and you will find how quickly the ad.ly website went up the ranking based on the belief that they will be one of the top paid sponsored tweet company. So, I say go to the Ad.ly and open up an account for your tweeter account so that you can start making some money on the side .

Look around and sometimes you will be surprised that how many people have thousands and thousands of twitter followers. Since using twitter we can constantly updating our status, more and more companies are trying to convince Twitter users and advertisers with in-stream advertising options, where instead of updating a “true” status the user will tweet an advertisement and will get paid. Simple but it works.

Now, we know how the “sponsored Tweets” work, let’s look into one of the how you can get paid doing sponsored Tweets.  At the early stage of Sponsored Tweeting, this type of service started off targeting all the celebrity Twitter users and then was available to everyone. And Ad.ly is one of the startup based on this business model. Started in Q4 of 2009 and quickly backed by a $500,000 investment, they already books a bunch of celebrities (look below).

Ad.ly offers pretty much the same service but its offering a little more $$$$ per tweet since its platform is better to target the audience thus delivers a better results for any ad campaign.  Take a look at the examples below from Shoe Money’s and John Chow’s Ad.ly account and how much they are getting paid per tweet. 

I am not saying that you will earn that much right away (unless you have  tens of thousands of follower) but still it can be a great revenue source for any tweeter user.  On top you tweets Ad.ly is now offering referral bonus on 12% of whatever they make/earn. Imagine you refer only 10 people then you will make roughly 100% of what they are making.  Also, they even simplified the sign up and/or the referral process.  All you have to do is go to Ad.ly and sign up.

So, is you have a tweeter account (I assume that you do) go to ad.ly and start making some money.

5 Ways to Attract Expensive Google Ads: Optimize Your Adsense Ads

Last month I have posted a how I earn the highest CPM for my websites using adsense and chitika. And today I will share some of the ways that you can attract higher paid ads for your websites.

• Make the ads more relevant
  Use se Section Targeting when you work with Google Adsense. Use <!–  google_ad_section_start –> at the beginning and  <!– google_ad_section_end –> at the end of your Google adsense code. Also ignore reader comments and navigation by putting <!– google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) –> at the beginning and <!– google_ad_section_end –> at the end of the adsense code.
• Targeting expensive keywords
  Check bids and revise content accordingly – e.g. house painting vs. home improvement. Try it and you will find an improvement. Also, if you don’t know what keyword to choose, go to the Google adwords tools section and choose for there.
• Put competitors and low CTR advertisers on your block list
  It’s a no brainer.
• Dispense with Flash-based or graphics-rich approach
  You already know that search engines do not like flash based or graphic rich websites. Content is the king, add it as much as you can in your site.
• Keywords in URL, H1 tag, body copy, title tag
  Use the keywords wherever you get a chance. Be consistent and precise with the keywords.

Finally one might ask, did I see them work? Yes most of the time.  But it also doesn’t mean that you will rush into making changes.  I need you to think about all the above and then decide if you would like to implement those or not.  Before i go for today, please keep in mind that you should try as much as you can to optimize for the better paid ads for your blog BUT don’t try any black hat ways to do anything. It will be a real shortcut to the end of you blogging career.

How to Make Money Tweeting: Sponsored Tweet

Yes, it’s no secret that Twitter can be a tremendous time-suck. But imagine getting paid for wasting those precious minutes of your day. Thanks to companies that are desperate to reach consumers in the social-media crowd, it’s now possible to make a buck or two — or much more — on Twitter by something called “Sponsored Tweets”. The way it works for Sponsored Tweets is that Twitter users can sign in, set the price they want companies to pay them for the privilege of tweeting an ad on their behalf, and wait for the offers to come in.

So, you can be any Billy Bob or Joe Blow but as long as you have followers you have a potential of earning. Now, you wonder how many tweeter users will use or actually use this service. Let’s take a look, Ted Murphy, founder and CEO of IZEA, says more than 7,000 Twitter users have signed up for Sponsored Tweets in its first month. He also has paid more than $100,000 to twitter users in his site’s first month of operation. Yes, I know the average per user is only $15 but keep in mind that given the current economy this could be a great way to earn spare change on the side. So far if you are interested to try this out then try out Ad.ly . They are one of the best rated sponsored tweets company.  Also, stay tuned for more on Ad.ly and how you can make money by sponsored tweets.

Best CPM Rate for Your Blogs Page View

Unless you are the top 100 websites in the USA and you have a group of dedicated sales people trying to sell you ad slots, probability is that you are not really that happy with your CPM rate that you are generating through your advertising network. Unlike you guys I also have tried out a bunch of online marketing companies. I have tried them individually, as well as mixing with each other. After trying them out for a while with different variation I will suggest the following advertising networks for anyone who is trying to generate a HIGH CPM rate for his/her website/blog.

Google Adsense:
Google Adsense, by far the best payout for ECPM. Google adsense program is easy to get approved and they pay on time and so far they paid every time.  I have seen up to $5/ECPM with Google. But again, on average it’s safe to say that about $3/ECPM is what I was making on average. Since Google was pretty continuous with its revenue, I was happy but not satisfied. So, the only things that I could do is the raise the number if impression by increasing the number of ad slots. This also has a limitation since Google will allow only 3 ad slots in a given page. So, I moved forward by trying the following.

Kontera:
Thanks to DP I found out about contextual ads and I started to look around. Based on the user reviews I went with Kontera, which so far has treated me, nice. I am generating a decent amount of revenue through them every month. But as far as the $/CPM goes, Kontera has been consistent with around $1/CPM using 2 links/post. It’s really easy to get approved with Kontera and you can get paid via paypal as well.

Chitika:
Since the banner was ads were not much a revenue generating sources, I decided to try out Chitika by replacing one of the slots for banner. Looking at the result I was about to kill myself just because I didn’t go with chitika a long time ago. Chitika has been and still is a nice compliment to Google Adsense ads for all of my blogs so far. I have a variance of $/CPM with Chitka but I would say, at the least you will get $1.50/CPM. And if you find a good placement for Chitika ads resulting a good click through rate then it will go up even more.

Keep in mind that from the very beginning I tested different revenue generating sources, which will comply with Google Adsense. In other words, I always looked and tested ONLY those sources, which can be used in addition to Google Adsense. Now you tell me, would you be happy with at least $5/CPM  for your page views from your blog. I know I would.

White Hat Link Cloaking

If you want to generalize, Link Cloaking or Link Masking describes the technique of serving a different page to a search engine spider than what a human visitor sees. Usually this technique is abused by spammers for keyword stuffing. And that’s why Black Hat Link Cloaking is a violation of the Terms of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning. Just incase you wanted to know the difference between them, read through my “SEO Ethics: White Hat SEO vs. Black Hat SEO” post.  Having said that, cloaking links in any Internet Marketing activity is important, especially if you promote lots of products. But its needs to White Hat cloaking. Today i will talk about 6 reasons to cloak you affiliate links as a blogger and in future how to do it.

Spam Complaints:
When a visitor clicks on an un-cloaked affiliate link, the affiliate’s link details will be displayed in the address bar. This serves to alert the visitor that they are not at the official website they believed they were being directed to.  And if a subscriber files a spam complaint with their ISP, the ISP could get the website shut down. So, to mitigate this issue, it is recommended for websites owners to use a link cloaking system to convert all direct affiliates link into a link with the domain name.
Example: Instead of link http://abcd.dot.com/aff3453 , you can have www.your-domain-name.com/product link.

Link Hijacking:
In the competitive internet marketing world it happens all the time and may or may not happen to you yet but probability is that it will happen. There are a lot of black hat way for the link hijackers who will simply substitute your affiliate ID with their own in the link, – stealing the commission at point of purchase. 

Conversion Rate:
Usually the merchants landing page or sales pages contain extra bonuses and newsletter subscriptions which may deviate customers away from buying and allows the merchant website to overwrite the affiliate’s link at the last minute. If you use an affiliate link cloaking service then you will be able to send you r subscribers to the specific product page resulting a high conversion rate.

Building Trust:
Often, a product that you are promoting at your website is withdrawn. And if you have used a direct affiliate link for that product then you will be sending all of your subscribers to something which doesn’t exist, losing your credibility. However, if you use a link cloaking system or service, then all you have to do is change that link for your destination page and you will be sending your subscribers to an alternate page.

Branding:
As you will be moving forward with your website, keep in mind that you also will be branding your website. By cloaking you affiliate links you will expedite your website’s brand building process. Once simplest way to perform this task is to format your link where your domain name stand out .
Example: http://www.Your-Website.com/Reviews/Product

Performance Tracking:
“We pay for our ignorance”, which is why as an internet marketer you need to be tracking you affiliate links click reports. You need to know how your keywords are working or you so that you can optimize them and make them more profitable. A decent link cloaking system will provide you with click tracking records. You can track your links click through rate, followed by conversion rate and you can also perform a lots of tests to optimize your profit.

Hopefully by now, you will have a decent idea about the importance about cloaking while blogging about other stuff. So get you cloaking script and start enjoying the benefits.

Determine Feasibility of Your Blogs Success

As an Engineer I deal with handful of project everyday and for all of our projects, we start working on project with the “Feasibility” study. And anyone who is planning on being a professional blogger or already is, should conduct a feasibility study. A Feasibility study is the time where we/anyone can project the success/failure rate of a work based on collected data. This feasibility study is not from holding from doing what you like rather to guide you to come up with a niche topic which is practical and will bring your some money some day.  I have tried to make the process simplified as much as possible but hey; sometimes it is just that technical. 

Getting a viable Business Idea
This is the first phase of the process where you solidify your blogs niche idea. If you haven’t decided the topic of your blog then you should fall back on your past experience. Is this something you enjoy? Do you have unique knowledge about a topic? Do you have a special talent or skill? Sometime, it is helpful to get feedback from other that you know. You need to start to rainstorm ideas that seem to fit with your background and interests. It is very important that you blogging idea be something that you will know and enjoy. After all you will be spending an awful amount of time blogging and doing other stuff, you would better enjoy it.

Researching the Market
Market research involves finding out what web searchers want/need and determining how you can satisfy that want/need through you blog. You need to find out your competitions successes and failure in the market place. And finally, based on your research you can project your blogs success or failure probability.

Finding the Target Market
The goal in this phase is to narrow down you search even more to find your best customers. You need to target those people who are looking for the information that you will offer. In this phase of market research you will develop a profile for you customers. You will gather your information through demographics (looks into where visitors come from: US, non US etc) and psychographics (look at lifestyle, age, lifestyle etc)

Competition
Before you go into a game you need to know each and everything about your opponents that you will be playing against. In this phase you will find out the direct and indirect competitions for you targeted niche. Make a list of 5/6 major players, in this case websites in that market and find out their market share, resources, focus, strengths and weakness. Once you have gathers all the above, you can now plan you attack to win that niche market share.

Money Making Strategy
By this time you should already know about your niche topic and your competitions along with the market share. And now you need outline a money making strategy. It is very easy to copy others but if you do that then you will a follower for rest your life. Instead you need find out what your competitors use to make money and make that better by using your thoughts into that. If the #1 site in you niche google adsense then you should think about google adsense and chitika at the same time. Think outside the box.

You might have fantastic contents in your blog that you take time to write. You might have the best layout for your blog. But if you don’t have the traffic then your probability of making money or being successful will be lower dramatically. And if you wanted to know the success feasibility for you current blog and/or your next project then go ahead do the homework now than later after committing your time.  And for those who have the home work and ready to build their next blog/website you might find my “ Create Website & Blog Like a Project Manager” pretty interesting.

How To Write Google AdWords Text Ads that results high CTR

Last couple of posts I have talked about what is google quality score and how you can improve your Google Quality Score. Today I will show you ways that will allow you to control the most important deciding factor for your keywords quality score, which is Google Adwords Ads text. You can save a huge chunk of your Adword expense just by writing an effective Google Adword Ad applying relevant keyword to its text. Once you manage to have an effective Google Adword Ad with relevant keyword to its text, Google will display your ads more than others, which will get you the clicks that you want and will give you a higher CTR (Click through ratio) and finally will cut the cost of your keyword.

From my list of readings and references I have found the following articles are very useful and handy. I have broken down the readings into two steps and I strongly suggest reading the pre-reads first to learn some general terms knowledge and then move into the implementation part where you can start practicing .

Pre-read :

• Starter Edition text ads : Find out what Google says about writing adwords ad text.
• Write Ad Copy  : Microsoft’s version of google ad text.

Implementation:

• AdWords Ads Writing Tips :  31 ways to text you learning’s before you spend you money with Google Adwords.
• How to Write PPC Ad Copy: Tom Demers has a nice easy to follow templates for writing google adwords ad campaign.

As you move forward with your Adwords account, it will always help you if you have a list of references (I call it cheat list) where you can always refer back to if you had any questions.

How to Improve Your Google Quality Score

• It will save you money by lowering your cost per click
• It will increase your profit by increasing your ad display

To refresh your memory, google’s Quality Score depends on the following equations

QS= CTR + HCTR + PRF + LPQ + ORF

Now, let’s take a look at what we can do as a user to control our cost per click. I took all the variables and made a chart as follows based on importance ranking:

My thought behind the importance ranking were that if you have an advertisement with relevant keyword then google will display it more  as well as it will get more licks. And once the customers click through it, since you customers will like you landing page, they will spend more time in your website. And in total you will receive a high quality score for your keyword.

How much you will spend on you PPC is depends on a lot a variables and majority of those variables are dependent on you. In others words, you are the only one who either can make you a lot of profit or make you looses a lot of capital.

ABC's of Google Quality score and its Engineering Behind it

What if you have a website and saved some money to spend for google adwords PPC (pay per click) ad campaign. And if you are planning to spend least amount of money for every keywords that you want sponsor and get most clicks possible then you need to understand how google decided your keywords pricing. How much an advertising will pay for his/her keyword depends on something called Quality Score that google assign to your keyword.

Google computes a quality score for each of its keywords in order to provide a higher user experience after a click through to the site. The quality score is then used to calculate the minimum bid prices, which in turns affects the rank of the ad, given a typical advertiser budget constraint. Even though the exact algorithm for computing Google quality score is not found yet, we can approximate it based on what google said and what others experienced.  The Quality Score is a product of the following:

• Current Keyword Click Through Rate
• Historical keyword performance
• Applicability of the keywords to the ad
• Layout of the landing page
• Other relevancy factors

The Click Through Rate or CTR:
It is the ratio of the number of times your ad is clicked by the number of times your ad was displayed. Click through rate is one of the dominant factors in QS and made almost real time. Also it could be both good and bad for you. If you have a high CTR or click through rate then you will pay less per click and if you have a lot CTR or click through rate then you will pay higher per click. You will pay google almost same amount of money but you will loose since less CTR will cost high price and will allow you less customers to sell.

Historical Click Through Rate or HCTR:
Its also based on CTR (Click through rate) but over a the life of that keyword. Historical keyword performance refers to how that particular keyword has trended in all Google campaigns everywhere over time. In this case Google looks at whether this keyword gets a good click through rate or not, whether its bid on by a larger number of people or not and how long it takes for an average folk to click on it. One others words, you do not have any effect on this section, this is purely from google profitability standpoint.

Relevance of Keywords to ads or RKA:
Relevance of your ad text means that whether Google find your keywords within the text of your ad of not, which is also called “keyword-to-ad-text-match. In others words, more keywords you will use in your ad, the higher will be your ads relevance.

Landing Page Quality or LPQ:
This is also a crucial part of the google Quality Score. Google wants to have its user a good web experience and to provide that your landing page layout and content needs to be rich is offerings. Sparse landing page will cost your more money and in the same token, you will pay less money per click if you have good landing page. Simple showing a product and only the price without any description or reviews will hurt your Quality Score.

Other Relevancy factors or ORF:
Not everything is for everyone. I think keeping that in mind; Google uses some other measurement to calculate your/my ads quality score, which is not released for public. My best educated guess will be (from Google profitably stand point), this score has to do something with customer appreciation. Example will be: how much you spend with google every month, how many keywords that you bid for, how long you are working with google etc. Keep in mind everyone like customers who has a lot of money and I strongly think that Other Relevancy factors plays a big role in that.

And now this is approximately all that you need to know to get you started with your Pay per Click adventure with Google.