Adsense Secrets Volume 4
Many of you have probably seen the new E-Book by Joel Comm called Adsense Secrets Volume 4. He is selling his new e-book for $9.95. In this book he claims to help you make more money out of your Adsense ads you currently are running on your site. If you aren’t running them, then I suggest you sign up now. If you don’t even have a web site, then read my post on how to Start Your Own Website. Please keep in mind that this is a free review, and no money is influencing what I have to say. I read the book, and these are MY thoughts on it. As promised, I said I would review the book after I finished reading it.
Adsense Secrets Volume 4 overall is a pretty good book to read. It is rather long compared to some others that I have read, but it is pretty detailed. The book has many tips and insight that can help someone making a dollar a day, or a hundred dollars a day. I did learn some good things while reading this book. I also read some things that I felt everyone knows.
My first thought before reading the book was that he had some real secrets to share. After I got halfway though, I realized he is just going in-depth on how the Adsense program works. He talks about ad placement, as well as how to blend the ads into your site to make them go almost un-noticed. Joel Comm also teaches you how to attract relevent ads by strategic keyword placement following your adsense code.
Joel Comm goes into detail with real life situations over CTR and how simple things can increase your click. Most importantly, how to make more money on what you have already established. You will learn a few things on keyword placement and section targeting. A small section is to troubleshooting. Want to know why your ads aren’t showing up, or why you are getting Public Service Ads? Adsense Secrets has the answer.
After reading Adsense Secrets I asked myself the question that many of you probably are wondering. Is all the information in this e-book available for free already? The answer is yes, majority of this info is around the internet. Don’t get me wrong though, he does have a good deal of stuff packed into this book that is his own. Some of the case studies, and real live examples of CTR and problems are not on the internet because they are his own.
In conclusion, the book is about half-n-half. Half of the book is found on the internet for free, while the other half is something you will only find within the book. It was a pretty good read, and I feel it is worth the 10 bucks if you have it to spare. Don’t waste the last of your money on it, but if you can afford to toss out $10 then definately buy the book.
My suggestion. Buy some paper from Staples for dirt cheap, set the printer to fast draft, and print out the whole book. Then grab a clipboard with a sheet of paper for notes, and sit back on the couch. I highly suggest taking notes while reading the book, and also noting what page it came from.
Start your own website
Before I get started, I just wanted to say I am still reading Adsense Secrets Volume 4. I haven’t finished reading it. I printed out all of the pages, but it is really long. I am about halfway done. When I finish it, there will be a review of it.
Now on to business. Have you had your own website before? Did you try to make any money off of it? Most people start a website or a blog, but don’t even try to monetize it. Today I will help you start your own website. There are two options. You can choose a free site, or buy your own domain name and hosting for a small fee per month. I honestly prefer buying your own domain for a few reasons. Main reason is authority. Most people trust a dot com site over site.blogger.com or something that screams free. By having a free site you are saying, “I am a cheap penny pencher”. I mostly turn away when I see a site hosted on blogger or wordpress, as do many other people.
Also please note that I am not promising you will make money. In the end, it is up to you. Some people fail, and others become millionaires. Then you have the average joe’s on the internet that make full-time income solely from their site. I am helping you start out your own journey to get yourself started. Where you end up is determined by you. The amount of time you put into your site, and how serious you are about it, will make or break you. In this post you will find the resources and information to get your site started. This is the first step to Making Money Online. If you choose the blog option, then you are Making Money Online Blogging. See the difference? Now lets begin.
FREE Options:
If you want to start out not paying anything, then I have two sites that I recommend to get you started. Go and set up a free account at either Blogger or Wordpress. I recomend Wordpress as you have more options and a wider range of freedom. Below are a few links to help you add adsense to blogger.
How do I put Adsense on my Blog (Blogger)
Google makes it easier to add Adsense to Blogger
How to add Adsense to Blogger and start making money from your blog
Adding Adsense To Blogger (video)
Your Own Domain:
This is what I suggest all of you to do if you actually are going to put a real effort into your site. The free options are for people that think, “yeah I will try it out”, where the paid option is for people who say they ARE going to do this!
First you need to find a web hosting company. This means all of your files will be held on their server. You can host them on your own computer, but that will probably me much slower and not the best option. Also most web hosting companies give you one, if not two, domain names. I recommend using 1&1’s Web Hosting. They are who I use, and I have had no problems at all! You also get two domains free when you sign up for hosting. They are still offering the first three months free! After that, it is $5 a month. This is an amazing offer, so you don’t want to miss out! Go to 1&1 and sign up now!
Now that you have your web hosting company, you will need an FTP client to upload files to their server. Once you get everything uploaded, you will rarely have to use this again. You will be able to do everything from the Wordpress dashboard. I use GlobalSCAPE’s Cute FTP, but there are plenty of free options out there. GlobalSCAPE offers a free trial, so it should get the job done. Click here to get Cute FTP. or Click here to search for other free options.
When you first open the FTP client, you will need to enter in your servers login information. You can get this from the web hosting company you chose. If you chose 1&1, then login and select FTP Account located under the Basic Setting section. You could also create a new FTP account because the default one is hard to remember as it is randomly generated. Use the info found there to put into your FTP client and connect. If you were able to login to your site’s FTP account, then continue on. If not, then you need to refer to your companies help section.
You have your Web Host, you have your FTP client, and you are logged in. You need to download Wordpress. There are other options to creating your own site. You could write the code yourself, or use a Web Page Builder, but for the sake of this tutorial we will stick with Wordpress. Download the latest version of Wordpress, and save it to your desktop. Most updated version of Windows can extract/open the file, but if you are having problems then download WinRAR. You need to extract the folder inside to your Desktop so you can upload it using your FTP client.
Before you can upload Wordpress, you need to edit some things to get it ready for your server. I recommend reading their Installation Guide. If memory serves correctly, you just have to edit the “wp-config-sample.php” file to include your servers information. Read the installation guide, and pay special attention to the config file.
Once the everything is setup, you can then upload. You do not upload the folder named “wordpress”, you upload all the files inside of it! I have seen some sites host from www.site.com/wordpress. This is not right. That should only be used if you have a static web site already, and are just adding a blog section. You want to upload ALL of the files INSIDE of the folder, not the folder itself. I could go on writing the whole rest of the process for you, but Wordpress already wrote an excellent tutorial. Finish reading the instructions on installing wordpress.
You now should be able to go to your site (www.yoursite.com) and see a sample post and comment. Sign in to your dashboard (http://www.yoursite.com/wp-admin/). You now are able to write your first post. Take some time to get familiar with the dashboard because it is where you will spend majority of your time.
What’s next?
In the next few posts I will post where to get plenty of FREE Wordpress themes so you can make your site look pretty. I will also post some plugins that I have found useful. Then following that, I will post on some methods to start making money from your site! In that post, you will learn about Adsense, Kontera, OIOPublisher, and a few more good ways to earn some extra cash.
Recap what you learned from this post:
This post was to help you get your website started. The first step in any site, is to get it started. You now should have your own website (whether free of paid hosting), and have made your first post. Now that you have the hardest part for any newbie, you are ready to start making money off of it.
If you chose to buy your hosting and domain, then in a few months, you should start making up your web hosting costs. I already am making my web hosting costs in just 2 months. I am not promising you will, but with some effort, I don’t see why not. Making up hosting costs is easy, but making up the income of a full-time job is the hard part. With a lot of effort, and some time, it is possible for anyone. I have heard different stories from many different people. Some say it took them 6 months, others claim it was over a year before they started making real money. Keep at it, and come back soon to read the next step in making money from your website.
Are you wanting to, or just started your own site? Sign up for my Full Feed RSS and don’t miss a beat. In the next posts you will learn what plugins to get started with, where to find a theme for your site, and how to start making money off of your site.
OIOPublisher Review
Many of you have probably heard of OIOPublisher before, especially for any blog owner in the MMO niche. I saw it a little while back, then I saw it was $37 dollars. Now that really is a great price, especially for what it does or can do for your site. Right now, until May 5th, you can get OIOPublisher for $37 with a $17 dollar off coupon. Once you sign up at OIOPublisher, enter in the following coupon code: QWERTY-17 to make the cost $20!
What can OIOPublisher do for me?
I think the question should be, “What can’t it do?”. This thing takes all the work out of selling ad space. Just like other adsense managers, it automatically injects code where you want your ads. The only thing it doesn’t inject is the sidebar, which you have to manually enter a simple, one line code. I am using it right now, and you can’t even tell the difference. The ads look the same, just like before I signed up! You can style them with DIV tags and much more! Also if you use inline ads (where the text of the post wraps around an ad), it will automate this without even editing code. You can sell banner ads, text links, inline ads, ad space in your emails, and way more.
Your Own Affiliate Program:
Yes, you heard right. You can set up your site’s own affiliate program. Anyone can sign up for free, no money to you or the customer. The customer is then presented with an affiliate link to give out. If they get someone to sign up, they get a comission, and you get the rest of the sale. My Sponsored ad space is set for $50 per slot, for 28 days, at %10 commission. If someone refers someone else to sign up, they get $5 per sale just for getting someone to advertise on your site. At the price I set, I get $45, you get $5 just for giving someone a link! Not bad at all. If you don’t get anyone to buy an ad, but you have 100 people sign up for the program, you don’t lose any money. There is no worry of losing money.
Stop being a sissy pants:
Anyone that is serious about making money off their site needs this. Plain and simple. I was put off at first just because I have to pay for something, but I am positive it will pay off soon! Right now is the best time to buy it because you get $17 off!
No this is not a paid review, I bought the service, and I am telling you that it is worth every penny! I am your guinea pig, if it was a flop then I would say so.
What are you waiting for? Head on over to OIOPublisher now and get started. Don’t forget to enter the coupon code to get your $17 off. Hurry now, you only have until May 5th.
Joel Comm Messed Up
We knew it was coming, Joel publicly announces his apology and admits that he messed up. I do want to thank him, because I am about to purchase the E-Book right now. I will write a review on it after I finish reading it. I should have the review ready in a couple of days. I also want to thank him for commenting on my site. He is a blogger himself, and I am sure he understands where we were coming from by questioning him. So now the final test is, is his E-book worth buying? I suggest you Subscribe to my Full RSS Feed so you can check back later and find out when I post my review on it.
Oddly on Joel Comm’s website, he doesn’t talk about his E-book that much. I saw a video post, and maybe a blog post, but No big advertising… You may want to read his public apology, I warn you that the page is a mile long just like any other sales page though.
Overall, I am glad to see him man up and admit he was wrong. He also listened to what be ranted about, and gave us the option to not even sign up for the report and just get the E-Book alone. He earned some respect back from me, and now I am off to see what it is all about. Click below and subscribe to my feed, you don’t want to miss my review over his E-book that I will be posting sometime this week!!!
Extra bump in traffic
I have been experimenting with different ways of getting traffic to my site. I have yet to be ranked by Google, so I am not too worried about search engine traffic as of yet. Many of you are wondering when the traffic will start pouring in for your own site. You have’t seen much from search engines, and you are not wanting to spend money out of pocket for advertsing on popular sites in your niche. This leaves your site a ghost town. No comments, no traffic, no clicks. But what can you do to get traffic without paying for it, and no search engine respect yet?
You have probably heard the saying, time is money, but what does that mean to you? To me it is putting an hour or two into working on your site’s traffic per day. Make sure your site is presentable (ex. your theme isn’t broken by testing in IE and Firefox). Write a new post that you feel people want to read and comment on. By doing the methods I am about to tell you, you want to make sure your site is presentable or your time will be wasted!
Social Networks: I open all the ones I use in seperate tabs, and login to each one. The networks I use are: Digg, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, Propeller, and Technorati. Using the “Share This” script at the bottom of my new post, I submit my new post to each one of them. Within about 12 hours, I see a decent amount of traffic through these alone! I don’t recommend using all of them, I just use the more common ones. You could use all of them, but that just requires a lot more time. I feel that is just overkill and not really worth it.
Site Hoppin: Right after you submitted your new post to a few popular Social Networks, we are on to the next step. I recently have been using Site Hoppin to get a bunch of visitors quickly. Every 10 sites you view through their program, you get 1 visitor. You earn more credits by commenting/tagging/rating a site. Usually I manually hop the first 5 sites, commenting on each one of them for a quick start on hops back to my site. Then I set the timer to 8 seconds and hit play to start the slideshow. That will run in the background for about an hour, if not longer while I do other things. If you haven’t heard of Site Hoppin before, then read my Site Hoppin Review.
Entrecard: I have a ton of Entrecard credits, so I usually look for some related sites to advertise on. I try not to waste all my credits in one place. It increases your odds by spreading them out among a few different sites. Usually I do some reasearch on the site by checking the pagerank, alexa rank, and so on. If it looks promising, then I advertise there. The downfall is that most campaigns are 5-8 days you, but If you do this often, you will not get behind. You can read my post on entrecard and learn how to get 300 Entrecard drops in 20 minutes.
MyBlogLog: Next stop is My Blog Log. About once a week I look for new communities to add to get my name/icon spread further through the network. I choose once a week because I kept looking over the same communites just to find a few new ones. If you do this once a week then you will find more for your money (time = money). By being signed in to My Blog log, it prepares us for the next step.
Commenting on many popular blogs in your niche. I have a folder of bookmarks that I try to comment on daily, or at least right after I make a new post. I currently have about 20 sites in this folder for the “Make Money Online” niche. 5 of these are sites that get an ungodly amount of traffic. I suggest commenting on 2 or 3 of their recent posts for each site. Make sure your comments are worth reading. Don’t just say “cool”, this makes you look like every one of the readers. Say for instance they post about SEO, you could throw in some tips they left out. I talked about how to SEO Your Site, it is something every blog owner should read!
Be A Top Commentator: A little case study that Not John Chow and I did was to pick a few popular sites and get on the “Top Commentator” list. This list provides a direct link to your site, and really does bring you more hits! We both came to the same conclusion, it really does work! I noticed about 30-50 extra hits per day for each site that I was “Top Commentator” on. For 5 sites, that could be an extra 250 hits per day!
What happens when you slack off? Well unfortunately so do your hits. I haven’t posted in 2 days, so I also haven’t commented, site hopped, or anything. This weekend I have been with my fiance and family taking care of things for our wedding. I just recently got on and checked my stats. All that extra traffic I earned was lost. For someone that doesn’t get any attention from search engines, or doesn’t pay or advertising, these methods are your only source of traffic!
Conclusion: If you are serious about your site, then take what I said above into consideration. You will see little to no traffic if you don’t do anything. If you write a post, make sure you have about 2 hours to dedicate afterwards to get your content seen. If you don’t, then you might as well not have even posted it!
