Marketing & Monetize Blog

Seems like this week I can give you two good news about AdSense:

First of all AdSense has a new program policy and now they allow publishers to place 3 link units on each page. This is a good news for who uses link units to monetize their web site or blog. I have used link units and they didn’t perform so well, this is just my case because other people are managing to make a few good bucks from link units. You can also read the complete policy update on AdSense Blog.

Secondly, thanks to AppliBlog I am able share with you some of the latest opinions of Google’s staff regarding ads backgrounds.

It is a well known fact that implementing AdSense ads within the web site design or adding custom backgrounds increases the CTR in almost all cases of blending (you can see a sample blending in right picture), but what does Google thinks about this ? Well, has I said before thanks to AppliBlog we have a decent answer from Google regarding the ads backgrounds.

For the question “Can we use Adsense background images?” Google’s answer sounds like this:

“Background images are fine so long as the ads are clearly portrayed as ads, and clearly distinguished from the content.”

Even if we have Google’s accept for ads background my final thought is that you should e-mail Google every time you try something new, just to be sure you don’t get your self banned from AdSense network.

If you have tried to blend ads with backgrounds share with us your opinions and also it will be a good thing to know if the results where satisfactory or not.

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After Yahoo launched YPN which is still in beta and is not accepting international publishers Ask.com is preparing to launch their own contextual ad network.

InterActiveCorp the company who owns Ask.com, Match.com, Ticketmaster, and Evite claims that they reached 34 million unique users per month and their new ad network will be incorporated into its Ask Sponsored Listings (ASL) platform. The launch of Ask contextual ad network should be expected at the and of the May for mid-sized publishers and for smaller publishers is expected later this year according to Clickz News.

With all the AdSense banned accounts and with some new features Ask’s ad network could be a real competitor for Google’s AdSense. Some of the options that will be available with Ask will be ads transparency and an other strong one is that they plan to inform content partners of their revenue share up front, rather than leave them guessing about the fluctuations in eCPM like in AdSense or other networks.

The most strong point of AdSense it’s their high payouts which I guess Ask won’t be able to compare at, but this is only my opinion and we should wait for them to launch their new service and see the facts.

You can read the official IAC press realease here.

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Without specifying an exact amount of time I ask myself (and my readers) if is possible to make $10.000 from blogging ? Now don’t you think about answers like: “Yes, in 10 years”, I mean in a reasonable period of time. Well I think this is possible with all the option of monetization these days. You only need a domain, WordPress, some English knowledge, if that’s needed you can easly use Learn a Language and you may call yourself a blogger.

What about the $10k ? Well I think is a long way from “the domain and WordPress” to earn that kind of amount of money, but you never know, for example I made over 1000$ in 3-4 months of blogging and I own two C class blogs. I tried a lot of monetization programs like AdSense, Chitika, contextual advertising, paid posting and many others.

Now my goal is to make $10k from my blogs in a short period of time and I will try my best to do that so stay tunned for the updates and maybe you can learn something from my choices and maybe from my mistakes.

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As you can see today I have implemented Kontera Ads with my blog. Kontera is a contextual advertising network that offers In Text advertising based on keywords within a body of text, practically they crawl the page where the code is placed and they place links on specified keywords. Kontera works very well for sites with a lot of content, for example their ads will work great for Collins College - Click Here.

You can see examples of Kontera Ads on my blog when you go with the mouse over the double underlined links. I am pleased with the fact that you don’t need to do any optimzation, they do all the work for you. Until I see the first results with Kontera here are some stats from other Kontera users (thanks DoshDosh):

• $30.20 from 6063 impressions and 295 clicks
• $18.88 from 5374 impressions / 218 clicks
• $110.0 from 6,003 impressions / 1270 clicks
• $0.34 from 115 impressions / 7 clicks

Well, I think the ads looks nice and don’t take a lot of space. I will be back with more stats and more tips for Kontera Ads in the next days.

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I have noticed some discussions on some popular forums about new ads from AdSense which contains an “x” (close button) and today I spotted one on my blog, now I am sure that those ads are true. Google is letting people closing the ads, or maybe this is just for webmasters, so they won’t click their own ads (a big LOL).

Here is a print screen with the add…

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If you are familiar with social bookmarking than you know what importance has to web sites optimizations, specially to blogs.

Sites like digg, reddit, del.icio.us and even more can be a really good source of traffic and that means also conversions / clicks. If you already know that than you sure know that it takes some time to submit your articles to all (main) social bookmarking sites…

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Just like AdSense and YPN these ads pay out on a per click basis. The value of the clicks depends upon the product being featured. It can range from $0.10 to as much as several dollars.

Chitika eMiniMalls ads comes with a customizable advert box which can be targeted either by keywords input when the ad code is generated or contextually in much the same way as Google’s AdSense program does.

Chitika also offers a referral program. They pay out 10% of any clicks your referrals generate in the first 15 months.

After AdSense reviewed and changed their Terms and Conditions now allows their publishers to use Chitika eMiniMalls ads and AdSense ads on the same page and in my opinion that is a good method for bloggers / website owners to increase their earnings.

They send payments directly to your paypal account at the end of each month, as long as the monthly total has exceeded $10, or you can have a standard cheque when your earning reach $50.

Chitika is a best choice for those people who want to show some products like Digital Cam, Laptops, PC Monitor and etc. on their blog because Chitika’s ads are totally product based.

I suggest you should give Chitika eMiniMalls a try even if you find it’s not for you or that it doesn’t really fit with your site’s theme, anyway is a good way to increase your income.

You can sign up with Chitika eMiniMalls here.

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AdSense Blog just announced that there is a new program policy page for Google AdSense. The new version is more user friendly and easy to read. This is recommended for new AdSense users and also for old members just to re-familiarize themselves with the details.

I might add that Program Policy is very important for AdSense users because many people are banned from AdSense because they don’t read the Program Policy and obviously they violate the terms without even knowing that.

Call it getting a jump on spring cleaning: we’ve launched a new version of the AdSense Online Program Policies today. We’ve tried to make the format more readable, so those of you who start the day with a cup of coffee and a copy of the Program Policies may notice that much of the wording is new. Nearly all of the policies themselves have stayed the same, but we encourage everyone to take a look at the new version, if only to re-familiarize yourself with the details.

Quote from AdSense Blog

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