Tips Adsense for Blogger

How do you make money from the Google Adsense Program? What AdSense Tips can you share with us?

I have been asked this question so many times in the past few weeks that I thought I should write something on the topic. It seems increasingly bloggers want to try to cover their hosting and ISP costs with some revenue from their blog - and increasingly they’re doing it and are able to make a few (or quite a lot) dollars on the side. Many are turning to Google’s Adsense program.

Covering costs of my Digital Photography Blog is why I originally signed up with Google Adsense - blogging can get expensive when you have high levels of traffic and a lot of pages.

Whilst the agreement you sign with Google stresses that you are not allowed to give specific information about your earnings from the program I can say that I’m glad I’ve signed up because its well and truly covered my costs - and then some. In fact I think its quite feasible to expect that Adsense coupled with other strategies for making money from Blogging could quite easily generate a decent living. It takes time and hard work, but I think its very doable. (Update: Since writing this series I’ve revealed that I am now looking at making over a six figure income this year in 2005 from blogging).

So how do I make money from Google Adsense? Let me share some AdSense Tips that heve helped me.

This will be the first in a series of posts on this topic. Let me say up front I’m no expert - there are a lot of people out there making a lot more money than I am using Adsense - however most of them are not telling their secrets - well not for free anyway. I’ve got no secrets to hide and am willing to share what I’ve learnt since I signed up for the program 8 months ago. If you want a REAL expert’s opinion on Adsense I’d recommend buying Joel Comm’s What Google Never Told You About Making Money with Adsense E-Book. Joel earns $15,000 per month from Adsense and has some good things to share.

I know some bloggers are put off or offended by the idea of making money from blogging so I’ll try not to let these posts dominate my blog - however if you are not interested in the topic, simply skip over these posts.

I am going to assume a few things in this series to cut down the amount of introductory comments I have to make. Here is what I am assuming:
You have a blog. Whilst most of the following tips will apply to other types of websites I run Adsense on blogs and will speak from that experience.
You have (or will) read a basic overview of Adsense and have some understanding of what it is.
You have(or will) read the program policies as outlined by Google. These give details of site eligibility, ad placements and other requirements for using the system.

Enough introductory comments - lets get stuck into the Adsense Tips for Bloggers!

Introduction to Blog Networks

I’ve done a little study in the past few years on ‘movements’ as part of my interest in emerging forms of spirituality and one of the things that I’ve come to know a little about is how new movements often start as fairly chaotic and disconnected entities but generally over time will (in order to survive and thrive) self organize and form clusters (that’s a terribly generalized comment - but for the sake of succinct communication I’ll leave it at that).

This can be seen in many instances throughout history across many different types of movements (big and small) and is currently happening in blogging (I guess we could call it a movement) also.

With the rise in popularity of blogging we’ve also seen a variety of ways for bloggers to self organize and cluster together. This has happened in many ways through people attempting to collate blogs (like technorati and blog pulse) but also through different blog directories and lists that attempt to categorize blogs (eg blogtopsites) and blogging communities (eg blogcritics) where bloggers work together on different projects.

This has also been seen in the emergence over the past couple of years of the ‘blog network’.

Blog Networks come in a range of shapes and sizes and have been designed with different purposes in mind - but in a sense if you strip them all back they are simply clusters of blogs that are in some way linked together under a common name or banner.

Most of these networks are have some commercial aspect to them while others are more about about promoting blogs and social networking.

The most prominent and long running of the current range of blog networks are Gawker Media and Weblogs Inc - both of which have numerous blogs with massive traffic and business models that make them quite large and profitable business ventures (in fact Weblogs Inc recently sold to AOL for a reported $25million (USD) - one of the reasons that I suspect the blog network space has become quite crowded in recent months).

In addition to these two large and prominent networks there are many others that have emerged around them. No one really knows how many there are (and there is some debate about what is and isn’t a network) but perhaps one of the best lists going around is that at the Blog Network List which currently tracks 75 networks. I’m certain it doesn’t cover every network out there but it’s a pretty good list.

As you’ll see by perusing the list - networks really do come in a large variety of configurations ranging from the very big with a large number of blogs with a wide range of topics, through to the very small and tightly focused networks that are targeting smaller niche topics.

I’m not going to talk here about specific networks or their pros and cons (I’m a co-owner of one myself so I’ll let others comment on that topic) but I do want to explore a common question that I’m asked by ProBlogger readers:

‘What are the Benefits and Costs of Joining a Blog Network?’

This question (and variations of it) is something that I get quite a bit, especially from newer bloggers attempting to work out whether it’s better for them to set up a blog on their own as an independent or whether it’s worth working with others in their blogging.

In my experience (as someone who runs independent blogs, networked blogs and who co-owns a network) there are definitely both real benefits AND costs that should be carefully weighed up before entering into an established network (or starting your own). In the coming day or two I want to write at least two posts exploring these topics.

Obviously I have some vested interest in the topic and will write from this perspective (please keep this in mind) and would invite the comment of others who are both independent and networked bloggers.

by:problogger.net

How to Create a Blog in Blogger.com Blogspot

Tutorial on how to create a blog in blogger.com / blogspot

1. Visit blogger.com
2. Enter your Gmail account in “Username (Email)” and password in “Password”.
(If you don’t have email yet, register first at gmail.com then come back here).
3. a. On “Create Your Blog Now” -> click
b. On “Blog Title” -> enter the title of your blog (as you like). Example: A. Fatih Syuhud Blog
4. On “Blog Address (URL) -> enter URL address as you like. Example: fatihsyuhud (click the “Check Availability” to make sure it’s available).
5. Klik “Continue”
6. On “Choose a Template” click “Continue”
7. “Your Blog Has Been Created!” -> You’ve created a Blog
8. Click “Start Blogging!” to write an article.
9. On “Title” enter a title as you like. Example: How to Write a Post in a Blog
10. Enter in the box below a paragraph or two about anything.
11. Click “Publsih Post”
12. Congratulations! You’ve successfully write an article / a post.

Notes: To post / write another article, you just need to click menu “Posting” or “Create”

Good luck!