Wham or Scam

I pulled the experiment. I got too nervous as the adsense was running on a website that was pulling in some nice commissions and I just can’t help thinking that I was diverting the potential sales away.

On the other hand I did learn something. It is a LOT easier to convert someone with AdSense. All they have to do is click, and ching, the money is yours. No trying to convince them the product is worth buying. AdSense has come a LONG way since I first started Internet Marketing, the ads are a lot more targeted to the specific visitors to your site; and depending on where you place the ads you are likely to get clicks.

Having said that, the principles of SEO apply. Get your website to the top of google and you will get more visitors. The more visitors, the more likely your ads will get clicked, the more money you may make.

The earnings from the clicks I did generate were a little surprising. I mentioned in my previous post that I was aiming for around £0.25 per day. Without going into specifics (because it’s against the AdSense TOS) the average £ per day was higher than that, so the potential for some not-so-insignificant income really is there.

My future plans include building some websites especially for AdSense. I don’t want to abandon the idea altogether. AdSense, once the SEO on the sites has kicked in, will generate (hopefully) a steady income, while my affiliate sites will give my IM a monetary boost. I also plan to draw up a step-by-step guide on how to set up and promote both affiliate and AdSense sites. However, this is for the future so stay tuned.

Well, this is probably going to be the last post until mid-May as I am on holiday(vacation) from the 3rd. I love my internet marketing, but it is great to ‘switch off’ sometimes

http://www.whamorscam.com

P.S. If you are wondering why I am putting my web address in this post (and every post from now on) it is because I have found clones of my site in different languages all over the net. I am not entirely sure whether this is a good thing, it seems to be as the backlink checks that I have carried out on this site shows the scraper sites are Do Follow. Plus, all my affiliate links seem to be intact, as far as I know anyway. So, if anybody picks this post up, plops it in their site – a free backlink for me and my site. BONUS!

There is a history of debate in the internet marketing world about whether placing AdSense on your blogs and websites is a yay or nay approach to making money online. Some say that you will not make nearly half as much money with Adsense on your blogs compared to affiliate links. They are of course referring to blogs and websites that either have one or the other; but what about blogs and sites that have both?

The common argument is that if you place Adsense on a page or site that is also selling affiliate products the Adsense will lure the visitor away from clicking on your affiliate link, with a potential for some serious loss of revenue. However, I have been hearing different of late. When I first started setting up adsense sites when I first started internet marketing (2004) the revenue was mediocre to say the least. I have never bothered with it since.

AdSense and its development has come a long long way since then and the technology exists now to hyper-target your ads to every visitor to your site. This is particularly useful for sitemasters who are targeting an audience in a specific country. You will inevitably get visitors from countries where the product you are selling is not applicable or available in that country; the AdSense ads however target your ads to reflect similar offers to that visitors country or region, and even something completely different if that visitor has a browsing history.

The upside? That visitor from the non-targeted country was going to click out of your site anyway (the product was not relevant or available to the country they live in) so why not give them another avenue to leave your site? – the AdSense ad that is targeted specifically for that visitor. Visitor happy, you earn revenue.

The Downside? Sitemasters who decide to display AdSense ads must place a privacy policy on their sites. This is  no biggie, there are plenty of templates out there, but it’s one more thing that is likely to put people, especially newbies off. Another potential problem is that the revenue earned will be negligable compared to the affliate commissions earned. This is likely to happen if the ads are placed in a postition on the site where people are likely to click them over the affiliate links in the post (such as the middle of the post). It is here that careful consideration must be given to the placement of the ads.

I have decided to conduct a little experiment. I am going to place AdSense ads on all my sites (bar this one) that also run affiliate links. If things don’t work they can be taken down at a click of a button. It just gives me a little more chance of some revenue. Unfortunately I will not be able to give precise amounts of revenue earned through AdSense (it is against their Terms of Service), but I will give a rough indication of whether things are working the way I want.

AdSense Goals:

• 3 Sites – aiming for an average of £0.25 per site per day. (Yep, I know its low, but I can always change it). If this goal is met then I would be earning in the region of £22 per month.
• This figure will be reviewed every month.
• As stated above, I will not publish exact AdSense revenue but I will state if the figure has been exceeded or not.

Right, I am now off to place some privacy policies and set up some AdSense.

i’ll keep you posted.

Today I made the decision to outsource a lot of my blog content and article work. The reason? I find article marketing very time consuming and I just get way too caught up in the details of the article (such as keyword density, questions like “does this article sound right?”) that I just don’t get anywhere with it. I try so hard to shake all those doubts, and the reality is that it does not matter; but the result is that it takes too much time to get the articles (and blogs) out there.

I am soooo glad that I started off doing it the hard way at the beginning. I was and still am proud of what I achieved with the articles that I did write; but if I am to move my business forward I have got to get the sites out there; not faff about with things that I worry about that don’t need worrying about.

How does it feel? Not good. I like to be in control, do things my way. However, I have chosen an outsourcer that is based in the UK, is reasonably priced (around $7 for a 350 word article) and I am reasonably confident they can get the articles back to me in a decent amount of time (although it is a Bank Holiday here in the UK so i’m expecting a little bit of a delay). From what I understand people are very pleased with the service they have received, which I am happy about.

I requested 5 articles from them for now (just testing the waters) which would cost around $35. If I am happy with the service they will get more work from me.

So, if this outsourcing project goes well I can concentrate on the things that I enjoy such as market research. I’ll keep you posted on developments.

Other News

I am planning to move this blog over to my Hostgator account, along with cancelling addon services for a domain that I no longer use. It is just a waste of money paying for hosting on another hosting company when I can get unlimited websites set up on hostgator for a minimal monthly charge. All my domain names will remain with the other company as it costs no more to keep them there, and transferring them is just too much hassle. I expect a little disruption to the service, and I will let you know nearer the time when this move is likely to happen.

The past four months has also been a great time for commissions. Every month in 2010 has seen commissions over £100. I never thought I would EVER see results like this! I am starting to see a little drop in visitor numbers to the site that is earning the commissions, but looking back on the trends over the past year it happened this time last year. Just got to ride with it and hope it picks up again.