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2009-02-07T17:53:00.000-08:00

Content Sites and Mini-Sites For Google Adsense Income - How YOU Can Benefit

2009-01-23T04:13:00.000-08:00

Recently I have been inundated with requests and queries on how to make an alternative income online using the now wildly popular Google Adsense.

As a result I have been in contact with an SEO Elite customer recently, lets refer to them as Spike (not their actual name but for reference purposes) and I have to admit that even I was a little shocked at the ease and duplicability of the system Spike had in place.

This lesson will outline what path they have taken and EXACTLY how they did it. You might wish to have a pen and paper ready as you will no doubt gain some helpful tips from this one.

Adsense Mini-Sites and Content sites, What are they?

I wont bore you too much here with the basics as I know you are itching to get into the meaty content. Adsense Mini-Sites or also referred to as Content sites are basically websites designed solely around making an income from Google Adsense by driving traffic to these websites which in turn, if built correctly will result in a pretty respectful income.

These type of sites are taking off in the search engine and usually will have quite a bit of original content aimed at being highly themed to the topic of the website. Adsense Mini-Sites are not to be confused with many of the "scraper" sites around which are just rubbish and will have your site banned and booted by Google faster then you can say "how much did I earn in Adsense today".

The purpose of an Adsense Mini-Sites as mentioned above is to create content rich WebPages that are highly geared towards a specific search term (to help improve search engine ranking's), attractive to the visitor and providing you with another income stream.

Below I will guide you through the steps taken to create your own profitable Google Adsense Mini-Site.

Saving your time and money...

As with everything there are many ways to go about completing the same objective, this is still the same here BUT the difference here is that the guessing game has been taken out of the equation, allowing you to focus on building your Google Adsense empire.

The guide which will be detailed below takes you through one of the most effective way's of making money from Adsense due to the fact that these sites are built to last, not just a useless spammy site that will diminish with time.

An Income that continues to climb and mature

In fact to outline how powerful this method is not only will your Mini-Sites be earning you an income possibly within the first month but that income will increase as each month passes for quite a while.

Maintenance

We all know how dull website maintenance can be, even I dread doing it from time to time, guess what? You guessed it Adsense Mini-Sites are built for ease of use, ease of maintenance and easy to upgrade.

Cost Effective

Mini-Sites are very cheap to produce in terms of initial outlay and continued costs. If you are starting from scratch with nothing then it is possible to set up your first site for under $200 and that includes everything. Once you have your hosting up and running you can usually add new domain names under the same account and it will cost you even less.
Spike, the SEO Elite customer I was talking to earlier mentioned that he can now have a Google Adsense Mini-Site up and running for under $50.

Time Effective

Your first Google Adsense Mini-Site will probably take you a little longer then usual as it may be completely new to you but once you have completed a couple you will be able to build a complete site in less then 3 days if you want to. Spike personally has 3 Adsense site right now that he is working on and has another 3 in the drafting stages, and this was referred to as "taking it slowly".

Your Action Guide To Adsense Profits - Taking You Step By Step.

Now we are up to the juicy stuff. I am going to take you through a very duplicable guide of only 5 steps which will have you pumping out Adsense earning mini-sites in no time.

So what exactly are these 5 steps?

Topic / Theme Selection
Profitability and Keyword Research
Website Design
Content Creation - Monetisation with Google Adwords
Article Distribution

Now that we have the steps lets break them down into practical examples with all the hints and tips that you can use to build an Adsense Mini-Site in minimum time.

Topic / Theme Selection - What will your website be about?

There are so many ways to brainstorm and come up with hundreds of topics or themes for a website, for your first Mini-Site it is better to do it on something you are familiar with and enjoy doing. Start off by writing down what you are interested in or hobbies you may participate in. I am sure you could list at least 10 different topics.

Lets say one of your topics was Ties (as in neckties)

You would then brainstorm on this topic but we will go into this further in the next section with Keyword research.

Another way to come up with a list of topics is to look around the desk you are currently sitting at. What do you have in front of you?

Drinking glasses
Coke
Hair Brush
Pens
CD's

In the room I am currently in?

Picture Frames
Ceiling Patterns
Wooden Flooring

The list goes on and on.

When looking for hot emerging topics the following recent most searched for keyphrases can be used to try and determine a niche or profitable market. Allot of the topics will be over populated and not worth focusing on but you can find some real gem's in there with relative ease.

AOL Hot Searches
Ask Jeeves / Jeeves IQ
Dogpile SearchSpy
Google Zeitgeist
Lycos 50
MSN Search Insider
Yahoo Buzz Index

Profitability and Keyword Research - Expanding your topic

This is all great but what if you have selected a topic that is either too saturated or just doesn't receive enough traffic? Well thats what this step is designed to do. Help weed out the dud topics and increase the chances of you building a profitable Mini-Site.

There are many Keyword research tool around but the grand daddy of all research tools is Wordtracker, with Wordtracker not only can you expand your topic into hundreds of possible extra keywords but it will also give you a competition analysis that can greatly help you determine the profitability of a website. Wordtracker provide a solution that has yet to be beaten but it also has a subscription fee.

You can view their website at http://www.wordtracker.com.

Wordtracker also have a free trial if you want to try them out.

Alternatively you can also do this using some of the free tools that are around, the best free tool that I have found so far is http://www.123promotion.co.uk/ppc/index.php. Not only do they provide the results of both the free version of Wordtracker and overture. Also you can see how many people are competing for each keyword in Google and a whole host of other details.

What you are aiming to do in this stage is firstly build a list of at least 20 different keyword phrases that are relevant to your topic, preferably more. Then you want to perform a competition search using either the free tool above or Wordtracker, if you have your own tool and it does a similar job then feel free to use that as well.

For basic Mini-Sites that won't require that much effort you would want to have a competition base of under 100,000 people. Preferably around 60,000. This will give you the opportunity to rank well in the search engines for that keyword phrase with minimal effort.

By using the free tool above I have been able to identify 10 keywords based around neckties that would be suitable for building content pages all of them with competition of less then 80,000 in Google. This was in the space of about 5 minutes worth of work.

As far as profitability goes you really will not know how profitable a site may be until you build it and get it out there. Spike has mentioned something very similar and has had sites that he though would do poorly bring in $10 and $15 per day in Google Adsense. The idea is that you build a site, set it up and move on to your next one.

Now if you can build just 5 sites that average around $10 per day then you are earning a nice $1500 in extra income per month with no or very little further effort.

What if you built 10 sites? or 15? or even 20? The passive income possibilities are very exciting to say the least.

Website Design and Layout

When designing your website for the purpose of Adsense Mini-Sites the idea is to have a simple site that display's the content in a neat manner whilst also drawing as much attention to the Google Adwords as possible.

I will not go into actual website creation here as that is beyond the realm of what we are targeting in this lesson

A great place to find free clean website templates is OSWD. Spike uses these open source templates in allot of his Adsense Mini-Sites due to the fact that they are free, most of them are in a very clean layout, they all come with source files so they can be modified to YOUR needs and they make for fast Adsense Mini-Site creation.

You can get to their free website selections at http://www.oswd.org/browse.php

There are many other template sites around but the above one seems to stand out at being the best among free templates. Alternatively you can also pay for what they call a "premium" template which are usually of a higher standard but these are not always better for the purpose that we need them.

Once you have your website template set-up and ready to go there are some basic SEO tips that will help you make the most out of each page you build. Most of these tips you may have seen in previous lessons but I will outline them here again.

When building your new content pages name your page names after the specific keyword phrase you are targeting.

Example: Mens Neckties becomes mens-neckties.html

This simple step can make a very big difference in helping you rank well for certain phrases.

Ensure you also add the keyword phrase in

tags at the beginning of your content page.
Create proper title tags for EVERY page using the targeted keyphrases
Create proper meta keywords and meta descriptions using targeted keyphrases

When linking to your Content pages weather that be from your main page or any other page it is best to use a text link and include your targeted keyphrases. Otherwise you are wasting potential SEO benefits of internal linking.

Effective Google Adword placement and Style

When inserting your Google Adsense code there are certain area's on your page that are proven to grab the visitor's attention much better then other areas.

One of these area's and the area that I myself and Spike use most often is the top left hand side at the beginning of your content creation. You can see that particular layout at the top of this page. Google bought out their own heatmap which confirms this positioning of Adsense as being one of the best. This can be viewed at at Google Adsense Heatmap

Some basic Adsense Tips that can improve your CTR by up to 15% sometimes 20% are.

Where possible use only one Adsense block per page. This improves the amount each click will provide you
Try to use the "Large Rectangle 336x280" option. Helps improve your CTR
Do not use border's around your Adsense
Make the text and heading color of Adsense ads the same as your content color
ALWAYS leave the URL link at the bottom of each add in blue. This is shown to increase CTR (click through ratio) as this is the standard color of all links on the Internet

By implementing just these few tips above Spike was able to improve his CTR on one of his older sites by a massive 18%!

Content Creation - Building your keyword rich pages

Well now is probably the hardest part of the entire process. Actually creating the content.

The main objective will be to create content for each keyphrase you have selected and have it as a completely separate page on your Mini-Site. Each page should be between 400 and 700 words.

When creating the content you would want to follow the basic SEO principles mentioned in the website layout section as well as naturally trying to include the keyword phrase through out the text.

If you were for example creating a page on Necktie Storage, you may want to write about the different types of necktie storage available, which ones a better, the benefits of storing your necktie's, how to prevent moth damage with necktie storage etc etc.

The key is to try and create quality content that the visitor will actually be interested in reading. Create content for the reader, not for the Adsense income. I know this may sound strange but if you create the pages for your reader, then the Adsense income will naturally come.

One of Spike's secret method's is to use an article writing company or service. This can drastically decrease the time you are spending on one website and allow you to increase your productivity and as a result income.

Two of the better article writing services are

www.elance.com
www.rentacoder.com

I prefer to use elance.com as my method for having content written but it is all a matter of personal choice. If you choose to use this method you can have quality articles written for about $4 per article and they will usually have them done in a pretty quick time frame. Each writer will bid on your project and the price they will do it for.

You will find after a while you will have a list of preferred author's which can make for some very well written articles.

The idea for writing content for each keyphrase is that you are effectively creating another page that can rank well in the search engines and therefore increase the traffic to your Mini-Site also increasing your Adsense Income

Article Distribution - Link Building

You will most likely find that you will naturally have high search engine results due to the competition research we did above but sometimes it is required to build backlinks on your Mini-Site and I would also recommend it as very beneficial to the long term development for your sites.

Although it is possible to start a major linking campaign to build search engine results it is not the most effective method when building sites purely for Ad sense Income. When trying to break into a more competitive market this would be advisable but since we are targeting low competition keywords we can get away with something much easier.

Writing articles and Submitting them to article directories. It is very possible to obtain number 1 ranking's by just submitting a few articles to the main directories. The reason for this is that you get to include a backlink to your site in the bio of your article. When doing this be sure to optimise the backlink for the keyword you are trying to rank well for.

Some of the main directories that accept articles are

www.goarticles.com
www.ideamarketers.com
www.ezinearticles.com
www.contentdesk.com
www.articleworld.net

Alternatively you can use an automated article submission service to speed up your article submissions and also give you the maximum coverage possible for your article. www.submityourarticle.com is a very good service for those who are time limited.

NOTE: If you are planning on using the article writing services mentioned in the previous section it might be an idea to factor in say 3 or 4 great articles. For this they general price is about $20 but they are usually of high quality and go a bit more in depth then just general content writing.

Expanding Your Horizons...

We have covered quite allot above which will give you the ability to go out and create some Google Adsense Mini-Sites of your own. The ease at which these sites can be produced will be of particular interest to many and allow you to create some different income streams with relative ease.

Hopefully this lesson has covered many of the questions that you may have had and provided you with a clear path forward for creating Adsense Mini-Sites.

I will be sending your Part 2 of Lesson #21, which I sent you last week... very soon. In this lesson I'll cover how to optimize that good 'ole "Model Train" website's offpage optimization factors. I have quite a bit I want to cover in the next few lessons, so stay tuned!

Talk to you soon,

How You Can Instantly Tap Into an Unlimited Source of Content, for Free

2009-01-23T03:54:00.000-08:00

"How You Can Instantly Tap Into an Unlimited Source of Content, for Free!"

Are you looking for dynamic, automatically refreshing, sticky content to spice up your website?

If you are a webmaster, you'll know how difficult it is to create fresh content to attract your subscribers and new visitors to your website. Paying freelance writers can cost you a fortune when you are just starting out and don't have site revenues to fund expenses, and writing the articles yourself takes way too much time and takes you away from other important tasks (like actually running the site and making sales happen).

Luckily, there's a little-known but extremely easy tool that you can use to instantly jazz up your website and provide your traffic with valuable information. In fact, you might have heard of this tool before. Headline syndication, aggregators, XML format?

Sound familiar?

Yup, I'm talking about RSS Feeds.

If you haven't heard about RSS Feeds, or what they are, I strongly urge you to print out this article, go to a quiet corner where you won't be disturbed and literally devour every word of the rest of this article. Not only will it probably save your business, but it will revolutionize the way you think about the Internet.

And if you've come across RSS feeds before or used them, then skim through the next section to refresh your memory (seriously, there is a lot of useful information that you might be missing out on) and then dive into the meat of this article, which will show you how to set up RSS feeds on your website to display dynamic, self-updating content with very little effort.

What Is RSS?

RSS stands for “Rich Site Summary”, although other terms such as “RDF Site Summary” (which emphasizes the file format) and “Really Simple Syndication” (which highlights the main selling point of RSS) are also useful in defining RSS by the book.

However, bookish definitions don't always explain things very well. What really is RSS?

RSS is a platform over which a webmaster can instantly deliver summarized information about the latest / most important content on his website. This summary is usually a list of headlines and snippets – the headline will instantly inform the reader of what this new article or page contains and the snippet (usually the first few lines of the article) is to further entice the reader into visiting the website, or to simply give the reader more information. RSS has evolved into a commonly accepted XML standard, and many websites now use RSS Feeds (XML files containing the summaries) to publish “updates” about themselves.

From the webmaster's point of view, an RSS feed is meant to allow visitors and subscribers an easy way to keep themselves abreast of fresh content on their website (without having them visit the website first). Additionally, an RSS Feed also allows the reader to “preview” this fresh content, thus letting them decide immediately if the new article / content is interesting to them or not. All in all, RSS Feeds have the main purpose of enhancing user experience.

Keep that last point as we go through the rest of this article – it is an underlying mindset to making RSS Feeds work effectively.

Using An RSS Feed

As an Internet entrepreneur, one of your most valuable tools can be an RSS Reader. This is essentially an aggregator – a collection of RSS Feeds (that you can add or remove) from different websites that you are interested in. A typical RSS Reader would include RSS Feeds from news sites, sports sites, and perhaps a few niche sites (such as SEO forums, blogs on SEO, etc.). The main purpose of this software is to keep you informed of the latest news and content on websites that you are interested in.

If you have used My Yahoo! or Bloglines , you've probably used RSS Feeds already. These are online RSS aggregators – you get to choose from numerous websites and within minutes you can have your own launch-pad for knowing everything that's happening in your niche, in the world, or in sports.

As a first step to understanding how RSS Feeds work, I'd suggest that you use at least one RSS Aggregator – either an online RSS tool or RSS reading software like SharpReader – and subscribe to a few RSS Feeds to learn how it works from a user's perspective.

Marketing and RSS

Using RSS Feeds, websites can:
Attract more customers / visitors.
Keep subscribers informed of new developments
Allow subscribers to instantly learn of new articles, content and products on their website.
Reduce the load on the subscriber's inbox by reserving newsletters for important news, special product offers, etc.

As a webmaster, you can use RSS Feeds to your advantage. Since blogging became insanely popular over two years ago, RSS Feeds have become mainstream. In other words, no matter what your niche,there's a good chance that you'll be able to find a few authority sites that publish RSS Feeds, thus syndicating their latest headlines.

How can you use this?

By providing your visitors relevant, self-refreshing content in the shape of the “latest news” by using RSS feeds from niche-relevant websites.

Now I'm not saying that you should cover your whole website (or even one whole page) with RSS Feeds. Such practice is frowned upon by search engines and will actually get your website banned from every single search engine index! RSS Feeds are meant for headline syndication, not for content scrapping.

Instead, you could use headlines from the top 3 forums in the weight loss niche to show the latest discussion threads on one side of the “News” page of your own weight loss website. The rest of the page would, of course, be covered with information (i.e. latest news) about your own website.

Or you could put a news ticker on your politics blog to not only give your blog a look of “being updated” but to also provide your readers with relevant, useful information.

If you sell sports goods and own an online store, you could run a “sports news” feed on your main page to attract the attention of your visitors and give your website a more authentic look and feel.

There are many different ways you can use RSS Feeds to add value to your website. Make sure though, that you are merely using these Feeds as “icing on the cake”, and not as the whole cake itself.

Finding RSS Feeds

Finding RSS Feeds is easy; there are several RSS-specific directories and niche search engines for you to browse through. However, the surge of blogging in the last two years has meant that any RSS search tool is inundated with blog spam. This makes it a bit harder to find RSS Feeds that you can actually use.

I've listed a few resources below that can help you get started in your search for finding relevant RSS Feeds.

Bloglines
BlogPulse
Daypop
Feedster
Findory Blogory
Gigablast Blog Search
IceRocket Blog Search
PubSub
Technorati

Once you've found the RSS Feeds of your choice, it's time to find out how to set them up on your website.

Setting up an RSS Feed to Display on your Website

Internet Marketers are a particular breed; we're always looking for an “easier” or “quicker” way of doing things; not necessarily shortcuts, but just ways to work smarter. It's the same with RSS. When I first came across it, I immediately went to Google and not only picked out a tool that could help me syndicate my own website (so I wouldn't have to spend time learning XML), but I also found several tools that I could use to display RSS Feeds from other websites onto mine!

These tools are ridiculously simple, and I'd fully suggest that you try them before venturing into learning how to display RSS Feeds on your webpages through code. If your website is in PHP, you can use the following software:

CaRP
This software also has a free version, which displays a simple ad in the middle of the news display saying something like “these news headlines brought to you by CaRP”. Try it out; it's easy to use, and will teach a lot about managing RSS Feeds.
There are JavaScript alternatives available as well (in case your website uses plain HTML).

Jawfish
Like CaRP, Jawfish also has a free trial, which is once again easy to setup if you can follow step-by-step instructions.

FeedRoll
Another JavaScript alternative is FeedRoll – this is perhaps the easiest to use of the three mentioned here, but it offers less flexibility and choice of feeds compared to the others.

Of course, if you want more options (or have ASP or something on your website), go to your search engine of choice and type in “How to display RSS Feeds on my website” to get a quick listing of articles,tutorials and more tools to help you out.

More RSS

RSS is an amazingly versatile platform that can be used from anything as simple as running a news ticker to something as topical and time-sensitive as providing weather alerts to affected areas. In fact, any information that is:

regularly updated
time sensitive
new

can be a good candidate for an RSS Feed. The key here is to remember that there are always new uses for information and technology... it's just a matter of pinning them down.