If you run AdSense on your blog or website you have probably read about how to increase your income almost overnight. Many of these ideas might seem ridiculous at first, but then you go ahead and try them anyway to see if you can stretch your visitors for that extra dollar.

For your convenience, I have created a list of the common suggestions given to those who want to increase their income and stated why or why they aren’t a myth. I have also listed the “Ugliness factor” which shows on a 0-10 scale how much the “cure” will effect your pages look and feel for the worst.

Image by monkeyc.net

Block MFA ads from your website
Myth or Cure: Myth.
AdSense detects the highest paying ads for each webpage. If an MFA is appearing on your site it is because it is the highest bidder. Blocking the MFA will only result in lower earnings overall.
Ugliness factor: 0

Look for low paying pages and remove AdSense
Myth or Cure: Cure.
If a page on your website consistently receives low paying ads while the rest of your site receives higher paying ads, it is possible that this page is bringing your other pages down. However, if this page has high traffic compared to your other pages, your earnings will be less without it. So choose wisely.
Ugliness factor: 0

Use the heatmap to place your ads
Myth or Cure: Cure.
Heatmaps are different for every website, but the general line of sight when coming to a new page is from top left to the middle and slowly to the right. If you place an ad in a ‘red’ spot you will earn more. To find out your own sites heatmap, check out CrazyEgg or you can look at a general heatmap for a quick reference. The ugliness factor depends on where, what, and how many.
Ugliness factor: 5

Place the most visible ad highest in your HTML file
Myth or Cure: Cure.
AdSense places the highest paying ad at the top of the highest ad within your HTML file. If you must, use CSS to make sure the highest paying ad is also the most visible.
Ugliness factor: 0

Use adlinks under your header
Myth or Cure: Cure.
The header is a high traffic area when it comes to the heatmap. So why not place an ad directly where the visitor will look? Adlinks are less intrusive because they are smaller but still ugly, especially in the middle of a layout.
Ugliness factor: 9

Blend the ads
Myth or Cure: Cure.
As long as you don’t create your entire website to look exactly like the ad (including the font-family and font-size) this should increase your earnings.
Ugliness factor: 2

Use complimentary colors for the ads
Myth or Cure: Cure.
Like blending ads, this will not kill the look and feel of your website. Using complimentary colors will give your visitors more of a hint that they are looking at an ad as opposed to just blending–which may or may not be better than blending the ad.
Ugliness factor: 2

Use obscure colors for the ads
Myth or Cure: Myth.
Using obscure colors compared to your layout is never the way to go. It is not only ugly, but will annoy your visitors so much they won’t return.
Ugliness factor: 10

Turn on image ads
Myth or Cure: Cure.
Choosing “Text and image ads” will give Google a wider range of ads to choose from when displaying the best performing ad. The downside? Not all websites want to show images.
Ugliness factor: 5

Use medium and large rectangles
Myth or Cure: Cure.
Medium and large rectangles have the largest inventory because they not only include image ads, but also video ads. They are also the easiest to see and generally look the best within content.
Ugliness factor: 2

Review products
Myth or Cure: Cure.
When it comes to getting money, reviews are the best way to get it (besides selling the product yourself). By reviewing a specific product you entice visitors to buy–offer them ads and they will click. Although, you might be better off placing an affiliate ad for the product instead of using AdSense.
Ugliness factor: 0

Place more ads on each page
Myth or Cure: Myth & Cure.
It depends on how many you are showing and how much content the page has. AdSense places the highest paying ads on the highest ad within your HTML source file. This means that the more ads you place the more low paying ads there will be, which will take away clicks from the other higher paying ones. So be sure not to place too many.
Ugliness factor: 5

Place less ads on each page
Myth or Cure: Myth & Cure.
It depends on how many ads you are showing. With less ads you will know visitors are clicking on the highest paying ad possible. However, the less ads the less visibility they get, meaning less clicks. This could go either way.
Ugliness factor: 0

Remove low performing pages
Myth or Cure: Cure.
Low performing pages (as in low CPM and low earnings overall) can hurt you with smart pricing. By removing low performing pages, the higher performing ones will most likely earn more.
Ugliness factor: 0

Place an ad block below content pages
Myth or Cure: Cure.
If you have plenty of content adding an ad block below it may improve your earnings. This is because someone who reads an entire article is more likely to be persuaded and willing to click and buy.
Ugliness factor: 4

Use h1s, h2s, title tags
Myth or Cure: Cure.
Using header tags and the title tag will increase earnings. Not only will this give you more visitors through search engines, but it will also tell Google more coherently what your page is about so they can show more relevant ads.
Ugliness factor: 0

If you still want to earn more money and you have tried all the cures, the only true way is by getting more traffic. To do this, try writing more content and use SEO.

Rate:

3.9 (3 people)

11 Comments

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With the new Entrecard + SezWho deal there are many WordPress users out there who are overwhelmed by trying to figure out how to customize SezWho and get it working properly on their blog.

I was one of those people. I looked over the WordPress plugin for hours, not just within the admin section but through the actual PHP files. I ran into problems such as not being able to customize the ‘Who am I?’ link correctly and the misplacement of the user avatars within posts. I searched for the answers and found others just like me who are having problems, with the addition of those having problems with the sidebar widget.

I headed over to the SezWho website in search of answers. I couldn’t find anything. I finally decided it was my fault. That I was obviously doing something wrong. I headed over to the download page and clicked on the WordPress plugin. Low and behold, at the bottom of the page is a link to “SezWho template modification example“.

Why you should manually install SezWho:

More control over the design.

Tags will be closed. Some people have had problems with no ending </p>, creating headaches for designs.

You know what is changing on your blog.

If you head to the page you will see a generic WordPress template with highlighted code. You might be wondering what each one does, so here are the answers:

comments.php
Places the avatar within your comments page. If you include this, when you hover over the image the users profile pops up.

<?php if (function_exists(’cp_comment_user_image’)) echo cp_comment_user_image(); ?>

This is a link to the users profile. By default, it displays ‘Who am I?’

<?php if (function_exists(’cp_comment_profile_link’)) echo cp_comment_profile_link(); ?>

This displays the rating system for comments.

<?php if (function_exists(’cp_comment_footer_content’)) echo cp_comment_footer_content(); ?>

single.php
This displays the ratings of your posts.

<?php if (function_exists(’cp_post_ratingbar’)) echo cp_post_ratingbar();?>

index.php
This displays the authors image with a popup to their profile.

<?php if (function_exists(’cp_post_author_image’)) echo cp_post_author_image(the_author());?>

This is a link to the authors profile using the authors name. A popup as usual is displayed.

<?php if (function_exists(’cp_post_author_link’)) echo cp_post_author_link();?>

This displays the rating of for each post on the index page.

<?php if (function_exists(’cp_post_ratingbar’)) echo cp_post_ratingbar();?>

To manually add the Red Carpet widget:

<li>
<?php
include(’/wp-content/plugins/sezwho/cpratecomments.php’);
if(function_exists(’widget_sezwho_rc’))
widget_sezwho_rc();
?>
</li>

Rate:

4.0 (5 people)

20 Comments

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Entrecard joined up with SezWho to help bloggers even more. The idea? Offering credits for comments will increase comments on even the newest of blogs and the best of blogs. Add in comment voting and offer even more credits for quality comments and you have a winner.

I have a feeling this new partnership will not only increase comments across the board, but also help Entrecard shed its skin and enter a new era of credits and EC blogging.

My only concerns are 1) will this cause even more inflation? and 2) will quality comments prevail or will communities be created and vote each other to inflate their own rankings?

This new partnership will without a doubt be welcomed by me and other Entrecard bloggers.

A Suggestion for Graham
With that being said, I already have an idea for Graham: create a top posts section where the top voted Entrecard posts (with a minimum of 10 votes or more) receive a link on the blog or within some other area of Entrecard. Although this might be entering the arena of competing with Digg and Reddit, I believe this would give quality posts the audience they deserve.

Rate:

3.7 (2 people)

4 Comments

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Although John Chow hasn’t been talked about as much as in the past, he is still considered amongst the Kings of profit when it comes to blogging.

John Chow’s blog started gaining traffic through social news site Digg by submitting an article that became popular quite quickly. He the submitted another article about how much traffic that article received, which again, became quite popular. Ever since, he has been reaping the rewards. Digg not only sent him traffic, but the visitors sent him links.

With the many links collected, Chow began creating contests. The links created by Diggers were enough to send visitors and have them become contest guinea pigs. They then subscribed to his RSS feed. As his RSS feed grew, Internet Marketers raved about how his blog went from zero to popular in just a matter of weeks. They sent him even more links and more traffic.

With the additional traffic, John Chow had it made. He began writing reviews with affiliate links attached. When his visitors bought the product, he made money. When he reviewed traffic generation sites, like BlogRush, his affiliate link sent even more traffic through pyramid schemes.

John Chow continued his quest for more traffic by holding a contest with Shoemoney. The contest was to see who could raise their feed count the most by the end of the month. Although Chow lost, his feed count increased significantly. Shoemoney’s involvement with Chow further helped raise Chow’s popularity when he asked Chow to fill in a couple of times for the Shoemoney radio show.

As marketers listened to John Chow on the radio, they clicked. Traffic was at an all-time high. Guest posts were flooding in quickly and each post receiving hundreds of comments. At this point in time Chow could tell bloggers to poop on a stick for traffic and they would do it exactly as described.

John Chow’s popularity has since leveled off. Earlier this year, for nearly a month his only posts were about eating at nice restaurants. Guest posters would fill in for Chow to carry the burden of writing articles on Internet marketing and making money. Although his eating posts have cooled down, his posts hardly, if ever deal with making money online.

Rate:

2.8

12 Comments

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Definition of racism:

Prejudice or discrimination based on an individual’s race; can be expressed individually or through institutional policies or practices.

Definition of target marketing:

Market specialization is a business term meaning the market segment to which a particular good or service is marketed. It is mainly defined by age, gender, geography, socio-economic grouping, or any other combination of demographics.

As you can see, there might be a little overlap between the two. In December of 2005 a settlement was reached in Gonzalez v. Abercrombie & Fitch discrimination lawsuit. It alleged:

Abercrombie & Fitch settled a $40 million discrimination lawsuit requiring it to pay this large cash sum to Hispanic, black, Asian American and female applicant employees who charged the company with discrimination. The lawsuit stemmed from claims that minorities were denied prominent sales positions in the store or had their contracts terminated primarily based on their race. Part of the settlement reached with Abercrombie & Fitch, in addition to establishing procedures to allow for more diverse employment, required that marketing materials - such as shopping bags, posters and catalogs - include members of various minority and ethnic groups.

So when is marketing to one group acceptable and when is it not?

First, lets look at when marketing to one group is unacceptable:

• When the group is entirely white
• When the group is anti-race
• When the group is anti-female

When is marketing to one group OK?

• When it is a specific age group
• When it is anti-abortion/pro-abortion
• When it is anti-male
• When the group doesn’t contain whites
• When it is to a nationality

So wait a second, why is marketing to entirely white groups considered racism while marketing to anything but white perfectly acceptable?
For one, white is seen as a majority, at least in the west. Thus, any prejudice or discrimination against a white man or women publicly is seen as fair game. However, when it comes to another race it is not. The same goes towards advertising to anti-male groups, or at the very least, feminists. Men are seen as a majority, not because men are the true majority (women are), but men hold the majority of powerful positions within the USA.

Going back to the Abercrombie & Fitch lawsuit, marketing to white men and women was seen as unacceptable and resulted in an enormous settlement, even though the large majority of their customers were white. However, if you have seen any of the latest McDonald’s commercials (or if you live in Southern USA, any KFC or Church’s Chicken ads) you will notice the complete lack of whites.

Although this is a huge governmental and societal double standard, this is how racism, prejudice, and discrimination is dealt with within the United States, even though within many portions of the US white is no longer the majority.

So to recap, marketing towards a less powerful minority is seen as OK, while marketing towards the actual majority will get you a lawsuit.

Rate:

2.8

7 Comments

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