So you want to increase your Adsense income? Log into your Adsense account, and look at your last month's stats. There are three key areas that contribute to your earnings: Impressions, Clickthroughs and Effective CPM. Improving your stats in any, or preferably, all of these three key areas will increase your Adsense earnings.

Impressions

Impressions are the number of times your webpages with Adsense ads have been viewed. You can increase Impressions by increasing traffic (preferably targeted traffic) to your webpages. Some of the best ways to increase targeted traffic to your webpages include:

-create more webpages, with relevant, focused content
-create more links to your webpages
-list your website/s under relevant categories in more directories
-set up a directory of relevant sites on your website and accept relevant
reciprocal links
-write relevant articles, with your site information in the 'resource box' at the end of each article, and submit them to article directories

Clickthroughs

Clickthroughs are the percentage of viewers who click on your Adsense ads. You can increase Clickthroughs by increasing the relevance of Adsense ads on your site, and by tweaking the format and placing of your ads.

Although you can't dictate which Adsense ads show on your site, you can
influence the relevance of the ads by maintaining a tightly focused website. If every page on your site focuses tightly on the site topic, its more likely that the Adsense ads will too. For example, if every page of your site is about fishing, and the word 'fishing' appears several times on every page, its likely that your Adsense ads will relate to fishing.

The best way to tweak your ad format and placement is to invest in an Adsense Tracker, and test, test, test! People who have done this tend to suggest that the best format is the large rectangle, with background and border the same color as the page behind it, so that the ad blends into the page. The best placement is towards the center or top left of the first screen of the page. Try these suggestions first, and then track and test, to be sure of what works best for your pages.

Effective CPM

Effective CPM is a measure of your average earnings, per thousand clicks. You can increase your Effective CPM by selecting topics that attract high bids from Adsense advertisers, and building pages and whole websites on higher paying topics.

Although Google doesn't release information on Adsense bids, you can get a good idea of the top paying topics by looking at information on Adwords bids, or, for that matter, bids on pay-per-click search engines like Overture. There are a number of keyword research tools available, both free and paid, that can help you find high paying topics.

The Formula

So now you have the basics of increasing your Adsense income. Its a deceptively simple formula:

-Build pages and websites on high paying topics for the best Effective CPM.
-Format and place your Adsense ads for maximum Clickthroughs.
-Promote your sites to drive targeted traffic to your Adsense webpages for maximum impressions.

3 Tips when Writing Articles

Do you love to write? Do you want to put those writing skills to good use? Perhaps you want to see your name published whether it be in a newspaper, magazine, e-zine or other forms of publication. Here's 3 tips to start off your New Year.

1. Brainstorm

Once you've decided what your writing is going to be about, brainstorm. Think of a new angle for your article. For example: If you're writing for your local newspaper about an author, don't necessarily write only the obvious details. Is there something about this author that makes them unique? What is so great about the book they've written, can you tie it with a current news event and or holiday?

2. Removing the Fluff is a Must!

When writing a first draft, it's expected to h ave at least some fluff. Fluff is words, sentences, certain aspects of your article that don't necessarily add to your article. An example would be: “I had no energy. My energy had been sucked out of me” Now that's not the great example, but you get the point. A good way to tell if you ave fluff is to put your article away for a while. Why? Because wen you leave your article for a bit, the next time you look over you'll see aspects of your article popping out. Certain words, facts and excess information that could easily be removed for a smooth flowing article. 3 fast tips that also apply are:

Editing- Proof read your articles and remember to use your spell checker. Grammar and spelling mistakes can easily turn your editor away.
Simple Language Structuring- You may be an expert in your field, but for others reading about your topic for the first time, your content should be simple. Make sure your sentences aren't run-ons. Are you teaching something? Break down aspects of your article into steps. This will ensure your reader understands your topic better.
Be careful of the word “the”- “The” is a common word that sometimes is repeated too many times in the article, causing your article to become repetitious. Use “the” repeatedly if you're trying to make a point.
3. Passion

No, I'm not talking about romance. Passion and excitement in your article. The topic that you choose to write about should excite you. It should be something you enjoy, something you love. If it's a topic you're not truly interested if, it's going to show in your writing. Especially if it's an article that you put together in 5 or so minute. Use words to “pump” up your article, actions, appeal to one's senses if it's about cooking. Have the reader become excited and motivated if it's a teaching article.

Editorial guidelines, also known as writer's guidelines, are the rules set forth by publishers for contributing authors. In order to have your article taken seriously you must review the guidelines prior to submission. It is also recommended that you review previous editions of the publication to get a better feel for the types of articles favored by the editor(s).

Outlined below are the typical issues covered in editorial guidelines along with their definitions and any additional information you should know.

Length of article: The minimum and maximum word count of articles considered for publication. Online articles are usually expected to be 750 to 1,000 words while off-line publications will often accept a longer article.

Topics: The subjects of articles accepted by the publication. Never submit an off topic article as this is very annoying and may result in further submissions from you being banned.

Illustrations/Photographs: Some publications require/accept illustrations or photographs and will usually specify the size and format required for acceptance.

Editorial style: Consistency and accuracy governs the use of a style selected by the editorial department of a publication. Many publications require the use of the Associated Press Stylebook which covers spelling, capitalization, grammar, punctuation and usage.

Author Photograph: Some publications require or accept a photograph of the author usually included with the submission of the article. Guidelines will often cover the size and format of photographs.

Byline length: Also known as an author biography or resource box. Some publications have certain requirements for length, characters per line and what or how much contact information can be included.

Payment: Your byline is often the only payment you will receive for your article. However, some publications (particularly those in print) pay for articles by the word or per article.

Rights: Governs whether or not the publication will accept original or reprinted articles, how long they plan to use the material and whether the article can be used elsewhere at the same time.

Query requirement: A query is a letter written to the editor that proposes an article topic and asks permission to submit. Some publications require that you query the editor (by e-mail, fax or mail) prior to forwarding your article.

Submission methods: Methods of submissions may include via fax, e-mail or hard copy sent by courier or standard mail.

Editorial calendar: It is not unusual for a publication to establish an editorial calendar for each year far in advance. The calendar will cover topics, themes, article types and required submission dates broken down by publication dates.

Format accepted: Each publication will accept articles in certain formats such as Word, WordPerfect, text or Adobe Acrobat.

Audience: Demographics such as number of subscribers, gender, educational level, age and income level.

Notification: When you will be contacted about your submission. Many publishers choose to contact only if an article is chosen for publication.

Acknowledgements: In some cases you will be required to sign (either electronically or on paper) an acknowledgement that you have read the guidelines.

It is very important to understand and follow the editorial guidelines of your target publications in order to maximize your chances of publication. Not all publications will include all of the above items in their editorial guidelines. Contact the editor if any of this information is not disclosed and you need it to refine your submission.

Most all ezine publishers need fresh content. Article writing is something that gets tedious to the publisher who sends out an ezine every week. Fresh, unique ideas are always attractive, and ezine authors don't mind publishing others work, (along with a complete research box, (THIS IS YOUR AD) as well.

If you can learn and excel with this kind of content writing, you can win in two areas. Promoting your own site, or writing content for others site owners and earning dollars as a ghostwriter.

I have been writing and promoting on the web for over 3 years. Here are the tips I find most important to a beginning --article for promoting-- writer.

Articles should be short enough to read in less than 5 minutes.

Ideally they should be between 300 and 600 words (an average page in a printed novel is about 300 words).

Top 10, or 7, (the number isn't that important) Tips on (your subject) are great attention grabbers for articles to promote your website.

Write in short paragraphs, forget what you learned about in English class, if a paragraph is long, find a good point where you can cut it and put an extra line break. Browsing for content, readers are more likely to stick with reading something the eye can easily skim from top to end. (Notice with this article, I have added spaces between each bullet in this list :o)

If your article is long, break it into 2 or 3 parts. For a real web traffic puller, and list building technique, request them to sign up for an autoresponder version to receive 2nd or 3rd part. (be sure to give them opt-out options when you do it this way)

Here is a mistake I see many online authors' making. Don't use huge big vocabulary. You are not writing a thesis, or essay for school. Write so that someone with a 8th grade education could easily read it. Don't try to impress with large vocabulary words, you will lose readers, who feel your writing is condesending to them. (See, how many do you think I may have lost using condesending?

Try to write with passion. Put feeling into your words. Pull in as many of the five senses, experience stories, as you can. For an example of this, read this article. Articles should educate, entertain or inform. Imagine how popular your article will be if it does all three.

Make sure your article is well formatted. You can post it at a site like ezinearticles.com and use their ("get this article page" to get your article in different formats, both text and html.) This sites also allow you to input your own personalized summary, and keywords, which allows webmasters to find them and use them as well.

Set a goal to publish a certain number of articles per week to a certain number of database sites.

It is easy to find sites to submit your articles too. Just go to google, type in articles, then, scroll to the bottom of the page. You will find a button which says, search within results.

With this search button type in "free articles" or "free content" or "free to republish" and you will find several submission sites. You can also type "article submission directories"

I have set a goal to do five things each day toward promotion. Each persons goals will be different, but remember, to be effective you must write new content and promote on a consistent basis.

However, if you have a good article, it will also duplicate itself quickly and spread across the web like a forest fire out of control!

You can optimize your article to get the exact keyword density for search engines, but that could fill another whole article. For your main keyword, try to use it about 7-10 times throughout the whole page.

If your articles aren't getting published very often, or you just want to increase the chances of them being published, then you will benefit from the tips in this article.

1. Article Length

You should always keep you article 500 to 800 words long. If you can't fit what you want to say into that amount of space, then break your article up into more than one part.

2. Resource Box Length

When writing your resource box, keep it 5 to 6 lines long. In a resource box you are simply trying to get people to request more information, not sell them something. If you want a longer ad, buy one!

3. Line Length

The lines in both your article and your resource box should be formatted to 60 to 65 characters per line. One of the consequences of not doing so is that, in some email programs, your article may appear with every line at a different length.

You can get your article formatted, as well as learning its character, line, and word count, at the following website for free. http://www.fwointl.com/FWOFormatter.html

4. Is Your Article Actually An Article?

Publishers want to provide their readers with actually useful information and you should want the same. If you write an article that is just a sales letter or press release it will be rejected 99 percent of the time.

5. Inactive Links

Before you even think about publishing or submitting your article check that all links within it are active and working. Nothing is more irritating than to click on a link for a site you're interested in only to find out that it no longer exists.

6. Spelling, Punctuation, and Grammar

If you submit your article and it's full of errors it will be thrown into the trash folder so fast that your head will spin. Submitting articles with these types of errors not only makes you look extremely unprofessional, but it shows disrespect for both the publisher and their readers.

7. S*AM Triggers

As a courtesy, you should run your article through a program that will check it for triggers that could possibly get it rejected by filters. This isn't a necessary step but it will definitely impress publishers and increase the chances of your article being published.

You can check your article for free at http://www.lyris.com/contentchecker.

8. Publisher Guidelines

This should be understood without having to say it, but it is still important enough to mention. Always, always, always follow the publisher's guidelines when submitting an article to them. Not doing so will get your article rejected quicker than anything else.

Read this list, print it out, and keep it by you when you are writing an article. Read each tip and make sure that you are following it.

Making the above mistakes will insult the intelligence of both the publishers and their readers, as well as wasting your time and theirs.

Who created accounting principles? Who sets and revises accounting standards? What if you don’t follow all the rules, do you go to jail? Is there an accounting police force that investigates and arrests violators? It would seem that there must be some regulatory force to make sure that providers of financial statements conform to the rules. There is, up to a point, and here is how it works:

Mainly, it’s all voluntary and it works pretty well. First, double-entry accounting originated in Italy in the 1400’s, so its been around awhile. Accounting principles have evolved over the years just as have accounting standards. The reason why the system works is that the business community could not function if there was not commonality and consistency in financial statement reporting. It would be chaos, much like if there were no driving rules of the road.

Therefore, in the United States, a body of experts known as the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB pronounced Fasbee) was established in 1973, which superseded another board called the Accounting Principles Board (APB). The FASB members go through a lengthy process of analyzing and reviewing problems in the accounting field that are brought to them. After much thought, they will make a pronouncement as to what they think the new or revised way of approaching the treatment of an accounting issue should be.

They are a non-governmental organization that has private financing. A big supporter of FASB is the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). Many Certified Public Accountants (CPAs) belong to this prestigious organization and are obligated to abide by its guidelines and principles of behavior. Other countries no doubt have similar organizations that require high levels of accounting professional conduct.

FASB established an accounting code called “Generally Accepted Accounting Principles” or (GAAP). The assumption is that if a business financial statement is prepared according to GAAP, then the user of that financial statement could rely on or trust the information more readily than if not prepared according to GAAP. Those businesses that deviate from GAAP, and many smaller businesses do, cannot say that their statements are prepared under GAAP; in fact, they should inform the reader that they are not. However, let the buyer beware.

One governmental body that has a policing function is the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC). It is primarily concerned with public companies because their job is to protect investors from unscrupulous acts. Recently, the SEC has gotten into the act of establishing accounting standards. It has its hands full today.

Since most businesses use their financial statements to prepare their required income tax returns, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) may audit those tax returns and review the financial statements upon which the tax returns are based. Not following the rules can get you in trouble with this governmental body.

You can see that in many ways compliance to the principles and standards is a mixture of voluntary and regulatory behavior. Currently, there is an effort underway to set international accounting standards due to the inexorable globalization process. This is a massive undertaking that will take years, but it is obviously necessary and inevitable.

1. Find a strategic business partner. Look for ones that have the same objective. You can trade leads, share marketing info, sell package deals, etc.

2. Brand your name and business. You can easily do this by just writing articles and submitting them to e-zines or web sites for republishing.

3. Start an auction on your web site. The type of auction could be related to the theme of your site. You'll draw traffic from auctioneers and bidders.

4. Remember to take a little time out of your day or week to brainstorm. New ideas are usually the difference between success and failure.

5. Model other successful business or people. I'm not saying out right copy them, but practice some of the same habits that have made them succeed.

6. Take risks to improve your business. Sometimes businesses don't want to advertise unless it's free, sometimes you have to spend money to get results.

7. Include emotional words in your advertisements. Use ones like love, security, relief, freedom, happy,
satisfaction, fun, etc.

8. Ask people online to review your web site. You can use the comments you get to improve your web site or you may turn the reviewer into a customer.

9. Out source part of your workload. You'll save on most employee costs. You could out source your secretarial work, accounting, marketing, etc.

10. Combine a product and service together in a package deal. It could increase your sales. If you're selling a book, offer an hour of consulting with it.

I am certain that, as a business owner, you have often entertained the question as to how much to spend and where to spend your advertising dollars. For most small business owners, these questions can add to the headaches suffered in the course of normal everyday operations of their business.

THERE ARE NO SIMPLE ANSWERS

The how much to spend and where to spend it questions have no easy answers.

Depending on your type of business, many people suggest that the *how much* should be equal to anywhere from 4% to 10% of your gross receipts.

The quandary is that a business cannot survive without a fresh flow of incoming customers. But, a business can seldom generate a fresh stream of customers without spending money to get the word out about their business.

THE CHALLENGE OF DEVELOPING EFFECTIVE ADVERTISING

Have you ever paid for advertising and sat back to await the fresh flow of customers, only to find yourself sitting and sitting and then sitting some more?

Don’t feel bad about that. It has happened to many of us before.

See, knowing where to spend the advertising money is not enough to get the job done.

Where to spend the money only begins to highlight the other issues connected with advertising:

· Marketing Plan
· Advertising Strategy
· Headlines, Ad Copy and Visual Presentation · Tracking the Success of Your Advertising Campaigns

THE MARKETING PLAN

The Marketing Plan is used primarily to identify your own products and services, costs, strengths, weaknesses and the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors.

ADVERTISING STRATEGY

It is important to understand what you expect to gain from your advertising.

Do you simply wish to get your name known so that when your customer will need you, they will think of you first? Or, do you wish to get your customers in your front door on Saturday?

Do you want your customers to come in and take a look around to discover the next object that they cannot live without? Or, do you want them to come in and buy a specific widget?

Do you hope that enough people will come in to buy enough products or services to pay for your single ad? Or, do you expect to gain a lifelong customer who will help pay for your advertising over the course of several years?

When you know what you want, then you will better understand just how to do it.

HEADLINES, AD COPY AND VISUAL PRESENTATION

You might be surprised how many business owners put out advertising without regard for the quality of the sales pitch or presentation. The quality of your distribution outlet or the amount of money you spent to get there will do little for you if the advertising vehicle is a junker.

Test all of your advertising materials in smaller markets before blowing your advertising bank roll on it. You must absolutely know the value of your advertising before putting large sums of money behind it.

TRACKING THE SUCCESS OF YOUR ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS

Tell your customers to save another 10% when they tell you they heard or saw your ad in such-and-such location. Suggest that they can register to win a free widget if they fill out a form and have them to tell you how they heard of your business. Advertise a specific widget in your ad and track the sales of that widget.

It does not matter how you track your advertising --- just make sure you do it!

IN SUMMARY

The ideal way to spend your advertising budget is to buy a rifle with a high-powered scope and to only shoot your targets in the light of day.

If you are not tracking your advertising, then you are shooting a pellet gun without an attached scope, with blinders on, and shooting in the dead darkness of night.

Even with a bigger gun, the blinders in the dark constitute the single largest mistake made by advertisers. If you are unable to track your advertising to learn what is working well, what is working somewhat, and what is a money pit, then you are condemned to repeat your mistakes over and again.

By relying only on gut instinct, you may be choosing to spend more money in the money pit and to lose all of your money in the process.

When you get down to the nuts and bolts of making money from your advertising, you should plan, prepare, track and study your results. You must have factual information on which to base your advertising decisions. When you are making the right advertising decisions, then making money from your business might just come easy.

Free Web Advertising - searchEstate – The search engine advertising solution for free web traffic.

searchEstate is the ultimate Internet Advertising Solution, optimised for Internet Explorer and Firefox.

To those who are not aware of searchEstate;

It’s a Major Search Engine that PAYS YOU to advertise and gets free web traffic to your website through its free web advertising ...

Quote:
“searchEstate is an Internet Advertising Solution based on an Internet search engine. We are member-based and share our advertising spaces and revenues with our members.”

About searchEstate...
searchEstate is an inversion of the ‘pay-per-click’ model employed by the major search engines. It’s like having your own SEO Company working for you 24/7. searchEstate is becoming known as ‘the peoples search engine’ because it allows the individual to profit from Internet advertising, instead of the major corporations.

searchEstate gives fast search results and you can even share revenue from the free web advertising. Internet advertising fees that the searchEstate search engine generates, is shared amongst its members..

The Difference...
Until now, free web advertising was only available to those who knew the search engine optimisation techniques required for top placement. searchEstate is a search engine that changes the way you advertise. Now it is possible, without specific technical knowledge, to attain top search engine rankings and get free web traffic to your site.

The Alternatives...
searchEstate has two modules, free and pro versions.

The free version allows you to build a Free Web Advertising network that rotates around the search engine on millions of pages, thus giving your business great exposure. The more people that are in your free advertising network, the greater that exposure becomes. SearchEstate search boxes are now starting to appear on many websites.

The Pro version of searchEstate offers a great deal more. A thousand automatically mailed ads each month. Twenty advertisements with 100 keywords and strategic exchanges with the top Internet search engines. Commissions on paid members through an affiliate program. Logo ads, Banner Ads, Text Ads and Search Engine Ads are all catered for and tracked by the searchEstate program.

Quote...
“The key to success is to sponsor others into searchEstate. You can do it by yourself or we can do it for you via our amazing Advertising Co-op. For a limited time, we help you build your downline easily through our 1000 fresh leads each month.”

Summary...
It seems that now there is an alternative and complete Internet Advertising Solution to paying the major search engines! As we are told, the best route to success is to actually own your own business. Your own Internet Advertising Solution is a great way to promote your main business.

Quote...
“What if we were to tell you that we can strategically go in and place ads in your billboards that other people will pay for? What if, say, the average pay-per-click fee was $0.10? Something really low cost, just to be on the safe side. Well, for 100,000 ad billboards, just having 1 ad get 1 click per day will net you $1,000 per day, minus our 5-10% service fee!”

Well, that’s certainly something I could live with! After a very concise conversation with the CEO, it seems a very viable proposition. A true “Swiss Army Knife” sort of business solution.

Why pay for your advertising when you get nothing in return? searchEstate seems the perfect solution. Why use anything else? The major search engines are fat enough already. Of course, there will be sceptics. That is why I took the trouble to talk about searchEstate with its founder and joint CEO.

When someone actually shows you how it works, it’s a lot different to just telling you.

There is no limit to a search engine database. It is not reliant upon sustained memberships. It is only reliant upon advertising. Isn’t it nice to know that now the Internet user can grab his/her share of some of the revenues generated?

From the inside, this certainly looks very lucrative. The Beta-Testing has shown amazing and consistent results on the Major Search Engines. searchEstate is certainly capable of achieving it's promise of free web advertising.

Discusses t he brief history of online advertising through specific ad strageis and discusses where online advertising is headed.
Is there such a thing as “traditional” online advertising? If there is, it started with banners, moved to FFAs, took a step backwards with SPAM, a hard right with classified advertising and then shot forward with pay per click search engine. So how do you know where to spend your advertising budget in the current market? If you’ve been responsible for your company’s web advertising efforts over the years you might agree that the traditional means of advertising worked; as least for a little while. So as new types of advertising penetrate the market with increasing frequency, what do you do with those proven stand-by methods of generating links and traffic? Throw them out? Keep them around for posterity? Maybe give them a facelift? Let’s review those traditional ad models then look at some experimental models. TRADITIONAL ONLINE ADVERTISING MODELS

Banners
Banner ads in the form of animated gifs are the most common and widely used form of online advertising today. Banner ads reach the widest possible audience because practically 100% of Internet users can view them without any special plugins. Web marketers, advertisers and promoters have quickly realized that banners under 12k in file size puts the ad in front of the visitor as quickly as possible, increasing the chance of click-through even though surfers are growing increasingly immune. New styles and shapes of banners (such as skyscraper ads) have grown in popularity recently, which is addressed in the “Experimental Advertising” section below. SPAM
What does SPAM stand for? It’s not “Stupid Pointless Annoying Message” (which in some cases it could be) but rather “Sending and Posting Advertising Messages.” It’s hard to believe SPAM is effective, but unarguably, it is. While click-through rates continue to fall and legislation begins to rise, it is a savvy advertiser’s best bet to stay away from it, unless of course you’re selling Pasta Pots or Viagra. Rich mail – “Fancy SPAM”
Most likely, the e-mail messages you receive on a daily basis are text only. Rich mail, on the other hand, allows graphics, video and audio to be included in the e-mail message. When you open up a rich e-mail your e-mail client automatically calls up your Internet connection and launches an html page in your browser. E-mail clients that are offline will invite you to click on the link when you have your Internet connection open again. If your e-mail client does not support graphics you will receive the e-mail in text only. While SPAM is still SPAM, rich mail has proven to be much more effective than standard text messages. Pop-Ups/Pop-Unders:
This creative, yet completely obtrusive and annoying means of advertising was once celebrated in some circles as the most innovative ad concept since banners. It only took a short time before many users, sick of being trapped in a never-ending onslaught of such ads, voiced their rejection. One can only wonder when advertisers will recognize the public dissatisfaction and move on to another more effective means to promote their companies. Institutional Advertising:
While institutional or “in-house” advertising has been available since the inception of the Internet, few companies have made an effort to utilize the many different aspects of online advertising in one format as has 7Search.com with its Direct Pay-Per-Text advertising. 7Search, a leader in the pay per click search engine arena, has recently introduced this program which enables its advertisers to advertise outside of its search return lists using the same titles and descriptions seen on its search engine. The pay-per-click model enables interested advertisers to leave behind the CPM impression model and focus on the click conversions. Direct Pay-Per-Text is a patent-pending concept from 7Search which will be released to the general public in the coming months. Pay-Per-Click Search Engines
It’s hard to think of PPC search engines as a “traditional” means to advertise online, but the ratio of those advertisers who do versus those who don’t is staggering; in fact the majority have at least tried their hand at leasing traffic. In a PPC agreement, the advertiser only pays for qualifying clicks to the destination site based on a prearranged per-click rate. The response on ads with well-written titles and descriptions targeted to the users query pull response rates unseen in the ad industry previously. The greatest advantage arguably is the ability to measure precisely the rate of return versus your investment. Some of the most popular PPC search engines are FindWhat.com, 7Search.com, Ah-ha.com and the industry leader Overture. EXPERIMENTAL ONLINE ADVERTISING MODELS Traffic Exchange Advertising:
Hit exchanges, actually a form of banner exchange, are a recent phenomenon on the Internet. You will visit the site of a member of an exchange, and in exchange, another member of the exchange will visit your site. The recent explosion of hit exchanges on the web has diluted the effectiveness of such a method of advertising. There have also been many instances of cheating, in which a script is used to generate visits to a site. However, if you have a product that is of interest to webmasters, and is low cost or has a free version, there is no harm in giving hit exchanges a try. Shockwave ads
Shockwave is best suited for campaigns that want to utilize out-of-banner real estate, such as applets, trading cards, and games. Director and Flash provide the ability to embed interaction, video, and audio within the file, making Shockwave files some of the richest ad units on the Web. Viral marketing and strong brand interaction are two of the key strengths of Shockwave ads. As these ads are typically “bandwidth monsters” the adoption has been slow and will most likely remain that way. Other downsides include development costs and the fact that it just won’t work without the Shockwave plug-in, which (though downloaded by millions of users) is far from being a mainstay. Interstitial ads
Interstitials are ads that play between pages on a website, much like television ads play between sections of a program. There are several variations on the interstitial model: some play in the main browser window, while some play in new, smaller windows; some are pre-cached, while some stream ad content as it plays; some provide the ability to create very rich ads, while some focus on smaller, faster-loading ads. Whatever the format, nearly all interstitial ads perform very well if measured by both click-through rates and brand recall. Floating ads and DHTML
Types of floating ads include DHTML sponsorships, in which advertising objects "fly" across the page on a preset course; cursor sponsorships, in which the cursor turns into an advertising image; and scrolling ads, in which an advertisement moves up and down the edge of a page as the user scrolls up and down. Floating ads give the advertiser and publisher the flexibility to achieve nearly any effect. However, as this is one of the more daring types of online advertising, advertising and content must be balanced on any given page. Floating ads (especially DHTML and cursors) are best run for short periods to create brand awareness—running them for longer periods can bring negative user feedback. It is important to understand that online advertising is only effective if it generates significant response and this applies to both traditional and experimental ads. Unfortunately, the only way to discover the efficiency of your campaign is to test in every format at least once with as many ads as you are able.

by: Diane Hughes
Everyone knows that advertising is essential to growing a business. One problem that small business owners have always faced is the high cost of marketing. Most, however don't realize that there is an effective way to reduce the cost of your advertising while - at the same time - increasing its reach.

Advertising co-ops are nothing new. Usually they are a "perk" offered by major manufacturers to encourage retailers to promote their products. Because the retailer has direct access to customers that would want to buy certain products, it only makes sense that they should do joint advertising. You've seen it - McDonalds mentioning Coke in their commercials, Dell stating that you get a free Epson printer with purchase and so on.

The retailer doesn't make the product the manufacturer is providing, but it IS a great match with what they DO offer. Nobody would want to eat a Big Mac without something to drink, and a computer wouldn't do a lot of good without a printer.

Now you can use this same strategy to create your own advertising co-op to increase the reach of your ads and drastically reduce the cost, too.


--- How It Works

Generally speaking, the cost of any advertisements (bulk emailings, ezine ads, banners, newspaper, etc.) would be split equally between all participants. If you and two associates decide to purchase a solo ad, you would each receive equal mentions in the ad and you would each pay equal portions of the cost.

So if the solo ad were going to a list of 200,000 and cost $150, each of the three would pay $50. You get to reach 200,000 people for 1/3 the cost you would have normally paid. And, because this ad relates you to other types of businesses, you actually expand your advertising reach.


--- Getting Started

So who would be qualified to enter into an ad co-op with you? It depends on the nature of your business. Think of others that reach your same target customer and make a list. If you design Web sites, you might approach hosting companies, graphic artists, copywriters or programmers. If your business is landscaping, you could invite yard maintenance companies to join you.

Once you have a list of one or more business types, think of current associates you know who belong to those groups. Also, ask others if they know of any reliable businesses that fall into the categories you've outlined.


--- Making the Approach

When you have a list of businesses to approach, simply write or email them with your offer. Be sure to point out the benefits such as:

* a win-win situation
* reduced cost of advertising
* expanded reach of advertising
* larger, more prominent ads for a fraction of the cost

Also, be sure to ask about the advertising outlets these businesses currently use. You will likely find new avenues that lead to greater exposure.


--- Finalizing the Deal

You'll need to work out payment arrangements with your partners prior to placing the ad(s). The best way I have found to handle the finances is for each party to pay me for their portion of the cost with a credit card. I then place the ad order with MY credit card. This way, you are assured of receiving the dollar amount due to you; and your partners have the assurance that - should you default on your end of the deal - they have recourse for getting their money back.

Working in cooperation with other businesses can lead to tremendous successes with advertising. When like-minded companies pool their resources to reach one target audience, the impact is doubled while the cost is reduced by at least half. That's the best advertising bargain around today!
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AdSense may be one of the fastest and easiest ways to monetize traffic to your web site whether you have products or services for sale or you simply provide free content to your visitors.

Simply stated, Google AdSense enables website operators to place some code on their site that connects to Google’s ad server content database and pulls keyword-relevant advertising onto the web pages. The webmaster gets paid a percentage of the fee that Google receives from the advertiser every time a visitor clicks on an ad. There is no charge for the webmaster to participate in AdSense. All costs are covered by the advertiser who participates in the AdSense sister program called AdWords.

Google’s sends out digital “robots” which use proprietary algorithms to parse the host web page and analyze the content in an effort to determine what keywords are relevant. It reports its findings back to Google’s ad server which then serves ads matching those keywords. Given that the entire process is automated, the “ad robots” do a pretty good job of getting the advertising content right most of the time.

The History of Google AdSense

Google AdSense has its roots in the old “Google Content-Targeted Advertising” program which they introduced back in March of 2003. Although this program was similar in concept to AdSense, there was no automated way of participating. Each webmaster negotiated a deal directly with Google, and websites that served less than 20 million page views per month were not welcome to participate.

As Google grew, they began to see how much money they were leaving on the table by excluding the smaller sites, which greatly outnumbered the sites serving over 20 million hits that were willing to serve other people’s ads. Their answer to that problem was AdSense which has no minimum traffic requirements and is open to all sites meeting Google’s content and decency requirements.

How much can you make running Google AdSense?

The answer to that question depends upon three factors:

1. How much traffic your site draws
2.How many visitors click on your ads
3.How much those ads pay per generated click

With some ads paying as much as $5 or more, it’s possible that you can generate a serious income with AdSense. There are relatively well documented cases of some people earning as much as $500 per DAY and more. Numbers like that are rare exceptions however. Even so, there is no reason why you can’t earn somewhere around $1,000 per month, or more, once you get the hang of it.

How to get started using Google AdSense

Make a visit to Google’s AdSense Site (https://www.google.com/adsense/) and sign up. Make sure that you read their Acceptable Use Policy and that you follow their content requirements. Google has their own “AdSense Police” who will have no problem booting you out of the program if you fail to walk the line.

Using Google AdSense on your site is like collecting free money. There’s no reason not to do it and potentially thousands of dollars worth of reasons to do it.

Don’t know about you but I really look forward to watching The Apprentice on TV each week. Because it almost always offers a lesson in online marketing.

Take the recent episode where the two teams were charged by The Donald with making money any way they could selling services to dog owners.

Drama aside, the team that lost was a so called "one trick pony". They pinned their success on one thing - dog washing. A good idea but not quite good enough. Because the winning team not only offered dog washing but dog massage plus nail clipping too. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that by offering a variety of services they earned three times as much.

Income diversification is also a winning strategy online. One I mention to all who will listen. That’s because it’s dangerous to depend on one product’s cash flow for your site’s survival.

So here are three ways to avoiding the fate of most one trick ponies.

===== > Promote Your Own Product

I strongly believe you should have your own product to promote.

Ideally something digitally delivered like an eBook or software? This way your "bread and butter" can’t suddenly be taken away from you should the product owner decide to no longer use affiliates. Which happens you know?

Even better it’s smart to develop a higher priced back end product that offers even more help. Doing so knowing that if you offer a high quality product a certain percentage will want even more ideas and solutions from you. And these back end sales are the easiest kind.

Oh and don’t think I didn’t hear that groan two paragraphs ago. But anyone can develop a starter info product in 24 hours.

• Develop a list of 25 pressing questions those in your niche want answered.
• Have a friend interview you for an hour over the phone asking you those questions.
• You provide insightful answers while taping the call.
• Transcribe the audio tape and convert the text into a PDF file.

There you go - nearly instant product. If it sells flesh it out further and raise the price to reflect the added value. If not try again with another topic.


===== > Promote Related Affiliate Products

But what if your visitors don’t want YOUR product? Well, don’t let them slip through your fingers without a fight. In this case affiliate products ARE the perfect solution.

Because a site focusing on weddings can not only sell a wedding planning book it can also offer one on how to throw a bridal shower. Or another how to get the best deal on your honeymoon.

Now to find such related eBooks available at Clickbank I use Affiliates Alert. It’s time saving software that runs from your desktop. With it you can find top selling products by keyword or commission payout by searching the entire Clickbank Marketplace or just a selected category. Best of all you can download it for free from www.AffiliatesAlert.com.


===== > Cash in on Waste Traffic

Still not every visitor is going to buy from you no matter how many tempting solutions you dangle in front of them. In fact the vast majority won’t. But that doesn’t mean you still can’t make money off them.

The most common way to cash in on waste traffic is to use Google’s Adsense. That’s where you display Google Adwords ads on your site for some unspecified cut of the action.

The nice thing about Adsense is you can be up and running in no time. All I do is incorporate the Adsense code in my page templates using SSI or server side includes. That way every new page added gives me more opportunities to make money.

So you want to increase your Adsense income? Log into your Adsense account, and look at your last month's stats. There are three key areas that contribute to your earnings: Impressions, Clickthroughs and Effective CPM. Improving your stats in any, or preferably, all of these three key areas will increase your Adsense earnings.

Impressions

Impressions are the number of times your webpages with Adsense ads have been viewed. You can increase Impressions by increasing traffic (preferably targeted traffic) to your webpages. Some of the best ways to increase targeted traffic to your webpages include:

-create more webpages, with relevant, focused content
-create more links to your webpages
-list your website/s under relevant categories in more directories
-set up a directory of relevant sites on your website and accept relevant
reciprocal links
-write relevant articles, with your site information in the 'resource box' at the end of each article, and submit them to article directories
-advertise with pay per click search engines like Google's Adwords. www.Miva.com (formerly www.FindWhat.com, www.YahooMarketing.com (formerly Overture) and 100's of others. When of the best places for pay per click info is www.payperclicksearchengines.com with a descriptive list of 659 search engines.

Clickthroughs

Clickthroughs are the percentage of viewers who click on your Adsense ads. You can increase Clickthroughs by increasing the relevance of Adsense ads on your site, and by tweaking the format and placing of your ads.

Although you can't dictate which Adsense ads show on your site, you can
influence the relevance of the ads by maintaining a tightly focused website. If every page on your site focuses tightly on the site topic, its more likely that the Adsense ads will too. For example, if every page of your site is about fishing, and the word 'fishing' appears several times on every page, its likely that your Adsense ads will relate to fishing.

The best way to tweak your ad format and placement is to invest in an Adsense Tracker, and test, test, test! People who have done this tend to suggest that the best format is the large rectangle, with background and border the same color as the page behind it, so that the ad blends into the page. The best placement is towards the center or top left of the first screen of the page. Try these suggestions first, and then track and test, to be sure of what works best for your pages.

Effective CPM

Effective CPM is a measure of your average earnings, per thousand clicks. You can increase your Effective CPM by selecting topics that attract high bids from Adsense advertisers, and building pages and whole websites on higher paying topics.

Although Google doesn't release information on Adsense bids, you can get a good idea of the top paying topics by looking at information on Adwords bids, or, for that matter, bids on pay-per-click search engines like Overture. There are a number of keyword research tools available, both free and paid, that can help you find high paying topics.

The Formula

So now you have the basics of increasing your Adsense income. Its a deceptively simple formula:

-Build pages and websites on high paying topics for the best Effective CPM.
-Format and place your Adsense ads for maximum Clickthroughs.
-Promote your sites to drive targeted traffic to your Adsense webpages for maximum impressions.

If you read my previous article you will know that the goal of these articles is to teach you ways to get started making money online without having to spend any money.

This is the second in the series and this time we deal with having your own blog. There are endless ways of making money once you have traffic, and your blog will get you traffic. The income we will be looking at today will come from Google Adsense.

There are multiple benefits to having a blog including the low cost (or no cost), the resources that will help you get traffic to your blog and the fact that you can provide your blog as an RSS feed. An RSS feed will allow readers to automatically receive your updates into their RSS reader.

Let's get started with our 6 steps.

1. Set up your blog. You will need to decide what you are going to blog about. You should decide on a theme and name your blog appropriately.

There are a number of free ways to set up a blog & to have it hosted for free. We will go with Blogger.com for our first blog.

Blogger will allow you to set up a blog for free they will host it for free and they will ping search engines every time you update, meaning you will get spidered & found.

Visit blogger.com & click the button on the front page labelled 'create your blog now' then follow the step by step instructions that Blogger provide.

Some key settings you will want to get right are:

I) 'Host your blog at Blogger' = Yes
II) 'Add your blog to our listings' = Yes
III) 'Ping Weblogs.com' = Yes
IV) 'Publish Site Feed' = Yes

2. Write some content. Before we move any further there has to be some information on the site & that means that you have to make some entries. You can write some of these entries yourself & some can be quotes from sites of interest to your reader that you can post using the Google Toolbar.

You can download the Google toolbar for free at toolbar.google.com. The toolbar includes a Blogger button. When you visit a site that has something of interest to your readers you can highlight the appropriate text & click the Blogger button. The content will then be added to your blog along with a link back to the site.

3. Once you have some content eg a weeks worth of blogging with 1 or 2 entries for everyday, you can apply for an adsense account. When you sign in to Blogger you will see an invitation to join Adsense. Use this link and apply for an account.

You can find out all about Adsense on the Adsense page but basically you get Google ads on your site & get paid if your visitor clicks them.

Google will decide what adverts show on your site based on the content it finds within.

You need to be aware that Google will decline your application if your site is not considered to have content. Nobody outside of Google knows the precise rules on this.

Once you have been accepted you can get some javascript from Google to add to you site. Copy this & then log in to Blogger.

Once you have logged into your blog you will see that one of the tabs across the top of the screen is labelled 'Template'. Click this. You will need to know a little bit of HTML to help find the right location to paste your Google code. But with a little experimentation you will find the right place for you. See the resource box at the end of this article for more help.

I would suggest that the ads need to be seen when the site loads but should not be too obvious or dominate your site.

4. Write some more content. Try and keep your content coming at regular intervals as a number of directories will check on your site at regular intervals & the smarter ones will visit on a schedule based on your update schedule. They will probably determine this in the hours after you first submit to them. Which is what we will do next.

5. Keep writing interesting content. Ideally you want people to come back again and again. As with customers its harder to get a new visitor than to keep existing visitors. So make it interesting, in fact make it so interesting that they can't help but tell all their friends about it also.

As with most free ways to make money this will take time to get going, but if you can build a following you will make money.

To get approval for your small business loan application, you must be able to meet the lending criteria set down. Some organisations are more risk averse than others, and will therefore have more stringent criteria.

To vastly increase your chances of a successful funding application, you will need to present the following information:

1. The reason for the loan. The lender will be looking for something that fits within the normal range and expertise of your business. The amount may cover a number of items, so you will need to cover each.

2. The amount required, and the repayment term of the small business loan you want. (e.g. $10,000 term 5 years, payable quarterly).

3. Details of how you will repay the amount borrowed. For example, “From the increase in profits of reduced running costs of the Whizzbang Go4It”

4. Details of security you will be able to offer to the lender. This will act as reassurance for the lender. If you’re not prepared to put up some aspect of security, then why should they?

5. You will need to include your business plan which will serve to answer essential questions relating to management capabilities, information about the market you operate in. What kind of business you are in etc.

6. 3 Years financial statements. You will need to present quality financial information from your accounting software, preferably signed off by your accountant or tax advisor.

7. Latest Set of Management accounts. Again produced from your accounting software.

8. Accounts receivables (debtors) and payables (creditors) ageing reports.

9. Principals financial statements. – Particularly required if some form of security is necessary.

If you are a new company, the emphasis is going to be on your business plan , and the security (also called collateral) you or your business can provide against the loan.

You must take the time to practice presenting your case to the bank or lender to iron out any glitches. Practice on your colleagues and family (you never know, they might be so impressed, they'll invest or lend!). It may help to role play the lender and come up with as many pointy questions as possible. The more time you take the better your chances will be. (But remember, don’t fall into the analysis paralysis trap!)

Good luck!

When starting a business, you have to determine the method you are going to use for accounting and paying taxes. The two choices are the cash method and the accrual method.

Cash Method

If you are looking for simplicity, the cash method is probably your best accounting choice. Generally, income and deductions can be claimed when payment is actually received or made. This is best shown with an example.

I open a small business and have to order business cards and stationary. I receive the products and pay the invoice on November 18, 2005. Under the cash method, I can deduct the cost on my 2005 tax return.

Some businesses are restricted from using the cash method. C corporations may only use the cash method if they have less than $5 million in gross revenues for a particular year. Professional Service Corporations can use the cash method without limit, while farming corporations can due so if gross revenues are less than $25 million. Tax shelters are prohibited from using the cash method.

Accrual Method

The Accrual Method of accounting is a bit more complex. Under this method, the focus in on the date the expense is incurred, not paid. Although this may seem a small difference, it can play havoc with your books and piece of mind.

Using our previous example, assume I order business cards and stationary on the December 18, 2005. I receive the products on December 30th, but don’t pay the invoice until January 20, 2006. When can the expense be claimed? It depends on when economic performance occurred.

Generally, economic performance occurs when goods or services are provided to you. In the above example, economic performance would arguably occur when the business cards and stationary were delivered with the invoice on December 30th. Thus, I would be able to deduct the expense for the 2005 tax year.

In Closing
As you can see, the cash method is the easier of the two accounting methods. To determine the best method for your business, speak with a tax professional.

1. Make your articles available on your site.

You'll have an easy way to get more sales by showing your visitors that your are an expert on the topic your visitors are interested in.

2. Use lots of white space. Keep your sentences and paragraphs short and to the point.

3. Write for your target audience.

You'll have a better chance of attracting people to your site that are interested in purchasing your products.

4. Use numbered lists.

Your numbered lists will help you to effectively share your tips with your readers while making your article easy to read.

Use your numbered lists to share points on your article's topic, list your directions when writing a how to article, or to deliver the content of your article if you wanted to write a list article.

You can also use numbered lists to share resources related to what you talk about in your article along with your descriptions of those resources.

5. Use the active voice.

With the active voice the subject does the action while with the passive voice the subject receives the action expressed by the verb.

For instance:

Active voice: The dog bit the mailman. Passive voice: The mailman was bitten by the dog.

Use the active voice to keep your sentences from being awkward or confusing and to liven up your article.

6. Make your writing more personal by using the word "you" a lot within your article.

A simple way to accomplish this is to write your article to one person.

You'll naturally use the word "you" a lot within your article, and your readers will feel like you're talking directly to them.

7. Don't be afraid to share your personality with your readers.

You could inject a little bit of humor into your article, or share an opinion, story or anecdote that relates to the topic of your article.

8. Offer a subscription to your e-zine or a freebie in your resource box.

Writing articles will help you to get your site promoted on relevant sites and e-zines at no cost to you.

Maximize the profit you get from writing your articles by giving your readers a subscription to your e-zine, or a freebie that they'll find valuable enough to go back to again and again.

9. Once you've written your article, wait a couple of days, and then reread your article.

You might be able to add new points that you might have missed before, add more detail to information you covered in your article, or reword parts of your article that are unclear.

10. Use current topics whether online or in the "real world" to get ideas for your articles.

Your articles will be cutting edge and newsworthy, and will have an excellent chance of being published by e-zine publishers and webmasters.